"What time is it?" Lucas yawned, shielding his eyes from the glare of the bedside lamp.
"About four in the morning," Adrian replied as he clipped on his suspenders. He was fully dressed and his shoelaces were tied. "How do you feel?"
Heartbroken? Confused? "Rough," Lucas decided. He sat up and reached for a glass of water. The curtains were drawn shut, but it was probably still dark out.
Adrian frowned. "You slept for twelve hours. Is it your arms or something else?"
Lucas shrugged. "All of the above? I haven't driven that distance in a while." He took a gulp of water and cringed. "Is this tap water or soil?"
"Sorry, we're out of bottled water."
His mouth tasted like something crawled in, crapped out dirt and died, so Lucas plodded to the bathroom and shut the door. He took a quick shower, brushed his teeth, and tried not to think about Adrian. He lingered in the bathroom for a few minutes as he towelled himself off. He wasn't sure what he was dreading more, the cold morning air or the coldness of his friend.
Lucas took a deep breath and opened the door a crack.
Adrian handed him a new pair of trousers.
"Thanks," he said and pulled them on. Adrian rummaged through Lucas' duffel bag. It looked like he had been at it for a while, and he fished out a fresh roll of gauze.
Adrian took Lucas' left arm and began to unravel the old, damp bandage.
"You don't need to do this," Lucas protested.
"It's fine," he insisted. Lucas held his breath as he watched Adrian's steady and precise movements. His long, deft fingers betrayed a familiarity with the process, and were careful to not make contact with the affected area or the soiled underside of the wrappings. He wrapped the bare arm, skin ugly but healing, with the clean bandage and worked on undoing the one on the right; time passed slowly with the meditative quality of an engrossing ritual.
Then it was done.
Lucas looked at his perfectly dressed arms, impressed. "Were you running a clinic out of your apartment?"
"You could say that," Adrian replied flatly.
There was a pause.
"I'm sorry," Lucas said, "I wish I helped more."
"It was my choice not to tell you," Adrian shrugged and pulled out an oxford shirt from the duffel bag. Lucas was about to reach for it when Adrian stopped him.
"No, let me," Adrian said. He effortlessly slipped the shirt sleeves over Lucas' arms, his cool fingers grazing Lucas' biceps. Lucas shuddered.
But Adrian didn't look coy, instead he was intent on fastening Lucas' shirt collar as if it were the most important job on earth. His fingers trailed down Lucas' front, and moved from button to button until he reached the belt line. The slowness was maddening.
"There," Adrian said as he fixed Lucas' collar, and slid his palms across Lucas' shoulders to smooth out the wrinkles.
Lucas kissed him on the cheek.
Adrian stiffened and pushed him away. "I can't. I'm sorry."
"But you feel it too, don't you?" His voice cracked.
"I know. But we need to keep moving." Adrian looked away and began packing.
The highway before dawn was deathly quiet, as there were only a few trucks on the road rolling down the opposing lane. He knew it was irrational to be mad at Adrian, but it still hurt. If he were the only person in the car, he might've been tempted to drift into the wrong lane. But since Adrian was beside him, he had to bottle up the storm growing inside. Lucas gripped the steering wheel tight, not caring if he gave himself permanent nerve damage.
Adrian avoided eye contact and didn't speak, except to warn Lucas that he was driving too fast. Adrian mostly sat hunched over and read the Borges anthology book in the dark. After two hours on the road, it would've already been bright out in Meridiana, but they were so far south that there were only the beginning slivers of dawn over the horizon.
Lucas cleared his throat. "You can read in the dark?"
"Well enough," Adrian replied.
That was all they said that morning. Before they left, they stocked up on supplies and filled up the gas without speaking a single word.
The sun finally rose, although its heat could only be barely felt in the morning chill. Lucas tried to distract himself from his thoughts by turning on the radio, but all that came out was static. He found a cassette tape on the dashboard, creatively labelled Pop Hits #23, and decided to play the tape.
