Chapter Three: We Won't Live Forever
Water drags at my thighs, my knees, my ankles, resisting each step I take. Despite the underwater treadmill being on the second lowest speed and being currently set on the lowest level, my chest heaves as if I had been running for an hour straight instead of thirty minutes.
Gasping for breath, I fumble for the controls, my hand shaking with exertion. The treadmill stops and the last bubbles from the jets stream to the surface. I stumble to the submerged stairs and plop down on one with a splash, leaning my head on the step flush with the floor of the gym, eyes shut tightly.
This is silly. I am shaking, my heart beating so fast it almost hurts, my energy sapped so thoroughly that my body is left as an empty, heavy shell, and I am not even halfway through my daily lap quota. It's not even that many! My legs don't ache at all, and if it weren't for the ever-present drag of exhaustion, I could finish it all in one go.
But here I am, gasping so hard it's difficult to gulp down a few mouthfuls of water. Shoot the Parasite and all its energy-sucking tradeoffs for having powers. I want my body back. I want my energy back. I want me back. I grit my teeth and haul myself out of the water, gravity dragging at my limbs and forcing me to consider how comfortable the floor looks right now.
I hang my head, gripping the edge of the small pool. Five minutes. Take a five minute break and then finish the laps. You can do this. Come on, Elias, you can do this. Straightening, I reach for my towel, dry my face, pick out an energy-giving snack, and tear off a piece with my teeth. It's tough and sweet, and even with no hunger pangs seasoning its taste, I can almost feel the Parasite sending an extra flood of saliva.
It wants my energy to survive, my nutrients to grow, my body as a safe home, and it gets it. There's nothing I can do about it. No surgery, no matter how delicately or expertly led by nanobots and the best surgeons, could detangle the Parasite from my brain stem and spine. No poisons or antibodies or anything imaginable will kill it without killing me. It wants to live as much as I do. But to live and thrive, one of us must eventually die.
I hate it. I hate it so much it screams in my cells, it turns the PowDown patch's constant cool into an acidic burn, it makes my hands want to rip at my skin and tear out the Parasite with bloody fingers. I hate so much that it burns so hot and strong it eats through all the fuel and there's nothing left in me to do anything about it.
My body is slowly falling to the Parasite's curse. I am dying and it hurts. Hurts because there's nothing I can do. Hurts because there must be something, somehow, that can stop it. Hurts because the doctors say I have roughly four and a bit years left. Hurts because I might die without getting my life turned around and doing something more than recovering from being a villain.
It's not fair. It's a childish reason but it isn't fair and—
"Breathe, Elias. In four seconds, out four seconds."
With a shudder, I inhale, hold, and exhale like Dr. Egret taught me until the spiraling cyclone of panic swirls itself out of existence. When it's gone, I brush back the hair sticking to my forehead and sigh. Megabytes and terabytes combined, I have to stop doom spiraling during exercise.
Taking a moment to orient myself, I sweep my gaze over the large, open gym and its occupants. Today, only the Storm Cell team (who's visiting today) and I are using the underwater treadmills, with the rest of the people using the Hero-grade specialized gym equipment on the far side of the room.
David is in the pool to my left, earbuds in and face scrunched in deep concentration as he nearly sprints against the strong current. Edison was in the pool to my right, but he must've left for the bathroom or something while I wasn't looking as his pool is empty and still.
No one to notice my plight. Great.
Titular walks down the path between the rows of pools, towel slung over her shoulder, a bundle in her arms, and black bun somehow dripping more water than her long-sleeved bathing suit. She pauses before she passes me, glancing at me with that quick once-over that feels more like a scanner than a friendly check up. "It's only going to get worse."
What's only going to... I sneak a peek at my fingers. They're blank white from my previous exertion. The edges of my doom spiral slink back, skirting the fringes of my mind. A scowl twists my face. "Thanks, that helps a lot."
She frowns, a slight wrinkle to her brow. "We won't live forever. No one does. Parasite carriers simply live shorter than most."
Like that makes me feel better. "Easy for you to say. You're not dying as fast as I am." I twist my fingers together, smudging my thumb across my palm. It's blank white on pale tan, making the dark ink of the viper and nine of spades tattoo stand starkly against my skin.
Viper for Deception (probably; it seems the most likely) and the spades for me (probably, again), both wrapped in mystery and remnants of people I don't remember. I've lost so much time to the emptiness of the blank—time and relationships and answers to the questions that haunt my dreams—and now I am left with this, a tattoo, a permanent evidence to a life so different from this mess I am living now.
