My commute to work became longer after I moved back home to be with my foster parents, who were the closest thing to a family I had. They both died five months after I moved back home, mama had a bad heart, and dad he was just so heartbroken when she left us, he followed shortly after. I couldn't sell the house they left to me because it held so many fond memories. Like how they always threw me crazy-themed birthday parties. I remembered one year they threw me a hero party. Everyone dressed up as superheroes and we took down the evil ParTye Minion and saved the birthday cake. I was still grieving, but I had to move on with life because that's just what was expected of a model adult to do. One can't stay stuck in the past forever, as my foster dad used to say. Not that I can remember much about my past. Or my memories of my childhood before my foster parents were ones I wanted to desperately forget. I did always wonder what kind of people my actual family was like, though. If they ever missed me or were they even looking for me. That could explain the dreams and there was that voice I heard one night. Then again, I could have been going through a mental crisis and just needed sleep. I told myself that I would one day continue the search for my past and find the answers I needed, but as of right now keeping myself busy was my number one priority. It kept me from thinking about things I shouldn't be.

I'd had a long crummy day, not to mention I had a crummy long night for the past few nights. I just could not wait to go home and snuggle up to my new favorite novel. Maybe even call Alex, my boyfriend of two years,and see if he wanted to come over and catch a movie on the T.V., but I knew that more than likely that wouldn't happen.  He had been distanced over the last five months. I had no idea if we could even be called a couple anymore. We hadn't seen each other in so long and he barely even contacted me if I didn't contact him first. Even if I had invited him over, he'd find a reason to ask for a raincheck. I would more than likely be up until dawn with my face buried deep into my computer trying to finish work.

After a full year of grunt work, they finally gave me a project worth my time and abilities. Mr. Peterson, the head director of my project, was breathing down my neck most of the day suggesting our new product's presentation should be "Top notch" and "Never seen before". The stress from that alone was enough to put anyone in the hospital. He can be a little overbearing at times, but surprisingly I did well under all that pressure. Although, someone should slip some cold medicine into his coffee one day so he can get the much-needed nap he kept skipping.

A knock came on my door, and I heard my coworker, Sarah, quickly say to me as she made her way for the elevator,

"Good night, Contessa. See you tomorrow, okay." 

I yelled waving back at my empty doorway where she was just standing,

"Oh, good night, Sarah. Be safe on your way home." 

I gathered up the last of my files to place in my bag so I could go over them later. Then I sat at my desk and tried to shut down my computer. The company made it a new rule for everyone to have their computers shut down when they were going home for the day. I realized it was taking longer than it normally did and thought it was weird at first how it would not shut down, being that it was brand new and had freshly installed updates since that morning. It was my replacement for the last one that broke as requested by the CEO himself. I had to admit that sometimes being the fancy of a company boss had its moments. Although I always found a way to turn him down when he requested a date.

I tried everything I could think of including the new tricks I learned from James, one of the computer technicians on the fifth floor. The only thing it kept doing was showing a message saying 'One Moment Please...' in a small blue box. I eventually quit trying and just waited for it to do what it needed to do; figured I must have pressed too many buttons and it just needed a little more time to shut down. At least that was what I hoped was wrong.

I was killing time by reading one of the many memos stuck to my desk and lightly tapping my fingers on the arm of my chair when I heard a loud beeping noise coming from the monitor. I was startled and thought that I might have damaged another computer, plus hearing such a loud noise in the dead silence of my office seemed eerie. It reminded me of the movie I had watched the night before and I cursed myself for watching it since I was never any good with horror films or anything related to them. I frantically tried to stop the unbearable noise only to have the screen flash blue, white, then black as it quickly filled up seconds later with millions of numbers which I soon realized were nothing but a bunch of ones and zeros.

"Oh no, what just happened? No, no, no, no, no, James is going to have my neck if I keep this up." I gasped.

The numbers quickly scrolled up my screen as I tried my hardest to get them off by pounding on the escape button and pressing random command keys from the list that James had given me.

"Was it F1 or F3? Uh...this can't be happening. Go back to normal you piece of shit." I ranted.

After messing with a few more keys, I finally stopped the beeping noise, I paused for a second to collect my thoughts and to celebrate a partial victory for at least stopping the noise. I stared at the monitor as the numbers scrolled by and I realized something strange was happening. I leaned close to the screen and studied the numbers as they flashed by.

