I roll my eyes and settle in the back with my blood packet. There comes a point where you are treated like a child so much that you start feeling like one. I have urges to stay up past my bedtime, eat junk food, sneak out the window to an ill advised party, and watch bad and unwholesome TV.

But I'm not a teenager or a child. I'm in my 50s. I don't want to behave that way anymore, but the lack of agency and trust is stifling. It didn't feel quite that way in New Eden, but I suspect that was more because the others view New Eden as safe. I'm beginning to wonder if I was shadowed when I brought Elder Isis to New Eden. Was an older vampire just outside of my senses? Was I just being humored to avoid a 'tantrum'?

By the time I'm finished my blood packet, I feel a bit better. Maybe I was just hangry? I haven't had much time to eat the past couple of days. Was Elder Remus right? Do I lose control or become bad tempered when I forget to eat? It is harder to remember to eat now. The hunger cues aren't the same and most of us don't need to eat every day, though the frequency is different for everyone.

Am I really more child than adult?

I don't think I am.

Feeling better, I open the laptop Damian gave me and start going through the supernatural subreddit in detail. I havn't really checked it in the past two days, instead focusing on the heist. Not checking it was a mistake. The information appears to be following the technology adaption lifecycle and we are in an acceleration phase. Over the past two days, the information on the site and the number of posts with actual evidence has doubled.

Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.

The subreddit has begun spilling over into the main stream news media and government resource allocation. Teams in almost every developed country have been established to determine the credibility of these claims.

I delve into the news stories, hoping to determine the identities of these groups and who they are following, when a breaking news story catches my attention. They have identified one of the people in the videos and are now looking for them. I open the news story.

It's Elder Remus.

They have the two frames from the slow motion camera, and one of the teams has matched it to footage of him walking through the museum earlier that day. Same outfit, same hair, but now we can see his face. There is apparently an entire team dedicated to finding him, and there is a link to submit pictures with geographical metadata attached so people can report sightings with pictures.

Crap.

"Uh… Damian?"

He sighs, "Yes?"

"They have figured out the slow cam footage of Elder Remus. They have his face and a team looking for him."

He looks at me through the rear view mirror. "Are you sure?"

I turn the computer around and hold the screen up so he can see it. "Positive."

"He is following you?"

"Yeah… said it was to protect me."

"He is going to lead both the elders and the humans right to us. We don't have months, we have days." He runs a hand through his hair. A nervous gesture that, until now, I had only heard rumors that he made.

"The humans don't have to respond by that point, they just have to decide to moonshot the return message."

"True…" he hesitates, "But that doesn't keep us safe. It is likely we will make sure the signal is sent, only to be captured or killed before a first contact scenario can be established."

"If that happens, our extraterrestrial counterparts may consider that an act of war."

"No, they will consider it an act of war."

"How do we avoid that?"

"We die. Before anyone can catch us, before the humans capture us, we die."