"How are you so calm about it?" The words come before I decide to speak them. "About dying young and all. Don't you wish you had more time?"
Titular tilts her head slightly, gaze sharp and intent. "Whose definition of 'young' are you using? For a Parasite carrier, we aren't dying young. We're dying exactly when we're supposed to."
She gestures to the other heroes around us with a nod and a flick of her hand. "Unlike Galah and most heroes, I am not here to go out with a bang. I am here because I know where I am coming from and where I am going. The time I have is exactly as much as I need to complete my mission in life." Shifting the bundle in her arms, she pulls out my holopad (since when did she get that?) and hands it to me. "You also have exactly as much time as you need."
I tuck my holopad in the dry folds of my towel, barely glancing at the screen (I'll look at it later). "How do you know four and a bit years is enough time? I don't even know who I am, let alone what I want to do!"
"Everything happens for a purpose." She fixes me with a steady, unreadable look. "Ask someone who does know." And with that, she strides past me, back straight and steps purposeful.
I stare, teeth clenched so hard my jaw starts to ache. What kind of cryptic, confused answer is that? It's not helpful in the least! Why can't anyone give me a straight answer instead of leaving it to me to figure out? A growl lodges in my throat and I wash it down with an aggressive swig of water. 'Ask someone who knows.' Like anyone knows who I am anymore.
Glowering at the pool, I chew through the last bits of my snack, kicking my feet slowly to cause waves. Sticky frizzles and sparks storm around behind my ribs, flashing red each time they peel themselves off my bones. I want to snap and snarl with them but that would only draw attention.
"Did she drop a bomb and leave you with the aftermath?"
Jerking my head up, I blink at David watching me, eyebrows tilted. He's panting, the water in his pool still sloshing from his running, and his earbuds hang in the air over a small hover pad. He almost looks normal, like a friend concerned for the other. But I know him well enough now to see the stiffness of his shoulders, the anxious twitch of his fingers, the guarded empathy he wears like a shield against whatever I could throw at him.
Something dark and sour twists my mouth and I sweep a hand through my hair, averting my gaze. "Something like that."
"That's Titular for you. She's...not the best at reading the room or social interaction in general."
Yeah, I've noticed. The charged silence that falls between us stretches taut like a rubber band pulled too far. If one of us lets go—says something burning like, 'So you're finally talking to me now' or 'I've missed playing video games with you even though it was only that one time' or 'I'm sorry I'm not who you remember'—maybe the other will snap and sting and all our unspoken wounds will spill open.
Or maybe the band itself will snap and we'll be one step closer to bridging the churning mist between us. Whatever it will be, neither of us takes the first step. Neither of us knows how. How can we? I am not Denizen, Blank Slate, even the Younger Elias Edison speaks of. I am just Elias, a name and a face which doesn't quite fit, which isn't quite filled, which isn't quite me.
And he...he's David, Dan, Formic, the first person to show me kindness and the first person I betrayed. So we look at each other with shields up, walls built, waiting for the pieces of each other we know to cross the gap and wave a flag of truce.
David clears his throat. "If you want to talk about it, I'm here." His eyes are averted and a hand cups his neck, fingers tightening and loosening like the nervous beat of a heart.
He's hurting and yet, he's offering to help me. Megabytes, why does he have to be so nice? Why can't he be mad at me like a normal person? I grip my hair and pull, letting my arms shake with the effort, letting the fizzles and sparks scream around my lungs, letting anything and everything complicated tangle itself into a knotted ball and carefully tucking it away in a dark corner of my mind.
My hands drop from my hair and I slide into the water with a long sigh. "Are you..." Sitting on one of the steps, I let my hand hang just over the water. A single bead of water slides down my finger, lingering on the tip, then drops with a soft plop. The ripples are big compared to it but impossibly insignificant compared to the rest of the pool. "Are you afraid of dying? Do you sometimes...wish you had more time?"
Another drop slides down my finger. It glistens in the light as it gathers itself, stretches down, down, down, and drops. Ripples, then stillness.
"Wow, she really did drop a bomb on you."
Lingering, stretching, falling. Ripples. Stillness. Then again, lingering, falling, caught in the air for a single, shining moment. Then ripples, stillness.
"To be frank, yeah, yeah I do. I wish I had more time here to, well, live and see my friends—my team—heal and be happy and all."
