Chapter 48: An Anomaly

Aldric arrived outside the café three minutes early and checked the time on his phone. Acceptable.

He put the device away and surveyed the street. Several people were waiting at the crosswalk, a man was trying with little success to stop his dog from investigating a trash can, and two teenagers seemed determined to let the entire neighborhood enjoy their conversation. Aldric noticed nothing unusual.

The light changed.

Emma appeared on the other side of the street and smiled at him.

Aldric swept his gaze over their surroundings. No one was running toward him. There was no suspicious movement in the crowd. He pressed two fingers to his wrist.

His heart rate was faster, but his breathing remained steady and there was no pain in his chest. No dizziness. No muscle weakness. He had made no physical effort that could explain the increase.

Aldric inhaled, searching for an unusual smell or the metallic taste that accompanied certain poisons. Nothing. Emma finished crossing the street while he eliminated the most dangerous possibilities.

“Hi.”

“Hello.”

“You okay?”

“Probably.”

“That’s very reassuring.”

“I have no visible injuries, and my breathing is normal.”

She was about to answer when her gaze dropped to his hand.

“Wait... are you checking your pulse? Why?”

Aldric did not yet have enough information to give her an accurate answer. Mentioning poisoning would be premature, and an unknown illness remained possible.

“As a precaution.”

“And I suppose if I ask what’s wrong, you’re going to tell me you don’t know.”

“Correct.”

“Great.”

“There does not appear to be any immediate danger, however.”

“Aldric, if you feel sick, you tell me. Okay?”

“Of course.”

“Preferably before you collapse in the middle of the street.”

“I have no reason to collapse.”

“Perfect. I’d really like to keep it that way.”

Aldric followed Emma as she headed toward the café, continuing to monitor his heart rate, which refused to return to its usual level.

His heart had reacted far more violently before for perfectly valid reasons: running twelve kilometers in armor to reach Valgrise before Malachar’s troops, Brakk crashing through the wall of the Silver Stag while Aldric was finishing his meal, or three assassins from the Brotherhood of the Veil entering his room in the middle of the night.

In all three cases, at least the cause had been obvious. An army, a troll, or three assassins left little room for doubt. This time, he was walking through Paris beside Emma, which made the comparison considerably less reassuring.

Emma told him about a client who had arrived late at the agency and then spent nearly ten minutes explaining that she was normally punctual. Aldric was listening when a group of tourists occupying the entire width of the sidewalk forced them apart. Emma went around them on the left while he had to slow down behind a couple who had just stopped.

He caught up with her a few seconds later.

His heart rate increased.

Aldric slowed down, and Emma continued for a few steps before noticing and turning around.

“What is it?”

“Nothing.”

He moved back alongside her, and his heart rate increased again.

One observation did not constitute proof. Fortunately, testing the hypothesis required neither specialized equipment nor the subject’s conscious participation.

A few dozen meters farther on, Aldric slowed in front of a bookstore window and let Emma get several meters ahead of him.

His heart rate decreased.

Interesting.

“Did you see something?” Emma asked.

“A book on the history of France.”

Emma walked back to him and looked at the cover.

“Do you want to go inside?”

His heart rate increased again.

Even more interesting.

“No. I only wanted to look.”

They continued walking. The phenomenon returned to its previous level.

Two identical results were the beginning of evidence, but Aldric had learned to be wary of beginnings. In the marshes of Varen, he had twice checked that an enemy soldier lying in the mud was dead. The man had not moved, had not breathed, and had even allowed a fly to land on his eye.

On the third pass, he had gotten up with a knife.

Ever since then, Aldric had placed a certain amount of importance on third checks.

At the next intersection, he slowed down while examining a street sign. Emma continued several meters before turning around.

His heart rate decreased.

“Are you looking for something?”

“I’m checking our route.”

“The café is straight ahead.”

“I see.”

He caught up with her, and his heart sped up again. Three times now. Coincidence was becoming difficult to defend.

