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Atmosphere
Shaun went back to the living room at the front of the house and looked around for where the other rooms in the house were. He saw a hallway in the dark and crept down it slowly, trying to not make much noise. He had a feeling, a very creepy feeling flowing into his body and his heart started beating faster the more he moved down it. He gently felt along the wall, trying not to step too anxiously, and attempted to be careful enough to not bump into anything that might be in the way.
'Of course there wouldn't be anything in the way. Jayden ALWAYS has his house tidy and spotless. There would be nothing to bump into,' Shaun thought with humor. Then right on cue his toes knocked into something and he stopped, lifting his foot in the air in surprised recoil. He took a step backward and kneeled down, trying to feel for whatever it was on the ground with his hands. He felt it, picked it up and squinted at it in the dark, making out the familiar shape of the frame.
'It's ARI,' he thought while he stood up again. He knew what ARI was. Jayden even showed it to him a couple times, letting him try it out. But one thing Jayden didn't know was how Shaun was able to find his expertly-hidden Triptocaine in the last house...
'It's because of this.' Shaun put the glasses on, and swiftly put his hands up to his mouth to stop himself from gasping loudly. "Woah…"
Usually he needed the glove to see what he currently saw in the hallway, so it certainly surprised him at what he did see. It was as if the glove was already being worn and activated over and over at a fairly rapid pace, sending yellow scan lines through the hallway and lighting up certain objects in blue again and again.
'Is this thing broken?' Shaun walked a little bit further down the hall, and bent down to look at one of the nearest blue objects. He couldn't analyze exactly what it was since he didn't have the glove, but he could still make a guess based on what the shape and outline looked like.
'No, this can't be broken. He wouldn't break something so precious to him. Maybe I can figure out what's going on here, if I investigate this.' The first object looked like a splotch on the carpet, yet not entirely consistent, uniform. This wasn't blood, or at least blood from a gaping wound. It kind of looked…powdery. Shaun narrowed his eyes, then moved on.
He crept down the hall a ways and stopped again, noticing an uneven trail leading from the first object he examined to here where the trail split off in two directions, one trail leading into the room next to him and the other leading farther down the hall and into a different room. These two trails had a different object mixed in, little drops peppered around in spots that were more consistent than the powder.
'Blood.' Shaun started to worry. 'What the heck was he doing?' He tiptoed into the nearest room and observed the trail in here for a moment. He was in Jayden's bedroom. Strangely enough the yellow scan line's boundary ended halfway through the room, not going farther than the bed or even to the closet and wardrobe on the other side.
'The glove must be in the room down the hall.' Shaun looked at Jayden's bed. It hasn't been disturbed, and was perfectly made. Shaun followed the trail to the desk and almost tripped over the knocked over chair on the floor. He saw a small pool of blood on the desk, and diluted blood inside the coffee mug, and then splattered spots of blood that led into the trail going out to the hallway. Shaun carefully went around the chair, not moving it or making noise, and looked around the other side of the desk and noticed with surprise that there was also blood here on the floor. Next to a bunch of knocked over folders and papers. He flipped open one of the folders that was on the top of the stack and saw the front page had pictures of Ethan from when he was arrested, and a police report underneath detailing their suspicion that he was the Origami Killer. Shaun furrowed his brows. He never heard about that. He flipped to the next page, and it was more pictures of Ethan, this time in what looked to be an interrogation room. The pictures were frame-by-frame shots of him with his face in different expressions while Jayden and Carter Blake asked him questions about his relation to the Origami Killer. Each shot had hand-written dialogue underneath it in pen that detailed what exactly they were saying in each picture.
'The only way to find him, is to let me out of here. I'm the only person who can save him.'
'That's just crazy talk, Ethan! That doesn't make any sense! How can I believe ANYTHING you say?'
'I love my son. I love... my son. If you keep me here, Shaun is going to die.'
Shaun almost teared up. 'Dad...' He closed the folder and stood up again, going back into the hallway. He went to where the last trail stopped, in front of the bathroom.
Shaun opened the door and every part of him quailed at what he witnessed. Norman was sitting on the toilet, that mysterious blue ARI-object color painted all over him, and the bathroom floor and wall tiles as well. He was unresponsive to Shaun's entering and apparently didn't notice at all. The only parts of his body that moved were his hands, the backs of them resting on his legs while his fingertips twitched incessantly, hands clenched tightly into fists with his nails digging deep into his palms. His nails were leaving imprints, or maybe even at this point drawing blood. His right hand wore that unmistakable black ARI glove. Norman's eyes were entirely blue in ARI's vision, and most of his face and suit were too. He looked like a ghost in the darkness, pure white but covered head to toe in spilled human substance. He still wore his shoes, and even those were subject to the color change in the blue light. Shaun could tell from how big the blue spots were for his eyes that his eyes were wide open. Every time his fingers twitched and dug into his palms the scan lines started over again, highlighting his body from scratch every other second. Shaun saw that every time it started over he had a split second to look at his eyes in the darkness. They were massively dilated, and staring straight ahead.
