Chương 23: Colleagues and Friends

The two scientists crossed the silent university gardens, lit by the pale winter sun. The clouds had parted, and a faint warmth accompanied the sea breeze. Neither of them had spoken since their meeting in the corridor, having simply chosen to take a shortcut to the department. Grayson had recovered some colour, though not enough to wash away the exhaustion and the shadows beneath his eyes.

"I didn't mean to sound rude and leave without telling you my name." Grayson broke the silence, turning to Lamb and looking at him with a recovered calm.

"I was the rude one, holding you back like that. You looked pale, and I thought it best to—" The stream of apologetic stuttering from Lamb was interrupted by a laugh from his companion.

"Quite the altruistic spirit." Grayson found himself unable to remember the last time he had smiled before this moment, yet something about this young man emanated an exceptional comfort. Lamb simply returned the laugh and nodded. A golden gleam flashed in his eye, the one shadowed by his brow, only for an instant.

"How old are you, out of curiosity?" Grayson asked, taking in his build: both were tall, but Grayson was noticeably less athletic and solidly built than his companion. The lab coat barely covered the thick forearms that rested below the wrist.

"I turned eighteen a few months ago. Why do you ask?" Lamb was momentarily caught off guard by the question, shaking his head a couple of times.

"I thought we were the same age. You seem considerably older." He replied, somewhat surprised, scratching at the sparse stubble on his chin." Oh, c'mon... Do I really look that old?" The faint smile of Monica lingered in his mind for an instant.

"I'm twenty-four. I've worked here since I was eighteen!" He said with a certain pride in his voice, though that pride quickly abandoned his tone and gave way to something calmer, more empathetic." Give me a break! A six-year difference is ridiculous!"

"A researcher at eighteen! Remarkable!" Lamb offered this sincerely, gulping down his fading resentment.

"I ended up here after I won a scholarship in Sector II, talk about some real luck!" He smiled, lightly patting his chest.

"This boy doesn't seem to know who I am. Good." The thought that he might converse with someone who didn't treat him as a prodigy at first sight settled something in him.

"My sincerest congratulations. Becoming a student here and at your age is a real achievement!" Grayson was genuinely enjoying the conversation with his companion. For the first time, he could speak without worrying about anything.

"But as far as I know... You could have chosen a nearer Institute or some affiliate branches, so why here?" Lamb lowered his gaze and stopped in the middle of the path. Grayson looked at him, concerned, checking that he was all right. The entire atmosphere around the two shifted for a moment, replacing the clear, fresh air of the gardens with something more sombre.

"For… A certain person." He murmured, resuming his walk with a smile on his lips. Grayson watched his back overtake him as the shadows of the trees began to deepen. The two arrived in the park outside the gardens. The enormous circular square of cemented paths took up most of their vision. Iron benches, the colour of faded green, decorated the edges, buried beneath the shade of the trees.

"Would you like to talk for a bit?" Lamb asked, indicating a spot in the shade. Grayson was caught off guard, but thinking of what might happen to him if he were left alone, he nodded and sat down beside the young man. The rustle of leaves moved by the wind sounded in his ears.

"You have a terrible look, you know that?" Lamb began, keeping his gaze fixed on the faint cracks in the cement. Grayson swallowed. The memory of the nightmares and of that man had been stitched by force behind his eyes, so that even closing his lids, he could easily reconstruct those images.

"Really? I've probably been working too much." He smiled, trying to meet his gaze, failing the moment Lamb resumed speaking.

"You might be a worse liar than me." His voice remained warm, but the serious tone made his speech feel more like an interrogation.

"Maybe I don't know how things really work here, but you show all the symptoms of insomnia, to say nothing of your 'worn down' appearance." Lamb looked him directly in the face, studying him from head to foot, taking in every detail of his figure.

"What is it you actually want?" A surge of anger wrapped around his throat, slowly breaking the bright air between the two.

"I just wish to help." The boy straightened his neck, meeting him directly in his violet, exhausted eyes.

"KLINT, DON'T YOU DARE GIVE TOO MUCH AWAY, YOU IDIOT—" The voice in his earpiece was brutally cut off by a subtle movement of the young man.

"Sorry, Maliard, but this is outside your remit."" I don't think you can understand his problems..."

"You… Want to actually help me?" Grayson began to tremble, pulling back from Lamb, pale in the face. Even his mouth had begun to shake, agitated by the weight those words had thrown into his heart.

"Yes, help you… Though it may not seem that way—" Lamb stopped speaking and changed expression the moment he noticed the trembling in his colleague's face.

"Cut the crap..." The words lingered in the air.

"Huh?"

"WHAT EXACTLY DO YOU THINK YOU COULD DO TO HELP ME?!" The question, laced with fury and frustration, burst from his lips like a jet, striking the well-meaning young man in front of him.

"Grayson, please! You have to-""YOU CAN'T UNDERSTAND! NO ONE COULD! NOT YOU, NOT LUG! NO ONE!" The rage behind the words rang through the empty park, unanswered even by the howling wind.

