Chapter Text
It’s some unholy hour of the night, and Caine can’t sleep.
Something in him, something unspoken and intrinsic, tells him that he’s really not supposed to be awake right now, and he feels it in the weight over his eyes and the heavy dragging at his bones. But sleep comes harder in the macroverse than it did in the digital space, and Caine finds himself shifting endlessly in the bed that Grant had given him.
Grant had called it a ‘spare room’, a place reserved for guests. And Caine had initially apologized profusely for taking up space meant for guests, but Grant had assured him it was fine. Especially since he never got guests anyways. So now it’s Caine’s room.
It’s plain and muted, color-wise, and it’s definitely a far cry from the bright, saturated hues of the Circus that Caine had previously considered home. It feels alien and hostile, and the room updates that Grant had promised really can’t come fast enough.
So he shifts every couple seconds, eyes locked onto the textured ceiling, and hopes that sleep will take him.
It doesn’t.
With a sigh, he sits up and pushes the blankets away from him. As he does, he pauses to stare at his legs wreathed in soft, comfortable pyjama pants in bright red and blue. Caine shifts his legs, watching as they follow his will, and finishes by wiggling his toes. The sensation is different, less ‘floaty’ than the circus, and he folds forward to reach down and touch his own skin.
The warmth against his palms is new and foreign. He’d never really had a temperature in the Circus, since the body under his clothes had been a grid-patterned transparent facsimile of a human body. And the more he thinks about it, the more he ponders the existence of his own corporeal form, the weirder he feels about it.
Not in a bad way. The weight and gravity of his own existence just pushes the limits of his perception of himself.
It doesn’t feel real, yet. Like he’s dreaming, and the second he wakes up, he’ll be once more stuck in the hell of his own design. The collapsing, fragmented shards of Caine’s destroyed, rotting empire spanning out around him like a broken halo, corrupting all it touches and staring uncaringly back as Caine screams and sobs his terror and grief.
A shudder runs through him. He can’t just sit here anymore and stew in his own worst nightmares—that’s how intrusive thoughts like the ones Bubble had sneered at him appear. Even if Bubble doesn’t exist anymore, the fear lingers like a wrinkle in lines of code that just doesn’t want to smooth out.
With a sigh—breathing is still an odd thing, and it’s so weird that it happens unconsciously—Caine slips out of bed and quietly makes his way towards the bedroom door. His hands find the knob and gingerly turn it.
The first thing he notices is the faint glow of a lamp at the bottom of the stairs. To his right, Grant’s bedroom door hangs open, where it’d previously been closed when the two of them turned in for the night. Caine furrows his brow.
Slowly, Caine makes his way down the stairs, mindful of how quiet his steps are. The carpet softens his footsteps even further, which Caine is thankful for, and he feels a swell of pride as he makes it to the bottom of the stairs without so much as a whisper. Then, he turns his attention to the living room.
The stairs lead directly onto the threshold between the kitchen and the living room, and Caine is woefully exposed here. But Grant isn’t a hostile creature, not in the slightest, and Caine isn’t fearful of being seen.
The couch is facing away from Caine, forming a 90 degree angle with another couch which faces the TV beneath the front window, and a tall floor lamp in the corner of the room is set to one of its lowest settings. Grant sits on the couch with his back to Caine and the stairs, and his shoulders are surprisingly relaxed.
Slowly, Caine creeps closer. His feet stick slightly to the hardwood floor as he walks, which makes him cringe at the quiet noise, but it’s quickly replaced by the sound of Grant muttering.
When Caine initially notices the sound, he freezes. He can’t make out individual words, but he is aware of the low-grade hissing static sound in his ears and the way the lamplight flickers ever-so-slightly, more like a flame dancing than an actual disturbance. Caine bites the inside of his cheek—a gesture he’s quite amused by, now that he’s in a human form—and slinks around the couch.
As he catches sight of Grant, he pauses again.
