As afternoon turned to evening, Ilian had since returned to the computer. Aura had since returned to the television. And Adan was sitting silently on the sofa with her, though he was staring blankly in the general direction of the TV rather than comprehending anything that was actually on the screen.

When the hour finally reached six pm, Aura had to say something. “You’ve literally not spoken a single word in like five hours” her voice broke into Adan’s blatantly obvious distraction.

“I guess I was just really interested in the show” he excused.

“Really? Which episode did you like best?” Aura pressed.

“I mean all of them were, you know, great” he shrugged and attempted a smile.

“Right” she said with obvious disbelief. “I guess I’ll just go get dinner ready” she grumbled as she pushed herself up from the couch with a bit of a huff as she left the room.

That was when Adan cast a dark look back at Ilian, who looked just as uncomfortable as earlier still. “Do you see the position you’ve put me in?” Adan whispered angrily once Aura had disappeared to the kitchen.

“Position?” Ilian replied with a deep breath.

“I don’t tell her, and I’m putting her in danger. As well as breaking fourteen years of trust between us. If that even means anything to you at all” Adan told him accusingly.

“Then I guess you should tell her” Ilian replied in that constantly soft spoken manner of his.

Adan scoffed loudly. “I do tell her and I send her directly into a permanent state of full on panic for the rest of our lives. However long that even will be. And she has a horrible enough time trying not to feel like that all day every day as it is! How do you not see the fucking problem here?” he exclaimed.

“How should I fix it?” Ilian said with a little more volume as he finally turned in the chair to look back at his companion. “If I leave this place, I can no longer hide it from them. Then you both die as soon as they find you anyway. Me as well. But either way, it’s not good for any of us.” Adan just glared back in response. “See? You don’t have a solution either” Ilian finished with a slight sigh.

“I guess you’ll just have to find some way to make her trust you, huh?” Adan offered with another shrug.

“Has she ever trusted anyone? Besides you?” Ilian asked.

Adan let out another breath at that particular question. “I’ve known her since we were three. And besides that...”

“What?”

“She’s in love with me. She wants to trust me. And now she sort of has to. Which is the main reason why me keeping your damn secret is next to impossible” he reminded roughly.

“Then I guess I’ll have to find some reason to make her want to trust me too” Ilian returned.

“Yeah. Good luck with that” Adan shook his head and left the room then as well.

----------------------------------------

Dinner was even more awkward and silent than lunch had been. And as soon as he had finished, Adan announced that he was going to head to bed for the night. Aura gave him a look that was equal parts surprise and worry.

“It’s like seven o’clock” she told him as he began to move away from the table.

“Guess it’s been an exhausting day” was his only explanation.

“Is this like code for something?” she asked furtively as she let herself have the tiniest bit of hope that maybe he was just trying to be subtle about wanting her to come to bed with him early for some reason or another, such as an encore of their earlier encounter in the room that very morning.

“No. Just feel like calling it a night” was Adan’s only answer. He then moved from the room without saying anything else.

Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

Aura looked after him, then back at Ilian, then back at the door. “I better go see if he’s... I don’t know. He’s been weird all... Never mind” she interrupted her own sentence, remembering who she was even speaking to. “I better just go see what’s going on with him.”

“Please stay” Ilian said just as she began to rise from her seat.

“Excuse me?”

“Like you said. We’ve barely spoken, just you and I” he offered as he turned those eyes to her which were just as annoyingly gorgeous as Adan’s.

“Yeah, I wonder why that is” she scoffed, though didn’t finish rising just yet, instead just watching him with her usual helping of suspicion.

“We’re all stuck in here together. I just want to try and make it easier” he told her sincerely.

“Really?” she raised a brow. “By us having a nice chat?”

“For starters” he offered with a slight shrug.

“Right” she said as she crossed her arms over her chest, continuing to watch him. Though at least this time there was the tiniest sliver of curiosity behind all her obvious distrust.

