WARNING: This chapter implies attempted suicide and domestic abuse.

He realizes that maybe this is the wrong way when he doesn't encounter the rows and rows of houses. Instead, he's running through some kind of a business district with shops everywhere, and he's just so damned confused. Who came up with the design for this damned town?

The steadily gaining footsteps behind him let Rex know that he's still being pursued. It appears that Six is determined to not lose him this time. He grits his teeth and picks up his speed. Can't get caught. Can't get caught. Can't get-

Rex bumps into someone at full speed. At the sudden stop, he feels his body unbalance and begins to tumble. A hand grabs Rex, and before he knows it, he's pressed between the wall of an alleyway and another body, effectively sealing his movements and stabilizing him all at the same time. It takes a few seconds for Rex's mind to reboot and for him to realize what's happened. And by then, all he can do is gape at the unfortunately familiar figure.

"You… Why are…?"

"Shh," Gatlocke shushes him. "You'll catch his attention if you keep talking."

And now that Rex pays a little more attention, he realizes that Gatlocke has positioned his body and his cape as to obscure Rex from anyone looking into the alleyway. It's uncomfortable, but at least it hides him from Six for now. Few more minutes later, Gatlocke pushes away, looking mighty proud of himself.

"You alright, kid?"

"Ah… Yeah… Uh… Thanks?"

"No problem," he says with a shrug. "You looked like you needed help… So why are you being chased? By a man in a green suit, no less. Don't tell me you're messing with the mob or something?"

"Nuh… Nothing like that…" Rex mumbles. Or so he hopes. But then again, this is him, we're talking about. He rubs the back of his neck. "Well thanks. I'll just get go-"

A loud rumbling sound fills the air. Rex looks to the left, then to the right, and then turns to look at Gatlocke. The man has the nerve to laugh boisterously and pat his stomach.

"Man, I'm so hungry! I haven't eaten lunch yet!"

"Uh… I think I saw a hamburger joint nearby…"

Gatlocke shoots him a dirty look and holds up his hands. And Rex realizes for the first time that one of the consequences of stopping the Nanite Event is that he's halted development in cybernetic technology. Instead of the sleek black arms, Gatlocke has on strange skin-colored arms that look more like uncomfortable plastic than real arms.

"Yeah, I don't like finger foods," he states. "So why don't we go and grab some Chinese, eh?" Then he wraps an arm around Rex's shoulder and begins to lead them away from the alleyway.

"Wait a minute! I need to get home-"

"Don't be like that, kid. You owe me anyways. Might as well as tell me your troubles as we eat!"

Rex protests some more, but Gatlocke is insistent and refuses to let him go. And in the end, Rex finds himself dragged inside a Chinese restaurant.

"What do you want to eat, kid?" Gatlocke asks as he stares intently at the menu.

"I'm not hungry."

"Aw, don't be like that. I'm buying."

That just makes Rex that much worried. Gatlocke's a businessman. He will never do something as self-sacrificing as paying for someone else. That means that he's here for some other kind of motive. Unless this Gatlocke is different from the Gatlocke from his universe. Where does a person's personality starts? Which part came to be because of the Event and which part was there before?

"I'm not hungry."

Gatlocke tsks before ordering an impossibly large amount of food in surprisingly decent Chinese. Rex just rolls his eyes and lets the merchant (what if he's not a merchant in this world?) do whatever he feels like.

By the time the food is ready, Rex easily picks up the food for Gatlocke and sits down at a table (one good deed and all that. Gatlocke saved his life, Rex can at least move food for him). He's then surprised when Gatlocke pushes one of the trays at him and says, "Eat."

"I said I'm-"

"Yeah, yeah. And you're a teenager. I bet you can fit something in your stomach."

Rex doesn't like this at all. It feels much too like he's falling into Gatlocke's debt. But he doesn't protest anymore. He just picks up the chopsticks and digs into the Lo Mein that Gatlocke paid for.

"See? Isn't that better?" Gatlocke asks as he scoops up a spoonful of friend rice into his mouth. "Food is the best way to connect with people, you know."

"Why are you doing this?"

"What? I can't be nice to the kid I just saved from the mafia?"

"He isn't part of the mafia," Rex snaps. Then stops himself, realizing what Gatlocke is trying to do. He glowers and turns his attention back to the food.

"… Why are you running from him?" Gatlocke asks.

Rex refuses to answer. He just focuses on shoveling as much food as he can into his mouth to distract himself. It must make Gatlocke reconsider his question, because he lets out a small sigh.