The older man doesn’t have those sunglasses on anymore, and his pale blue eyes are glassy and shimmer with vague flickers of fluorescent colors. He’s got his hands clasped together between his knees, his elbows resting on his thighs, and he looks at the floor without really seeming to see what’s there. His lips move with mutterings Caine only picks up fragments of: Loretta, circus, Evan, abstract.
The static is slightly louder here, not enough to be deafening, however, and Caine wrestles with his next move.
On one hand, he could just leave Grant to it and avoid the possibility of feeling weird, guilty, or sad about being the reason Grant is like this now. But the thought of leaving him makes Caine feel even more guilty, and he decides on his other option.
That being to sit down on the couch, albeit pressed against the armrest so Grant has as much space as he wants.
The second he does, his weight makes the couch dip. The movement makes Grant blink a few times, his hazy eyes growing clear and responsive once more, and he raises his head to look around. The static and muttering cease, and the lamplight’s flickering also returns to consistent, unchanging illumination.
Grant seems a little surprised that he’s out here, his mouth crooking slightly like he’s puzzling out some difficult problem, before he seems to notice Caine staring at him with wide eyes and a mouth set into a flat, mildly terrified line.
“Oh, Caine. I didn’t know you were up.” Grant says.
Caine blinks. He relaxes slightly, wringing his fingers. “I couldn’t sleep.”
“No?” Grant hums, before chuckling softly, “In a way, I suppose I couldn’t either.”
“What do you mean?” Caine asks.
Grant gestures for Caine to shuffle closer. He does.
“Well, I suppose you’d call it a form of sleepwalking. Oh, sleepwalking’s something that happens to some people for a lot of reasons. It’s where your body gets up while you’re asleep and does things that you’d do when you’re awake. What I have isn’t exactly that, but it’s the closest thing I can compare it to.” Grant explains patiently.
Caine hums, nodding. “So it doesn’t happen to every human?”
“Nope. There’s a lot of variation in the things humans do and experience, all due to genetics, environment, and in unfortunate cases, physical or mental trauma.”
“What are some things that you and our—I-I mean, your friends, have that aren’t something that everyone has?” Caine stumbles over his words, and he doesn’t miss the flicker of sympathy that passes over the man’s eyes.
But he doesn’t draw attention to the wording Caine used. Instead, he smiles and explains, “Christine was loosely diagnosed with autism as a child. She says it wasn’t ever truly, formally diagnosed, but she has a few things she needs to accommodate every day so that she feels comfortable and able to do what someone like me can do.”
“What’s autism?”
Grant presses a hand to his chin, tilting his head back slightly in thought. He remains like that for long enough that Caine’s worried he’s upset Grant… but eventually, he turns to Caine and explains, “It’s a fundamental difference in how a person’s brain processes and works. It’s not a bad thing, it just means that she struggles to stay in loud, bright places for a long time. She also doesn’t like how certain things feel when they touch her, or when she touches them. She also might have a bit of trouble navigating social situations, which might mean she struggles to react to emotional reactions, or relating to people. It can be isolating.”
Caine furrows his brow, thinking hard. He’s not sure, but…
“Grant?”
“Yes?”
“Do I have autism?”
Grant blinks at him. A moment later, he laughs. It’s not a mocking laugh, nor a cutting one, just an amused and incredulous outburst. Despite that, Caine’s face heats up. “I-I didn’t mean to be rude—”
“We could always get you tested once you’re on my insurance plan, if you’d like. Although I think it’s probably just a result of you previously being an AI.”
Caine nods, staring at his feet where his toe-tips just barely brush the rug. As he swings his feet, he listens to Grant describe some of the other things that set the rest of them apart from what Grant describes as someone with a ‘neurotypical mind’ and ‘a body that does what you want it to’.
