Let’s get into all of the ancient history later. Even if I tried to give an account of what happened, it would be riddled with errors as recounted from a child’s squishy memory. I’d suggest you ask him, but I won’t send you down that road again.

All that you need to know now is that I will no longer be a hostage in the backseat of this car. Less than a hostage. I have lived in the darkest fringe, somehow growing into the knowledge that to be known, is to invite destruction.

I assume that planning an assassination attempt would be easier than what I’ve been working on. It’s easier getting someone to crash a car than it is to gain control of the car without doing any lasting damage to the person. This isn’t out of some altruistic feeling I have toward A. I’d gladly see him rot in a dark room as I have done since I was born. But I don’t know how much of us is shared. If he were to die while at the controls, that might mean the end of both of us.

So, I’m starting small. A minor speedbump that will begin the destabilization. I needed him to miss his flight. However, even something as small as this required several steps as well as a fair bit of luck.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

How easy would it be if I could just turn his alarm off after he went to sleep? But the light from the phone would surely wake him up. No point in dwelling on that. I just had to work backwards from that moment of impossibility. The alarm also wouldn’t go off if the phone were dead.

There was something there. The phone rests on a charger right next to the bed. I realized a while ago, that I have some rudimentary control of the body while he is sleeping. There are no fine motor skills, sort of like moving a limb after it has gone numb. What I can do is throw my arm out and knock the phone off of the charger.

This would still only work if the phone completely died before the alarm was supposed to go off. Which meant I needed to deplete the battery as much as possible throughout the day. While I don’t have real control during waking hours, I do have some influence. He’s called me intrusive, which makes me giggle every time I hear it. To be something as substantial as intrusive.

“How many hours do you think you spend doing work that has no real impact on the world?” “What would your younger self think of you?” “What do you think she’s been up to?” “Do you think she ever loved you the way you loved her?” Maybe I should calm down a bit.

It worked. The phone battery is running low after flipping through social media even when we weren’t on our break. Tonight, after he has fallen asleep, I throw my arm out toward the phone. It takes two tries, but now, the phone is lying face down on the bedside table. All I can do now is wait, and watch.