"You know, when I was your age, I spent most of my time watching anime and reading manga."

"… Excuse me?" Rex asks around his food.

"I'm just saying. You seem to have chosen a poor form of entertainment." Gatlocke shrugs. "You don't even look like you're having fun."

"Normally, people wouldn't consider being chased fun."

"But you are having fun, aren't you? Despite all your protests, you're rather protective over the man in green. You're secretly enjoying this, aren't you, kid?"

Rex lowers his chopsticks and looks at Gatlocke. "Why did you help me?"

"Have you ever heard of a group called the Consortium?"

Don't react! But the warning comes too late. Rex feels his entire body stiffen and he looks away, unable to meet Gatlocke's calculating eyes.

"Thought so," the merchant says. And even without looking, Rex can hear the gleeful smirk on that man's face.

"Do you know of their end goal?"

"… Achieve immortality…" Or at least that's what Rex assumes since the Nanites were never created and they never changed their goal from immortality to achieve God-like powers.

Gatlocke nods. "Good, good. Then I don't have to waste too much time with explanations. Recently, César Salazar made a great headway in his research. The Consortium is already celebrating that they'll have their immortality soon."

César is… what? Is that where he was last night? Rex clenches his hands into fists to stop them from shaking. He forces himself to take a deep breath. This has to be some kind of a trick that Gatlocke's trying. Rex doesn't know what his angle is, but he's not going to fall for it.

"Why are you telling me this?"

Gatlocke pauses, raising a brow. "Oh? Don't tell me you lost your memory, kid! After all the trouble I went through to get you all this information, you go and forget everything on me? Jeesh, you're as troublesome as always."

Oh dear gods. And suddenly, everything makes that much more sense. The reason why Gatlocke interfered with Six. The reason why Gatlocke just bought him a meal. The reason why Gatlocke wants to talk to him right now… Rex closes his eyes and forces down the nausea.

"So I… I asked you to gather information on César?"

Gatlocke clicks his tongue, giving Rex a disappointed look. Rex assumes that means yes.

"But why… Why do I need to know what the Consortium knows? Why does that matter to me?" Whether they achieve immortality or not doesn't matter, as long as they don't suddenly decide they want to become gods. So what exactly is the other Rex after? Why did he hire Gatlocke? Or maybe this isn't about the Consortium but about César. Maybe the other Rex wanted to keep an eye on his brother. But for what purposes? What was the other him thinking?

"Why don't you ask yourself why you're being chased by the man in green?"

"What does the Providence have to do with-"

Gatlocke's head snaps up, eyes wide with shock and… fear? "What the hell do you know about Providence?"

"Whua…?" Rex closes his mouth with a snap and stares at Gatlocke's body language. It's tense with nerves and anger, and if Rex didn't know any better, he'd say that Gatlocke's terrified. "Providence doesn't exist."

Gatlocke slams his prosthetic hands on the table. "No. Don't you dare. Every single lead I've ever had on Providence always leads to those three words. I know they exist! They may hide well, but they can't hide from me forever. Tell me."

"I don't know anything," Rex says. And oddly enough, it's the truth. He really doesn't know anything. After all, he highly doubts that Gatlocke wants to hear that Providence is an organization that "contain, kill, or cure" EVOs. "I'm sorry, but I really don't."

"Just like you don't know why the man in green is chasing you?"

"That's different."

"Not according to you. That man in green is connected to Providence, isn't he?"

"To be perfectly honest, I have no idea."

Gatlocke throws his hands up in the air. "You know what, kid? I'm done. When you're ready to tell me about Providence, call me." He throws down few dollars for tip and passes his business card to Rex. Then he turns around and walks away, his cape billowing behind him.

Rex looks down at the impossibly large amount of food in front of him and sighs.

"Can I get a to-go box?" he asks in Chinese.

He holds the plastic bag with the leftover Chinese food loosely in one hand as he walks out of the restaurant. Rex stretches a little and looks across the street and freezes.

Six is standing there, casually leaning against the lamppost and checking his cellphone. When he notices that Rex has come out of the restaurant, he puts it away and straightens his suit.

Rex doesn't hesitate.

He runs back into the restaurant. There has to be another exit. One that isn't monitored by Six. But then what? What is he going to do? He doesn't know the way back home from here. Even if he starts running, Six will just chase him around and around, and he doesn't even have Gatlocke to rely on this time. So what now? What should he-

"Boy!" the manager calls. He waves Rex to the back and points at the back exit through the kitchen.

