12:31 am

Between the power outage and the hard, black clouds overhead, Seattle was little more than rain-slick silhouettes. The metallic drum of raindrops on dormant street lights competed with a barrage of echoing, hard-soled footsteps on the pavement. A pair of boots and a billowing black raincoat darted around a corner and under an awning to meet the front door fist-first. His slender but well-muscled hand pounded wet prints on the cheap paint. With a grimace, he clutched at his shoulder with his free hand. The blood warmed his icy fingers.

"Hello?" He shouted loud enough to be heard across the street, but received no reply. "Somebody, please -- open up!" He rested his wide back against the door, panting; his voice was hoarse with over a mile's fatigue. He released his shoulder and inspected his hand. It came away dripping crimson. "Fuck..."

He caught only a few breaths before he heard scraping in the distance. Without turning to look, he pushed himself off the door and took off again down the street.

Though the rain was sharp and heavy against her skin, it whispered to her like a lullaby. Bit by bit, it washed the tension from her body, leaving sweet nothings in its place. Carmo sighed as the water counted the seconds she wasted. Opening her eyes, she looked up at the inky sky. It was a shame it was so overcast – the city's glow so often drowned out the stars, it was rare for them to get a chance to really shine. She closed her eyes again and ran her fingers through her hair. Or at least, she tried to. It was difficult when the strands were stuck together in stringy clumps.

Her laptop's battery had finally run dry, and with the city-wide blackout, Carmo'd resigned herself to an unproductive night. That was just as well. It wasn't like she'd been making any progress on the stupid article anyway. She'd been wrestling with it since late that afternoon, and what did she have to show for it? A half-assed opening paragraph that made her cringe just thinking about it. She'd had writer's block before, but this was just ridiculous.

And thus, Carmo found herself outside in the rain, ice sneaking up her veins like climbing vines. Just her and the water thrumming against her skin, the clattering of the droplets against the sidewalk – hang on. That clattering seemed much too punctuated to be rain. She opened her eyes again and turned her head towards the sound. Shapes melted together in the darkness, blurring in the downpour, but she was certain she could make out a figure in the distance. It was running. People didn't just go out for a midnight jog in a rainstorm. Her skin itched with new anticipation, and she took a step back, moving from the sidewalk to the shelter of her building's doorway. This wasn't normal. The silhouette grew more solid as it approached – and it was moving fast. Whoever it was must've been at least six feet tall, and they seemed to cross at least that distance with every stride. There was something else about them though – something in the way they favored one side… Carmo was fairly certain they weren't using their arms properly either. Something was wrong.

the figure grew larger and larger, the steps more clear and frantic. Carmo balled her hands into fists at her side. They could be in trouble. They could be trouble. The rain counted the moments she stood frozen in her doorway until right when they passed her door –

"Hey!"

For the first time in some hours, he heard a new sound: a voice. His heart expanded in his throat. He felt sick.

He was relieved. Apprehensive. Exhausted. More than anything, he was ever mindful of the scraping around the corner -- couldn't she hear it? He spun on one trained foot and lunged toward her house.

Then stopped.

"Please!" he panted, bent at the waist with trembling hands on his knees. "I'm being followed and I don't know what..." He gulped his desperation and looked up at the woman lost in the shadow of her doorway. "Can I come in?"

--

Carmo stumbled back when the towering man lunged at her. She bit out a curse, steadying herself on the door frame. His words spun through her mind as she scrambled to process them. He was sopping wet and there was a manic edge to his voice, and for an instant she regretted drawing his attention.

"Wha- no!" Carmo knew how to take care of herself, but she wasn't an idiot. She leaned away from him, trying to get out of reach in case he tried to grab her, but she doubted it'd do much luck, lanky bastard that he was. "Who's chasing you? What's wrong?"

--

The raised hood twisted, looking between the street and the woman again. The sound of steel on blacktop dug into the roots of his teeth.

