Miles

It took all day and three trips to cart the majority of supplies from Dr. Gore's clinic on the Fault to his new establishment across the river in the south. The building he moved into was the only one in the factory district that wasn't completely in shambles. But it was far from clean and the water came out rusty and smelling like blood. "We'll have to fix that," Dr. Gore said, unperturbed by the brown water. Piper was as disturbed as I was. He didn't say anything, but the muscles in his face were working hard to not pull into a grimace.

We made our last trip as the sun was setting over the smoke stacks to the west. I didn't like the idea of hanging around Jaggar territory during the night, but Dr. Gore, with all of his selfish optimism insisted that we were fine and since he was my only ride home, I had no choice but to unpack supplies by lamp light and practice controlling my fear.

"We'll get electricity turned on by tomorrow," Dr. Gore said as he entered the main room. It was the same size as the waiting room in the old place, but it felt smaller because of the low ceiling that bowed a little in the middle of the room. "Do you mind helping Piper clean up the new lab?" he asked me without looking at me. Then he picked up a box and walked out of the room without anything further.

"Sure," I said to the empty room.

In the soon-to-be-lab, Piper was wiping down every counter and wall with a strong disinfectant. The smell burned my nose, but it made a noticeable improvement on the color of the tile. "You're going to want gloves if you're helping me," he said without looking up. The guy was acting more and more like Dr. Gore each day. "This stuff is pretty much straight acid."

"Sounds delightful," I said and looked around for some gloves.

"They're in a box in the back of the truck," Piper said.

I took a deep breath of dusty air before walking out into the twilight to look for gloves. Darkness was closing in quickly and there were no street lamps in this part of the city. Only a few lights on the corners of the factory buildings to help the creepy looking guards keep things in sight. I walked quickly to the truck and started digging around for some gloves without looking too hard at my surroundings. If I ignored the creepiness, then maybe it'd ignore me. But out of the corner of my eye, I saw something move around in the shadows. I tried not to look at it, but then it started running and jumped the fence of the factory, landing on the grass beside the street. And then it stared at me in the last rays of light.

It was Mikkel. Even covered in mud and shadow, I could see that it was him. Only he could keep such an adelige posture under mud. Another form moved behind the fence and I dreaded discovering who it was. There were only two possibilities: Markus or Cory. If it was Markus, I'd lock them out of the clinic for being such roockt schwach, but if it was Cory, I was afraid I might try to kill Mikkel.

Mikkel mumbled something to the second person and that person backed away from the fence. That's how I knew it was Cory. Something in me snapped and I stormed over to Mikkel, not knowing what I was going to do once I got there.

The street wasn't as wide as I thought it was and I arrived in front of Mikkel faster than I had expected. I stood in front of him, close enough to punch him if I happened to completely lose it. He rolled his shoulders back and adjusted his posture as if to say, "Did you need something?" But he didn't say anything at all.

Nor did I. What could I have said?

After a moment of waiting for me to say something, Mikkel relaxed and ran his dirty fingers through his hair, combing out all kinds of dirt and dibris from the tunnels. Then he brushed himself off and continued to wait for me to talk, but I still couldn't find the words.

"Cory would love to see you right now," he said, "but I'm afraid she's dirtier than I at the moment and would like to wash herself off first. Perhaps we can arrage to meet you at the house later tonight? I'd love to hear what brought you down to the factory district."

I couldn't stop myself. I punched him on his arrogant cheek bone and stormed back to the clinic, leaving the gloves in the truck.