“Where should we start our ‘chat?’” he asked a moment later.

“This should go great” she mumbled. “Fine, tell me about your childhood.”

“My childhood?” he swallowed as he tried to maintain eye contact with those pools of light blue that were still filled with suspicion. “When I was a child?”

“Yeah that’s what childhood means” she returned. She then sighed. “Let me guess. Too much peyote after Colonel Reese knocked up you pretty Indian mom and left her to raise you on some reservation? I mean, that’s the story, right?”

“It is rather hard to believe, I suppose” Ilian replied.

“Ya think?”

“How else would I explain being able to get into this place at all?”

“Yeah, I mean that’s the only way it would be remotely believable that any other human could have gotten past the bio-coded door lock” she told him pointedly.

“I’m getting the impression that you’re having trouble believing my story, then?”

“You are observant” she replied, trying her best to maintain a brave front. But confrontation of any kind was something she had always avoided like her life depended on it. And now it very well might.

“I just thought that maybe if my identity and appearance were familiar to both of you, then it would be easier to make this work” he stated sadly.

Aura felt her breath catch, trying to determine exactly what he meant by that particular comment. Then part of it caught her. “Your appearance?”

“I took that from his head. Then just altered it slightly” he told her with another deep breath, locking his eyes on her then.

“What?” she shook her head, “and what do you mean took it from his head, and, what are you even admitting to here, Ilian?” she asked as she felt her breath quickening as the panic attack began.

“I know it’s pointless now to keep pretending. And all I can do is hope you both believe me when I say that I really am not here to hurt either of you. I was hiding here myself, then you two arrived. I guess I panicked a little too. I had to find a way to try and explain why I was here. And I didn’t think the truth would have been that easy for the two of you to deal with. So I tried to invent another. And used parts of both of your lives to do so.”

“So I’ve been right this whole time?” her voice cracked as she spoke, now gripping the seat of her chair tightly with both hands.

“Pretending to be one of you is not easy. I failed at it. No point in pretending anymore, right?”

“So, you are one of them?” she breathed the words, frozen in place then.

“Only biologically. I was telling the truth when I said I was hiding here. I don’t want them to find us any more than you and Adan do” he assured.

Tears formed in her eyes as she continued to have trouble breathing, but also continued to be unable to run from the room. What good would it have even done if she could have?

“And this isn’t even the way you really look?” was the first thing that popped into her muddled brain then.

“It is now. To change yourself so much, to this extent? It’s something that can only be done once. And, I got the impression that both of you enjoyed this appearance as well. So I guess that was maybe one thing I got right” he attempted a smile, but the fear remaining in her eyes made it difficult to achieve.

“Why are you hiding from them?” she asked, surprising herself with her ability to even manage to continue speaking with him in light of everything she now knew.

“I opposed their plans for this world. They did not like that. I fled before the attacks started. I found this place. Then the two of you found me in it. That’s the shortest version.”

“You just found it?” she needed to press him to explain that.

“With our technology and abilities, if we’re really looking for a place like this...” seeing a new wave of fear produced by his words, he changed the direction of his sentence. “But I’m using those same abilities to hide it from them now, to keep us all safe. They won’t stay here forever. Not after they’ve taken all they want.”

Aura swallowed hard again, “and how long will that take?”

“That I can’t give you a solid answer on. I fled before we finished fully researching this planet.”

“Can you give me a ballpark figure maybe, Ilian. I mean, this is my life we’re talking about,” she pleaded.

“Ballpark?” he thought a moment, “that means an estimation, right?”

“Ilian,” she pressed.

“Ten, twenty years, maybe? But I honestly don’t know. And it depends on how many...” he looked down, deciding against finishing that sentence.

“How many what?”

“How many of you are still alive, out there. And how long they will be,” he made himself give her the answer, to which she only choked back another sob in response to. “Like I said, I opposed their plan. If I hadn’t, why would I even be here talking to you now, Aura?”