Felix has something called ‘ADHD’, which makes him act impulsively and is actually very similar to Christine’s autism, albeit milder. He takes ‘medication’ for it, but also for his ‘depression’ and ‘anxiety’, which is a little pod he swallows whole every morning to make sure he’s not sad and on edge all the time. The light colored lines and splotches he’d seen on Felix’s hands are called ‘scars’, which are marks left behind when a ‘wound’ heals. He also has a ‘pet’ called a ‘gecko’, which is a small, quiet animal with four legs and a tail. Like a tiny alligator that eats bugs instead of candy or meat. And Caine is not allowed to talk about the gecko when something called a ‘land-lord’ is around because Felix is apparently not allowed to keep it in his apartment.
That seems a little dumb to Caine, who doesn’t see how a little gecko would destroy Chris and Felix’s whole house. Although he wasn’t sure how dangerous a gecko was until Grant pulled up a picture of a ‘leopard gecko’ on his phone. Once he saw those big eyes, teeny little feet, and smiling face, Caine knew then that a land-lord might be a bit unreasonable.
Dakota is ‘non-binary’, which means they don’t feel like a man or a woman, but rather something without gender at all. That one’s a bit hard for Caine to wrap his head around, which Grant described as being ‘because Caine was a being created in binary’. Apparently, as long as Caine is genuine and well-intentioned with his questions for them, they’d likely be willing to answer any he has. Grant also seemed a little sad when he added that Dakota has ‘chronic pain’, which is pain that never stops and that the medication thing might not ever help feel better.
That information makes Caine’s chest feel tight and heavy again.
Olivia also has that depression and anxiety thing that Felix has, but she has to be on a more powerful medication for it or she struggles to go outside. She also has something called ‘tendonitis’ that makes her arm hurt when she draws too much. But thankfully, that one can be helped with medication.
Jocelyn has two different colored eyes, which is rare and pretty and a very nice thing to learn about. Caine finds himself a little excited about that one, since he also has ‘heterochromia’, and hearing Grant describe it as pretty is really, really nice. But she also has something called ‘CPTSD’ which hurts to learn about again, because it meant that she was treated violently and horribly when she was little and couldn’t protect herself from the people who were supposed to care for her and love her.
When Grant comes to the end of his explanation, the sky outside is just starting to turn murky blue-gray from a deep, light-polluted navy, and exhaustion is starting to creep in at the edges of his mind. His eyelids feel like weights have been placed on them, making it a fight to keep his eyes open. It’s even weirder when an involuntary sensation blooms in his lungs, making him open his mouth and suck in a deep, satisfying breath.
Once it subsides, Caine looks up at Grant and asks, “What was that?”
Grant smiles. “That was a yawn. It means you’re tired.”
“Well, I could’ve told you that.” Caine snorts, which pulls a laugh from Grant.
A moment later, Grant rises to his feet and stretches, his arms reaching high above his head as he, too, yawns. He shakes himself out afterwards, like he’s trying to shed the sleepiness from his bones, and turns towards Caine. “Come on. Let’s get you into bed.”
Caine nods, another yawn pulling him into exhaustion again. He lets Kinger lead him across the room and up the stairs.
Grant stops in front of Caine’s bedroom door, where Caine hesitates. He glances back at Grant. “Do you think I’ll be able to fall asleep now?”
With a shrug and a smile, Grant replies, “I suppose we’ll have to see. But between you and me, I think it’ll come to you very easily.”
Caine nods, turning back towards his room. He slips through the door, rolling into his bed and pulling the blankets up over his body. The warmth is immediate, a soothing, spreading comfort that pulls him closer to the enveloping embrace of sleep.
As Grant pulls the door shut, he says a soft, “Good night, little bee.”
Caine’s eyes grow heavier and heavier, but he manages to slur out a reply of, “G’night…” before sinking into soft dreams.
“You hear about that weird signal spike at OL-77 the other day?” Comes a woman’s voice at Lillian’s left.