"I don't know. It's got...claws? That's all I could see. Please...I just need somewhere to hide for...maybe half an hour." He ran his hand over his wounded right shoulder again, disappointed but not surprised when he found it as sticky as ever. Even as the rain beat down against the gash, his blood felt unmistakably thick between his fingers. "And...maybe some bandages. That's all, I promise."

--

Carmo froze at his answer. Claws? What sort of– but then her eyes widened when she realized why he was holding his shoulder so tightly. Blood, inky black in the night, seeped between his fingers and stained his ruined coat. It was then that she finally heard the scraping.

"Shit," she bit out. Jamming her hand into her pocket, she fished out her keys and scrambled to open the door. "Inside!" she commanded, all but shoving the stranger through the door. Once they were both inside, she slammed the door shut, the automatic lock clicking into place. The door did nothing to dull the scraping sound, but Carmo did her best to ignore it. She reached in her pocket again for – she'd left her phone in her room. Letting out a sound that was some mix between a groan and a growl, she spun back to the stranger. "Upstairs. We need to get away from the door."

--

Wiping his hand on his jeans, the man pulled out his own phone -- still at a respectable 67% charge -- and awoke the screen. Light on his size 12 feet, he dashed through the living room and leapt up the staircase, five steps at a time behind the ghostly blue glow of his phone's LED.

Carmo hurried up the stairs after him and his ridiculous strides. Seriously, what was up with this dude's proportions if he could clear five steps at a time?

"Fourth floor," she called after him. When they got to the correct landing, she pushed past him to run to her apartment door, jamming the key into the lock and shoving it open. Once they'd both cleared the threshold, Carmo slammed the door shut – just as she heard the sickening crack of snapping wood and shattering glass from the ground floor. She didn't know if the ice seeping through her veins was from the rain or terror. Gritting her teeth, she spun to face the stranger in the darkness.

"There are families in this building!" She hissed it at him like it was a threat. The crackle of destruction had died down, but now there was the scraping again. It was getting closer. Fear and anxiety mixing with frustration, Carmo's hand curled into a fist and she slammed it against the wall. "Call the police," she said as she pushed past him, marching to her bedroom. When she returned, she was holding an aluminum bat.

--

No matter how rapidly he climbed the steps, the screech of his attacker's claws never sounded any more distant. Like a needle at the peak of his spine, the groan of metal on undulating concrete reached intimately through his bones and deep into his nerves. The hair on the back of his head stood on end. His skin felt taut to his trapezius. Still, he made it upstairs in good time -- whatever that meant.

Crash.

His panicked mind struggled to make sense of the splintering. For an instant, he assumed the worst. He turned to look for his new ally -- futile, in the black night -- only to hear her voice, urgent and desperate as his own. This was all wrong.

Before he could begin stammering his justifications, he had orders. His thumb swished across the screen, back-lighting the watery, red smear he'd left behind. His gaze fixed on the upper corner of his phone. No signal. His molars creaked into one-another as he pounded out 9-1-1.

For his efforts, he got the frozen, off-color tone of the busy signal. His ears rang, pleading.

"Connect, damn it..." He might have said it more harshly if he hadn't had this argument every hour before. Had the outage claimed the cell tower, too? He wiped the screen on his coat and tapped the numbers in three more times as he stood at the door. None of his attempts surprised him.

His knit brows lifted to face the woman -- who was now armed.

"I don't understand -- it ignored everybody else! I thought if I came in, it would..." Does it matter? he asked himself. It's here now. What are you going to do about it? He glanced back at the door of the apartment, toward the figure that had followed him so far.

He weighed his options.

The unearthly scratching was punctuated by the stranger's urgent voice, both hushed and secretive, yet deafening in the darkness of Carmo's apartment. Her heart rose to her throat as her frantic mind tried to piece together their situation. There was something inside the building with them. They were in her apartment. Her apartment that had no fire escape (how would a young girl living on her own be able to afford a place unless no one else wanted it?) just a four story drop to the asphalt below. There was no escape. No alarm. No police.