—every time I see you falling, I get down on my knees and pray—
He groaned. 1980s synth-pop greeted them, complete with drum machines and British musicians with pathetic levels of yearning. He pressed forward to the next track.
—under a blue moon I saw you, so soon you'll take me—
And forward.
—if I only thought of the right words, I could've held on to your heart—
Adrian raised an eyebrow. But it didn't end.
—and if a double-decker bus crashes into us, to die by your side is such a heavenly way to die—
He winced and turned it off. Who knew that mooks listened to this crap? He spent the rest of the drive pointedly not giving Adrian a single glance and was grateful for the silence.
The drive was shorter than expected. They pulled up to the deserted village just half past noon, and the pale sun hung in the middle of the sky. Clouds crept closer together and conspired to block off what little warmth remained.
Lucas stepped out of the car and flipped up the collar of his trench coat. The temperature approached freezing. Even though they were only an hour west of the Atlantic, you couldn't see the ocean from here. It felt like they were in an inland desert.
One-storey buildings lined the abandoned main street, and the fast food litter on the street corner was the only evidence of recent visitors from the media. Clumps of desert grass lined the sidewalk, and appeared to be dead or dying.
"Is this place known for cattle-grazing?" Adrian asked.
"Yeah."
"Then something unnatural happened here."
Adrian strode into the main street. Lucas followed him into a corner grocery store, where the lights and refrigeration was still on. It was eerie. A crate of overpriced tomatoes sat in the middle of the store, still perfectly red and ripe. Fragrant bunches of parsley stood upright in plastic bags. Lucas' stomach rumbled.
Adrian pursed his lips. "People were here just a few days ago."
They turned into an aisle and Lucas nearly slipped.
"This isn't dust, is it?" he murmured, brushing off the ash he stepped into. Adrian's look of alarm confirmed his suspicion. Adrian grabbed him by the wrist and led him zigzagging into the other aisles, where they found more ash. There was even ash behind the cash register. Adrian's grip tightened, and his finger nails dug into Lucas' skin.
"We need to go into one of the houses. Now," Adrian growled.
Lucas ran after Adrian, who rushed out of the grocery store and crossed the street to an abandoned house. The door was left open, and it appeared to be the same house featured on the news. There was ash on the dining room chair. Adrian entered room after room, and his face grew white. He stood by the doorway of what was a teenager's bedroom, judging by the Nirvana poster on the wall. There was ash on the bed. He shook, and then leaned against the doorframe for support.
"What's wrong?" Lucas asked.
His voice was barely a whisper. "It's just like when the Cybers were killed."
"Wait—the ashes were people?"
"We don't leave behind a body," Adrian's eyes glazed over. "You can't dissect something that self-disintegrates."
"I don't understand. None of them were human?" Adrian didn't reply. "Hey, Adrian?"
Adrian's knees buckled and Lucas caught him.
"I should've gone back," Adrian sobbed into his hands, "but I didn't. They died because of me. And it's happening again."
"We should get you out of here," Lucas said, but his friend remained unresponsive. So Lucas half-carried him out of the house, feeling every shuddering breath. And just their luck—big fat drops of rain began to fall from the sky, and they were soaked by the time they returned to the car.
Adrian wept in the backseat, and Lucas sat helplessly beside him. Adrian looked so uncharacteristically frail and broken, as if he had seen his siblings die again.
Rain poured, the sky grew darker, and lighting split the sky in half. Over a hill in the distance, he saw the shadow of a castle—tall and foreboding.
Then it was gone.
Lucas blinked. There was no hill, just barren flat pasture where cattle used to graze.
The rain eased up. He checked on Adrian; he was asleep but his skin felt cold. Lucas stepped out of the car and noticed that despite the rain, the grass still looked pretty dead. He poked his head back into the abandoned house, mouthed a silent apology to its former inhabitants, and brought a pot of water to a boil.
