Chapter 45: Chapter 45: Ambush
Garrett let himself in, dropped his keys by the door, and didn’t think much past the next hour.
He ate something quick, standing over the counter instead of bothering with a plate. Showered. Brushed his teeth. Checked his phone once, out of habit more than expectation, and found nothing worth answering.
He didn’t check the timer again.
He was tired of looking at it for one night.
The conversation with Freya had gone differently than he’d expected. He’d gone there because he needed to start somewhere, and for a while, it had actually felt easy. They’d talked about classes, complained about campus, joked about things that didn’t really matter.
Then she’d asked about Emiliana.
Now he was back in his apartment, and there wasn’t much he could do about it.
Whatever Freya thought about him and Emiliana was her business.
At least for tonight.
By the time he got into bed, his mind had gone quiet enough to let him sleep, no lingering replay of the conversation with Freya, no circling back to Emiliana. Just the kind of blank exhaustion that came from a long day finally catching up with him.
He was out within minutes.
The night passed without anything worth remembering.
Garrett woke at his usual time, same as always, no alarm needed anymore.
For a few seconds, he stared at the ceiling before getting out of bed. His room was still dim, the morning light barely making it through the curtains.
Nothing had changed overnight.
He got ready on autopilot. Coffee, clothes, bag, out the door with enough time to walk instead of rush. The morning air was cold enough to wake him up the rest of the way by the time he reached campus.
Students were already moving between buildings, some walking in groups, others staring down at their phones as they hurried toward their first classes.
"You look like you actually slept for once," Daniel said, falling into step beside him outside the lecture hall.
"Miracles happen."
"Wonders never end."
Daniel grinned, already talking about something that had happened in one of his other classes, some argument between two students over group project credit that had apparently gotten heated enough for the professor to step in.
Garrett half listened, nodding in the right places, letting Daniel carry the conversation the way he usually did.
Daniel didn’t seem to notice that Garrett wasn’t saying much.
Then again, Daniel was used to that.
They reached the lecture hall, and Daniel continued talking until they found their seats.
The morning went normally.
Classes went the way classes usually went. Notes, a couple of questions he didn’t bother raising his hand for, a professor who ran ten minutes over on a lecture nobody needed to run ten minutes over on.
Garrett wrote down what mattered and ignored what didn’t.
At one point, Daniel leaned over and whispered something about the professor’s slides being impossible to read.
Garrett looked at the screen.
He wasn’t wrong.
"Maybe it’s a test."
"Of what?"
"Patience."
Daniel covered his mouth to keep from laughing.
The lecture continued.
Nothing unusual happened.
He hadn’t seen Emiliana since Sunday. She hadn’t messaged him either. Nobody mentioned Freya. Nobody brought up Sunday, or the system, or anything that would’ve turned an ordinary day into something else.
Garrett noticed that he was still thinking about Freya from time to time, though he didn’t spend much effort on it.
He had no idea what she thought after he’d left her apartment.
He’d told her Emiliana was just a friend, that was true enough. At least, it was the simplest answer.
He didn’t know what else he could have said without making the conversation much more complicated than it needed to be.
By the time he made it through lunch and the last class of the afternoon, nothing had happened worth remembering.
Daniel stayed around for a while after the last lecture, talking about some plans for later in the week. Garrett listened, gave a few short answers, and eventually they went their separate ways.
"See you tomorrow," Daniel said.
"Yeah."
Garrett adjusted his bag and started home.
Just a normal day, moving the way normal days did, with everything else sitting quietly underneath it.
The first part of the walk went by without much thought.
Classes let out, and Garrett fell into the usual rhythm of the walk home. Sidewalks full of the same after-school crowd, the same shortcuts he took without thinking about them anymore.
He passed the same small stores, the same bus stop, the same café where people always seemed to be standing outside with drinks in their hands.
The first stretch went by fast, the way it always did. Streets blurring past while his mind drifted somewhere else, half on nothing, half on the growing list of things he still hadn’t figured out.
His thoughts moved between different things without staying on any of them for long.
The task.
Freya.
Emiliana.
The money he’d already made.
The people he’d met since the system entered his life.
None of it needed an answer right now.
He kept walking.
As he got closer to his building, though, something in him slowed down before he consciously decided to.
The street narrowed here, fewer people, quieter. He took the familiar turn toward his place, the same one he took every day, past the same shuttered laundromat and the same alley mouth he never paid much attention to.
The noise from the main road faded behind him.
This part of the route was usually quiet, Usually empty and this time, he noticed it.
Three men, standing where no one usually stood, positioned in a way that wasn’t accidental.
One near the alley mouth.
One a few steps further up the sidewalk.
One directly in his path, close enough that Garrett would have to either stop or walk straight into him.
Garrett slowed his steps, reading the situation before anyone said a word.
Not a coincidence.
He didn’t stop immediately.
He kept walking for another few seconds, watching them without making it obvious that he was watching.
None of them moved aside.
That was enough.
Garrett kept walking for another couple of steps before stopping.
He didn’t need to get any closer to know they weren’t there by accident.
The street behind him was still open, but the three men had chosen their positions carefully enough that moving past them wouldn’t be simple.
Garrett looked at the one who seemed like the leader of the pack.
He looked back.
For a moment, neither of them said anything.
Garrett stopped a few feet from them, hands loose at his sides, expression unreadable.
He didn’t know what they wanted.
Dezny stepped forward first, that same crooked smile settling into place.
"Didn’t think we’d catch up with you this easy."
"You were waiting for me," Garrett said.
Not a question.
"Give the man a prize."
Garrett glanced past him, taking in the other two without turning his head much.
The second thug hadn’t moved from his spot near the alley, arms crossed, clearly there to block that route if Garrett tried it.
The new one had shifted slightly closer, cutting off the sidewalk behind him.
Three men.
No obvious way through.
They planned this out.
That was the part that actually registered as a problem.
Three of them, positioned like this, meant someone had thought it through beforehand. This wasn’t just Dezny showing up angry on his own.
Garrett looked at the three men again.
No one looked nervous.
No one looked uncertain.
They had come here knowing exactly what they were doing.
"Do I know you?" Garrett said, voice level, mild annoyance the only thing bleeding through. "What do you want?"
"We’re here for you," Dezny said, finally dropping whatever pretense had been left. "That’s all you need to know right now."
Garrett studied him for a moment, then let his gaze move briefly to the other two, still holding their positions, still saying nothing.
Nobody offered a name.
Nobody explained who’d sent them, or why now, or what exactly "here for you" was supposed to mean beyond the obvious.
Garrett didn’t ask.
There wasn’t much point in asking questions when they clearly weren’t planning to answer them.
He just stood there, calm, weighing exactly how much trouble he was actually in.
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