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After the escape, Miles falls asleep heavily and abruptly, scarred and hurting, but wakes up so soft . He feels floaty, weightless, and warm all over. There's no chill or smell of the seedy motel room they have rented.
His mind goes to the rusty memories of what it was like to have people by his side, the slow mornings with someone's arms around him, tugging him close. Lazy kisses and idle chatter before a litany of work calls would start.
But that's not it, and it's not a great heating or a very good duvet; he didn't manage to find either of those yesterday afternoon.
When Miles turns on his other side, there's a feeling of being tucked in by a loved one. He desperately wants to stay on the verge of falling back asleep, wants to wake up later with bright sun high in the sky, fresh and clear air with no reek of blood or death, with Walrider calm and secure under his skin when they continue their journey home.
Distantly, a room phone starts giving a chime from where it sits on the dresser.
Some of the warmth seeps away from Miles, and he can hear the stationary phone clattering on the wooden surface, the cheap plastic starting to crack while Walrider figures out how to stop the sound.
The understanding that it's trying to keep quiet, to not break this moment of peace, melts Miles's heart a little.
When he opens his eyes, some nanites fly away from his face so as not to obscure his view. It's a rainy early night, and their room is dark, the light from the street lamps barely comes through the thick blinds. They couldn't have been here for more than a couple of hours, and he still intends to rest a little more after they deal with the chiming.
Walrider doesn't need to see him in the dark when he makes the gesture of picking up the phone. He lowers his hand, and the nanites that got scattered by his movement cling to him again.
“ Eddie, dear ,” the sweet lady that runs the motel says, and her voice is so strained that his blood immediately runs cold. “ I know it's late, but these people want to talk-- ” and the stillness instantly breaks as Walrider explodes around him in shrieking swarms.
It dashes through the room, punches the phone into the dresser, and deeply cuts Miles in its panic. As Walrider disperses, the avalanche of sensations blinds him, and everything hurts and smells of rot, mold, he feels dozens of bugs in his bed, in the sheets, even on himself , and throws up with nothing but bile.
The fingers Walrider has made for him are gone, and it's far too difficult to get up as his body folds into itself. The fucker has left him, completely, just like that.
He wheezes into the buzzing darkness, “ Jesus fucking christ , CALM DOWN!” But Walrider doesn't listen, so Miles has to blindly crawl to the ground to lay between the bed and a shabby windowsill while it destroys the room to think, think, think .
He takes a lonely breath and then curses loudly into the swirling room, barely managing to grab his phone from the bedside table. Believing he has dealt with the worst of Murkoff and can afford a day of rest was absolutely moronic, but he can fix it now, do what he kept the phone for, and then let Walrider smash it to smithereens.
He fumbles with the phone, almost throwing it away when it turns on and highlights all blood and gore, but tries to look at his contact list to memorize phone numbers of his ex-colleagues, of someone he could turn to, someone who can be his eyes and ears while he finds his footing.
How long has it been, three minutes? Above him, swarms start assembling into handfuls, growing more collected. He's already exhausted.
A curtain rod almost lands on him when Walrider tears down the blinds, and Miles knows it will break the window but can't collect himself enough to try rolling under the bed. It reminds him of his experience with war correspondence, when his luck ran out and he could only wait for the world to stop screaming.
When his grip on the phone slips, he just doesn't pick it up. Blake Langermann's number becomes his biggest comfort.
“Hey, soldier,” Miles aims for gentle. “You fucker. Come here, it's fine.”
Walrider breaks the window but doesn't leave. He snaps.
“We gotta work on those nerves of yours, holy shit ,” he would try catching nanites with his hands if he could. “What am I supposed to do here? I'm not about to baby talk a weapon. I can't even hear you anymore.”
In his mottled vision the light from the street lamp catches on Walrider like a highlight on a tide, almost gracious, as it finally stretches towards him and cuts into his skull.
It cradles his head with rough affection as its being completes his, but now Miles wishes there was more cruelty to it, some sort of anger he could deal with, when instead he's overwhelmed with sadness so palpable and harsh he almost snarls at it again.
Someone bangs on the door when Miles turns to his side to vomit blood. He laughs bitterly, having believed something he shouldn't have.
It roams in his head, but stays quiet, and Miles doesn't miss the irony in the way it can't actually apologize to him. Because it doesn't know how to. Because he never did it himself.
Walrider pulls his face from the puked blood and pushes him towards the window, but he just crushes into the windowsill like a ragdoll.
“I can't,” he mumbles into heaps of glass. The door gives a loud creak under the ambush. “You have to drive.”
“I can't,” it replies, and yet still tries to raise his hand. Its nanites detach with hurried effort, ruining whatever is left of him even more. But Miles's body desperately needs time to get its bearings.
“Kill whoever enters and come back.”
At least sadness gives way to apprehension at the mention of the threat.
His legs and arms go numb as Walrider focuses on his organs, severing as much of itself as it can afford to deal with the targets quicker. Miles decides to get drunk to forget how he woke up.
The intruders finally break down the door, and Walrider doesn't wait for the first shot. Miles hears it grinding bodies into dust and closes his eyes.