Lillian pauses in typing up her daily report, blonde hair falling into her face as she glances at her coworker Heather, who peers over her shoulder at the mess that is Lillian’s desk. WIth a shrug, Lillian leans back in her rolling chair. “No? I’ve been off for a few days.”
Heather hums, drumming her fingers. “I’m surprised! It’s all anyone can talk about.”
“Then talk about it.” Lillian says with a teasing smirk.
Heather laughs, her auburn bob bouncing. As she does, the fluorescent panel lights overhead reflect off the C&A brooch on the right side of her shirt. “So you know how the Obsolete Location buildings are under state ownership now, and they’re supposed to be cordoned off?”
“Yeah?”
“Well, someone was messing around in one, probably some civilian, and they did something that sent this huuuuuge signal spike through our system. There was a blackout and everything! And now David is assembling a group of field staff to go check it out!”
Lillian snorts. “David? Doing something himself? That’s a miracle.”
“I know, right? There must be something important there!”
“Maybe…” Lillian starts in a low voice, “...maybe it’s the old AI?”
Heather’s eyes grow round. “You know the supervisors don’t like us talking about the old stuff!”
Rolling her eyes, Lillian spins her chair around to face her computer again. “They don’t like us yapping at each other mid-shift, either, but here we are.”
Heather huffs, either in amusement or annoyance, and leaves. Once she’s gone, Lillian takes a deep breath and opens the company’s news board.
Sure enough, there’s an announcement from David about the weird signal spike two days ago. A few of the C&A staff have commented underneath the post, confused about the whole thing, but that’s not something that interests Lillian. Instead, she furrows her brow and focuses on the large banner over the announcement.
REMEMBER: THE COMPANY IS TO REMAIN ANONYMOUS. DO NOT DISCLOSE SENSITIVE COMPANY INFORMATION TO ANYONE OUTSIDE THE COMPANY.
Lillian sighs, leaning on one hand. Her mind drifts back to the circumstances leading to her taking a job here: an encrypted message from an anonymous email address drifting into her inbox, promising a well-paying, comfortable job.
Well, she’d gotten just that. But there’s a lot she still doesn’t know about C&A, other than that there was an accident with their AI programs in 1996 that nobody likes to talk about. She just keeps her head down and works hard, and makes fun connections with her equally-ignorant coworkers.
The tidbits of info she does get, however… those are intriguing enough to make her mind race with theories. And she’s not leaving such an interesting job that easily.
Especially not now that the company’s mobilizing for field investigations…
“Thought you two wouldn’t show.” Dakota teases from where they sit nonchalantly at a coffee shop table.
Felix bares his teeth in a cocky grin. “Yeah, you’d love that, wouldn’t you?”
Dakota snorts, adjusting their position sitting at the table as Chris and Felix sit down. Beside Dakota, Jocelyn greets the pair gleefully. As Dakota reaches out for their cup, their bones crack and pop incessantly.
That’s one of Dakota’s weird ‘things’ lingering after leaving the circus: they’re now hypermobile and their bones are always making noise. It’s even creepier, at least to Felix, when Dakota’s wearing something that exposes their limbs instead of their ever-present black leather jacket.
Because whenever Dakota moves, structures move and roll under their skin in the shape of some of their previous misshapen Zooble limbs. Ridges and bumps, sliding under the flesh like something trying to get out. But nothing shows up on x-rays or anything.
The tradeoff for looking that absurdly creepy kinda sucks, though: Dakota has low-grade chronic pain, which wasn’t a thing before the circus, apparently. It’s evident even now, in the tense set of their shoulders and the slight tremor in their fingers.
Felix never thought he’d have sympathy for Dakota of all people, but here he is.
“Is Olivia on break soon?” Chris asks, reaching for the coffee that Jocelyn had likely bought.
Jocelyn—formerly Ragatha—smiles sweetly, her mismatched blue-and-brown eyes gleaming. “Dakota says so! But who knows how long it’ll take, since Olivia has a bunch of new hires she needs to help out.”
