Charlie had to sit down for a minute. His legs were bugging him again, not letting him move like he wanted to. The man should have guessed that would happen. He had moved around too much today, had done too many things on his feet. Whenever he got the chance, he would need a few supplements to help ease it all a bit more.

Checking on the youngest in the group, Charlie could see that Troy had fallen asleep. Fast asleep even, with the heavy breathing indicating a deep slumber. Nothing short of an old gunshot would wake him. And maybe that was for the best. The kid needed more rest, even if there was a constant struggle against it. Troy was not one who could handle it. He wasn't meant to handle it. Even if the mind was strong, the body had not been tempered. It would break sooner than later. And there was nobody but him and Mara who would get to see it through.

From behind, he could feel the weight on the sofa shifting. It pressed against his back slightly, alerting him to Mara once again regaining some semblance of consciousness. It was getting to that time of the day. Her fingers would be too weak to write on the notepad, but her mind still craved anything but sleep. That would have been fine if she could talk for a long time. But, she couldn't. Her throat would fill before two minutes had passed, making another crisis begin. They had agreed to not risk it.

“You saw it, didn't you?” Mara asked, her voice a bit raspy. She did not ask for water, but Charlie offered it nonetheless. It was not accepted. The throat would remain sore no matter what. Only time would let it heal, to be used for another day. “What he brought in with him.”

“I did,” Charlie answered. There was no way he wouldn't have. The man had carried Troy in his arms for a long time, looking over every detail, making sure the cold would not take another victim. There was no way he would have let that happen. But… it had also made him see that which had been hidden. The marks had been in a discreet spot, never to be seen by those wearing it. “What do you think it means?”

It had been on the underside of the man’s shoes, meaning he had stepped on it on his way out of the river. With how large a piece had been there, Charlie knew that a normal person would not have let it go unnoticed. But… this was Troy being talked about. The kid had likely taken it as his legs giving out, not spending a moment on what it actually was. Would he even have been able to see it? The coldness could make eyes weak, making it impossible to see more than a few meters.

“It means that others are among us. If it had been one, it could have been passed off as a sick creature not going through its standard cycles. With so many… we should start securing the room,” Mara said, her many words making a cough slip out afterwards. A lengthy answer to a complex answer. Charlie knew he should have given his own ideas instead, yet he needed to be sure that Mara had something on the same path as him. It would not do well to disagree with her.

“I have made it as secure as I could,” Charlie stated. He knew how pitiful the fortifications had been, but knew of no clear way to improve it. Materials were scarce, and there was next to no chance of Troy successfully gathering what was needed. It weighed too much. “Maybe we can make it… unattractive? Smear the windows, add splinters to the outside. We could collapse the wall to the room we don't use. Would make the foundations seem unstable.”

Without looking at her, Charlie could already tell that the idea had been rejected. Those eyes of hers were strong enough to make his hairs rise. If he was any less tired, he might even have shivered from it. Not now, though. His eyelids were too heavy for such an action.

“Without fortifications and without security, the only thing we can do is run,” Mara stated. That much had been clear from the start. But… there was no chance they could do that. Charlie refused to risk, even if she would accept it without a passing thought.

After the notepad had started to grow large, the acceptance of her own mortality had grown. It was as if she had accepted it all, that she had done what she came to do. Charlie, however, had not accepted that fact, and he knew that he never would.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

“If all else fails, we can think about it. There is no need to take unnecessary risks until then,” Charlie answered, already knowing the coming storm.

But… not one argument came. Instead, Mara was silent for the longest of times. It might only have been a minute or two, but it was an eternity when compared to the usual. She normally spoke a lot, then rested for even longer. There were no short bursts and short pauses. Everything was to come at once or nothing was to come at all.

“How many do you think are looking for us at this very moment?” Mara asked. Which was peculiar. She usually never wanted to talk about that. Charlie could remember bringing it up during their first days of travel. Back then, there had not been any kind of response, her just looking at him blankly. It was a stupid question. Which was why it was so hard to articulate the peculiarity of the question.

“I am not too sure, honestly. Might be ten, might be a hundred, or it might even be a few thousand people. There is only one real way to find out, and I don't think we want to do that,” Charlie answered after a few seconds of thought. The AI was an important project, yes, but was it that important? Sure, it could disrupt the whole political environment if information about it was released, but so could a load of other things. Charlie had personally worked on projects that would break enough conventions to start a war, and that was the stuff he could still remember doing.

“We will find out the moment we slip up, and there is nothing we can do about it,” Mara stated. Charlie briefly looked over to her and got to see the woman’s eyes staring up at the ceiling. They looked empty today. “They can mobilise to any point in the country within five hours. It takes us weeks to move halfway across it. The only real defence we have is that we are small. The moment anybody takes notice of us, we will be doomed.”

…

“Not the greatest odds to have, I suppose,” Charlie said, not wanting the silence to continue.

“You are right. It is not. We are against a force unimaginably large, with a budget so high that we can do nothing about it. We can kill one but another will take its place in an instant, ready to capture us with the most advanced technology they have,” Mara said. Charlie felt like she had kept it within her for some time now, her words flowing out as if they had been practised many times. “Any normal person should have faltered by now, yet we have not made a single destructive error. We have come close to doom, yes, but not once have we fallen over the line once. Do you know why that is?”

“Teamwork? Skill? Maybe the gear on us?” Charlie suggested.

“Luck,” Mara flatly stated. “The only reason behind our continued survival is pure luck. It is through a vain oversight of our threat level that we have been allowed to roam around for so long. The moment they have a confirmation about our location, so close to the border, they will not care for us. They will only care about the extraction of the storage unit, no matter the costs. You have already realised this, Charlie, yet you seem to never act upon it.”

“What is there to act on? If I know that all actions are inherently useless, that we are only alive because of us being a lacking threat, what exactly do you expect to do?” Charlie asked. His voice was perhaps a little louder than it needed to be. He was agitated by her words, even if he knew them to be the truth.

Mara put her eyes on him, and Charlie could not help but readjust his seating. He might have met her gaze with his own, but that did not mean he could match her intensity. He used to be able to… that was a long time ago now, wasn't it? Back in those white walls, Charlie could stare her down, and even overcome her at times, just with the power of those two balls he looked out with. Not anymore. Not even close.

“You are a sad sack of flesh. You have been a sad sack of flesh for a long time,” Mara pointed out, her tone as calm as ever, yet the context still felt like a sting to the side. “I thought time would make you realise the need for change, that the knowledge that everything could lead to your doom would make you understand. But… I was wrong. You refuse to forget.”

…

Charlie did not answer. He did not want to answer. Nothing would force him to answer. Nothing could force him to answer. Charlie would be silent.

Dr Hale must have respected his choice. Dr Hale. Not Mara. She wasn't his friend for a decade now. She was a doctor, a person who travelled with him, and somebody he had to care for, lest she would not survive for long.

Dissociation. It wasn't a good thing. But… It helped in moments like these. Charlie knew he shouldn't do them, yet… he had to. There was nothing else he could do. The world just had to make sense somehow.

“He’s dead, Charlie. You have to remember that,” Mara, his friend, said. “There’s nothing you can do to change that.”

Then she went back to sleep as if her words had not caused yet another wave of guilt to wash through him.

Charlie did not sleep that night. He only stared forward, too afraid to close his eyes. If he closed them, he would see Darlow. He would see what he did. He would see what he had become.

He didn't want to see.