Carmo grit her teeth against the fear bubbling up inside her and fought against the tears building in the corner of her eyes. The scraping was getting closer.

"Turn the camera on," she said, swallowing, "and get to the back. After… if you can, get it to Josh Chan at the Seattle Sun. Tell him –" Carmo trailed off. Tell him what? She shook head to herself and a tear escaped. "Just get it to him." Standing before the door, she tightened her shaking grip on her bat and raised it, ready to strike.

Then she looked over her shoulder to see the stranger's blurred figure.

"Carmo Koizumi," she said in a soft, frail voice. "You?"

--

He flicked through menus with a practiced thumb, checked the indicator in the corner to see that the flash was on, and framed the small, protective woman and her door in the viewfinder. Too tired to argue, he just chewed the rising, acidic guilt in his throat; why the hell was she already prepared to make a last stand over his stupid mistake? If he just got out of here, maybe he could make this his problem again.

Still, they needed to know what they were up against. He held his ground, ready to get a picture...when the woman's weight shifted. She said something about caramel, and it took him five seconds to recognize it as a name. He sighed misty respect for her in the biting night air.

"Hiko Kogawa," he nodded in response, forcing husky strength back into his voice. "Yoroshiku." Something in that firmness said, Stay strong, Koizumi. We'll get through this. He only hoped she could hear it. In the next, tense moments, the tearing of linoleum gave way to a thud of finality.

After a moment's pause, the shearing continued, muffled somehow, until it faded into the distance. Did...did that thing just walk away? Its heavy nails raked back over the metal door frame and returned to the familiar, fruitless task of piercing solid concrete.

Carmo knew about twenty words in Japanese, and through her adrenaline-fueled haze, she recognized that as one of them. The corner of her mouth quirked up into a tense smile that didn't reach her eyes.

"Back at ya," she muttered. Then she returned her focus to the door and the sounds echoing behind it.

But then something shifted. The sounds changed and the scraping grew farther and farther away. Carmo didn't know how long she waited, poised and shaking after the sounds finally became nothing but a petrifying memory.

Eventually she let out the breath she'd been holding, body deflating. The aluminum bat fell to the floor in a clatter as Carmo collapsed in on herself. She was a little ball, shaking and drenched, sitting in the growing puddle that was no doubt ruining the old carpet.

Hiko dashed toward her collapsing form, the last vestiges of worry still clawing at his scalp. He extended his good arm, though he wasn't sure where; did she need a hug? A hand? Help walking? The stranger's distance made it hard to find his place.

"Are you hurt?" He thumbed for the flashlight in advance, ready to check on her wounds.

Carmo opened her mouth to reply, but instead something that was a mix between a sob and a gasp escaped her lips. Clamping a hand over her mouth, she breathed in, trying vainly to get back some control. Eventually she just shook her head. She hadn't even seen whatever it was, let alone get close enough for it to attack her.

With her free hand she searched around on the floor next to her until she found her bat. Carmo pushed herself up, using it to steady herself. Still shaking, she breathed in one last time.

"There's first aide stuff in the bathroom for your shoulder," she said in a quivering voice. "Pass me your phone. I need to take a picture of whatever it did to the front door." Actually, she needed to throw up. Or wake up. But she was trying very hard not to think about that.

As they planned together, the clouds continued their listless crawl through the sky, freeing a sliver of moonlight. Ms. Koizumi was still little more than a shadow, but at her suggestion, he began to look around the apartment. The architecture was uncanny -- predictably generic, but cavernous with unfamiliarity. The carpet was filthy...He realized he still hadn't taken off his boots and grinned, guilty. Not like I'm sticking around...

His wound pulsed, and he remembered the rough-worn edges of the three-pronged claw. Somehow, it had missed somebody as huge as him, but even still...He looked down at the top of the girl's head and heavily reconsidered her plan.

"I'm coming with you." He stepped back, glancing around for the bathroom. "Where's the kit again? We..." He thought back to the almost comically large trio of blades again. "...might need it later, anyway."

