Apollo's Return

The silence of your small apartment is shattered by frantic, insistent knocking at your door. It's almost three in the morning. Your heart pounds in your chest, a familiar, unsettling feeling of another heartbeat seeming to sync with yours. You grab the metal baseball bat from under your bed, cautiously approaching the door.

Through the peephole, you see the frantic face of your best friend, Thalia. Relief washes over you, quickly replaced by annoyance. You open the door, ready to scold her for waking you, but her panicked demeanor and immediate scanning of the room shut you up.

She slams the door shut behind her, pressing her back against it and breathing heavily. "Corrin told me everything," she says, trying to sound normal despite her obvious distress. "You really dropped out?"

You try to push away the thought of your abandoned future, focusing on her strange behavior. "You disappear off the face of the earth for a good two weeks, show up on my doorstep at 3 am, and that's what you want to talk about?" You're tired of her unexplained absences. "I've been calling you for days. Where have you been?"