Hearing the pain and trauma in her tone, Mateo went against his better judgement and offered her a solution, the only one he knew.
"I myself may not have an answer nor a direct solution mum, but I know someone– something who does."
Desperate for answers, Maria decided to ignore her son's cryptic way of speaking and pulled his shirt, asking who had the answers.
"The CODE?" Mateo answered with a tired exhale. "Say that you accept THE CODE."
"The code, is that like some sort of website on the dark web or something. How much do I need to pay to use their services. Is it safe and reliable?"
Amazed by the amount of caution she had despite the faint tremor of trauma passing through her body every now and then, he followed through with his plan, which based on his mother's wide eyed expression, was a success.
"Mateo!! Something weird is happening. I can seesome weird hologram in front of my eyes yet in my mind at the same time. It's asking me to accept some code, what should I do."
And then there was silence
45356544
It was about 6 years ago, when Mateo, then 13 was at his wits end about what to do.
Summer break had just begun and he was bored as hell since he didn't have friends to spend the break with on account of their family moving to Beverly Hills.
He mostly spent the early days of the break lazying on the couch and giving his parents the silent treatment since they refused to buy him video games or get him a high spec phone to play mobile games on even though they were responsible for the move and his alienation.
He didn't know it then but that summer would be the beginning of his journey into the world of written fantasy.
It started with his mum who upon seeing her son trail the fine line between respect and disrespect, by treating them like air at times and running errands at others decided to do something about it.
Thus she introduced him to a novel advertised to her on Facebook, something about werewolves which she personally didn't read but assumed would be okay for him to, plus in her mind it came with an added benefit of improving his grammar and vocabulary.
How wrong she was.
hen Mateo had asked his mum to say it, it had been nothing more than an experiment.
A test, to see if she could also access the mythical platform, and now seeing her in that dazed state he made a quiet resolution.
'I have to sell as much information as I can, no more Mr. Nice guy. Even if I don't sell it, someone else will.'