Chapter Eight

Reflection

Waking and realising how yesterday hadn't only been a fever dream, had quickly chased Kyle out of bed.

Shame.

It'd even been a decent bed, too. An honest to God foldable cot, the kind you got when you traded the local top dog what was left of the meds and biomarkers Fi and Aiden had pulled out of the GRE hospital.

Unlike Carl and Aitor (one of who'd been suspicious and the other downright offended at first), Frank hadn't hesitated when Kyle had offered them. Nah. He'd had taken them without a word. And then he'd followed it up with a helping of generosity.

The trio had gotten a shack to crash in, which, admittedly, held a distinct chicken shit odour and still had feathers wedged in its floorboards, but, hey. The cots. They were downright divine (if maybe too short, since Kyle's feet had been dangling all night). Which was just as well, since both him and Aiden had been sternly told to make generous use of them after the Fish Eye's local doc had come by for a house visit and patched them up. Hakon, the doc had mostly ignored. Purposefully, Kyle figured.

But, anyway. Night had come. Sleep, less so.

And now, with the morning weighing Kyle down with the knowledge that he'd left Fi to whatever—

—he swallowed hard.

He'd brought Fi's pack with him when he'd dragged himself out the door. Aimless at first, Kyle had mapped out the Fish Eye's main level by walking it twice. He'd noted its layout. Its exits (purpose-built and potential). Its entrances. Its switchback stairs, markets, and even something that looked suspiciously much like a compact outdoor stage. Afterwards, he'd found himself a railing fencing off a sheer drop—one close to the shack he'd slept in—and had beached himself there, with Fi's pack now hanging off a spoke by his side.

Time crept by. Villedor began to fill with daylight. Slowly, steadily, with every ray highlighting just how depressed the fucking thing looked from up here.

More so than any other city Kyle had been to since the Fall. Why? Because it still tried. It clung to life. Hard. But it was a pathetic grasping for a foothold out in the a hostile territory, evident by unfinished or destroyed blockades, bridges, and even pulleys. Most anything beyond the Fish Eye (from what Kyle could see, anyway) looked… desperate.

Or maybe you're projecting.

Yeah.

That was probably it.

Kyle's eyes cut down and landed on the polaroid he held pinched in his fingers. Fi and Theo smiled at him; happy, finally; a family, finally. His.

His family.

His responsibility.

His failure.

Kyle's throat constricted. Breathing became a conscious effort. Hard work, really, while a bundle of emotions threatened to unravel him. The guilt, the fear, the fury burning him up; they wanted nothing more than to pull him apart, and judging by how his biomarker lost not only one but two green lights, they were doing one hell of a job.

He closed his eyes.

Villedor's rattle of a dying breath layered across the thud-thud-thud of his heart. Voices. Wind snatching on cloth and leaves. The creak of wood, the groan of metal, the cluck-cluck of a chicken somewhere near. And the crunch of careful footsteps drawing close.

Pull yourself together, dude.

The footsteps crunched one more time, just by his right shoulder.

"What's his— ah— her? Name?"

Kyle allowed himself another long second before he opened his eyes and traded Aiden a sideways look. The kid had ditched his ashen, almost-a-corpse aesthetic overnight, but the bruises and bandages the doc had slapped on him made it hard to forget just how thoroughly he'd gotten his ass beat yesterday. Kyle's arm smarted in sympathy, limp as it was in its new sling.

"Sorry," Aiden said, his fingers scratching idly at his arm (the injection marks, to be precise). He'd misunderstood Kyle's stare. Or maybe he'd read it right, for all Kyle knew, what with how he couldn't be entirely sure where his head was at right now.

Since followed the apology, which Aiden spent scratching at himself some more and looking constipated as hell. He obviously had more to say, but the conflicted frown he wore told Kyle he wasn't about to risk swallowing not only his foot, but the whole damn leg attached it, too.

Yeah.

He knew that look.

"Theodore." Kyle shuffled half a step to the side. It was an open invitation to join him, one the kid immediately took. "Theo. We lost him a month after this was taken. Sudden heart failure or some bullshit like that." He didn't mean to go on, but when had that truly ever stopped him? "If he'd been born pre-Fall we might have known about it sooner and could have done something about it. Would've been able to give him a chance, you know?"

Aiden's lips slanted down, but he didn't comment. Kyle could appreciate that, even if he'd invited the conversation. But what was there to say? After all, loss was a certainty these days. The only way you'd avoid it was if you were the one to go first. So Kyle changed the subject before either of them had a chance to try and talk their way around this here father's grief.

"You're looking better."

"Yeah, I feel it, too," Aiden said. "Except for the ribs, those are hurting a whole lot more than yesterday, believe it or not."