Carmo didn't have the energy to argue with him. Once they'd found the kit, they dealt with his shoulder as best they could and started the agonizing crawl down the stairs. Flight after flight, they descended, Carmo still gripping her bat loosely in her trembling hand. They finally made it to the bottom and she squinted in the darkness to try and make out anything. Then the lights came back on. When Carmo's stinging eyes at last were able to focus, her eyes fell on something perhaps more terrifying than the unnamed monster stalking the streets.

The front door was completely undamaged.

His jaw fell lax, like a fish waiting for a coherent word to drift into his mouth. He leapt toward the ground floor, darting back and forth in search of another entrance. He glanced at Koizumi repeatedly for reasons he failed to place: there had to be another exit, right? She'd heard all of that, right? And more to the point: she didn't think he staged it...right? His expression drooped with every pass.

The simple entryway didn't seem to have room for secrets or side paths. However, very real bandages pressed into his collarbone as he walked back toward the staircase, still dazed. Very real terror still hung in the air between him and the wide-eyed woman who'd saved his life. And this is what she gets in return...? He stopped walking and gave his best effort to look at her, but his eyes only made it to her kneecaps.

"I...um. I'm sorry for imposing on you, Ms. Koizumi." Keep your door locked. Please. There was no way to say it without further incriminating himself. After everything she'd done for him, this was all he could give.

The rain, the buzzing electricity in the lights, the man's voice and frantic pacing… The longer Carmo stared at the door – which should've been in splinters because she'd heard it damnit, she'd heard it crack and shatter and imagined it was bone instead of wood – the more all the sounds meshed together into white noise in her mind. It started off low and hushed but grew and grew until it was deafening. She was blind and dead to the world around her, trapped in the whirlpool of her own thoughts. She'd heard it. She'd heard it and heard every moment of her life wash through her. But she hadn't seen it. Had it even been real? It was certainly real enough to the man. Carmo had forgotten his name already, but not the way his sticky red life seeped through his ruined clothes.

He was saying something to her, but Carmo couldn't hear him. She couldn't understand.

So instead she just squeezed her eyes shut and turned on her heel. After a deep, shuddering breath, she walked back up the stairs and found the entrance to her apartment. The sound of the door slamming shut behind her was the final note anyone would hear from her for quite some time.

—

1:45 am

Hiko was far too big and far too tired for these chairs. Wicker and wood, the quaint bottom-sized furnishings lined the side of the stairway, a polite distance from the rest of the room. The waiting room chairs were too small to recline in, so Hiko sat hunched forward, thick elbows seated in his lap, looking out at the rain. His coat lay discarded on a second chair, obscuring it entirely in black and grey angles of modern art. A sleeveless polyester blend revealed his muscular arms -- and he'd be lying if he said the bandages didn't make it somehow more stylish.

He hadn't meant to stick around. Ms. Koizumi had tied up all the loose ends, for better or... For the better. If he left now, her nightmare could end. And his... He could figure it out.

No matter how much he said it, the front door failed to look any less like a meat grinder, all potential and sharp glass and cheap, breakable, splintering wood. And beyond that... It was a lot harder to be a hotshot all alone in the waiting room at a quarter to 2, one shoulder lacerated to the muscle. Hiko looked down at his hands.

World Without Words trumpeted from his phone's dated speaker, grainier than he'd expected. All things considered, he was glad he'd forgotten his $300 headphones; his phone's cosmetic case -- all retro pop-art-deco and color abstractions -- lent some reverberating body to the tinny instruments. It was a bug, not a feature.

He had told himself a few times now that he was staying for her. Whatever the hell had happened earlier, the claw was still out there. She was the only one it hadn't ignored. If it had its sights on her, he had to stay and help her fight it. If it had its sights on her, that was his fault -- and he had to take responsibility.

That's what he told himself. But there he sat, still terrified by a door, wondering if this team captain schtick was just an excuse to stay warm.

