Chaos was something he didn't like dealing with. He hated his inability to solve anything chaotic. The helplessness that came with it. 

The next day went smoothly, even though the morning was hard. I called Allison as soon as I got up, but as she is just a lot smarter than my mum is, I had to be a lot more careful with what I could and could not tell her about my mate. About Vir. 

I wanted to shout from the rooftops that I'd found him, that I was proud to call him mine. I couldn't. He didn't want me to. I didn't know Vir that well yet, but I did know that he must have had his reasons for the secrecy. Maybe he liked mystery, who would know? It was just that I had the feeling it was something else than that, something more complicated. 

It couldn't be that he didn't want me, I knew by the reactions I received from his body every time I came close, the bond was just as strong on his side as it was on mine. True, he didn't act upon it, he didn't succumb to the urges like most men, especially alphas, would. But this was Vir I was talking about, he was a different kind of person anyway. He was shy, and there was something about him that screamed mystery, that screamed there was a layer beneath his outer shell that not many persons had seen yet. I was adamant on getting to know that layer too.

Despite the early hour and the lack of information, Allison was very happy I called. We talked about all the representatives and their weird behaviours for almost an hour, until it was obvious that I needed to go to follow the programme. Hell, I even had to hurry a lot to be able to make it to the bus that would bring us to the three different lectures we had to follow on the other side of the city. There, in a building that looked almost as new as the Headquarters, was a research group that investigated everything that had to do with light. We got three different lectures about the same subject, but all had a different way of looking at it. Biologists looked at the function of light in organisms, physicists explained the wave-particle duality of it, historians looked at how light was looked at in every historical time period. There was so much information that was not interesting to me, that after three times two hours, I was exhausted.

And then we weren't even done yet. Several smart people from Sapientiae gathered together to have an elaborate discussion with the representatives about humanity, ethics and whatnot. It was awfully boring. 

Thankfully, at around four, we were free to go wherever we pleased. Most of the representatives went back to the Headquarters immediately to study, process their notes, or whatever nerdy people do whenever they have free time. How would I know? 

I, however, decided to go to take a walk through the city. It was around seven kilometres to the Headquarters from here, and I was in desperate need for exercise, so I quickly decided to just walk, or run, or skate home. On my way here, I had seen some stores that seemed to sell inline skates. I obviously left mine at home, so I was glad I brought my credit card to buy myself some new ones. 

So soon I went, on my inline skates. Left, right, left, right. Just push my feet to the side, force the muscles in my leg to contract to push me forward. I hadn't done it for a week now, and only when I felt the little wheels roll over the pavement, I realised how much I'd missed it. I was stumbling the first few metres, but I got the hang of it again after a minute, so soon I was gliding past other pedestrians faster than I'd ever gone in the Fortis pack. 

Here in Sapientiae, the pavement was way smoother, causing me to move a lot quicker than I was able to go on a brick road with holes and bumps in it everywhere. It was absolutely fantastic. What was even more fun, was that now I didn't have to watch where I was going every second, I could look around as well. 

I didn't know a lot about the Sapientiae pack, but I knew that even though the entire pack was quite big, over 85% of all inhabitants lived in the big city. Only families with very young children, elderly and sickly people lived in the countryside. This explained the need for very high buildings all over the city. Several ten thousand people needed to be housed somewhere, so hundreds of apartments were located in every skyscraper. 

The difference between an apartment building and a research facility was visible really well, though. Where the apartments were nice, clean and obviously good in technical quality, the research buildings screamed high tech, ground breaking research, cutting edge technology. Basically, it was visible that the big research institutions had money.

And a lot of it at that.

Besides that, everywhere I looked were gigantic billboards with flickering lights, advertising a new clinical trial, a new department team, a job vacancy. One of the billboards stood out from all the others as soon as I saw it. 

It was plain, not as flashy as the others, but the message was very clear all the same. 'Order is the key to success,' it said, with the face of a middle aged man with piercing icy blue eyes. Looking at the name of the company that financed the billboard, and the building it was on, I gathered that the man was the head of Quantics, one of the big companies for technology.

Order is the key to success.

For some reason, it stuck to me, and as the voice in my head kept chanting the mantra over and over while I skated to the Headquarters, I couldn't shake it off. Maybe it was the man with the piercing eyes, maybe it was something else, but something about that message, just gave me the creeps. It gave me the feeling that this wasn't the last time I would think about it. I was sure of that. 

***

Hoii,

For some reason, I tend to forget updating on Mondays? No idea why.
Anyway, what did you think of this chapter? Order is the key to success... What would it mean? Let me know! And don't forget to vote if you liked this chapter!

Love,
Sanne