"Oh, I believe it."

"But, yeah. Otherwise I'm… back to normal?" Aiden returned to idly scratching at his injection marks, just where the biomarker sat snug against his skin. And as so was the norm with Kyle's chaotic brain, the gesture inevitably dragged a memory from his mind. In it, Fi fiddled with a bracelet he'd made for her. A birthday gift. After a birthday she'd nearly forfeited. 1 DAY AT A TIME it had read.

"I'm not though," Aiden continued, his frown growing weighty. "Normal, I mean. Never have been, and now..." He looked over to the Fish Eye's modest morning crowd coming out to beat the sun at fully rising. One of them wandered over to a bell (big as a man's head), and another picked up a wooden ratchet lying near it. Then they got to making noise, nearly perfectly in tandem with other holds across Central Villedor's rooftops. Kyle even heard a few dogs bark in answer.

Grats, you survived another night, the disjointed clanging said. Good luck.

Neither of them spoke until the noise died down. And Aiden didn't seem too inclined to pick up wherever he'd left off. He kept staring at the people stepping out into the morning.

"Spit it out," Kyle prompted.

"What?" His eyes cut to Kyle and he looked just about as put on the spot as he'd sounded.

"Whatever you were about to say."

In response, Aiden puffed out his cheeks and let out an agitated sigh. "Yeah, okay. A few days ago the most I had to worry about was feeding myself and chasing after Mia. Now? I attacked you." His gaze dropped away from Kyle's. Shame, Kyle assumed. "Given the chance, I would have killed you and Hakon. And after that? I'd have—" Aiden's jaw clenched. "I'd have been gone. For good. So, it doesn't matter how normal I feel right now. I'm not. And that's just not something I know how to deal with. The only thing I do know, is that me being here puts all these people at risk. Including you."

"Oh ye of little faith."

Aiden's brows pinched. The glare he shot Kyle was distinct neighbours with the withering kind. "I'm not kidding. I shouldn't be here."

"So you said back at the Bazaar. Are you going to make me repeat myself?"

"That was before I almost killed you!"

"Please. You got nowhere close."

A stubborn light lit in the kid's eyes, making him look properly awake for the first time since he'd shuffled his way over here. "How are you— how can you just— This isn't fucking funny."

"No, it isn't," Kyle admitted, all while he convinced his overtaxed think meat to sort through the dozens of possible angles he could tackle this one from. This was, after all, a complex topic. Kinda like The Talk; a comparison so unhelpful, it tickled a brief, stupid smile out of him. Aiden immediately looked ready to box him in the arm again.

And, yeah. That'd fucking hurt, he wasn't about to pretend otherwise.

"Alright." Kyle cleared his throat and slid the polaroid back into the sleeve of Fi's journal before he flipped her pack closed. A pack which he was determined to keep with him until she was back to reclaim it. Because, yes, he'd find her.

He hadn't forgotten about that.

But while he got himself back into shape to make good on that promise, he might as well keep the one he'd given Spike, even if he hadn't exactly uttered the words.

"Back in seventeen," he said, turning his attention to Aiden, "which, for reference, was when you were still in diapers, Fi and I got snatched up by one of the GRE's crazy scientist types. A dude named Fraser. He's the one who gets most of the credit for cooking up the first—" Kyle opened a single set of air-quotes with his good arm. "—cure." How Kyle had met and worked alongside the two men actually behind that particular breakthrough he didn't feel the need to throw in. May you rest better than the lot of us, he thought.

"But his real achievement—or so he'd say—was project Windfall, which was some harebrained shot at a remedy for mortality."

"Seriously?"

"Yep. Pretty sure the inhibitors are some kinda byproduct of it, but don't ask me how any of this shit works. Just roll with it for now, alright?"

"Okay, but— where are we going with this?"

"Patience, young padawan. You need a bit of context first."

The blank look shuttling across Aiden's face told Kyle the reference had gone above his head. A travesty which Kyle earmarked for later. So he could fix this devastating wrong.

"What we didn't know back then was why Fraser had such a big crush on us that he had to take us home to his evil science lair. See, in sixteen, Fi and I ran into a pair of— ah— unusual Volatiles. They were downright cruel and sadistic, and, yeah, smart. Play with you kinda smart before they kill you. Smash UV lights smart. Lock-a-mom-in-a-closet-with-her-babies-about-to-turn smart."

"Shit."

"Mhm. I managed to kill one of 'em, though not before it tore up my arm. Which, you know, I didn't think was a big deal at first since I'd been infected for a while already. But turns out you can get double shafted by a different THV flavour, especially when that flavour had been engineered by Fraser chasing his Windfall project. You with me still?"

