Macon evening had been uneventful. Lately, that had typical. Yet he it as a potential issue for the Macon of the next day.
He'd been walking home from work rather than taking the métro due to an overwhelming amount of fatigue after a long day of watching others carry out their mundane tasks all day with extreme confidence.
He had a headache above his left eye that was becoming more pronounced as Tuesday progressed. He was also trying not to think about Friday's report that he had been pretending didn't exist since Monday.
Macon cut through a small alley just off of Montparnasse; it was quieter and less crowded.
When he came upon the alley, he noticed a young woman standing against a wall between two street lamps. The girl, who was likely in her early twenties (though it was hard to tell), had purple hair. Not purple in the "dress up" sense of being purple; rather, this was "real" purple -- either this person really knew what they were doing or simply did not care. The girl's jacket was at least two sizes too large for her; she was standing at a minimum of five feet tall, and her fingers were completely covered by her sleeves since she'd been standing there long enough that it appeared she was a permanent fixture.
Macon almost walked past her. He came close.
But it was her eyes that stopped him. Not that they were purple as well; they were but that didn't really matter; what mattered was that her eyes conveyed a message.
Just nothing.
Not sad, nothing; not tired, nothing.
No absence of something, like someone had scraped away any entity/living thing that should have been inside, left the lights on.
She said something. Very soft.
"Sorry?" He moved forward without thinking.
She repeated it. Still nothing that he could discern. One more step…
Her hand went up, two fingers against his forehead.
Macon tried to step back.
His body did not.
"What-"
There was not a single muscle in his body, as though the wires between his brain and everything else had been methodically severed.
His brain had been directed to act at the request of God.
Two seconds.
There was then a sensation that suddenly passed cold and fast through his skull from left to right, and his knees simply buckled.
CRACK
He heard his own hands hit the concrete a split second before he felt the pain, and for an instant, he felt as though he was simply an idiot on the sidewalk in Paris.
When he lifted his head, she was already gone.
There were no footsteps, no outline disappearing. Only emptiness from the street, two streetlights, and a car somewhere distant.
The night before, he spent some time on the ground.
Next thing he knew, something was in his field of vision.
No way. Not an image of something from the past. Didn't change when he blinked. It was concrete and in front of him was something he could only see, with a ton of boxes in array form, all mostly grey and unreadable, like an incomplete software program that couldn't run on the correct operating system.
Name = grey. Title = grey. Stats = grey. Abilities = grey.
All grey.
But one. Far right bottom right box.
Unique Ability.
And underneath that box in a font that was slightly thinner, indicating it was older than the others:
Death Sight.
'...'
He just stared at it. Closed his eyes. Opened his eyes. There it was. So he slammed his eyes shut. There it was. So he blinked a lot of times to the point of being a little insane; would probably look that way to anyone who watched him.
There it was.
He stood up; wiped off his hands with the palms of his hands.
He just walked home; there was nothing else he could do at that point.
He didn't go to sleep.
He attempted; did all the things you do to get ready for bed, brush your teeth, get in bed, lie on the bed and try to blank out your mind (which only means he was thinking about).
He tried everything, and nothing worked.
At 3 a.m., he gave up and went to the kitchen.
He made coffee and stood by the window.
There was a neighbor walking his dog; he was an elderly gentleman with a very round dog; they were both moving as if they had agreed that time was irrelevant.
The number above the neighbor's head was as bright as a neon light -
31%.
He placed his mug on the windowsill.
"OK"
The neighbor and round dog turned the corner; the number was no longer seen.
He stood at the window for a long time after that .
"Am I going crazy?"
That was possible; this is sleep deprivation/stress; this has been documented; you read something about it once.
He went back to bed.
He did not sleep.
The next morning, every person in the city had a number.
The metro stations, the platforms, the streets, each had a white number above the person's head, floating there and only visible to you while everyone else continues about their normal human behaviors, totally unaware of the numbers.
Most of the numbers were very low - 8%, 14%, a person with headphones and a really big, thick book had 22%.
He could not stop looking.
"This is a normal day, right?"
Everyone else but me.
He got off where he always did.
He noticed a man in passing.
He was dressed in gray pants and a black briefcase and looked to be in his early 40's with the typical "I've been doing this too long and know I'm going to do it until I die" expression on his face. He was at a red light along with several others and was looking at his phone.
97%
Macon stopped, walking blindly.
He was bumped and slightly pushed forward by someone who walked directly past him without even glancing back. This person was in The City.
He didn't move. He stood at the intersection staring at the 97% reading above this man's head trying to come up with some way to interpret what to do with this statistic (if there was anything he could do) or if in fact this was real.
The light turned green. The man walked across the street.
Macon continued watching until the man was lost among the other persons walking.
He got into the office 20 minutes late and spent the first hour of his work day looking blankly at the screen of the computer and appearing to read yet was not.
The interface of the system began responding as he focused on it; like the reflex that he had already developed, but had not yet learned.
Death Sight. To see how "probable" death is for others.
That was all there was to it; there was no manual, no guide lines or note explaining what he should do with this.
On the traffic light, you can see a stranger with a rating of 97%.
Not encouraging at all.
The alert came in at 5:00 PM.
It was a serious event that had happened on Rue de Rennes. A pedestrian suffered from a hit-and-run car accident, and he is in critical condition.
He looked through his collection of photos for an image of himself wearing a gray suit and black briefcase laying on the ground.
Macon then set his phone down on its side on top of his desk.
Although he had seen the rating of 97%, he had done nothing because he did not know what to do since he had spent all day convincing himself that it was not real, and really, what do you say to someone you have never met before at a traffic light?
He sat at his desk until 7:00 PM.
He accomplished nothing work-wise during this time.
While on the train home, he took his cell phone out and took a selfie.
He wanted to confirm that this was really happening to him.
As he viewed the image, he noticed there was 101% above the top of his head.
He remained completely still.
He was not at 97% or 100%.
He was at 101%.
'That cannot happen', he thought.
Percentages are always based on 100, and the word itself means "for every 100", and there is no way you can have more than one hundred percent of a certain item.
Even though this was confounding to him, he did not know what the meaning of one hundred and one percent was yet.
However, he could feel his stomach knotting at the thought of being at a level of one hundred and one percent.