Chapter 13
Xavier
The first thing I noticed was the floor digging into my spine.
Not the mattress. Not the bed under the dormer window. Rough, uneven boards under a thin layer of blanket and folded towels that smelled like detergent and us.
The second thing was sound.
A muted clack-clack-clack, rapid but uneven. Fingers on cheap plastic keys.
Clare.
I snapped alert. My vision swam. Shapes blurred at the edges before sharpening into focus.
Gray daylight flooded the room, hard and flat through the small window. Noon light. Not morning. Not night. The angle wrong, shadows in places they shouldn’t be.
My brain did the math without permission and spat out a number that made my stomach tighten.
Too long.
I’d lost eighteen hours. Just... gone.
I looked to the bed.
Empty.
That got me vertical.
The laptop sat at the foot of the bed, propped against the mattress. Clare crouched cross-legged in front of it, hair yanked into a messy knot on top of her head.
Empty paper cup and wrappers littered the floor around her like casualties. A cardboard tray from some café leaned against the wall. Two plastic grocery bags slumped nearby, half-open to show bread, cheese, oranges, something wrapped in butcher paper.
Food. Coffee.
Bought. Outside.
My hands fisted in the blanket.
Clare. Out there. Alone.
She went out. While I was unconscious on the floor like dead weight.
“Hey. You’re awake!”
Her head whipped toward me, relief breaking across her face, fast and sharp.
“You scared the shit out of me.”
She scrambled over on her knees, one hand braced on the floor, the other reaching for my shoulder.
I grabbed her first, pulled her into my lap, arms locking around her.
She let me. Relaxed into the hold. Her weight solid and real against my chest.
“I’m okay. We’re okay.”
You left. You went outside. Alone.
The words wouldn’t come. They never did. Just pressure in my throat, mouth shaping sounds that died before reaching air.
But my grip said it. Tightening until she squeaked.
She saw it anyway. Always could.
“After you fainted, you slept until noon.” Gentle. Careful. “Almost nineteen hours. I checked your breathing every ten minutes like a paranoid person because you wouldn’t wake up.”
She pulled back enough to meet my gaze.
“I decided to go out for food. Quick trip. Corner market, two blocks. I was careful.”
My grip tightened.
“Xavier.” Firmer now. “You need a lot more than bus station crackers to get back to your old self. Your system shut down because you’ve been running on fumes, denial, and spite for days. Shocking. Who could have predicted ignoring basic human needs would have consequences?”
Sarcasm. Her default armor when defensive.
I kept holding on. Couldn’t let go yet.
She didn’t pull away. Just shifted in my lap, settling more comfortably.
“How do you feel? Dizzy? Nausea? Vision problems?”
I managed a headshake. Everything still felt... loose. Disconnected. Like my body was a car I was relearning to drive.
She touched my face, turning it toward the light. Professional. Clinical.
Except her fingers touched me so tenderly.
“Look at me.”
I obeyed.
Her thumb brushed just below one socket. “Pupils equal and reactive. Good.” Her touch slid to my throat, checking my pulse. Lingered there, pressed against the beat.
Longer than medically necessary.
Our eyes held.
She broke first, clearing her throat, reaching for the grocery bag.
“Eat. You collapsed from malnutrition as much as head trauma. Your body is trying to heal while you feed it nothing. Math doesn’t work that way.”
She pushed food into my grasp. Bread. Cheese. Something wrapped in wax paper that smelled like cured meat. Hovering. Her palm warm on my shoulder.
Worried. She was worried in ways that went beyond clinical concern.
The realization settled in my chest. Different heat than protectiveness. Softer. More dangerous.
I tore off a piece of bread. My hands steady now, at least. Small victory. Forced myself to chew and swallow even though my throat wanted to close around questions I couldn’t ask.
The taste exploded across my tongue. Real food. Salt. Fat. Substance. My stomach woke with a vengeance, cramping with sudden hunger.
I ate mechanically. Bread, cheese, meat. Watching her watch me. The exhausted shadows under her eyes. Darker than before. The way she kept checking me like I might vanish.
She barely slept watching me. Probably didn’t sleep at all. We were circling back to a few days ago, and that was counterproductive.
We needed to talk about this. But food first. Then laptop. Then... maybe I could figure out how to gesture that conversation.
I glanced at the groceries spread around us. Raised an eyebrow.
“Yeah, I bought enough for a small army. Because apparently I panic-shop when fugitives I’m harboring collapse unconscious for eighteen hours.”
Sarcasm again. Deflecting.
I reached for the notepad tucked under the laptop. Wrote: Thank you.
