By then, he normally would have been comfortably seated and on his way home, fully prepared to make a cup of warm chamomile tea and relax for the evening off. Not that night.
That night, everything was so very wrong.
It was dark and he was cold in spite of the small furnace a small way's away. He couldn't think how far and when he tried -
A pounding headache, his eyes slipped shut.
In spite of the pain, he thought, Concussion, and then winced at the second shoot of pain through his skull.
Georgia, he reminded himself. It is February. That's why I'm cold.
He missed his friends, missed knowing they were safe and missed having them at his side through the bad. He missed the tight half hugs and warm laughs and their words -
(What's the third? I'm proud of you.)
They often thought that he was constantly thinking of facts, or intellectual puzzles. In reality, he had very light thoughts, most of the time. Light like a lightbulb or a butterfly or the sun and oh the sun was warm and that was what he wanted to be. Warm like with his friends
Thoughts that contemplated life and, at that moment, How do I keep going against these odds over sixty percent of Georgia is rural that's approximately ninety-seven thousand kilometres squared statistically speaking it is almost impossible to find a person in that amount of space without a guideline and they don't even know who to profile and how can they profile all three quickly enough to find me especially when they're each so different and it's the least likely one that took me and I'm scared.
There was no obvious answer. Just 'stay alive'.
He sat in rambling silence for a few minutes more, before pain interrupted his quiet world.
Again.
Oh well.
He wouldn't have focused for much longer anyways.
His eyes closed. In his mind's eye, he visualized a large maroon pentagon, banishing all other thoughts from his mind. He focused deeply on the pentagon, and made it vivid and three dimensional, imagining the shadows cast upon the blood coloured surface.
Undoubtedly, there was a twitch running up his leg, but he was so deep he didn't even notice it until -
And then it was like someone had stabbed at his leg, pulling out and giving him a moment of relief and then again and again and again and when would it stop.
He slammed out of the vision, and into simple maths.
One multiplied by one equals one. One multiplied by two equals two. One multiplied by three equals three. One multiplied by four equals four.
The neurons in his brain relaxed and started to fire off as normal, little jumps that could have been harnessed into energy.
Two multiplied by five equals ten. Two multiplied by six equals twelve. Two multiplied by seven equals fourteen.
The stabbing pain continued, but it seemed dull then as though he were under the effects of morphine.
Something snapped him away and amber eyes gazed into his own. "Tell me you don't want it," the voice he had come to associate with calm and peace and it doesn't hurt said.
Before he could even begin to muster the effort to reply, there was a tiny prick on his arm and he was thrust even further into his mind.