Home. Thame lets out a long breath as he looks up at his building. He'd got really comfortable in his flat but the thought of people knowing where he was or, worse, listening or watching, filled him with dread. He grabs a coffee on the corner of the street and watches the building, seeing if anything irregular cropped up. By now they'd know he was back and would be going after his stuff. Deliveries, neighbours pottering about, but nothing suspicious. There were no vans or people hanging out for abnormal amounts of time. Not a single person was doing a relay with another, keeping tabs. It seemed to be safe for now.
Deciding that he'd give it a little longer, he turns on his phone. If he's going to let the world come at him, he might as well take it full-force electronically first. Texts, WhatsApp group messages, missed calls, social notifications: every App yelled its worst. Thame wondered if the vibration notifications would make the phone dance. It was too much to sift through.
He went into a few key Apps and changed his passwords. After all, Paimona had used the phone to create a digital-only creature of her making. Most importantly, he stops his subscription to the Cloud and digitally scrubs it clean. She couldn't keep tabs on him any longer. He strips his social accounts of their content so they're bare. His history deleted in an instant. There's one thing for it: total reset. Factory settings. The whole shebang.
Would he need people's numbers? Maybe. He knew his parents' by heart but the rest were disposable. Does he need a recruiter's number still? No. Guys from university he used to party with? Probably not. Isabella's? His finger hovers over the confirm button. He stops, flicks through his contacts, grabs a pen and writes Andrea's and a couple other useful numbers on a napkin. He knew that re-downloading the Apps would still give him some notifications, but he could handle that. The next few weeks would be him wiping his life clean, and he might as well start with his phone. He presses full reset.
Thame packs everything away into his pockets and heads for his building, tapping out an email confirming he's moving out. He has a month to serve and, if he's alive after that, he'll need a new place. Thankfully his keys still work and, ignoring the concierge, he quickly scarpers to the lift across the foyer. Thame knew Paimona was likely notifying one of them, so he had to be quick. In front of his door, all looked normal. Behind it, surely a sea of dust had settled, like snow in a quiet tomb.
He turns the key and heads in. Evidently the flat has had some visitors, a couple rather recently. Dustmarks of things moved around were a telltale sign: there were irregular levels and thicknesses in the grey fuzz. And his vases and animal decorations aren't in the right places. Sloppy. Thame picks up a lingering smell of old, cheap male aftershave: they'd been there that very morning.
He doesn't care if he's being watched, he just needs some key items. Grabbing a large duffle, he stuffs it full of clothes and toiletries. A toothbrush, razor and some chargers follow. Stopping to change into his own clothes, Thame immediately feels one hundred times better. Switching his new synthetic jumper and summer jacket for his own coat, he's almost done. Reaching into his paperwork which sat on his top drawer, he grabs two additional credit cards, the ones he didn't need on the work trip.
Outside the window, he sees a maintenance van pull up, and four very hardy and mean looking plumbers get out. Thame wastes no more time in heading out, getting the lift down to the first floor and watching the stairs. One of the plumbers passes by, headed to the top exit. Thame dashes down to the foyer.
"Tell your friends that I'm sorry I missed them."
Thame winks and smiles before leaving. He speedily crosses the street and disappears into city. They could track his credit cards, but cash would be fine for a couple of days. He stops by an ATM and gets enough for a no-frills hotel for a couple of nights.
A potential child. A guaranteed psycho who hates him, running the richest organisation in the world. An army of incarnations of his brother being bred. And his own people seemingly ready to kill him to retain their own power and wealth.
He needed to contact the London contingent of The Order, those loyal to Dragon. It'll eventually leak that he visited them but, for now, they would be a source of information on his son and the gathering. But first must be his friend Andrea. He needed someone to guarantee he was alive, to know what happened. And deep down, he just wanted a hug from a friendly face. Somebody who could see the person he was before his life partner awoke from his slumber.
*
"Oh. My. God!" Andrea is completely dumbfounded as a now human-looking Thame turns up at her door. There's a breath of momentary silence before adrenalin shoots through them both.
"Come in! Come in!" Andrea grabs him for a long hug. "You're back then, and well rocking the gap year hair."
Thame puts his hand through his long unstyled overgrown mop, which he'd partly botched at Paimona's. There hadn't been time to fix everything about his appearance since the cave.
"Next on the list I assure you." He follows Andrea to her kitchen, where she puts on the kettle, still reeling at seeing him out of the blue.
"So. She turns back to him."Where the fuck have you been?"
"It's a very long story, but would you believe me when I say barely anywhere?"
"You were on a work trip and then, bang! You've taken a year off to travel. I was worried sick. You have a breakdown? Are you okay?"
"Well yes, it was a touch out of the blue." Thame wondered what he should reveal. He didn't want to endanger her, and the truth would sound too fantastical anyhow.
"Your messages were a bit weird too. Like you'd changed your whole personality."
"Can I have a look?"