“I keep telling ‘Via she’s not, like, obligated to put work stuff over taking a break, but she doesn’t listen to me.” Dakota mutters, tapping their index finger on the lid of their cup. Their long, black undercut falls over their right eye, dipping down to brush their chin, and it’s impossible for Felix not to make a joke at their expense.
“You gonna grab your guitar and belt out Welcome to the Black Parade or something?” Felix teases, eyes glittering.
A single green eye locks onto Felix, glaring daggers in his direction. “Don’t you have a League of Legends tournament to lose, four-eyes?”
Before Dakota and Felix can start throwing out more insults, Chris loudly interjects, “ANYWAYS, Felix and I have, um, something pretty important to tell you guys. Once Olivia’s here, I mean.”
Dakota’s glare softens. “Must be something pretty insane. You look tense.”
“Do I?” Chris laughs, “I didn’t know.”
Dakota leans back in their chair, reaching up to tug at a few vividly-dyed pink, yellow, and cyan strands of hair at the end of their forelock. “Felix hasn’t been an abysmal roommate, has he?”
“Excuse the fuck out of you, I am an incredible roommate.” Felix shoots back, offended.
WIth a laugh, Chris replies, “He’s right, actually. We’ve had no issues.”
Aside from the AIIB guy who hit us with the Nightmare Beam, Felix thinks to himself.
Judging by the way Chris shifts slightly in discomfort, she’s thinking the same thing. Felix leans forward on one arm, using his other to drum his fingertips against the table. And despite his best efforts, he can’t stop the way his grin slides down into a tense frown.
What if there’s more of those guys watching us?
He glances back at the floor-to-ceiling windows spanning the length of the front of the coffee shop. People pass by sporadically outside, some of which nonchalantly glance through the glass. But Felix has always been bad at remembering people’s faces, and he doesn’t know if someone he’s seen before is passing back again, staring in at them.
Dakota’s voice cuts through his thoughts and drags him out of his anxiety, “Must’ve been something bad if Felix is struggling to be an ass.”
Felix scoffs, eyes flicking up to Dakota as his grin returns, albeit strained. “I never struggle to be an ass.”
“Oh, I know it comes naturally to you, but—”
“Okay, can we take it easy?” Jocelyn pipes up, shooting a nervous smile around the table, “We’re here for a nice, friendly time, remember? And if there’s a problem, we’ll deal with it together.”
Felix rolls his eyes, but doesn’t fire a cutting remark Jocelyn’s way. At least he can tolerate her better than Dakota now—Jocelyn’s gotten a lot better at saying what she’s actually thinking instead of suffocating it under forced positivity. And Felix can at least respect that.
Dakota is still Felix’s number one rival, though, and that’s just how he likes it.
“Hey guys, sorry I’m late!” A high-pitched voice chirps from the direction of the counter.
Felix glances to his left to see Olivia, who’s no longer a red ribbon attached to a porcelain mask, but a short, blonde girl with fluffy hair that dips to the middle of her back. Her eyes are wide and dark blue, and too-large, round glasses sit lightly on her nose. She’s wearing a pastel pink knit cardigan over her black work uniform and apron, and she lets out a tired huff as she slumps down in the empty seat next to Dakota. “I was supposed to go on break an hour ago.”
Dakota laughs, their face softening at the sight of Olivia. “You should’ve just said that you’re going on break and left.”
Olivia drags her hands down her face. “I couldn’t just leave the new girls on their own! They looked so nervous!”
Felix waves a hand dismissively before reaching for his cold cup of hot chocolate. “It’s a non-Starbucks coffee shop, Ribbons, it’s no biggie if someone’s stupid caramel-soybean-vanilla-frappe-decaf-latte gets messed up once.”
Olivia throws her hands in the air. “It is, though! Our shop can’t rely on a multi-million-dollar chain to fund it if we have a bad sale day!”