"WHY DOES EVERYONE INSIST ON TRYING TO HELP ME!! WHY CAN'T I JUST BE LEFT ALONE!" Everything that had accumulated deep within him erupted in front of him. Grayson gasped, catching his breath after the outburst, bracing to leave. His eyes were on the verge of breaking into tears, but something stopped him.

"No, I can't understand it… But that doesn't mean I can't at least try to help you." A smile appeared on his serious face as he gently squeezed Grayson's shoulder, stopping him from leaving.

"How could you… Understand what it feels like to leave someone behind?" His angry tone had settled, though a veil of frustration and dull rage continued to run through it Lamb's grip tightened, startling him for an instant. The strength left his fingers immediately, returning to rest on his own legs, crossed between them. Lamb's face shifted quickly, appearing severe and shaken. His brown eyes seemed flat; his lips set in place, no movement beneath the skin.

He raised his gaze to the sky, watching the clouds slowly cover the sun. A sigh escaped him, measured so that the words that followed it would carry the same weight.

"Perhaps I don't know… You're right." His face did not leave the sky while he spoke, remaining fixed on the slow dance of clouds.

"Despite everything, I really want to help you. Everyone carries their own pain, and each of those pains has its own nuances. I can't know your suffering with absolute certainty, but I can try to ease it. Keeping everything inside will only poison you." Grayson had to twitch his tongue, clutching the fabric. The grip on his coat tightened further as the image of Lamb's smile pressed itself into his mind.

"I…" A fragment of a sentence left his lips, an attempt to reconstruct his torment in that cold air. The boy waited, watching him without crossing their gazes, simply waiting.

"I left my girlfriend to die in an accident…" The admission came out through his weeping with a weight heavy enough to make the air between them unbearable. The sun was covered by clouds, and a cold breeze began to sweep away the few remaining leaves from the cement. Lance held the silence. For some reason, that event struck him as uncomfortably familiar, leaving him wrapped in the shadow of the memory of Jude being dragged away into a forest.

"It was a routine experiment. We shouldn't have done it, but I thought the data was right. Something went wrong, and I was the only one to survive." As he told it, his voice started to crack and his lips to tremble.

"You'll probably think that I'm squalid… Disgusting, perhaps even contemptible, but I deserve those words." His eyes darkened, drifting ever further from that pale violet light"I understand if you want to walk away. Even I would want to run from someone like me. A dirty murderer." Lamb kept his gaze lowered, gripping his hands so hard they almost began to bleed, all while Grayson stood there, speaking.

"She was such a gentle person. So much so that she used to worry about someone as isolated as me, and I… I managed to break her smile. What contempt covers me." A short laugh echoed around him, forcing him to cover his face with his hands.

"I push myself harder than everyone else with the excuse of doing it for her, of bringing some honour to her memory… but that isn't it." The laughter began to thin into the air, marked by sighs.

"I do it only because I want to punish myself. I don't do it for Erika… I do it to condemn myself every second of the day." The breeze passed through his hair, stirring the platinum strands.

"THIS IS THE DISGUSTING THING I AM!" Even swallowing became difficult through his weeping.

"Grayson…" Lamb spoke in the middle of his breakdown, voice low, almost inaudible between the scientist's gasping and the sound of leaves being dragged past. Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

"Do you really think your pain belongs only to you?" He took him by the neck, forcing him to look him in the face. A golden gleam flashed briefly in his brown pupils.

"You are not disgusting for what you did. Being afraid, wanting to live, not knowing how to make the right choices are the things that make us human… BUT YOU ARE DISGUSTING FOR THE WAY YOU TREAT HER MEMORY!" The grip on his coat collar tightened as Grayson's gaze flickered between fury and surprise. He clenched his teeth and seized Klint's shirt in both fists, pulling him forward.

"WHO ARE YOU TO TELL ME HOW TO TREAT SOMEONE! DON'T YOU DARE THINK YOU COULD EVER TRULY UNDERSTAND!" His eyes were glassy and ready to pour tears across his skin, but the violence in his arms showed no sign of relenting, pulling Lamb closer.

"Klint… Klint!!" The last words his sister had ever spoken to him rang in his head, hammering against the already charged moment. He pressed his forehead hard against Dirac's, silencing him with the force of the contact. Grayson pulled back instinctively from the young man whose forehead was damp with his tears and cold sweat.

"Listen to me…" He gasped, trying to recover the composure he had lost in that impulsive gesture.

"Everyone has the right to grieve. Everyone has the right to have regrets. Everyone has the right to feel guilty for something." He clenched one of the bench planks with force, stripping a few flakes of paint and revealing the grey metal beneath.

"But none of us can degrade ourselves for it. Your faults will certainly not wash away. They will stay with you, but being so miserable won't help you either." He calmed, slowly pulling back from him, looking for a way to make his message land.