He was not typically one to pilfer coffee from the dead, but the grounds in the kitchen pantry smelled fragrant and Adrian needed some cheering up. As he opened the fridge and prepared some sandwiches, he thought about Adrian's reaction, and more importantly, the guilt he heard in his voice.
He walked back to the car with a plate of sandwiches and two mugs of coffee. Much to his relief, Adrian was awake and reading a book in the back seat. Lucas knocked on the door while awkwardly trying not to spill or drop their meal.
Adrian opened the door. "I wondered where you went. Where did you get those?"
"The grocery," he lied as he scooted into the back seat and shut the door.
Adrian took a steaming mug of coffee. The mug displayed a photo of a smiling girl in a cowboy hat and Happy 10th birthday Luisa! etched across it. He raised an eyebrow
Lucas shrugged and bit into a cheese sandwich.
Adrian sighed and sipped from the mug. He acted annoyed but Lucas could tell that he liked the coffee.
Three sandwiches later, Adrian finally spoke. "No, I don't think they were human."
Lucas swallowed. "So were they posing as humans? For how long and why?"
"I have no idea. I thought I was the only one doing that."
"And more importantly, how and why did they die?"
Adrian pursed his lips. "Sustenance withdrawal." He pulled out a notebook and began taking notes. "There were no signs of struggle in the environment, so it was probably not due to physical trauma. But if they died of sustenance withdrawal, why were they still at work? Why were they going about their daily lives instead of looking for sustenance?"
"Maybe they didn't know they weren't human?"
Adrian's eyes widened.
"That was a dumb idea," Lucas shook his head.
"No, you may be on to something," he said and squeezed Lucas' shoulder. Lucas absentmindedly reached for his hand and squeezed it back.
Adrian stiffened, retreated to his coffee, and stared out the window. "We'll comb through the town and look for anything suspicious," he said resolutely. "This may provide clues to Jose's upcoming plans."
Lucas nodded, still feeling the ghost of Adrian's hand on him. They watched the sky, and the clouds above thinned into a grey overcast that spread across the horizon. It obscured the sun and gave the view a certain timeless quality to it, as if they were in limbo. Lucas wished that were the case, that time would cease and by some trick of multidimensional physics, they'd be on this journey forever and never reach its end.
But Cybersix needed to, and that's what mattered.
"I think I understand now why you need to end this," Lucas said, waving vaguely towards the town. "Ending the legacy of Von Reichter and all."
Adrian looked up.
"It's your siblings, isn't it?" Lucas tentatively met his gaze. "You feel guilty for not having saved them, and that's why you do everything in your power to keep Von Reichter and Jose from harming anyone else. So it won't happen again."
Adrian leaned back in the chair. "But it did."
"You didn't know."
Adrian didn't say anything.
Lucas took a deep breath. "I still don't think it's your responsibility, but I get it now. You want a normal life, but protecting everyone from him is your reason for living."
He paused to look at Adrian, who remained still and unreadable. Lucas mustered his courage and continued. "Because when you end him, you can finally forgive yourself for having lived."
There was a pause. A tear escaped from Adrian's eye. Lucas froze, it wasn't the reaction he had expected. He held his breath and waited for Adrian to speak.
"Do you know what I'll regret the most?" Adrian whispered.
"What?"
"Not finishing more books."
Lucas was stumped.
"I'm serious," Adrian chuckled. "I would have read faster if I knew I'd die soon. And the awful thing is I'm at a boring essay in this Borges anthology, but I feel obliged to finish it since it's the last book I'll ever read."
Lucas relaxed. "Doesn't that mean that you should be skipping to the good stuff?"
"There must be a reason why the essay is here, and I won't find out unless I read it."
"I hope it's worth it. Borges works in mysterious ways," Lucas grinned.
Adrian grinned back. It was beautiful.
Lucas cleared his throat. "So, you ready to go out there?"
The smile remained. "As ready as I'll ever be."