—

Carmo didn't sleep that night. She tried to wash away the terror, but it stained her skin like a tattoo. She tried to find safety under her covers, but every breath she took moved the fabric, the friction creating a noise that was so similar to that awful scratching. When she did manage some sleep, it was of a tall bleeding stranger, and shattered wood – shattered bone.

While in the darkness her apartment was a haven, in the morning it was nothing but a reminder that curled her stomach. As the morning light stretched across the sky, the events of just hours ago seemed more and more like a passing dream. But Carmo still couldn't forget it completely. As soon as the first rosy rays of dawn leaked through her windows, Carmo was out the building's (still undamaged) door. It was the weekend, so she wasn't expected to report into the office that morning. So instead she took her laptop and charger to the nearest coffee shop, trying vainly to return to her article.

1:26 pm

The golden sting of afternoon sun brought Hiko back into the lobby. Slumped in a waiting room chair, he lifted his chin and tried to remember where he was. Groggy, he thought back to the other side of the morning: to half his phone's battery spent playing Nujabes, to the hourly chime of the wall clock's music box -- to the sting in his right shoulder, visibly bloodied and stark against the white bandages. That woke him right up.

The clock must have chimed four, last he heard. Looking out the front windows, he was horrified to think how late he'd slept or what his makeup must look like, but these small terrors made his aching body feel almost normal. The last thing he wanted was to see his unkempt mug in the mirror, but the first thing he didn't want was to show it to the rest of the world, and quite frankly, he needed coffee. Stat.

Straightening his rather long back and trundling past various tenants who seemed shocked to see him alive, he searched for a restroom. His artist's fingertips strategically washed away the blurred eyeliner. Gradually, the effect shifted from 'dumped on prom night' to a more respectable 'walk of shame' aesthetic not entirely out of line with his actual mood. He folded the crusted, bloody side of his jacket into itself and draped it over his damaged shoulder. Voila: at least now, he could pretend it was a sports injury. He smoothed his shirt against his taut stomach, pulled his shoulders back, and put a smile on before he walked out of the building.

He'd only seen this part of town once before -- 13 hours ago -- but his nose was all he needed to find coffee. It was a standard selection: French vanilla, hazelnut, flavors you could get at Costco, but the smell of good preparation lured him through the front door and directly in-line. He double-checked he still had his wallet after last night--

...and his gut bent inward on itself. Not twelve feet away sat Ms. Koizumi, quietly trying to get on with her life after the nightmare that was last night. He prayed she hadn't noticed his head bobbing above everybody else's on the way over here.

Carmo tapped furiously away at her keyboard. It seemed as though horrifying, nightmarish events had a way of breaking through her writer's block. Well, she really had no idea if what she was writing was any good. She could feel her thoughts zipping around her head in a mess of frenetic energy. She had no doubt her article was chaos, full of run-ons and rambling thoughts. Her fingers worked so quickly, trembling, the mistypes happened faster than she could register them. But she refused to go back and fix them, desperate as she was to move forward, as though it could put distance between her and the haunting night before.

But then there was a sensation – a prickling on her skin. For a single, heart-stopping moment, Carmo was pulled back to the moment she realized she was prey, claws trailing against the ground, wood shattering in the darkness. Her eyes shot up and she felt her stomach freeze in her throat when she locked eyes with him.

Honestly, she didn't know if she was relieved it was only a man, or scared because it was the same man from last night.

For a long moment, all Carmo could do was stare, frozen. Then her mind crashed back into her, and she realized it was the middle of the day and she was sitting in a coffee shop, and this was ridiculous.

Shutting her laptop with an audible snap, Carmo grit her teeth. She finally looked away from the man and started shoving her things in her bag. She straightened up to her full height after. And then she finally looked back at the man, a new fire in her eyes. She held his eyes for a long time, then glanced to the door. After one last look, Carmo turned on her heel and marched out of the shop, not looking back to see if he followed.