Alice showed him the periscope near the hatch. The storm was still so strong that only black and white dotted stripes running left to right were the only things one could see. Afterwards, Felix spent most of his time cleaning his wounds and bandaging them. He could feel a burning and a throbbing sensation around the damaged skin, and every time one of the black radioactive speckles touched his injured skin he gasped, biting his hand to avoid screaming.

The Giant had been already sleeping for hours, curled into a massive ball because, compared to his size, every bed seemed like a cradle. Maybe he should sleep too, but he couldn’t really trust them enough, that was the truth.

Alice helped him to clean the blood from his suit, but, as it had already dried, not even the whole soap in the world would be enough to scrub it off.

“Hey, Felix”, she said, “Do you think the enemy will attack us one day?”;

“I’m sure they will. They want us to share the same fate of the dinosaurs, and I tried to stop them”, but he failed;

“Why tried? Have they already attacked, and we didn’t know it?”.

When he tried to say yes, another jolt blocked his throat.

“My bad. I was trying to say that I’m trying to stop them”;

“That’s why you enrolled in that Academy? Does it have a name or it’s just the Academy?”

“It has one, but nobody really uses it, and I forgot it. My memory isn’t the best. It’s embarrassing to say, but I wanted to try the new military HUDs they were giving”, and he wanted to stay away from his family, “Those things arrived on earth in my second year. Maybe if I knew what was going to happen I’d have never chosen the Army and I’d have stayed with my family”. But after the day of the attack that wasn’t a possibility anymore.

“It changed many things, even for us”, Alice said, “We couldn’t go out at night anymore, we couldn’t even look out of the windows, we had to queue for bread; all of it when They were thousands of miles away, what would have happened if they were nearer?”;

“All of the people who saw them never came back to tell about it”;

“And those who are sent to the front?”;

“That’s why I wanted to drop out when They arrived”.

She had been sitting on a chair at Colin’s bedside, sometimes biting her nails, or fiddling with a spoon. After an hour, her lids drooped, and she’d jump whenever she found she was drifting asleep.

“You can sleep”, he said, but she shook her head. It made him remember when they got his enemy Francis.

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“I won’t”, she said, “He needs me”;

“He must mean a lot for you then”. And it made it harder to tell her that there wasn’t no hope for him.

“I’d have done the same even if it was a stranger”, she said, “I’m not like someone else here. That doesn’t mean I’d suffer the same: I’m an only child, and he’s the closest person I can call brother”;

“A man and woman can’t be friends”;

“That’s a very close-minded thing to say”;

“Do you love him?”. She lowered her gaze, and coughed to hide her surprise, but Felix already knew the answer.

“W-well, we’ve never dated. He had a girlfriend, I had a boyfriend for some time. He was moving in a different city after high school, as he had a tuition in one of the best colleges in the country, while I had to settle for a lower one. Maybe we’d have lost touch”;

“Which major did you choose? Nursing?”. Damn, why he couldn’t tell her straight that he had to kill him. It was like his courage died with his adult body. Her eyes narrowed on him, “Just because I like helping others doesn’t mean I have to be a nurse”.

“That’s nothing wrong in being one”;

“I know, but my grandma, my big sister, my aunts, everyone apart from my Mom, who is a doctor, is a nurse. I wanted to be different, so I chose Bioengineering”. He couldn’t care less about a college which didn’t exist anymore; he had to tell her straight what was happening.

“How would react if he died?”;

She rubbed one of her already gleaming eyes, “He won’t. I won’t allow it, not this time”;

“He’s not going to make it. I’ve already seen something like this. We can all be in danger”. Colin’s face was already devoid of color, just like his wife’s in the last time he saw her.

She tightened her hands into fist, “I don’t care, I won’t stop hoping until his heart stops beating”;

“Yes, but-”. She stood from her chair, “You can’t know it! Maybe it’s different, maybe miracle will happen”, and she burst into the tears.

He couldn’t continue anymore, so he sighed, “We’ll wait and see”. He behaved way worse when his wife was at that boy’s place, and Elliot had to do it in front of him, and it was better for her to not experience what he did that time. He learned that miracles didn’t exist, and, by the look of his skin, there won’t be one even this time. It was like a rag stretched between his ribs, and the dark green lumps on his armpits, on the side of the neck, under the jaw, chin, and in front and behind his ears, had become even more swollen. He shuddered. That was how a Glowing one was born, and there was no way he could beat one in his current state, and neither that Giant.

Alice kept an eye on Colin. Her lids started to close, and her head was swaying toward the shoulder, sometimes she raised it in a gasp to remain awake, but at last, she fell asleep.

If he made it look like an accident, then she’d suffer less. It was still despicable, but he had to do for the sake of their survival.

He grabbed a pillow from the upper bed and pushed it on Colin’s face, keeping a look on the others. He didn’t wake up and this was a good sign. But as time passed, he stopped and checked the pulse on his neck. It was feeble, but present. Then he pushed harder, but he wouldn’t die even after minutes.

He threw the pillow on the upper bed again, grabbed his neck and pushed his thumbs on his throat. Alice raised her head, mumbling, and Felix retracted his hands. It was only a feint. So, he cleaned the sweat from his forehead and resumed.

“He won’t die”. His arms started to shake as more the minutes passed. Maybe he was too weak, but a person should die of asphyxia after fifteen minutes. What was going wrong?

He tried even to crush his throat, but it was different than the others time. He couldn’t explain it, but it was much harder than his. At last, he took his knife. He would do the job and wait at the hatch for the right moment to slip away, but it was a plan that was anything but foolproof.

Radio signal picked up…