Aiden nodded.

"Great. Now. We're back in seventeen and Fraser finds out Fi and me had picked up his up until then unsuccessful project. Unsuccessful because the last two subjects he'd worked on had turned into Harran's literal pair of devils. But we hadn't. We didn't even know we had that shit in us until he'd had me strapped to gurney and dosed me again. So— there I am, cussing the fucker out, until, suddenly—" Kyle snapped his finger. "I lose it. My mind empties itself of anything but a fury I can't say I'd ever felt before. I mean, I get angry, you know? I can get plenty fucking pissed. But this? This was different. I didn't have room in my head for anything but rage and I was this—" Kyle pinched his index finger and thumb almost all the way together, leaving nothing but a hairline's gap between them. "—close to forgetting myself, name and all. Then I hear Fi somewhere. She shouts my name, and all that anger I have, it finds this needle-sharp focus. I'm going to get loose. I'm going to find her. I'm going to get to her. Nothing—abso-fucking-lutely nothing—can stop me. Thankfully, I didn't manage."

Kyle exhaled slowly.

"I have no idea what I would've done if I had actually gotten loose and found her. Would I have hurt her?" He huffed. "Probably? What I do know though is that by the time they'd had me sedated again, I'd torn a guy's neck out with my teeth and almost crushed another dude's windpipe."

Aiden stared blatantly at him. He even did one of those startled blinks, which told Kyle he hadn't expected their experience to line up quite as much.

"Yeah, it wasn't pretty. Neither was coming to afterwards and realising that, no, I hadn't just had a shitty nightmare. The blood I tasted in my mouth was very, very real. So was the panic after, because— yeah—" Kyle nodded grimly. "—losing control like that? It's terrifying. It's world ending kinda bad. It's…" He trailed off and quirked a prompting brow at Aiden.

"Overwhelming?" Aiden eventually said. "I can barely keep my thoughts still to think of anything else. And what's the point of 'anything else' anyway, when I know what's waiting for me when this thing goes red again?" He raised his biomarker, but his eyes were locked with Kyle's. It was a flighty eye contact though, driven by fear. "How did you— make it? For so long, I mean. How did you manage to stay—" He gestured vaguely at Kyle..

"Me? Human? Not entirely by myself," Kyle admitted. "Not at first, anyway. I couldn't. Not with Fraser pushing to find out just how far he could go without losing me entirely. Since, you know, it'd be bad for business if his customers ate their friends 'cause their fav sports team lost and they got tipped into a frenzy. And in-between the experiments, I stayed mad. Depressed. Mad some more. Took me a long while to realise he was doing me a favour."

"Really? A favour?" Aiden sounded doubtful.

"Yeah. 'course. He—" Kyle paused as he spotted Hakon stepping from their shared shed. An unease rode the man that Kyle hadn't seen on him before; like the Fish Eye was more of a threat to him than the streets below. Fair. Judging by the reaction he'd gotten yesterday (lotsa shouting and glaring), that might even be true.

Hakon slid his eyes from corner to corner, before finally shedding his trepidation and replacing it with a confident swagger (which Kyle assumed to be mostly forced). Swagger engaged, Hakon went past Aiden and Kyle, only stopping briefly to quick a brow at them and shovel invisible food into his mouth with an equally invisible spoon. Kyle shrug-nodded (with one shoulder, fuck that damn arm) in agreement. A thumbs up later Hakon had his back to them, headed for the Fish Eye's titular tavern and eventually out of sight.

"Where was I?"

"You were saying this Fraser did you a favour."

"Yep. He helped me understand exactly what to expect and what would send me over the edge. Anger. Fear. Pain. Anything that'd stressed me out, basically." Kyle permitted himself a grimly flavoured exhale through his nose. "Once, I told Fi I was waiting to turn green the next time one of Fraser's associates in assholery pissed me off. She didn't think it was funny."

Neither did Aiden, Kyle noted and his heart ached for the kid's childhood having gotten lost in the shuffle of the apocalypse.

Kyle huffed once and swung back to the topic at hand. "Doesn't mean it was easy though. Hell no. Fighting to stay on my lane was about the hardest thing I'd done in my life until then. Hard enough I sometimes thought maybe it wasn't worth it. That, maybe, just fucking maybe, I'd be doing the world a favour if I'd let those devils in my blood win. After all, that'd mean Fraser loses, right? And that— that's a thought that's hella tempting and one you're going to have, too."

"I'd rather—"

Kyle poised a finger at Aiden. "Nah-ah. You're not punching your own ticket."

His lips pressing into a thin, hard frown, Aiden fixed his eyes at Villedor winking at him as the sun slanted off steel and glass.