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Aldric considered a fourth test anyway before deciding against it. Emma had already noticed two of his delays, and if he kept moving away from her every fifty meters, she would eventually ask what he was doing.

So he continued beside her until they reached the café.

An hour later, they left the café and walked to the metro station. Emma stopped near the entrance and turned toward him.

“Thanks for the coffee.”

“It wasn’t expensive.”

“I wasn’t talking about the coffee. I meant spending time together.”

“In that case, thank you too.”

Emma smiled, and his heart immediately sped up.

“What?” Emma asked.

“Nothing.”

“You’re making that face again.”

“What face?”

“The one where you’re thinking way too hard about something.”

“I’m thinking normally.”

Her smile widened, which did absolutely nothing to improve the situation.

“See you soon, Aldric.”

“See you soon.”

Emma went down the first few steps before turning around to wave at him. Aldric returned the gesture and watched her disappear into the station. His heart rate began to decrease.

Distance therefore seemed to matter, even if it still did not explain why a simple smile from Emma had been enough to make his heart beat faster. Aldric waited until she disappeared down the stairs before continuing on his way and noticed that his heart rate decreased as he moved farther from the station. Proximity remained the most likely explanation, but it was clearly incomplete.

That hypothesis lasted for approximately twenty minutes.

Aldric was approaching his apartment when his phone vibrated.

Emma: I made it home safely.

His heart sped up as he read the message. He slowed down and pressed two fingers to his wrist to check. The increase was slight, but unmistakable.

He replied Good and was about to put his phone away when the three little dots appeared at the bottom of the conversation.

Emma: I had a nice time today 😊

This time, his heart rate increased enough to make him stop in the middle of the sidewalk. Aldric reread the message to verify the result and got the same reaction.

He looked up at the buildings around him. Emma was several kilometers away, and unless the laws governing distance had changed sometime in the past twenty minutes, physical proximity could no longer explain the phenomenon. Aldric opened his notes app and revised his hypothesis.

Physiological Anomaly

Hypothesis 1: Proximity to Emma

Status: Insufficient

Hypothesis 2: Remote communication

His phone vibrated before he could continue.

Lucas: Depot tomorrow at 6:30?

His heart did not react. Aldric waited, but his heart rate remained stable.

The phone itself was therefore not responsible. Aldric opened his notes to revise his hypothesis, then spent a moment looking at Emma’s name at the top of the conversation.

Two days later, Aldric met Emma at the end of her workday. The anomaly had provided no new useful information in the meantime, but it had not disappeared either. They had been walking together for about ten minutes when Emma told him about a man who had tried to negotiate the price of an apartment during a viewing.

“He wanted to lower the price because he was going to have to redo both living rooms.”

“Were they in poor condition?”

“That’s the problem. Everything is new. He didn’t like the color. He explained that since he was going to have to repaint the walls, that counted as renovation work and the owner should take it into account in the price.”

“What color were they? If it was unusual, his reasoning might have some merit.”

“White.”

“In that case, his argument is less convincing. Did he want to change anything else?”

“Of course. He didn’t like the flooring in the second living room either. He wanted to replace it even though it was installed less than three months ago.”

“Those are not repairs.”

“That’s what I spent twenty minutes trying to explain to him. He told me that if he had to pay to change them, then it counted as work...”

“In that case, he should have asked for a larger reduction. He could have announced that he also intended to replace the windows, kitchen, and bathroom. The more things in perfect condition he decided to destroy, the higher the cost of the work would become.”

“Please don’t give him that idea...”

She burst out laughing, and Aldric’s heart sped up. His hand moved to his wrist.

“Your pulse again?” Emma asked.

“The anomaly persists.”

“And you still haven’t seen a doctor?”

“I have no symptoms requiring medical intervention.”

“Aldric, your heart has been doing weird things for two days.”

“It accelerates under certain circumstances.”

“Which fits my definition of ‘doing weird things’ pretty well.”

