BLOODY HORIZON

CHAPTER FIVE

°°° Feets °°°

      Sean woke up to a knock on the room’s door.

"Jay, you are going to be late for school," Ann’s voice followed the knock.

"I almost forgot." Jason still has school this week,’ Sean yawned and turned in his bed. Jason wouldn’t be able to skip school until tomorrow, when his class’s excursion trip begins. "Funny how time and events aligned for this visit," Sean said, rubbing his eyes as he sat up.

"Yo! "Jay, Jay!" he called out, standing up. "Jason!" he yelled, peeling the blanket off Jason’s body, forcing him to open his eyes.

"Hey... what gives?" Jason cried out, squirming in his bed.

"Dude, you are going to be late," Sean said, throwing the blanket back on Jason.

"No… "I just need a little bit more," Jason groggily said and yawned, hugging the blanket.

"What the hell, bro... "Are you still bed wet?" Sean said with a tone of dipalm.

"Huh?... What are you?" Jason spoke with sleep still in his voice, then stopped as the words sank in. "What?" he yelled, sitting up immediately and pulling the blanket over his lower body.

"Hah!" Sean laughed at Jason’s reaction. "Just kidding, bro," he said with a wicked smile. "Needed to wake you up for school... "It worked like a charm," Sean laughed and walked to the wardrobe.

      Jason had helped him put his things in order after dinner the previous night, after which they had deliberated on whether or not to go through with their plan, especially since Andrew had gotten involved.

"What are you doing?" Jason asked for help getting off the bed after muttering some words angrily to himself.

"I’m going to go out for a run," Sean replied, taking out a Nike Air Pegasus 92 running shoe.

"Do you know the area well?" Jason asked, a bit concerned.

"I did a little research, downloaded a map... "I will be able to find my way back," Sean gave an assuring smile.

"Alright bro. You can take my arm band. I barely use it. "It's got an advanced GPS map or something in it... just in case," Jason stood up from his bed and walked to the door. "Be back before breakfast though."

"Yes, sir," Sean replied immediately, standing at attention.

"Shut up!" Jason laughed, dragging himself out of the room. "See you later."

      Sean grabbed the armband and scanned it. Unlike his at home, this one had a built-in screen. Finding the on button, he pushed it. It had a blue hue with two infinity symbols placed vertically and horizontally, like a cross. The logo of the company Jason’s dad, Dan, works for is Dual Infinity.

      The logo gave way to a blank screen, and then a few app icons appeared on it. Sean clicked on the first, which was a music app. The device connected to the house’s Wi-Fi and began downloading his songs of choice. He wasn’t much of a Rolling Stones fan like Jason, who had almost all their albums, and today he was in the mood for hip-hop, for 50 Cent, the man whose music his father respected above any other.

While the songs were being downloaded, he opened another app, one with the dual infinity symbols.

"A running app?" he quizzed as the app instructed him to login. He did, logging into Jason’s account and skimming through the app's basic description.

     The arm band was designed to help the users set goals, record metrics, and track progress to help them stick with a specific training program. The running app tracked health and performance metrics like pace, distance, mileage, heart rate, and calories. It was also programmed with training runs and recorded running routes through GPS, which was going to be most useful to him since he could just follow the already recorded routes from Jason’s runs.

      The most striking application was the social application. It allowed those who had access to the armband to connect with one another, ask for advice on safe routes, and find the best gear for starters. It was literally a whole new social media app.

     Although he had issues concerning privacy as the app allowed users to access the location of other users on the GPS system within a specific radius, he later calmed down after realizing there was a specific setting to either turn it on or off.

He sighed, deciding to look into it later in the day as he would be the only one at home until Jason and Andrew returned from school.

     Sean pulled an ash-colored hooded sweater over his head, slid into his running shoes, and strapped the arm band on. With a sigh, he ran down the spiral staircase, putting on his earphones.

"Good morning, Mr. and Mrs. White," Sean greeted, running past the two adults with mugs of coffee in their hands.

"Hey Sean," Mrs. White, Ann, waved at him, froze, and quickly called out. "Sean? "Where are you going?"

"Oh… "I'm going out for a run," Sean said, stopping and turning to face the couple.

"Uhh… okay… wait… "Do you know the area well enough to go on your own?" Ann asked, trying not to come off as manipulative or as though she wanted to stop him from going out, even though that was what she wanted.

"Umm... yeah... well, not really, but this app, Feets," he said, referring to the running app. "It has this feature that records routes, so I should be able to find my way back." "Better still, I could just follow the recorded routes from Jason’s runs," he added, taking off the earphones.

"Uhh… okay, I guess, but…"

"Take the route he saved as a triple," Mr. White and Dan interrupted Ann, noticing that she was scared that something would happen to Sean. "It is quite straight forward and doesn’t have too many turns," Dan instructed.

Sean turned the arm band to his face, opened the app Feets, found the route, and selected it.

"Turn on the "in your ears instructor"; it’ll save you the stress of having to look back at the screen when running." Dan raised his cup of coffee as though making a toast.

      Sean gave Dan a puzzled look, activated the feature, and asked. "Do you have one of these?" He knew very well that working for a company that produced a good or service didn’t automatically mean one would know the good or service that well.

"Yeah, I have about two versions, and shocker," Dan gave a confident smile and said proudly, "Feet is my idea." He smirked, feeling fulfilled.

Sean looked at him for a moment, nodded, and said, "That’s really cool." Well, I've got to go. "Catch y’all later," he waved and ran out, blocking his ear.

"You know that blasted app is the reason we are moving this far away, right?" Ann looked at him in such a way that told him she wasn’t mad about the move, at least not as much as she was mad about the fact that Sean went for a morning run without an escort.

"We’ll pick him up on the way to school," Dan said in surrender as Ann walked away.