Part Three - Escape.

I woke up, lying in my bed with my clothes on. I didn't remember how I had gotten there, my mind seemed to be nothing more than a blank computer screen. And then it came back to me with a wave.

The drugs. I had taken the drugs.

I checked the watch and it was already early afternoon. There was no point in calling in sick now, I would have to explain it on Monday. I had to pull myself back together, I had to.

Or else I would die. I tried to remember something, anything from the point when I had injected the drugs. But I couldn't remember a thing. Only... only a feeling. The feeling of a soft touch against my skin.

My gaze slid slowly over the room and fell upon the opposite wall. Something was written on it with red lipstick.

"You are living like a pirate with your sixth sense. Be careful, it's a dangerous life."

I stared at it for a while and then fell back into the bed with a groan.

The annoying and common sound of the groceries passing through the counter in yet another Food Mart calmed me down. Everyone was busy and the store was filled with people. After all, it was Friday afternoon.

Food. I needed food to survive and pull myself back together. I had planned a nice and quiet evening at home, eating a lot of food, maybe renting a couple of movies and taking a long bath. So far nothing had been bothering me today and I was silently hoping that whatever rain cloud of insanity had come over me, it had passed now and there would be no more rain any time soon.

While I waited at the counter, I looked around and whistled the tune of a dead melody, already reaching for my wallet in my pocket. A cashier smiled at me from the other side of the room and I smiled back as well. She had a nice smile and radiant blue eyes. Her attention turned to the next customer, but shortly after I had paid for my groceries and a young girl had passed between me and the other counter, I felt her eyes upon me again and I turned around to...

A man was sitting in her chair and he was looking straight across the store, at me. A suit with black sunglasses and a wire plugged into his ear.

A wire.

A subconscious works in very interesting ways. You can experience a great tragedy in your life or a very unpleasant incident and you simply forget about it the day after, like it has been wiped out of your system, another deleted file. Sometimes a tiny, irrelevant thing can trigger deep and strong emotions within you for seemingly no particular reason. Sometimes you can control it and sometimes your subconscious overpowers you and you simply follow the instincts that have kept your race alive for millions of years without giving it a thought.

That's what I did at that very exact moment, I followed my instincts. I turned around and broke into a run. I don't know the reason. Maybe it was the sudden surprise of seeing this strange man instead of the cashier. Maybe it was the wire that was plugged into his ear.

Or maybe it was just pure instinct that tried to keep me alive because now I know that if I would have stayed in that store for another nanosecond, I would have died right there in an instant and no one would've even noticed.

Whatever the reason was, maybe this was the very moment when I truly started to live my life as a pirate, allowing my sixth sense to guide me. I didn't know what kind of wheel I had set into run or how big that wheel was. And I wasn't sure if I wanted to find out.

But I had to keep myself alive. It is the instinct of every living being and I wasn't an exception.

Out through the glass doors, through the crowds of countless, nameless people. Into the streets of the big city, people shouting and screaming behind me as I ran through it all, feeling the cold breath of the northern wind blowing in my neck. I tried not to look where I was running because I knew that one moment of hesitation could cost me my life.

My sixth sense had never been as alive before as it was right then. I felt him, everywhere and all around me. Several bullets whizzed past my head and once I felt his cold long fingers grabbing after me...

... but they found nothing but empty air.

I felt myself being dragged into a dreamlike escape from someone I didn't even know. I heard the sound of an approaching motorcycle but I didn't bother to look up until the noise was too loud to ignore. A huge black Shadow Spirit was cruising right against me, its rider hidden behind a black helmet. My instincts told me to keep on running and it was not like I had much of a choice - I felt the man almost literally stepping on my feet by now. I knew I would not escape from him, I knew I was lost.

I also knew that if I would look back now, I would panic. But I had nothing to lose, nothing to care for anymore, I just wanted to look at the hunter's face for one last time.

The black sunglasses reflected my eyes, huge and filled with fear. I screamed, tripped and fell down to the ground, thus completely eliminating any chances of survival. The man was right behind me and the bike was just about to run me over.

Thousands of thoughts raced through my mind as I saw that bike coming straight toward me and I remember one of them being... "Hey, this is not a bad way to go. I get to die like an actionhero." You can't even imagine my surprise when the bike moved a couple of feet to the left a few of meters away from me and the rider reached out his hand. The next thing I knew was that I was sitting right behind him on the bike.

"Hold on," said a woman's voice and I did what she told me to, wrapping my arms around her waist from behind.

The Spirit roared and made a huge leap over the suit, landing elegantly back on the asphalt. I looked behind to see the man behind us reaching for something within his jacket and it was a gun.

I didn't have to tell the rider to go faster. We were riding faster than the wind as I felt the bullets whistling past my ears. The streets were nothing more than a changing, blurry view of blinking neon and crowds of people. And we rode through it all, deeper into the dark night as we disappeared out of the view.

I closed my eyes and rested my head against the rider's back, afraid that I would faint or fall asleep. I didn't even try to understand what had just happened. But I knew one thing.

I was still alive.