"Sure, it feels… unreasonably cruel right now," Kyle continued. "The whole living bit. But it won't always be. You'll figure it out."

"Because you did?"

Kyle puffed air from his nose. "No. Because you deserve it. You deserve a fair chance at a life that's your own. One that's long and full of whatever makes you happy. Just like them." He motioned towards the Fish Eye's people with an incline of his head. "There are plenty of infected living packed together tight here, and I'll eat a fucking hat if shit doesn't sometimes go wrong, like, I don't know, a rat gnawing through a cable and knocking out someone's UV light while they sleep and no one hearing their biomarker go off. But that risk doesn't make them any less deserving of giving life an honest shot. It's not their fault. It's not your fault. Not mine either, and it sure as fucking hell wasn't Theo's fault when he tried to kill Fi and I the first time."

Aiden tossed him a quizzical look. "Theo? Your—" He stared.

"Context. Sorry. Remember the two Volatiles I mentioned earlier?"

Aiden nodded — right as a peculiar noise echoed through the Villedor streets: an engine. Kyle tilted his head, listening, but the whine of the vehicle echoed off too many buildings for him to figure out exactly where it was coming from. Was he surprising to hear one? Nah, not really. The streets near the subway they'd come out of had been cleared, and Villedor seemed to produce enough bio fuel to supplement whatever power output the wind turbines and solar panels provided. Plus, there were enough spare parts sitting around.

"They have working cars…?" Aiden's eyes widened just a bit.

"Honestly, I would've been shocked if they hadn't kept a few of their vehicles running. But come on, don't tell me you haven't ridden in a car before."

Aiden shrugged. "I probably have? I honestly can't remember. And the only time I see working ones these days is whenever I pass through New Paris."

"Hm," Kyle intoned before he hopped back onto the right track. "Anyway— those two Volatiles I mentioned before, they were brothers. Kids who got snatched up by Fraser when he worked out of Harran and then exposed to Windfall on purpose. One was fourteen or fifteen, the other a bit older. I killed the older one, the other got away until the GRE found him, caught him, and hauled him off to join Fi and me in Fraser's lab. So, all of a sudden we're kinda roommates, you know. Except instead of wanting to murder us—or anyone else for that matter—this little Volakid sits there in his cage and chants his name. Theo." Kyle paused. "Theo." Another pause. "Theo. Theo. Over and over he repeats it. It made little sense to use back then, but it ended up being a lot more meaningful than we thought. See, it turns out him and his brother had been linked through some creepy THV induced hive mind, or at least that's what Theo told us later after we'd gotten out. And when I killed his brother, it knocked something loose. First he said, he remembered wanting to track me down and make me pay. Make all of us pay, really. But before he got around to it, he found his own name, buried deep. He dug it out and then he clung to it, convincing himself that a Night with a Name has no business hurting innocent people."

Kyle turned his eyes to Aiden.

"Are you picking up what I am trying to put down here?"

"Maybe."

"Okay, let me spell it out. I had doubts," Kyle said. "About myself. About being allowed a life beyond my ten by ten feet large box, even if I didn't realise it at first. These doubts hit me hard when I heard that our friends were going to break us out and all I could think of was… I can't go. We can't go."

Voices rose over by the Fish Eye's main entrance (the one Kyle and Co had limped up yesterday), and Kyle's eyes took to wandering over there. The woman from yesterday (the one with the crossbow and purple in her hair) had started arguing with what might've been a guard stationed there. She was pointing down the ramp.

"I got over it," Kyle continued, idly watching the back and forth. "'course I did. Because fuck this bullshit, we didn't deserve this. And you know what? If this Volakid I'm neighbours with can beat this? If this kid—who's not even sixteen yet—with the face of a fucked up monster can scrounge up enough humanity for a smile and a kind word? Well, so can I."

Abandoning the commotion, Kyle threw Aiden the most meaningful look he could manage. "And so can you."

Aiden's face fell. A proper I can't believe you said that kinda falling, with his eyes losing focus and his lips hitching down.

Oh, c'mon, Kyle lamented. I thought that was a pretty good speech, what the hell?

"That's Waltz," Aiden suddenly murmured, even as he raised a hand, knocking it first against Kyle's arm and then pointing right past him.

"What?" Kyle's eyes snapped back to the entrance.

A group of four had come up to the Fish Eye. Two women with antlers rising from their heads. A hound, geared up in black and red and carrying an honest to god sledgehammer.

And up front, walked a straight-backed man wearing a narrow black tailcoat and a face which Kyle had last seen on a waster damaged personnel file.

Waltz.

By the time Aiden called after him, Kyle had already started walking.