Chapter 29: Psychopath vs Serial Killer
I thought for a moment. My life was pretty messed up right now when it came to timelines, but 7 years ago I would have been 17... maybe 18 years old? I closed my eyes as my lips curled into a snarl of disgust. Luckily for me, my neighbor seemed to be staring off into space as he told his story.
"You were so beautiful," he breathed, reaching out with his hands into the air in front of him like he could touch the me he was picturing in his head. "Your black hair was like the finest of silks as it swayed gently in the breeze. I remember you using your pen to push it back behind your ear before your supervisor yelled at you for having your hair down at a crime scene. I wanted to kill that bastard for speaking to you like that."
I tried to remember the situation he was talking about, but it took me a few minutes before I could remember it. And he was right. My mentor was a bastard that just because he was twice my age thought that he knew twice what I did. But if I remember that kill properly, it was a really messy one. Absolutely no finesse to it. In fact, I think that I even labeled the killer as being a sociopath because of the way he killed the woman and just dumped her body.
It was more of a crime of passion than a well thought out kill. He didn’t even remember to clean up the semen on her stomach afterwards.
As I said, messy.
"After that, I found out who you were, where you lived, everything about you. I didn’t care that you were too young for me according to society’s standards. I knew you were mine and that was all that mattered."
I tuned him out after a while. I didn’t need to know exactly how he managed to find me, or even how young I was when he ’fell in love’ with me. The only thing that mattered was getting my armor activated, getting off of this bed, and ripping his head off. Because let’s face it. He wasn’t coming out of this situation alive.
And if this was his kill site, then no one would even think to look for him here. He would have already made sure of that.
I stretched my neck side to side, hearing the popping and the cracks of my bones. I don’t even want to think about how he managed to get us from our condo building in the middle of a busy sector to... wherever we were now. Raising my shoulder I tried to rotate it as much as I could in an attempt to work out the knots in my upper back.
Some people were so inconsiderate when they were kidnapping you. The least they could do was tie me to a chair or something. Laying flat like this was just too uncomfortable.
A series of clicks, snarls, and growls came out of nowhere cutting my neighbor, whose name I still didn’t know, off from whatever memory he was reliving. He stood up quickly and looked around. And based on the evidence in front of me, I really didn’t want to know what he was going on about to make him that excited.
"What was that?!?" he demanded walking over to the window, he pushed the red checkered curtain aside and looked outside.
"No idea," I replied meaning it. I mean, it sounded like Saaja, but that couldn’t be possible. We were on Earth and as far away from the Saalistaja as we could possibly be.
"Analysing blood was what it said," said Jun Li his voice low and subdued. "Mei Xing, it is speaking in Saaja," he confirmed, "I think it was your armor activating."
There was another series of clicks and roars, and my neighbor grabbed the shotgun that he had resting by the door and stormed out of the room.
"Bloodlines confirmed, merging with owner," continued Jun Li, translating the clicks and growls.
"Oh no," I growled in response. "I will not be hooking up with any sort of system."
"Not a system," replied Jun Li in a soothing voice. "The armor is not sentient. From what I can tell, this is how the armor syncs to you, ensuring that you are the only one that can use it."
"Not a system?" I repeated. Because honestly, I didn’t want anything to do with systems. I had Jun Li and that was more than enough.
Wait a moment... how was my armor activated into pairing with me?!? "Don’t tell me it was my fucking blood," I growled when I realized that I probably smeared my blood onto the choker when I was trying to stretch my neck and shoulders.
"Fine," replied Jun Li sounding prim and proper, "I will not tell you that it was your blood that activated it."
"You were the one that said very clearly that my blood would not activate the armor, because, and I quote; ’it would be useless in battle. Any time someone else’s blood came in contact with it, it would change owners’ end quote," I growled. I spent months learning a language that I still had no idea how to speak or read when all I needed to do was get kidnapped by a serial killer and bleed on the fucking thing.
However, when there were no more clicks, roars, growls, or snarls I calmed down. At least Jun Li was the only one in my head.
"You should try activating it," suggested Jun Li, unhelpfully.
"You know what?!? You are right, why didn’t I think about that before? Let me just raise my arm to touch the side of the collar. Oh, wait... that’s right, I’m tied to a fucking bed!" I growled, starting to lose my temper. Taking a deep breath, I calmed myself back down.
"Well, no need to be so bitchy about it," sniffed Jun Li.
"Who the fuck are you talking to?!?" demanded my neighbor as he came storming back into the room that I was currently in.
"Myself," I said sarcastically. "Who the hell do you think I am talking to? The invisible man inside the room?"
The man standing over me with a shotgun looked around the room as if there really was an invisible man somewhere.
"Now, be a dear and untie me from the bed."
