TW: Panic attack

"No... no..." The old guard let out a a desperate wail. He reached out his hand towards the now distant group, as if he could catch them and convince them to return to him.

I didn't do anything wrong. I am innocent.

I would never hurt them.

Cyanide?

I would never even think to poison them.

Right?

I never even owned cyanide.

It's not my fault, right?

He anxiously glanced as his dog, as if he was silently seeking confirmation that it was not his fault. The dog observed him with a neutral expression, but from his body language the animal was clearly tense. Although he could not understand exactly what had happened, he fully understood the gravity of the situation given the reaction of the kids and of his own owner.

Ted, however, interpreted his attitude as judgement.

He thinks it's my fault. I am dangerous. I almost killed innocent kids.

Ted slowly collapsed onto his knees in the quiet room, the silence pressing against his ears. Every tick of the clock from the kitchen seemed to echo in the vast emptiness, adding to his sense of isolation. As his fears began to take shape in the shadows, the familiar grip of panic tightened around his chest.

I almost ended the life of five children.

He felt as if there was no oxygen in the air around him. He gasped for air, but each breath felt shallower than the last. The terror of not being able to breathe properly fuelled his fear.

My life is over. The police will soon come to knock at my doorstep.

His heart pounded like a drum in his chest, adding to his confusion as he felt so dizzy he could barely sit up.

Spike will feel so ashamed of me, he will not even consider me as his dad anymore.

Ted felt an invisible force pushing him down, holding him in place. His muscles wouldn't obey his commands and he found himself unable to move. He was paralysed by panic, trapped in his own body as terror gripped him.

My dog will end up homeless or put down. We will never snuggle on the couch together again. I will never give him his cookie before bed ever again. I will never see his tail wagging again.

An avalanche of despair overwhelmed him. It was a brutal, all-consuming force that left him sobbing aloud in its devastating wake. He hid his face in his hands, ashamed, frightened.

I will never reach Mathilda in heaven. There is no place there for killers. She probably hates me now. She surely saw everything. My wife saw me from the sky almost poisoning some children. They trusted me. They wanted to help me. How did that happen?

The inspector felt a deep sense of isolation. The noise around him seemed to fade into the background as his own torn screams and sobs took centre stage, adding to his sense of loneliness.

Why did it happen? Why me? Why am I such a mess?

But all of a sudden, something broke out of this spiral of frightening thoughts and feelings of guilt. Ted felt a reassuring weight on his chest and the wet sensation of a tongue moving swiftly across his face. He blinked a few times before focusing his gaze on his furry friend. He had just noticed that he was barking desperately, clearly in distress.

WOFF! WOFF!

As the adrenaline in his body began to wear off and his mind slowly returned to a clearer state, he felt numb. His body felt heavy, his mind a blank slate. The world around him seemed distant, muted, as if he was looking at it from the other side of a foggy window. But he still managed to give his dog a weak smile and respond with a gentle pat on his head, even if his hands were still trembling.

"Hey, hey buddy. It's okay. It's okay. Don't worry. Just a little crisis. Thank you, buddy. You are the best." He said, with a low, broken voice. He sighed deeply and welcomed his friend in a tight embrace. The worst moment seemed to be over, so even the dog slowly seemed to calm down. He did not, however, stop wagging his tail and giving his owner kisses, trying to cheer him up.

Even after the worst of the panic attack had passed, a lingering fog of fear remained around Ted. It dulled his senses and cast a grey hue over everything, a constant reminder of his worries for the future. A wave of nausea washed over him, therefore he decided not to move. He sat still with his beloved dog between his arms. Hoping to freeze this moment in time.

But Ted was not as alone as he thought. Someone had been watching him for some time. A mysterious figure moved silently away from his window and walked calmly through the streets of the city.

The man radiated an unnatural calmness, with his quiet gait and the slight sway of his briefcase. His elegant, pitch-black loafers set a regular rhythm that cut through the silence of the evening like a knife. Every fragment of his human identity was jealously concealed behind a white rabbit mask that gave him a menacing, vaguely otherworldly air that could leave anyone who laid eyes on him in awe.

The only thing that betrayed his perfect impassivity was the red glow of his mechanical eyes: his irises were slightly smaller than the eyeball, but shone like rubies.

Despite his frustration at the boy's failed murder, the man could not help but be fascinated, to say the least, by the inspector's explosive reaction. In a matter of seconds, the man had been able to express his emotions with an intensity that left Frank quite astonished. He wondered how it was possible to feel emotions so intense that a person could completely lose control.

Frank had always loved studying people, observing their reactions and behavior in different situations. Human emotions had always seemed to him a kind of mystery, a complicated puzzle to be solved. He often wondered about the real evolutionary benefit of emotions. He found them superfluous, but interesting at the same time.

He had always lived in a kind of perpetual numbness, unable to fully connect with the feelings of others that transcended mere logic. Although he could sometimes experience faint hints of feelings and emotions, he had never been always able to be transported by them, to feel the fire within him.

It was not difficult to understand why the inspector was upset; after all, he had unwittingly made himself the prime suspect in what the law considered to be a very serious crime. Frank did not feel guilty; after all, the guard posed a serious problem for his mission since he had witnessed way too much of the secondary activation process of the space-time turbine. Not to mention that he had clearly expressed a desire to thwart his goal of eliminating that pesky brat, Jacob Bressler.

Only a very limited number of things could make him feel anything other than numb. Frank guarded those things jealously, almost obsessively. One of those things was his work: he wouldn't let anyone or anything interfere with his goals, fuelled by a deep-seated desire for revenge. He could hold a grudge for years, stopping at nothing to give his enemy what they deserved.

Not to mention that this time Jake had forced him to postpone an important mission for a long time, so now nothing was more important in Frank's mind than tracking Jake down and destroying him.

But with discretion. His modus operandi was never flashy, he liked to operate in the dark. Quiet, focused, determined.

The man pulled his phone from the pocket of his suit and tapped the touch screen. A map of the city appeared on the screen, with four white dots moving slowly but steadily together to the left of the map. Between them there was a red dot.

It was so easy to track people these days that Frank was almost disappointed at the lack of thrill in finding them. Hacking their devices had been insultingly easy, and now these idiots were walking around with a constantly updated tracking device.

He put the phone away as he slowly let his body and presence be swallowed by the darkness of the night.

He still had a lot of work to do.