The Boy Who Fell
2
“Hey, Adam, she’s staring right at you!”
The gruff voice floated across the quad, stitched to a grin Elias didn’t recognise and a face he would forget within a minute. For as long as he could rember, people blurred. Maybe his mind protected him, maybe he was just afraid.
Faces had never brought him anything but trouble. He should focus on just one: his own. People hated him for it. “Snob,” they said. “Arrogant peacock,” he heard that too.
They shoved him around. It was easy for them. He was small and scrawny, just the perfect target. He didn’t care about that either.
Maybe, deep down, he knew they weren’t completely wrong.
Elias followed the voice and found its target. His gaze lingered longer than it should.
Adam reddened, sky-blue eyes flashing with uncertain mischief. Everything about him invited attention: the relaxed posture, the half-moon smile that drew boys into easy jokes and girls into passing notes folded into origami roses.
Five minutes later, Elias had already misplaced Adam’s features. Until one rainy Tuesday.
“I saw what you did with that loop,” Adam said. “You went from a triple nest to a one-liner with a lookup. Clever.”
“There’s more than one way to do it,” Elias said, shrugging as he hit save.
Adam’s grin was as bright as his eyes. “Maybe, but it’s rare to see code that feels… is beautiful the right word? That probably sounds la. Sorry. I’m Adam. You might not rember , but I…”
He kept talking, yet Elias had already tuned him out. Rain blurred the window behind him; the rhythm of the droplets was softly hypnotic, and for one heartbeat he forgot to breathe.
He’d always been the one overlooked, forgettable, but Adam had seen him. As if he were soone worth noticing, worth rembering.
After that, he carefully folded Adam’s face like an origami rose and pressed it between the pages of his favourite books. He shouldn’t have done that.
He did it anyway.
Their shared interest pulled them closer. Adam had dragged him to soccer tryouts, just because he could, and Elias, usually carried by whatever current was strongest, followed along. He didn’t understand it then, not fully.
But over ti, he began to.
One rule stayed firm: he would never catalogue the people Adam laughed with or the ones he kissed. Writing those nas down would make Elias a footnote in soone else’s brilliance, so he stayed near the margin a little longer.
Today, a restless breeze feathered willow leaves just outside the academy. Elias slipped through a hidden passage to a low hill a few minutes’ walk from campus. It was still within the school’s protective field, so leaving the grounds was easy.
He lay stretched across a thick branch, the rough bark steady beneath him. Trees never asked questions; they never wore disappointnt, unlike Adam’s face when Elias had been rude to the librarian he was chatting with. The look in Adam’s eyes had said everything.
He liked her. Obvious and, sohow, irritating.
Footsteps rustled through the grass. A shadow fell across the trunk.
Adam, unchanged. Sa clear blue eyes as the day Elias first saw him, nearly five years ago. So much had changed since then. Elias was no longer the small, scrawny boy who went unnoticed. Lately, he caught people watching him in the corridors, and sotis his locker was stuffed with notes—nas, phone numbers.
He couldn’t match a single na to a face; only two ever stayed with him. Rembering them never did him any good. A slip of control might turn him into them, so he chose to forget. That was his way of keeping the power contained.
“Skipping class again?” Adam called up.
“Only while the attendance logs think I’m in my seat.” Elias brushed aside a soft ribbon of willow leaves.
“The teachers will catch on eventually, Ellie.”
“They never do.” Elias dropped a half-smile. “So, how was your date with Emily?”
Adam rested his shoulder against the trunk. “You still think Emma’s na is Emily.”
“Why should I rember it?”
“She sat next to you for three years in English,” Adam said, voice gently teasing.
“Wait, how do you know that?”
“Because we weren’t dating. She asked to give you her number.” Adam laughed, light and careless, as if it ant nothing. Of course, it never did.
In that mont Adam’s smile stopped warming Elias, and he realised he wanted sothing more than encouragent. Ironically, it was also the mont everything beca clear.
At the top of the willow, he rembered the rule. No, not just a rule. A vow.
Never cross the line.
He tilted his head back toward the sky, blinking hard against the flickering light that filtered through the dainty leaves. His fingers pressed against the bark, trying to carve the vow into the wood itself.
“I’m not interested in anyone. Not that it matters.”
To you.
“It does,” Adam said.
Elias’s pulse hitched. This wasn’t how the mory was supposed to go; the blue in Adam’s eyes had turned stormy and unsure.
“Co down,” Adam murmured. “The bell’s about to ring. Or… just co down.”
Leaves stirred by a wind that carried the scent of rain. But that wasn’t right; the sky had been clear blue that day. mories bled into mories: the gruff voice echoing across the quad, the patter of distant rain, Adam’s dazzling smile softening into sothing sadder. Then even that faded, washed away in the growing blue light.
“Co back,” Elias breathed, though he couldn’t tell which of them had said it.
“Trust .” Adam’s voice reached him once again, his hand extended, waiting.
Elias closed his eyes, let the sound of that voice settle into him and wondered how long a heart could hover between falling and flying.
Then he let go of the branch and leapt into the warm blue—the colour of the sky above, the colour of his eyes.
