Over the next few days, I learned a rather interesting fact: Amelia was scary.

At first, I had been a tiny bit confused as to why she needed my scroll's 'higher security.' However, as I watched her pore over the lives of the Ubiquitous Problem Solvers Inc. (UPSI for short), I understood.

If anyone bothered to investigate these people's impending deaths, they'd instantly zero in on us. Without the benefits of shadow security, it would be all too easy to find information on who had been recently snooping through the victims' lives.

And when I say 'snooping'… At the very least, I now knew that when Amelia said she would be thorough, she meant thorough.

All but the most withdrawn members of UPSI had their entire lives mapped out and analyzed over the course of four days. She knew their basic schedules. She knew where they liked to go for a drink. She could even name most of the people they were likely to hit up for a casual fling.

Yeah. Amelia was scary.

She also happened to be my scary. Woe unto her foes and all that, but having her in my corner filled me with a swell of confidence. It even managed to temporarily beat back the anxiety that had taken hold of me.

And that was a lot of anxiety indeed.

Funnily enough, very little had to do with my upcoming foray into committing dubious acts of violence and eldritch fuckery. I mostly felt a sense of anticipation for all that. Mostly.

What was really throwing me off was my worry over Essence.

Amelia wasn't even focusing on the exercises at the moment. And yet, two days into her research, she quietly admitted to me that she'd managed to collect another point in that particular stat. Once again, I managed to calmly congratulate her and actually mean it. Then I proceeded to have a mini breakdown in the shower after pushing too hard and getting swamped by eldritch visions.

Truly, I was a man who could learn from his mistakes and decide when it was time to stop slamming my head against a wall.

In other words, instead of constantly driving myself to the edge of madness and back, I turned my focus to all the info Amelia was collecting. So far, she'd narrowed down her list of ideal targets to two names: Oliwia Rangel and Rafe O'Quinn.

Rafe O'Quinn: single, 32, and reckless. A lithe, relatively good-looking man with sandy hair and stormy blue eyes. An 'explosives and demolition specialist', according to the little promo he had on their company's website.

In the pictures, he was sporting about as many guns as all their other members did. Read: far too fucking many. Still, even to my untrained eyes, the way he held them suggested that he wasn't as great at using them as most of his fellow mercs were.

He was posing more than anything. There were even a few shots of him holding a gun in ways Mela would have killed me for. 'If yer going to have a finger on the trigger, ye better make fucking sure ya couldn't blow yer own toes off or something', she had repeatedly insisted.

Rafe was not respecting that rule.

Oliwia Rangel, meanwhile, was a 'field medic and stealth operative.' This time, the woman in the photos very much did know her way around a gun. She even had a short video where she showed off her skills with a sniper, which was… impressive and worrying, sure. But she was also the tiniest of the mercs and nowhere near the same physical condition as the majority of them.

This was a woman used to sneaking around, looking after the wounded, and gleefully taking her enemies out before they ever laid eyes on her. So, I was pretty sure that if I could catch her by surprise, I could take her.

She'd still demolish me if I fought her head-on, of course. But then again, so would Rafe. No, I'd be counting on their carelessness.

Thankfully, both of them were prone to boisterously celebrating every chance they got, which meant they almost always went home in someone's company and completely shit-faced. Their addresses were also extremely easy to get, and they lived on the 'less reputable' floors of their respective megabuildings.

In the slums, this would have meant the shittiest of shitty apartments where you'd be lucky to have a front door. In the inner districts? You still got building security, basic protection from privacy invasions (physically and over the net), and a guarantee that if someone did manage to break into your apartment and began violently murdering you, people would intervene. So long as you made enough noise.

Stupid inner district showoffs.

Still, these two presented a unique and amazing opportunity. They would be relatively easy to catch outside of their homes. If they were drunk enough, I might be able to swipe them off the street with minimal struggle. I could either take them to a secondary location or do whatever I needed to on the spot. Fuck, there was even a chance they'd let me right into their homes, if I played my cards right.

I had to spend close to half an hour staring at the pics of the two mercs before I finally came to the conclusion that no, I didn't want this badly enough to hit them on them, let alone follow through with anything that would imply. Not yet, at least.

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After all, letting them pick me up in one of their favorite bars would very publicly place me on the list of people who'd encountered my would-be victims last. Besides, I was scrawny, young, and 'cute' at best. Not exactly their prime preference in hookup partners, if all the photo evidence was anything to go by.

It was about then that I realized where my train of thought had taken me. I had to escape to the bathroom again, just to stare myself in the eye a little and pretend like a part of me didn't want to throw up.

Or that a part of me wasn't more eager than ever to get my hands on a victim I could attempt (and hopefully fail) to turn into a shadow.

That was a whole thing on its own, of course. No matter how you sliced things, I was trying to kill a person and then cannibalize their horribly mutated remains.

Frankly, I had no problems with the first part of the equation, even accounting for the whole 'shadow conversion horror show' I'd be putting on. I'd have been conflicted at best before my kidnapping, but everything that Amelia's father put me through had numbed bits of me and twisted other parts into something cold and alien.

