The Need for Fear by Oisin McGann

Chapter 1: Evasive Maneuvers
    The moment Chi realized he was being followed, he started taking measures to lose the tail. But that realization didn’t happen all at once. He spotted the old man for the first time on Charing Cross Road. The rigid figure wore square-framed glasses on his dour, creased face. His upright, almost military poise was emphasized by his dull-gray trench coat. He was entirely unremarkable, except for where he was standing: in front of the street display of a shop that sold accessories aimed at people who wanted to dress like art students. The guy looked like he was in his sixties. Chi would have bet money that the old geezer had never in his life worn an eyebrow ring or a pair of multicolored Doc Martens. There could have been all sorts of reasons he was standing there, yet it ticked the “Odd-But-Not-Yet-Suspicious” box in Chi’s brain. His well-trained memory filed it away.
    Chi was coming out of a shop that specialized in books about the Truth. It was a gnarly old place, full of indie publications by writers who questioned the blinkered perception of the masses. On the dusty old shelves, you could find works by visionaries, real investigative journalists. Not the puppets who worked for the mainstream media and were controlled by the military-industrial complex; no, here, you could find writers like Chi himself. Conspiracies were his passion and it had made him somewhat paranoid, his senses more attuned to his surroundings than the average Londoner—which was why he noted the old man who appeared to be minding his own business in the wrong kind of place.
    Chi’s own attempts to avoid attention were foiled by his eye-catching appearance. His wire-wool fair hair was pulled back from his pasty, babyish face into an untidy ponytail. That face sat atop a stocky frame that was over six feet tall. His wraparound prescription shades and knee-length leather coat spoke of someone who craved a cool image but wasn’t sure how it was done, and had nothing but contempt for anyone who followed contemporary trends.
    Chi saw the old guy for the second time when he was sitting outside a café on St. Martin’s Lane, reading on his laptop. The man walked right past him and sat down at a table at another café across the street. He opened up a newspaper, shook it out, folded it back to his chosen section and started reading. This ticked the “Coincidence?” box in Chi’s brain and he filed that away, too. A newspaper —yeah right . He snorted to himself in derision. As if any news in mainstream print was worth reading. The center of London was a busy place, but it wasn’t unusual to see the same person more than once as you went about your business. People often followed parallel routes through town; the human mind was prone to accepting established patterns. Two ticked boxes was not enough reason to get worked up, but it did cause Chi to pay a bit more attention to the stranger.
    Half an hour later, as he was crossing Trafalgar Square in front of the National Gallery, Chi held up his phone as if looking up a location on a map, but instead he used the camera over the screen to look at what was behind him. And there he was: the same old man, walking at a leisurely gait about thirty paces behind him. Chi felt his heart thud in his chest as he realized that it had finally happened. This was it . He was being watched. Perhaps he’d even been Targeted. His breathing quickened and he had to suppress a nervous smile. He was where every writer of the Truth aspired to be: He’d finally pissed someone off enough to make the big time. They were paying attention to him now.
    Well, he wasn’t some chump who walked around with his eyes closed. Let them try and keep up. Gripping the shoulder strap of his laptop case, he crossed Haymarket and Regent Street; strode down the wide, busy stretch of Pall Mall; then darted left into St. James’s Square, veering off the