"But isn't this…?"

The manager just winks and pats him on the back. Then he goes back to his business as if Rex isn't there. And now that Rex starts to move through the kitchen, none of the other workers look at him. They're all in on this, he realizes with a start. Rex has no idea why this is the case or why they're even helping him, but he does make sure to thank them all before exiting the restaurant.

Luckily, Six doesn't seem to have figured out about the back exit, because there's no one here. Taking a deep breath, Rex begins to run again.

By the time Rex feels safe enough to stop, he finds himself at the abandoned factory that Tuck took him to in the morning. Rex glances around, makes sure that there really isn't anyone following him, and makes his way in to the room with the red curtain for a door.

He sits on the couch, staring up at the ceiling. He's mentally going through everything, trying to figure out exactly what is going on in his life.

Nanites exist. At least, the ones in his body exists. And now that he thinks about it, perhaps when he made his wish and came here, the nanites that was within him then came with him. Except maybe they weakened, because he's tried to make Smackhands and his other usual builds, but none of it works. What does that mean? That one day, he's going to wake up and find out that all the nanites no longer work? If that's the case, is there a way for him to predict that?

And on similar thought wave is the problem of Providence. It cannot exist but all evidence seems to point contrarily. What's even more worrisome is Gatlocke's reaction. And now that he stops to think about it, wasn't that also Six's question? Just what is Providence that causes that kind of reaction?

"This is so damned frustrating!" he shouts. He picks up a random item nearby (some kind of a box-like puzzle) and throws it against the wall. It shatters with a loud clatter, falling to the ground in pieces. But within those pieces...

"... A paper?"

Slowly, he stands up and picks up the piece of paper that's been neatly folded. He blows off the pieces of whatever it is that he's tossed, and glups. "What are you...?"

Rex unfolds the paper.

"If you are reading this now, Tuck, then it means I'm gone. And if you're not Tuck, then you're screwed, because if both me and Tuck are gone, that means there's literally no chance for you to survive. In this room, I've hidden everything that I know. All the explanations is in the diary. Tuck, I'm sorry, but I'm leaving the rest up to you."

"You've got to be-"

He stops himself when he realizes something crucial. Then that means all the explanation that he's wanted is in this room. And until he gets the diary back, he's just going to have to trust that he'll be able to figure things out.

With that thought in mind, Rex rips through the room.

"This better not be a habit forming," he mumbles lowly under his breath as he stares down at all the notes that he's gathered.

The rest of the room is completely trashed, but he doesn't really care all that much for that. He has the papers. And with shaky hands, he opens one.

"7DE134ACE."

Wait...

With a frown, Rex opens the rest of the papers and realizes with a hiss that all of the papers are like that, just a string of random numbers and letters. The back of each papers are numbered from one to however many scraps there are, but none of this makes sense. What are these papers and just why would anyone need them?

Not for the first time, Rex wishes that he had that diary back. Now that he knows that he has his nanites, he'll be able to force open the diary. And with the diary, he can figure out what these strings and numbers are and go on from there. He can put his entire life story together and finally feel ready to face the world.

"Rex?"

He flinches and turns. Circe is standing by the red curtain and giving at him an uncertain look. Without another prompt, Rex quickly sweeps the papers into his pocket and turn to face her fully.

"Hey," he says.

"I see you've been redecorating." She motions at the rest of the room, looking a little confused and torn. "Something piss you off?"

Rex shrugs, unsure how to answer that one. "What brings you here, Circe?"

"Don't even remember that, huh?" she whispers softly. She makes her way to the couch and sits down. "It must be nice. Just lose everything you don't want to remember."

"I don't really have a choice in what I forget and don't," Rex grumbles. He leans against the desk. "So why don't you just fill me in?"

Circe hesitates for a second before sighing. "Always get what you want, don't you, Rex?" She unwraps the bandages around her arms, revealing scars and burn marks. "These are just the most obvious ones."

Rex opens his mouth. He wants to say something. Anything. But then he realizes that he really has no idea what he's supposed to say so he just shuts his mouth close. It makes Circe smile serenly, and it's almost eerie how calm she looks.

"I don't come from the happiest background," she says simply. "And as cliched as it sounds, you saved me from that."

"Whua...?"

"So hurry up and remember, Rex."

Those are the words that Circe says, but the words that Rex hears are "Hurry and save us."