"Jayden! You're having a seizure! Oh my god!" Shaun hurriedly flipped on the light switch and took off ARI, almost throwing them off his face and onto the bathroom counter. Jayden's pupils shrank slightly in reaction to the sudden brightness. His mouth was ajar, and his head was twitching slightly side to side.
"Jayden! Jayden!" Shaun ran to him and grabbed his arms, trying to pull him off the toilet, but he wouldn't budge. Adrenaline crashed through Shaun's veins, he had never been so scared for someone in his life. "Please wake up! Please hear me! Snap out of it!" Tears welled up and fell down Shaun's face. "I can't lose anyone close to me ever again! Jayden, please!" Shaun tapped Jayden's clenching fists over and over again with his palms, frantically trying to remind him of the code.
Please. Please.
Please Please Please Please Please Please Please
"NORMAN!" Shaun screamed, "Norman, PLEASE DON'T DIE! I BEG YOU, WAKE UP!" Shaun shook Jayden's shoulders in desperation. "I need you, Norman! Don't die! Don't leave me here all alone! I can't go back home anymore! Please, wake up!"
Norman moaned weakly, the sound caught in his throat. His hands slowly unclenched and started twitching less erratically. Shaun saw a clear tube in Jayden's gloveless hand.
"God dammit!" Shaun pried the empty bottle of Tripto out of Norman's hand, sliding it out forcefully and threw it at the floor. Norman's body started slumping forward, eyes rolling in the back of his head, another low moan barely reaching its ability to be voiced.
'No… he's losing consciousness!' Shaun caught Norman when he doubled over and turned around while holding him, getting him off the toilet and momentarily holding him against the wall so Norman's body would stay put while Shaun moved his hands to a different position so he could relocate him easier. Shaun turned around and pressed his back into Norman's chest to keep him from falling down, and lifted his hands behind him to grab Norman's arms and pull some of his weight onto his back, like a passed-out, half piggy-back. Shaun slouched forward and hobbled them over to the door, Norman's shoes dragging on the tile behind them. It took a while to get them to Jayden's bedroom even though it wasn't that far away because Shaun wasn't used to carrying a grown man's figuratively dead weight around with no help.
Finally, they got to Jayden's bed and Shaun leaned to the right, letting Norman roll off his back and onto the bed. Shaun picked up Norman's legs and made sure his whole body was on the mattress before pulling the string on the table lamp next to him, then running around to the other side of the queen-sized bed to turn on the other table lamp. Shaun sat on the unoccupied side while he watched Norman, worried out of his mind. Norman's eyes were closed, and he barely seemed to breathe. Shaun laid down on his stomach next to him and put his hand on the side of Norman's face, willing him to wake up with his distraught stare and mental pleading. After a few minutes with no response, Shaun closed his eyes, weeping, and drooped his forehead onto Norman's cheek.
"Why… why couldn't you have waited until I was here, I could have helped you stop yourself from doing this," Shaun cried into Norman's ear. "You would have been a much better Dad than that moron Steve," he sobbed shakily.
Shaun was utterly heartbroken. Jayden was his last resort, he had no one else to turn to or rely on. His mom practically went insane after Ethan's death, even though they were divorced, and was so scared that Shaun would be the next one in the family to perish she wanted to forcefully change everything that was in Shaun's life to prevent it from happening, whether he was allowed to have a say in it or not. But with every fiber of his being, Shaun did not want to cut off his ties with Jayden.
Steve was always abusive toward him and calling him things like "Little shit", and "Troublemaker" when his mom was not in the house, leading his mom to not believe anything Shaun said that was bad about him. She always attributed it to Shaun wanting to 'break up the new family', and Shaun would always scream back 'we don't have a family anymore!'. Then the next day Shaun would take the bus to school, like normal, but then walk down the street to the bus station, and disappear entirely for a few days.
And every one of those times he left he went to stay with Jayden. And all those times Jayden never questioned him, just let him in the house and allowed Shaun to leave again whenever he felt good and ready.
"Jayden, Please be my father. I love you. … I can't live without you, I need you to stay in my life. You can teach me all that cool FBI stuff again, like we used to do…! Please... Norman, don't… die…" Shaun hiccupped, fresh tears dropping on Norman's cheek, washing away the blood that was caked on it. He sobbed for what felt like eternity, and then finally it happened.
"…'S...cared'?"
Norman barely opened his eyes and croaked out the single word. He tried to look at Shaun's hand on his face, most of his vision obscured by his eyelashes and caked blood that sealed around his eyelids.
"Oh my god! Jayden, you're alive…!" Shaun screamed in elated surprise, putting the side of his head on Jayden's chest and hugging his neck tightly as if it was the end of the world. Jayden waited a few seconds to regain his strength, then carefully lifted a hand and rested it on Shaun's head.
"Shaun, I'm... sorry. I'm so, so sorry. I won't hold it against you if you never forgive me…" he said weakly, staring groggily at the ceiling.
.
Every time Shaun left for a few days, Steve got more and more suspicious. Shaun didn't know that this latest time he ran away, Steve was secretly tailing him in his car. He followed Shaun to Jayden's house. Memorized the address, and how to get there. He was going to come back the next night after some preparation. He was finally going to end all this bullshit, once and for all.