Prelude to Evil

He was getting close. He could feel it in his bones. Every step was taking him further in the right direction, and despite the alarms going off inside of his head, he felt compelled to carry on with this self-assigned task, not to let the fear creep into his conscious mind and slow him.

Tree branches reached out to obscure his view, so he often switched to the mode that allowed him to see right through them, ignoring those who would scratch his face or trip him up. The forest was dense and desolate, and in all the hours he’d been here, he hadn’t seen another person—human or otherwise. There was a time when he would’ve counted himself more of the former, but as this journey continued, the harder he prayed he was actually more of the latter than he’d ever cared to admit to anyone. As well as some of his colleagues professed to know him, none of them knew the truth, not even the ones he’d known the longest. The secret he carried had died along