I would have liked to think that I wouldn't be able to discard an innocent person's life so casually. But the mercenaries? More importantly, these mercenaries? Yeah, no. The second Amelia told me about what they'd been up to, I was downright fucking eager to get at them. If things had been a little different, they'd have been the ones dragging me to her father, after all.

The shadow conversion itself was tied up in an emotional mess. But I couldn't deny that whatever instincts my experiences had left me with were screaming at me to make more shadows. To let The Ravening Observer's influence spread and collect ever more data in his name.

It was easy enough to ignore the urges most of the time, especially when I was spending time with Amelia. There were moments, however, while I was connected to the net or just browsing random data we stole from her father, when the urge reared its head to devour it all and then do… something.

This, of course, left the final sticking point. The part that actually disturbed me so much whenever I allowed myself to think about it.

Cannibalism.

The one thing my human and corrupted bits seemed to agree on, even if from different angles. My human half had glaringly obvious issues with the practice, but it was the sorrow of the Shadow Runner blood running through my veins that caught me off-guard. The thought of devouring failed shadows filled with me such a profound sadness, coupled with a bitter sense of duty, that I wanted to curl up into a ball and cry.

It was more than a little ironic that even eldritch monstrosities could feel such a level of compassion, particularly for the remains of what was in the end a failed member of their species.

I stared at the bright red color of my Shadow Runner eyes, sighed, and splashed water over my face one final time before vacating the bathroom.

"Hey… you good?" Amelia's question awkwardly greeted my return.

I shot the girl a glance only to find her watching me worriedly.

"I'm fine. Really! No reason to look at me that way," I insisted, keeping up a reasonable level of cheer. "Why do you ask?"

"I don't know… you looked like you were about to cry when you left the room earlier. Well, or throw up. Dunno. Besides, I know that you've been, um… upset, recently," she finished lamely, suddenly refusing to look at me.

I froze halfway into taking a different chair, sighed, and made my way over to our usual couch instead. Flopping into the seat next to her, I only hesitated for a moment before I let my head fall onto her shoulder.

It was a slightly awkward position to be in, really. Even with how short I was, there was still a crick in my neck, and I was tilting my head a bit too far to properly land it on her shoulder. Still, the way she marginally relaxed at the gesture was… nice.

"I'm fine. Sure, I'm a little anxious about Essence, but I'll be okay. And I'm sorry if I haven't been as… friendly, too. Just have a lot on my mind."

"You're fine!" she insisted quickly and a little squeakily. Then she cleared her throat and continued more calmly. "I'm not upset or anything. I mean, sure, I noticed you were upset when I got more Essence, but you weren't horrible about it or anything. You handled it fine. And we'll figure it out soon, you'll see! I mean, that's why I'm researching these two, right?"

She motioned vaguely at the two profiles she was compiling for the mercs, and I fought the urge to flinch. Yeah, Amelia knew exactly what I wanted to do with them. It wasn't really a surprise, considering I'd outright declared my motivation.

I felt a flicker of something warm and a tiny bit giddy at the confirmation of her support, though.

What that said about both of us, I wasn't sure. But in the case of the mercs, it wasn't like it mattered anyway.

"Thank you for… all that." I gestured towards the profiles. "I've never done anything like it before. I'm not sure I'd even know where to start."

That earned me a giggle. "And you think I've stalked people before, is that it?" Amelia teased lightly, but she continued talking before I could panic and apologize. "Thankfully, it's a lot like regular research. You need to find data, confirm its authenticity, collate it, etc. My father had me doing that a whole fucking lot, so this is almost relaxing by comparison."

"Even though you're picking targets for a half-human half-eldritch abomination?"

The words slipped out of me before I could stop them. I regretted them bitterly and instantly.

Amelia, however, barely paused. I swear I could feel her rolling her eyes as she opened her mouth again. "Even though I'm doing that, yes. I mean, I regularly cuddle with that same abomination while discussing and fantasizing about my father's untimely and preferably painful death. Why do you think this would bother me?"

"Well…" I cleared my throat, thankful she couldn't see me blush. "I dunno?"

"Exactly, you don't know. Now, go get into some better clothes and do something to hide your eyes a little. One of those hoodies we got, maybe? They did have decently large hoods. Maybe we should order you a hat of some kind… ooooh, or a mask! Lots of people wear those. Maybe. They do in the TV shows I watched, at least."

"Um, Amelia? Why would I need to dress and hide my eyes?"

She shifted her shoulder so I had to lift my head off it, letting her look me directly in the eye. "Because you're going out, of course."

My heart suddenly started trying to beat its way out of my chest in a rush of a brand-new kind of anxiety.

"I am?"

"Of course you are. This is my fault, really. I mean, I spent so much time cooped up in that lab that staying in no longer bothers me. I should have known you'd go stir-crazy eventually. So, yes, you're going to take a walk. I'll be on call with you so I can guide you through the district. This'll help you scout out a few places ahead of, you know, trying to kidnap people or whatever."

"Um…"

"Stop umming and go dress!"

I obeyed, still considerably freaked out at the prospect of leaving the apartment. Amelia, meanwhile, just grumbled about 'silly boys' and kept compiling her murder profiles.

Like I said… scary.

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