I still, an invisible hand squeezing my heart. If I could spend more time with my brother...repair my relationship with David...I could do so much more with more time. My throat thickens and I struggle to swallow. "Me too."
Water shifts and a warm hand touches my shoulder. I look up and meet David's gaze. It's warm and heavy with grief and loss, but a spark of something as soft as a feather shines through. He retracts his hand and reaches up to the necklace hanging around his neck, feeling the links between his forefinger and thumb. "I don't know if you believe in a life after death and all, but I do, and..."
His fingers find the small mouse trinket on the necklace and he curls his fist around it. "I'm going to see them—my friends and family—again after this is over. In that place there's no more pain or broken things and we'll all be healed. It'll be okay in the end." A wishful, sad smile turns up the corners of his lips. "Remembering that helps me be okay with—with the end, even though it scares me from time to time."
Something shifts in my chest, restless like a prowling bank of fog, and it pulls at my face, scrunching and prodding it into something twisted. My lips twitch. "That must be nice to believe in." I haven't given much thought to the existence of life after death. Maybe it's there, maybe it's not; how can we know? How can anyone believe in it? No one's ever seen it, no one can prove it's there, and no one can prove it's not there. It isn't an argument I want to join—there's no use. But David...believes in it. How? Why? Doesn't it sound too good to be true?
David shrugs, dropping his hand from his necklace. "It's better than despair, isn't it?"
"I guess." I heave a sigh, trying to dislodge the fog bank, but it clings to my lungs like condensation. "I don't see how all of you are so positive about this. I know I should focus on all the good things and all that positive thinking stuff but I can't—" My tongue catches on my teeth,"—I can't ignore this." I wave at my tan skin, my white-tipped fingers, the shadowed crescents under my eyes, all of it. All of the evidence. I'm dying, a voice cries in my head. I'm dying and I can't stop it.
Eyebrows tilting, David reaches towards me. "Have hope, Elias. It won't be like this forever. One day you'll find out what you want to do and everything else will come more easily after that."
I sigh and scrub my hands through my curls. They're limp from sweat and water and stick to my fingers like soggy fur. "How are you so sure?"
"It's hope." He smiles that wishful, sad smile again. "Hope and faith for something better to come. It gives you something to live for."
Hope. Something so nebulous, so intangible and whimsical, and it's—something to live for. Something to keep on going despite the horrible deck life has handed me. I smoosh my face around, my eyelids weighted and leaden and the rest of me sagging under the pull of gravity. It's just—everything nothing. "I'm trying." It comes as a rough whisper and I don't bother correcting it. That's all I can really say. I am trying. Really hard.
"Yeah." Weariness mirrors in David's face and he sweeps his gaze around the room, lips pressed together. David fixes his attention back on me, offering a lopsided smile that doesn't quite lift the tiredness from his eyes. "Come on, let's get Citizen, clean up, and be miserable couch potatoes together for a while."
It's a peace offering, a rare opening (from David) for distraction from gloomy thoughts, and I almost smile back, my cheeks moving more than my mouth. "Yeah. Let's...do that."
Later, as we're piled on my twin bed watching a movie, wrapped in extra blankets and nestled in extra pillows, I place a hand over my heart, twisting my wrist to hide the viper tattoo. Warmth embalms me from all sides and the smooth rhythm of Edison's breathing beside me soothes the dark storm inside. I nestle into my pillow, leaning my head on Edison's shoulder, letting my eyes slip closed for a little while.
For a moment, there is just my heart beating and the soft drone of the movie in the background. One heartbeat, two. Two heartbeats, three. Three heartbeats, four.
I once read a theory that each living creature lives for one billion heartbeats and how long they lived depended on how fast their heart beat. A blue whale lives longer than a mouse because its heartbeat is a slow, steady rhythm, while a mouse's is the tempo of quick skittering of feet.
Where do humans fit on that scale? Why can some live longer than most? Does the Parisite steal heartbeats? How many heartbeats do I have left? Two skip past and I find myself counting. Is that my four millionth, two thousandth, five hundred and ninety ninth? Or is it my seven millionth, nine thousandth, two hundred, and sixty second?
Titular believes that she has exactly enough time—exactly enough heartbeats—to live. David believes in a life after death where everything will be alright. And I...I am just here, measuring the seconds passing through my heartbeat and fighting through the current of life one step at a time.
I won't live forever—none of us do. I have to accept that. But in the time I have left, I have to keep on trying. Edison slips an arm around my shoulder and squeezes. A bit of the heaviness slips off my chest. At least...I won't be alone.
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