Wes had thought that the Lock - Jason, Jamie, whatever - would lose interest after a couple days of being ignored, but he had been very, very wrong.

Currently, the Hawthorne guy was parked outside his work, staring at him with an unblinking stare from behind the steering wheel of his truck.

"So....friend of yours?"

Wes scowled and turned to look over his shoulder and watch his manager come out from the kitchen, the young woman dressed in the same bright red shirt, black apron, and baseball cap as himself, their work uniform just as unflattering on her as it was on him. "No." He grounded out. "Just some stalker Lock who won't get the hint that I don't want anything to do with him."

His manager frowned as she came to stand next to him, mirroring his position by leaning her elbows against the front counter. "How did he find you?"

"That fucking registry, no doubt," Wes growled as he glared harder out at the lock, who hadn't seemed to blink in the entire time he'd been there.

"I thought that was private or whatever?" She said before she shifted to go to the cash register, putting in a code to open the drawer.

"I'd bet people in the military can access it, I mean, think about it." Wes said in a low, conspiratory tone, "The more functioning locks the military has, the more super soldiers they have in the arsenal."

"I thought that was, like, against...that peace treaty thing," she mumbled as she looked over the contents of the drawer, closing it then to give Wes a concerned look.

"Making the specific level and type a Key is public without the Key's consent goes against the treaty," Wes said firmly, holding the lock's gaze. "There's nothing that says a government can't use the Key's info to match them up with a Lock and then send the Lock to 'persuade them'," Wes said with air quotes. "They've been doing it in Asia and Europe for years now. It was only a matter of time before it happened here. So much for the Land of the Free." Wes growled.

"Well...how are you going to shake him off?"

Wes grunted. "Don't know - I've tried outrunning him and shit, but he's always there. When I get home, I have to go up my fire escape to get into my apartment, and then the psycho just pounds on my door until, like one AM - which I googled, and I found out was the curfew the military has on Locks. So he goes back to his base and he checks in or whatever the fuck he has to do, and then he's back at my door at six am sharp pounding again. And then I go out the window again and go to the bus stop, and he follows the bus in his truck." He looked to his manager and her raised eyebrows then. "I think he has a tracker on me. I don't know how he would have gotten it on me, but he's always there-" He said hurriedly, his tone growing increasingly aggravated, "He's waiting outside the grocery store. He's waiting outside the bar. He hasn't approached me in public yet, but it's only a matter of time."

"I think I read somewhere that Locks weren't allowed to follow Keys that weren't their own into public places of business or something," she mumbled with a frown.

"Yeah, I read that too, but this guy is nuts - I mean, look at him!" He saw her look toward the truck outside and Wes turned to glare back at the lock, who was still glaring at him. "It's only a matter of time before he snaps and kidnaps me or something."

Out of the corner of his eyes he saw her give him a funny look. "Kidnaps you?" She asked skeptically.

"Yeah!" he looked at her with a hard look. "I read National Geographic. It's a problem, Brittany. Happens all the time to Keys. Google it. Crazy Locks will grab Keys off the street all the time and put them in, like, dark rooms or closets and shit until they make The Drop with them."

"The drop?" She asked with a frown.

"When a Key formed a permanent bond with a Lock? Come on, Brittany! You work with a Key, you should know this stuff!" He said, slapping the counter.

She frowned hard, holding up a hand. "I'm sixteen. I have bigger things to worry about than terminology I'm never going to use. Clock out as soon as Willard gets here." she turned and walked back into the back, leaving Wes alone at the counter.

Wes scowled and returned to glaring at the Lock.

Brittany might not have to worry about this kind of shit, but Wes knew he was in a very dangerous situation.

Usually, Locks just hung around being pathetic for a day or two before they moved on to a more skilled Key, or at least one that didn't act like they hated them. 

There were few worse fates to a Lock than not having a Key, and having a Key that hated you was one of them. In fact, he heard that having your Key hate your guts was the only thing worse than not having a Key.

But this guy - this guy just wouldn't give up!

No matter how much Wes screamed at him through his apartment door to fuck off or ignored him. 

He was always there. Pounding on the door at all hours of the night, first thing in the morning. Stalking him the entire day. 

Wes read online that Locks used tactics like this to break Keys down until they had no choice but to fold and take the Lock on as their partner, that it was a watered-down tactic the military used to torture people into doing what they wanted.

And if annoying someone into breaking didn't work, the Lock would escalate, eventually leading to the full-blown 'locked-in-a-dark-room' tactic that was basically the horror story all Keys were told to make them pair off as soon as possible with a Lock.

Wes had never thought he'd be the kind of Key anyone would want.

As he screamed at the Lock that was stalking him, he was untrained. He had zero experience, zero skill. Yeah, he might have potential, but so did a shit ton of other Keys that actually WANTED to have a Lock, actually WANTED someone as their little pet. 

Because let's face it.

Lock's weren't partners to Keys.

They were their bitches.

A Key could make their Lock do anything, feel anything, think anything. It was on a much deeper, permanent level than normal people. With Locks, their Key could control them from the other side of the world and a Lock had zero ability to reject their Key once the bond was permanent. 

Which is why it was important for a lock to find the right key, or else they were completely fucked.

And Wes wasn't the right key for ANYONE, let alone a guy that was bugging the crap out of him.

So Wes needed to find a way to get rid of this guy, since the dude didn't have enough sense in him to figure out for himself that Wes was completely bad for him.

On Wes's first day off, he crawled through his living room window and snuck down the street to take the first bus to the train station, where he promptly rode the train back to his hometown three hours away.

If anyone was able to get rid of this guy, it would be Wes's Grandpa.