Before Felix can jokingly shoot something back, Chris leans forward on the table, raising her voice slightly. “So, Felix and I have a lot to tell you guys about. Felix, should I tell them, or do you want to?”
Felix opens his mouth, momentarily considering spinning a bullshit story. But the hair at the back of his neck prickles like he’s being watched, and he deflates. His attention snaps back to the front window.
There’s nothing there.
He glances back at the table. “Go ahead.”
Chris shifts, wringing her fingers together on the table. “Felix and I, uh, we went exploring an old C&A building—”
“Why would you do that?!” Jocelyn cries, eyes wide and terrified as she rises in her seat slightly.
Felix waves a hand. “Give her a minute, Rags, Jesus.”
Reluctantly, Jocelyn lowers herself again. Chris continues.
“W-well, Felix and I were gonna smash any functional computers so nobody else gets stuck, you know? But, uh… I may have ended up…” She grins shakily, nervously, “...pulling Caine out?”
Silence.
Not a normal pause..
Gut-punched silence.
Dakota is the first to speak, voice shaking with anger. “You what?”
The lights in the mostly-empty coffee shop flicker, the fixture directly above their table actually dying completely with a sharp POP. The temperature drops a couple degrees, the chill causing Felix to shiver, and there’s a low buzzing in his ears that brings to mind an old TV. The handful of other patrons, mostly elderly folks, murmur in confusion at the flickering lights but seem mostly unbothered.
Anger rises hot and caustic in Felix’s throat, protectiveness and hostility warring with the little voice at the back of his mind telling him to wait. But impulse control has never been Felix’s strong suit, and he bares his teeth, which itch horribly as they reshape into jagged animal fangs. “Let her talk.”
Dakota narrows their eyes, obviously annoyed with the situation. Thankfully, however, Olivia lightly reaches out and laces her fingers with Dakota’s. Dakota jumps at the touch, glancing down at their intertwined hands, and sighs while leaning back in their seat. “Okay. I’m listening.”
“So, um… he’s not really the Caine you would imagine. He’s actually just a kid. Maybe thirteen years old? Fourteen at a push. But he’s with Grant, and he’s gonna take care of Caine.” Chris explains.
After a few more heartbeats of silence, Jocelyn speaks in a gentler voice than Felix anticipated, “Is he… violent? Or malicious?”
“Nah. He’s pretty excited to see everything the ‘macroverse’ has to offer.” Felix replies. “He’s already experienced the wonders of 2am McDonalds and the nightmare that is the Walmart self-checkout lane.”
“That’s good, right?” Olivia asks, “After all, the more he sees of the world he wanted to replicate, the more he’ll realize why we wanted to leave…right?”
Christine sighs, rubbing at her left temple. “He seems to want to stay and be a human, so I don’t think there’s any desire to go back to the digital world and drag us with him.”
Now that the whole Caine bombshell is out of the way, and now that Dakota seems to be gearing up to speak again, Felix raises his voice and speaks before they can. “We have news on something a lot more important than a 13 year old kid, though!”
All eyes snap onto him. Folding his arms across his chest, he leans back with a jagged grin. “Grant’s fancy anonymous big boss decided it’s a good idea to start testing weird shit on us. He sent some little henchman to our apartment yesterday with a signal jammer prototype that ended up giving us satanic levels of nasty symptoms. Chris begged me to tell you all—”
“WE decided TOGETHER that it’d be a good idea to let you guys know. Just in case one of these guys drops by any of your places,” Christine interrupts, “But yeah, it was… nasty.”
Dakota smirks at Felix. “I hope Felix passed out.”
“We both ended up being knocked completely off our feet, actually,” Chris continues, “It was like suddenly being hit with some horrible, horrible flu. And it just made me realize that we…”
Felix glances at her. Chris’s hands are laced together on the table, her face fighting to remain neutral and collected despite the watery glaze over her eyes and the twitch in her brows. “...we aren’t human like we were before.”