Andrea shrugged and gave him her phone while she made the tea. Despite their best efforts, they hadn't quite picked up his personality. The cheeky asides or straight sarcasm were replaced with a lack of energy and fun. They could match the words and pace, but not the feeling. In the end he couldn't stop himself: it all came spilling out.
"I was kidnapped in Turin after my business meeting. Held in an actual Sicilian cave for a year by a mad old woman over a thousand years old. She kept me drugged until the end when she believed I was my alternative self. A being from another world, a King with magnificent physical powers and supporters around the globe. A beast who lives through me, in my blood. An ancestor I never knew I had. I was let out and escaped to a nearby port, where I was a stowaway on a tanker heading for the UK. There my own supporters, the King's Order, turned on me, tried to take my sperm to continue the bloodline and then kill me. Instead I stopped them, kicked them off the tanker and saved the crew. I swam some three or four miles to shore where I then bought the most awful jumper, headed back home and then came here."
"So, on the piss then."
Thame felt the pressure dissipate as he exhaled. It felt good.
"Obviously. Not a care in the world." He picked up his tea. They were both sitting around the breakfast counter.
"So tell me about you. Still in luuuurve?"
"Yes, Daniel is great. Finally a good one and, if you hadn't noticed, now my co-habitor." Andrea replied. Thame was pleased. They were a genuinely lovely couple and it was obvious that Daniel adored her. Thame checked out her left hand in an exaggerated manner.
"Not yet. Maybe soon. I haven't decided yet and I'll be the one proposing."
"I'd hope you would." Thame loved seeing the true Andrea back after her previous bad relationships. She was comfortable with herself, and powerful with it.
"Speaking of weddings, do you know, or have you been living under a social media rock?"
Thame look inquisitively at Andrea. It had been an actual bloody rock.
"Isabella, she's..." Andrea paused.
"Engaged?" Thame asks. "To whom?" He was shocked. Stupidly, he hadn't considered her in another relationship.
"How do you not know?"
"I blocked her after she dumped me on holiday by leaving a note."
"Fair play. Well, yes, he's a high-flier business type. Very rich."
"You got a pic?" Thame wanted to see them together to prepare himself for an eventual meeting in person. It was bound to happen at one of Andrea's parties or life events.
"Do you like him?" He asks, as Andrea flicks through a gallery.
"Mmm. Okay, truth is that he's alright. Bit boring maybe, a bit straight. I didn't really see them together but it's been a while and she's happy."
"You say the right things." Thame smiles at her.
"You know they met when he saved us from some arseholes trying to fight us in a bar?" Andrea remarks as she passed him the phone. "There you go, with me in it to boot."
It's a picture of the three of them on a weekend away. Daniel was clearly behind the phone snapping away. Smiling back at Thame was a smug, all-knowing Intern, the man who wanted to not only kill him, but to torture him for an eternity first. Thame's face dropped at the same speed as his stomach. The force caused it to lurch back up and send a feeling of nausea through his throat.
"Whoa, you okay? Christ, you still love her."
Thame gave her a look.
"Shit, you do. I suppose it makes sense. Neither of you really had closure."
"No, well, yes. Of course I love her still. But there's something else."
Andrea frowns, beckoning more information.
"I really am the descendent of Ormr. I was trapped in a cave and..." Thame grabs a knife, slicing a surface wound on his arm.
"Thame!" Andrea shrieks as she sees the blood. He puts down the knife and holds a tea towel around his wound.
"What the fuck are you doing?" She exclaims. "And what the fuck are you talking about?"
Thame removed the towel and wiped away the blood. The gash was gone. Andrea's mouth actually dropped as she stared at it. Looking back up at him, she saw that his eyes were that of the beast.
Thame is about to tell her about Isabella's clear and present danger but the doorbell goes.
"Fuck. Fuck. Fuck." Andrea instinctively checks her watch. "You're totally cool with seeing Isabella, right?"
She dashes to the door. Isabella is on time, as always, to do last-minute wedding planning. She strolls in, leaving Andrea at the door and heads to the kitchen. Andrea holds her breath in anticipation. Isabella has stopped dead in her tracks. There he was. Weird haircut but still the same man she left all those years before.
"Hi." The world hung in the air between them for what felt like an hour.
"Hi." Came Thame's reply, which set up an excruciatingly awkward silence. "Err, congratulations."
"Thanks." Isabella's reply was terse. General pleasantries were never their thing. Andrea had snuck in behind them, a fiendish viewer.
"Isa's over for some last minute wedding prep."
"Two weeks or so to go." Isabella replies with an uncomfortable apologetic expression.
He instantly felt love flood back through him. It burned a hole in his middle; Ormr would be passed out from the smoke. Her nervous fidgeting didn't make clear what she felt about him, but they were in more danger than ever.
"I was just leaving actually." Thame moves to the door, offering a weak wave as a goodbye. "Good luck with it all. Andrea, I'll see you soon."
Two weeks wasn't enough time for anything. Now he had to save her, but as he shut the door, he didn't know how. She clearly loved the imposter and the whole thing would've been closely orchestrated. The means would come later. There was another threat to take on first.