Waking felt like breaking the surface after a dive gone far too deep. Had it not been for Adam’s warm hand pressing against his forehead, Elias might have thought it was just another looping mory. The dorm ceiling blurred, then steadied. He traced the line of sight past the overwatered pothos drooping from its hook to Adam’s exhausted face.
Adam leaned in. Dull blue eyes rimd with red, dark circles deepening the tired look; sweat glead along his brow. “Hey,” he whispered. “You’re back.”
Elias’s tongue felt thick. “How long…?”
“Ten days.” The words left Adam on a shudder. He lifted a ceramic cup. “Small sips.”
Elias’s fingers shook as he accepted it. Their hands brushed, and a tidal wave of nightmares surged. The cup tilted; water slipped toward the floor, but before it could spill, a pale hand flashed forward and caught it. The air stirred, lifting a strand of his green hair.
Black nail polish, silver hair, eyes like fresh blood. Astra.
mories slamd into him: Astra and the librarian girl, Eydis; Chira unmasked; the virus feeding his night terrors; Adam’s voice, rawer than he had ever heard it, begging him to wake up.
Elias had replaced the nightmares with selected mories, too lost in his own mind to see how selfish it was, how much it had cost Adam.
But now, everything pressed in at once.
Too much.
Too fast.
He couldn’t breathe. Air clawed at his throat but never reached his lungs. His arms were drained of all strength, and his heart pounded like it was trying to escape his chest.
He wanted to go back. Back to the willow grove, where everything was green and silent and safe. Where shadows didn’t speak and his own mind hadn’t turned against him.
Adam reached for him, tentative. Elias recoiled, back hitting the wall.
No!
Don’t.
A hand intervened. Eydis’s.
“You might want to sit this one out, Adam,” she said.
“I can’t just leave him like this.”
Eydis let out a breath then glanced at Astra. No words were exchanged, but the ssage was received.
Astra captured Adam’s elbow. “Seems I misjudged him,” she comnted. “Photosynthesis was clearly too ambitious.”
Adam blinked. “Wait—what does that even—”
“We’re getting food, and I’m not paying.” She herded him out; the door shut with a soft click.
Only then did Elias let his expression collapse. The weight of ten days hit him harder than the fever ever had. He had vanished into his own mind, left Adam scrambling for a solution without even the decency of a goodbye; too afraid to face the truth of what he was becoming. The rot ran deep now, curling through whatever greenery had once tried to grow.
And now, here he was, being dragged back to the surface just to face another storm.
Eydis stepped into his field of vision. She straightened the cuffs of her black trench coat, then lowered herself until amber eyes aligned with erald.
“Well, Chira, where were we?” she said, tugging strands of dark hair behind her ear.
He knew there was no point in denying it, considering what Adam had told her. And yet, like a reflex, he leaned back, chin high, the cold in his eyes an answer before he spoke. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Her smile bared the edge of a canine, almost teasing, just a little cruel. “Adorable. We can do the extended version if you prefer: you deflect, I deliver a charming monologue, you stall and pretend this is negotiable. Eventually I get bored and inventive. Or—" She paused. “You could astonish first and just say yes.”
Elias scoffed. “I don’t answer to anyone. And I’m still waiting to hear what you think gives you the upper hand.”
Boredom flickered across her features. “Predictable.” From her coat she produced a sleek black box. “You hackers really should update your scripted replies.”
Elias froze. The object was an Obsidian Legion encryption key, identical to his own. That should have been impossible.
“I see you recognise it. Let’s refresh, shall we?” She rolled the box across her knuckles. “I ask nicely. You answer honestly. If your words delight , we proceed. If it disappoints, I pass this to an interested third party who cares less about what you’ve done and more about what you are.”
His grip tightened on the sheet, but he didn’t flinch. “I’ve never seen that before. Could just as easily be your toy, not mine.”
“My toy?” Her brow arched, amused. “Without your credentials that key is a paperweight, right?”
He leaned forward. “If that really is a key, congratulations, you’re holding a useless brick. Anyone with the IQ of a fern knows those servers are wrapped in failsafes. One component alone does nothing. But if waving tech you don’t understand makes you feel important, don’t let stop you.”
“Of course not.” She tilted her head. “But here’s the thing, Elias. Every system has a flaw.”
He laughed under his breath. “Yours is believing this act is clever.”
“I was talking about you.” She stepped back.
He blinked.
“Still, thank you for the confirmation.” She slipped the box back into her coat. “I was ninety percent sure what it was. Your reaction just raised my certainty.”
“What do you an? Is it not—“ he caught himself. His voice still raspy and crack, his head pounding. Fatigue made this incredibly hard to think or perhaps, just exactly how she liked it. “It’s still your assumption.”
Her voice softened to a purr. “Now, about the other secret. The one you buried so deep you had to root yourself in place to keep it inside.”
A growl cracked through his chest, green light flaring at the edges of his eyes.
Eydis’s gaze flicked to his clenched hand, still tangled in the sheets, but now trembling. She smiled wider, delighted.
“Think Adam would find that fascinating? Let’s find out, shall we?”
Elias’s heart lurched. Only then he realised that this…
was the threat.
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