Aldric was about to explain that a measurable variation did not constitute weird behavior when Emma took out her phone.

“Wait, I have to show you something.”

She opened a photograph and moved closer so she could hold the screen between them. A suit of armor stood in a store window beside a sword that Aldric judged far too broad before he had even finished examining the pauldrons.

“I walked past this place this morning,” Emma said. “It made me think of you.”

His heart sped up again.

Aldric looked at Emma, then at the photograph. The armor complicated the observation. It was impossible to determine with certainty which of the two had caused the reaction.

“That armor is unusable. The pauldrons restrict movement, and the sword is too broad.”

“Aldric, it’s not real combat armor.”

“That does not make the sword any less broad.”

A cyclist approached from behind them before Aldric could say anything else and passed close enough that Emma had to move aside. Her hand bumped against Aldric’s, and their fingers touched.

The contact had produced the largest variation recorded since the investigation began. Aldric looked at their hands, then raised his eyes when Emma started walking again.

“Aldric, are you coming?”

He caught up with her, and they continued their walk. Emma picked up their conversation where she had left off, while Aldric kept to himself the questions this new reaction had added to the previous ones.

That same evening, Aldric sat down at his desk and opened his notebook. So far, he had focused primarily on the moments when the anomaly appeared. That was a mistake. On a battlefield, knowing where the enemy never struck could be just as useful as knowing where they attacked.

Patrick had spoken to him for nearly twenty minutes about a change in the schedule without causing the slightest reaction. Karim had asked him to move several crates, Julien had mentioned their next game, and Lucas had sent him three messages during the day, including a photograph of a cat wearing a construction helmet. Even Lucas’s cat and its construction helmet had failed to produce any measurable reaction.

Aldric reread his observations. Distance was innocent. So was the phone. Physical contact intensified the phenomenon, but was not necessary for it to occur. He had eliminated the suspects one after another, and despite that, something kept coming back.

Or rather, someone.

Aldric turned to a new page, wrote Emma in the center, and circled her name.

He drew several branches around her name and wrote down the explanations that still seemed possible. Some were unlikely. Others were dangerous enough to deserve being eliminated first.

A substance present on Emma could have explained the reactions when she was near him, but much less so those that had occurred while she was several kilometers away. Magic would have been even more concerning. Aldric had encountered enchantments capable of altering the senses, curses that revealed themselves only after several days, and at least one poison whose first effects had felt like a pleasant warmth. He had learned long ago that the absence of pain did not mean the absence of danger.

And yet, he had detected no trace of mana since arriving in this world, and Emma had never displayed the slightest supernatural ability. If she was a witch who had been concealing her powers since they met, she had gone to considerable effort to find him an apartment before beginning her attack.

Aldric dismissed that possibility.

That left a less dangerous explanation, but one that was more difficult to accept: the phenomenon might be coming from him. He knew his own body well enough to recognize the fear that preceded danger, the anger of a confrontation, or the particular tension that appeared in the seconds before a fight. His heart had raced in the face of creatures capable of tearing him open and opponents against whom a single mistake could cost him his life. What he experienced with Emma felt nothing like any of those things.

Besides, she posed no identifiable threat. She was unarmed, had never attempted to kill him, and had helped him several times without asking for anything in return. Classifying her as an adversary would have required a generous definition of the word threat.

An emotion was preferable to poisoning, a curse, or a heart condition, but his experience prevented him from considering emotions harmless simply because they could not be fought with a sword.

He picked up his pen and went through the emotions he knew well enough to recognize. Fear could be ruled out, as could anger. Frustration seemed unlikely, since he enjoyed the time he spent with Emma. He knew guilt, satisfaction, loyalty, and concern, some of them far better than he would have liked, but none matched what he experienced with her.

Aldric had to acknowledge a problem that years of war had left him poorly prepared to handle: he knew the emotions that came before a battle far better than those that appeared during a walk with a woman.

Now he had to figure out which one it was.