Slightly faint, but clearly a woman’s shadow was visible outside the window as Rohit and Beth rushed after hearing the wailing sound from Keith’s room.

Surprisingly, Keith was fast asleep and the wailing stopped.

“Save my child please. Beth, only you can save him. The Command is coming for him. I shouldn’t have trusted it. It wants to leave my body and inhabit Keith’s nervous system, where it will influence his behaviour and make him do terrible things. Read all about parasites, you might figure out something. I must leave now,” Quincy had somehow managed to see her son and speak to Beth before disappearing yet again. 

Studies have proved that many parasites use more than one host organism and since they cannot survive without a host, they rely on their hosts themselves to facilitate transmission – Rohit discovered this fact after five minutes of using a search engine. 

Somehow, they had to figure out how The Command could be stopped from reaching Keith.

Suddenly, Beth remembered that The Voice had told them that the evil power fed on anxiety, fear and sorrow.

“So if Keith stays happy all the time, maybe The Command couldn’t touch him. Let’s ensure that he doesn’t get upset about anything and stays relaxed at all times. Let’s even celebrate his birthday in advance, let him not even sense that there is a problem,” Beth had found a temporary solution.

“Superb idea, let’s all try that. But have you ever come across a kid who is happy about everything all the time? It’s obvious for a child to get disappointed about something that might appear unimportant to us,” A Minute appeared in all her glory with a glowing neon arrow and it was even visible to Rohit.

Soon, The One Minuters arrived even though they were planning to come a couple of days later.

“Seems like we need to rush to the University ground. Twitter is abuzz with tweets about weird vibrations in the local university campus. This time, let’s reach before the damage is done,” Dev was all charged up to stop The Command.

“Stay here Beth, what if The Command comes for Keith while you are away?” Rohit was worried as he understood the gravity of the situation.

“Sixty seconds, we will be back in just sixty seconds. I and The Voice will know if it comes here and we’ll be here in no time,” A Minute sounded confident.

Sadly enough, she had no idea that The Command could now be present at two places at the same time since it had separated Quincy’s shadow from her body and was using both as hosts simultaneously.

The story continues tomorrow in the next post. Did you notice that I managed to start each sentence of this chapter of the story with the letter S (I have managed to do the same from the B letter post)! This is my 18th post for this year’s A to Z Challenge (#atozchallenge). Head to my previous posts to read the entire story.
Read all my posts for the challenge in the A to Z links below:
A ➡ B ➡ C ➡ D ➡ E ➡ F ➡ G ➡ H ➡ I ➡ J ➡ K ➡ L ➡ M ➡ N ➡ O ➡ P ➡ Q ➡ R ➡ S ➡ T ➡ U ➡ V ➡ W ➡ X ➡ Y ➡ Z