01011001 01101111 01110101 01110010 00100000 01101101 01101001 01110011 01110011 01101001 01101111 01101110 00100000 01101000 01100001 01110011 00100000 01100010 01100101 01100101 01101110 00100000 01100001 01100010 01101111 01110010 01110100 01100101 01100100 00101110 00001010 01001001 01110100 00100000 01101001 01110011 00100000 01110100 01101001 01101101 01100101 00100000 01110100 01101111 00100000 01110010 01100101 01110100 01110101 01110010 01101110 00100000 01101000 01101111 01101101 01100101 00101100 00100000 01000011 01101111 01101110 01110100 01100101 01110011 01110011 01100001 00101110 00001010 01010111 01100101 00100000 01110111 01101001 01101100 01101100 00100000 01110111 01100001 01101001 01110100 00100000 01100110 01101111 01110010 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 00100000 01100001 01110100 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 01110010 00100000 01110000 01101100 01100001 01100011 01100101 00100000 01101111 01100110 00100000 01110010 01100101 01110011 01101001 01100100 01100101 01101110 01100011 01100101 00100000 01100001 01110100 00100000 00110000 00110001 00110000 00110000 00100000 01101000 01101111 01110101 01110010 01110011 00101110 00001010 01010000 01101100 01100101 01100001 01110011 01100101 00100000 01100010 01100101 00100000 01110010 01100101 01100001 01100100 01111001 00100000 01100110 01101111 01110010 00100000 01101111 01110101 01110010 00100000 01100001 01110010 01110010 01101001 01110110 01100001 01101100 00101110 00001010 01010111 01100101 00100000 01101000 01100001 01110110 01100101 00100000 01101101 01101001 01110011 01110011 01100101 01100100 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 00101100 00100000 01100100 01100001 01110101 01100111 01101000 01110100 01100101 01110010 00101110 00001010 01001001 01110100 00100000 01101000 01100001 01110011 00100000 01100010 01100101 01100101 01101110 00100000 01110100 01101111 01101111 00100000 01101100 01101111 01101110 01100111 00101110 

"What the hell...?"

Right before my eyes they slowly turned into letters and those letters slowly became words, as I read on, I suddenly became even more freaked out. I was beginning to understand what the numbers were saying.

I jumped up from my chair, knocked over the trash bin near my desk, and my chair flew back hitting the wall with a loud thud. I looked around my office then quickly ran for the door and shut it as I heard someone making their way down the hall. It was the janitor, but my mind was in a state of shock, and I believed it could have been anybody walking down the hall, even whoever was tampering with my computer.

As I rested on the door and firmly patted my cheeks, I whispered to myself,

"This can't be real. I must be dreaming. Come on, Contessa, wake up..."

My heart raced as I tried to calm myself down. I kept telling myself it was just a joke and struggled to think of a sensible and rational reason someone would play such an elaborate prank. Listening closely to the footsteps that came down the hall I held my breath as they came closer to my office door. The sudden sound of a phone ringing made me flinch. I clench my fists and shut my eyes tightly than I heard a male voice answering the call,

"Hello...yes, I'm on my way now...no just wait for me I won't take long."

I couldn't hear much of what he was saying and soon his voice faded away along with his footsteps. Exhaling, I relaxed my hands as I recognized the voice on the other side was only Kyle, from the maintenance department, I hung my head for being so strung up over nothing.

"No more late-night horror movies for me," I mumbled.

I slowly made my way back to my desk and tried to calm myself down before looking back at the computer. Looking at the monitor it was clear that I could read it as clearly as ever: the numbers transformed before my very eyes into readable text.

Your mission has been aborted.
It is time to return home, Contessa.
We will wait for you at your place of residence at 0100 hours.
Please be ready for our arrival.
We have missed you, daughter.
It has been too long.

Freaking out once again I wondered if it could be more than a prank. I was an orphan, as far as I knew I didn't have any living relatives, not even my foster parents. So many questions ran through my head that it made me a little sick. Who could this be? What exactly could this mean? How did they know my name? I was too frightened to go home by myself or to be alone for that matter, so I decided to call Alex.

"Okay, maybe I can catch him before he turns off his phone for the night," I said as I dialed his number.

When he did not answer his phone, I hung up quickly and texted him; I waited for a reply, but nothing came.

"Dammit, why the hell won't he pick up?" I cursed at the phone repeatedly as I dialed his number over and over.

Looking at my phone I sat at my desk scared and trying to convince myself that I was dreaming. I could have just called the police, but I thought that if I went to the police, they'd just think I was crazy, and it was a prank call. I tried to get a hold of Alex repeatedly only to reach his voicemail each time. Looking over at the clock on my wall I saw it was only a quarter past eleven, so I knew he'd still be awake. What could he have been doing at that moment, I was beginning to think the worst.

"0100 hours... If I'm correct that would be one in the morning. This is just too crazy. Alex, please answer your phone...why won't you pick up." I said my voice breaking up.

My hands began to shake violently as I held my phone on my lap and my vision blurred while hot tears streamed down my now pale white face. I was scared to move and the only person I thought would be there for me wouldn't answer the damn phone. Was it over between us? Was there nothing I could do to save the relationship at that point? Had I been replaced and abandoned by the only other person I thought of as a family? Everything I had been dealing with up to that moment crashed down on me heavily. Was I finally completely alone? Or was the message on my computer a message from someone who knew me from my past? No, it couldn't be. The state searched for years to find my next of kin until they finally gave up. No one ever came forward, so why now? Dammit, at least Alex should have had the balls to tell me to my face or even via text that we were done. 

"I knew this was going to happen sooner or later, I shouldn't even be surprised." I cried.

I'm not sure what took place after I closed my eyes with my head on the desk. The last thing I remember before slipping into a deep sleep was the sound of my computer finally shutting down, the door to my office opening, and a familiar hushed voice whispering into my ear,

"I finally found you. You'll be home soon enough, so no more tears." 

It was followed by a soft kiss on my forehead and the feeling of floating in mid-air. 

I tried to open my eyes a little and whispered, 

"Alex?" 

But no one replied. As if I were being carried off to safety I dove deeper into my slumber.