"They're back."

Ciel snaps to attention in an instant. "Where?"

Elesis points out the window, where she's been staring restlessly outwards for the majority of the past day and a half. "A bit away," she says, and Ciel confirms this with a glance out the window. "You wanna go meet them there?"

They're both already moving before she even finishes the sentence, though, and with a quick yell to everyone else in the house they're off. There's no zombies in sight, and so the coast is clear when Ciel runs to Lu and immediately allows her to fall boneless into his arms. "Are you unhurt?" he asks, and it's only when he doesn't get a response that he turns to Rose, more than a little worried.

And that's when he sees the tear tracks, the green stains, the spare gloves they've donned that Ain so forcefully made them leave with. "I think it would be best if we spoke of this indoors," Rose says wearily. She looks like she's about to fall over out of sheer exhaustion, and then some more.

So they find themselves indoors, and even though there's barely anywhere for them to lie down Ciel still finds himself crouched on the floor holding Lu's hand as she sleeps restlessly slumped against Rose. Dynamo yowls until Add lets him out of his arms to curl up on Lu's back. Rose coughs, and the emptied water bottle drops from her strengthless hand. "It was horrible," she croaks, squeezing Lu's other hand tightly in her own. "Don't go back. It's not worth it."

Elesis kneels in front of her, and in the frozen ten seconds that they hold their gaze at each other they seem to have reached some kind of understanding. "What did you see?" she asks quietly, tenderly, and Ciel has to look away for fear that he's intruding on something so private and yet so open.

And yet Rose just shakes her head, and Elesis gets to her feet with a sigh. "Get some rest," she says, like some sort of ultimatum. "You don't have to talk about it now." She hesitates, and from where he's perched on the floor Ciel can see Elesis raise her hand slowly, almost like she's about to reach out and touch Rose, make sure she's there, but her hand falls as she rises, and soon she's walking away to get back to her patrols.

It's not so lonely here by the couch, even though Lu and Rose are slumped asleep against each other and clearly neither is having restful dreams. Elesis finds Add and Ara and drags them off into another room, and Ciel only gets to hear bits and pieces of their conversation but there's a lot of don't and we have to and it doesn't matter anymore. He tunes them out after Ara gets up and leaves, and doesn't even bat an eye when Add follows her with a pleading look.

Ain, for his part, sits alone at the remnants of the dining table, slowly scraping viral moss off of the notes that Lu recovered and into a little glass tube. Ciel feels guilty for prying his hand out of Lu's the moment her fingers even give the slightest slack, but—

(but.)

"Misery craves company," Ain sighs when Ciel joins him. "You don't seem too worried about your sister."

"She needs rest." A truth on its own, yet nowhere near the menagerie of worries that Ciel's been harbouring. "I can't help her with that."

"That is true." The cap goes on, accompanied by a little silicone ring to keep it airtight, and Ain shakes the tube of mossy matter in the air before sticking it in his backpack. "Now, I'm no conservator, but I'm sure I can clean the rest of the moss off this and get around to reading it."

He's got a stack of notes on the side, and Ciel reaches out to pick one up. "An apartment layout?"

Ain nods. "I know neither Lu nor Rose are in the condition to speak at the moment, but I couldn't help theorizing some layouts for Henir's lab," he admits. Ciel glances over the sheet; it seems reasonable for an apartment in downtown Feita, with a bedroom and two bathrooms and a small study. Wait, no, there's one more bedroom at the end of the hallway—he scans it again for any other rooms, and turns out none. "The notes we uncovered in Altera intrigued me greatly. I was long of the belief that Henir was entirely a bachelor, and to find out that he once had a family is horrifying, frankly."

"Did the notes say he had a child?"

"A son, I believe. If he were alive now, he'd be maybe about Lu's age, or perhaps even older." Ain grimaces. "I can't imagine having Henir for a father. I hope that boy lives, or lived, a good life."

Ciel stares at the page, and decides he doesn't want to see it anymore, and puts it aside.

"Did you hear much of what Elesis was discussing with the others?"

"No."

"Ah. Well, I believe the plan has changed," Ain continues, scraping the viral moss off with a scalpel as much as he can. "Henir's lab… is probably not meant for human eyes. But my mother's friend… Professor Artemis Ebalon. He was my biology professor in university." Ain offers a grim smile. "He had a lab here in Feita where he studied meteorology, and his name was on that list in Altera. I need to know why."

And there's something a bit dark in his tone, even though he clearly speaks of this professor with fondness. It must be awful to Ain, seeing his golden worldview crumble little by little: his only family turned collaborator on humanity's doom, the wasteland challenging every single thing he thought he could solve with science. Despite the merry air with which he continues to scrape the notes from Henir's lab, he looks small—defeated, even.

"Do you have an extra scalpel?" Ciel asks, and Ain perks up. "I'll help you."

"Thank you." Ain reaches into his bag and brings out his toolbox; their hands brush for a moment too long when Ciel takes the scalpel from him. "Two heads are better than one."

And seven are better than two, Ciel wants to say, but that's the logic that nearly got them killed in the Core, and that's apparently the same logic that resulted in the virus being made in the first place. Yes, two is good, but seven is better when people think things through, and Ciel is suddenly very worried for Add and Ara's attempt at getting to Ebalon's lab.

He says nothing.

A/N: I've gotten so much stuff done today, holy cow

it's been a weird two weeks and my motivation has been wildly fluctuating, but i'm glad i finished writing this chapter. we're about to run into a scene i've been thinking about for a long time and i hope i can get that up next week, because it's just straight catharsis for me!

~Marg