Nobody says anything for a long time. But Felix isn’t necessarily aware of what the other three people at the table are doing, since he’s watching Chris violently fight against a breakdown in total silence. His eyes drift to her hands. Momentarily, he considers reaching out.
But Dakota, Olivia, and Jocelyn are right there.
That shouldn’t matter, something in his mind hisses.
Felix compromises. He moves his leg subtly, silently, so that his thigh bumps against Chris’. She twitches at the contact, blinking a few times as she comes back to herself. And thankfully, she doesn’t bring attention to it outside of ever-so-slightly pressing back against him.
“Who gives a shit?” Felix scoffs, waving a hand dismissively, “We still look like it, we’re unfortunately bound by the shackles of capitalism and required to live like it, and it’s not like we’re suddenly… I dunno, like, twisted-ass werewolves or anything. All in all, we got a pretty alright deal out of escaping. And, like, at least we don’t look like our avatars.”
With a sigh, Dakota replies, “He’s right, as much as I hate to admit it. Personally, I’m glad I don’t look like a modern art piece anymore. Chronic pain be damned, I can shred on a guitar.”
“That’s the spirit, bootleg Gerard Way!” Felix crows, jabbing a thumbs-up in their direction.
“He’s the vocalist, dipshit.”
In response, Felix exaggeratedly adjusts his glasses, pushes out his front teeth over his bottom lip dorkily, and holds up a finger. In a mocking tone, he says,. “Um, actually, you got your MCR trivia wrong—”
Jocelyn sighs loudly, rubbing at her temples. “Can you two get along for more than two seconds, please?”
“Absolutely not.” Both Felix and Dakota reply in unison.
“The guy who hit you guys with the signal jammer, was he malicious about it?” Olivia pipes up, dragging Felix back to the ground.
Chris shakes her head. “No, actually. He seemed really surprised by it, if I’m being honest. And he left when Felix told him to.”
“When I threatened him, you mean.” Felix corrects.
“Sure.” Chris says. “But he seemed to feel uncomfortable with the idea of making us suffer.”
With an unconvinced scoff, Felix flicks the side of his half-full cup. “Yeah, yeah, he felt bad. But he didn’t leave until I scared him. He knew he was killing you. And I still had to threaten him to leave.”
“I wasn’t—” Chris protests, but Felix cuts her off.
“You didn’t see what you looked like,” Felix says bluntly, “You were closer to him than I was, and you looked like you were dying.”
Jocelyn sucks in a sharp breath through her teeth. Running a hand shakily through her long red hair, she says, “Th-that doesn’t sound great. Like, at all. Chris, are you sure there’s no lingering effects? Felix?”
At her question, Felix takes stock of his own body.
His joints ache mildly, which he’d previously just chocked up to sleeping in a weird pose. There’s the slightest, miniscule threat of a headache behind his eyeballs that’s been sitting heavily there since the guy had left yesterday, and he’s got the slightest tremor in his fingers. But aside from that, there’s nothing wrong. These things could easily be just due to the weather, or the cold. Or his meds.
Chris doesn’t look bad anymore either, aside from the slight exhaustion hanging beneath her eyes and the slightly pallid tone to her face. She doesn’t seem to have any tremors either, which is a relief.
“I don’t think I feel any worse than I did before.” Felix concludes.
Chris nods. “Yeah, I don’t think I’ve got any side effects either.”
“Good. But, uh… take care of yourselves.” Jocelyn says. Her eyes flit warily towards the window behind Felix, which he also turns to look at.
He makes a millisecond of eye contact with some woman walking past, which makes the hair on his neck stand on end, but he doesn’t have any concrete evidence of her actually being a threat. So he turns back around and listens in relative silence as the rest of his companions slip into more casual conversation.
It feels like there’s a cloud of misfortune hanging over their heads that only Felix can sense, and he doesn’t like it at all.