She read it. Her expression shifted. Softened.
“Just eat the damn food.”
I ate. She watched, satisfied when I swallowed, relaxing by degrees.
After a few minutes, she grabbed the laptop, angling it so we could both see. Our shoulders touched. Natural. Easy.
Her weight against my side grounded me more than the food.
“While you were unconscious, I became best friends with anonymous internet surgeons. Living the dream.”
She pulled up the forum thread. Lines of text filled the display, username after username stacking responses beneath her original post.
“Got some responses. Nothing concrete, but enough to be... concerning.”
I leaned closer, reading over her shoulder. My hand found her thigh automatically, settling there like it belonged. Denim was warm under my palm. The contact grounded me while processing the words on screen.
She didn’t pull away. Didn’t even flinch. Just kept scrolling, her leg solid and real beneath my touch.
“Okay, so.” Clare tapped the trackpad. “General consensus from the medical hivemind: your chip is weird as hell. Custom-built for something that definitely isn’t helping you.”
“This guy,” she pointed, “thinks it’s military hardware. Prototypes, classified trials. Another one speculates wireless capability.” She scrolled faster. “Lots of technical jargon. Nobody really knows. But everyone agrees it’s not medical.”
My fingers tightened.
Wireless. Signal handling. Someone could be listening. Watching. Tracking.
“Yeah, I had the same reaction.” She glanced at me. “Super comforting. “
“And here’s where it gets interesting.” Bitterness crept into her voice. “Meet V_Actual_87. Internet’s most charming personality.”
She highlighted a post in all caps.
“TAKE THIS DOWN NOW. YOU’RE A FRAUD. SHAME ON YOU.”
My jaw tightened.
“He showed up maybe six hours after I posted. Started demanding I delete everything. Got increasingly hostile until...” She tapped a moderator note.
“Banned. Finally.”
The mod’s comment was terse: User removed for harassment and repeated TOS violations.
I reached for the notepad, scribbled quickly.
Gone?
Clare huffed. “You’d think. But no. Because trolls are like cockroaches.”
She switched tabs, revealing a different username. “TruthSeeker_2024. Brand new account. Showed up six hours after the ban. Same writing style, same aggressive energy, same demands.”
This post contains false material. Remove now or face consequences.
The exact phrasing. The same caps-lock rage.
My hand stilled.
“Yeah.” She leaned back slightly, our shoulders pressing together. “So either we’ve got the world’s most dedicated internet warrior, or we pissed off someone who really doesn’t want people asking questions about your neck jewelry. Either way, his insistence is strange, but it made me curious too.”
I pulled the laptop closer, scanning TruthSeeker’s posts.
The pattern was clear. Escalating threats mixed with caps-lock rage. Demands for deletion, accusations of fraud, warnings about consequences.
Someone who knew what the chip was.
Someone who wanted this conversation shut down.
“So here’s what we know.” She counted on her fingers. “Custom-fabricated. Not medical. Possible wireless capability, maybe. Military-adjacent speculation. No documentation anywhere. And at least one very angry person who desperately wants me to shut up about it.”
“That’s it. That’s all I found after hours of crowdsourcing.”
I wrote:
Someone’s scared = close to something
“Oh good. We’ve achieved ‘making powerful enemies’ status.” She closed the laptop with more force than necessary. “Really climbing that success ladder.”
But her voice lacked real heat. Just exhaustion.
I squeezed her thigh gently.
She covered my palm with hers. Threaded our fingers together without looking.
We sat like that for a moment, the afternoon light shifting across the floor.
Her pulse beat against my thumb. Steady. Real.
“I wanted answers.” Quiet now. “Wanted to give you something concrete. A name, a purpose, a reason. Instead I got internet arguments and threats.”
I tugged the notepad closer with my free hand, writing one-handed while she held the other.
You tried.
Her expression shifted.
“You’re very gracious for a guy with experimental hardware in his neck and zero memory of how it got there.”
I wrote again:
Have you.
She stared at those two words.
“Xavier...”
I squeezed her fingers. Pulled them to my chest, over my heart where it hammered steady and strong.
Truth. Simple truth.
I had her. She was here, fighting beside me, refusing to give up even when every lead turned to ash.
That was worth more than answers.
She swallowed hard. “We’ll keep trying. Something else. Another way.”
Neither of us believed it. But we needed to say it anyway.
I brought her knuckles to my lips. Pressed them there, feeling her pulse flutter against my mouth.
Her breath caught. Audible. She went very still.
Our faces too close. Her golden-brown eyes wide, locked on mine.
For three heartbeats, neither of us moved.
Then she cleared her throat. Looked away.