"I am a hypocrite who has made the same mistakes and will keep making them, but as long as I'm certain that I'm respecting the people who appreciate me and who trust me… I can't keep degrading myself." He smiled radiantly at the young scientist, who stood motionless with his eyes fixed on his figure.

"Listen… would Erika be glad of the words you've just spoken?" A second golden gleam accompanied his gaze, now resting on the cement covered in leaves. Lamb disappeared from Dirac's sight. The whole park transformed into the same library from which he had thrown himself to escape the white figure, though the atmosphere this time was entirely different. He was lying on the desk, arms folded to form a rest for his tired head. He felt as though he were not asleep, yet he couldn't move or open his eyes.

"Still here again? What am I to do with you…" A woman's voice murmured behind him, the sound of heels on the wooden floor accompanying her step delicately.

"You promised me you'd stop staying up late." She huffed, slowly shrugging off her coat. She looked at the papers beneath his arms and smiled, close to tears. All her projects, all her ideas, he had been continuing to study them without pause, transcribing and noting every correction and every possible addition.

"Thank you from the heart, Gray… Thank you for being here." A tear ran down her cheek as she laid her coat over the science-worn researcher like a blanket. She leaned down toward him, stroking his loose hair, silver in an almost metallic way.

"I love you." She whispered in his ear, then pressed her lips to his cheek. She stole one last glance at her companion before disappearing into the dark of the room Grayson was a witness to that forgotten memory, left helpless by the warmth on his cold skin. He could not move but knew he had begun to weep from behind his barely parted lids, the gap just wide enough to let the sadness escape. The scene finally dissipated, returning him to the bench in the park.

He continued to watch him, wrapped in that air of genuine care that had followed him from the beginning of the walk.

"Well then, Dirac? You know the answer." Lamb said, smoothing the creases in his shirt and trousers, preparing for the end of their talk.

"No… She would certainly be crying if she could hear me." He cried onto his clothes, staining them with tears. His voice remained clear despite the pain flowing down his face. Lamb rose to his feet and placed himself directly before him, taking his hands. Grayson looked at him with wet eyes, and the violet gleam returned to his pupils.

"If you ever need someone to speak to, just come to me. No one deserves to feel this afflicted." He released his hands and moved away, waving as he went. For the first time, Grayson felt the weight that had afflicted his heart ease. He watched his figure partially disappear into the park's undergrowth, smiling.

"I can't offer you a cure for your sorrow, but I know that you will find it yourself. You are strong, don't forget that." Lamb turned, waving a hand before finally vanishing from sight.

"I'm sorry, Erika…" He murmured, wiping his face and taking his necklace in both hands. His reflection appeared on the gold figure frozen in an act of prayer, a young woman, a symbol of his faith." Eifibes … Perhaps I should try reading something." He whispered and disappeared in the opposite direction. In the meantime, Lamb had tucked himself behind a bush, trying to muffle the shouting escaping from his earpiece, hidden carefully beneath his hair.

"YOU'RE AN IDIOT! WHAT DO YOU THINK WOULD HAVE HAPPENED IF YOU'D LET SOMETHING SLIP!!" Maliard's outburst was without limit, and all Lance could do was flush and bury himself further into the leaves.

"I'm sorry… He made me want to help him." He tried to apologise several times, but his 'partner' seemed entirely unwilling to listen.

"Listen… We are not here to help someone work through their problems. We are here to safeguard the lives of every citizen in the capital." Maliard's tone settled, the coldness of his words identical to that of their first meeting.

"What do you think could happen if someone like him were to awaken in an area like this? You and that scatterbrained girl of yours were lucky to awaken in a forest." Maliard pressed on with his explanation, trying to make the rationale for the mission as clear as possible.

"Maliard… What you're saying is correct, but if you all managed to help me, there has to be a way for him, too." Lance watched the rays of sunlight filter into his corner, thinking back on the forest where he had lived before changing his life.

"I've lost a lot of things, important things, by coming here, but I'm still grateful to have been given a second chance. It will probably be the same for him, so if at all possible I'd like to—""Lance Klint..." His speech was cut off by Maliard calling his name, this time in a low and critical tone.

"Not everyone can be helped, and just as many don't even want that help. How do you find a way to do it… Maybe only by sacrificing yourself in the attempt to reach out will you manage, and even then, there's no guarantee." Maliard's words came out of the earpiece like an irritating drone, and Lance was left with his own thoughts.

"I just want to help him. I don't care if…" The thought cut off in his mind. He heard his own words and stopped. He looked at the damp ground covered in bark, leaves, and branches. In the middle, a spider was happily scaling a promontory of vegetable remains and rock, only to find itself face to face with Lance.

"In the end, I'm the hypocrite, aren't I?" He smiled, letting a laugh escape his throat. He stood immediately after, fixing his hair to cover the earpiece.

"Receiving? I lost the connection for a moment." Maliard's voice re-emerged from the earpiece.

"Loud and clear! How's the other group doing?" He asked, remembering how Monica and Jeanne had vanished the moment they arrived at the university, leaving him alone and disoriented by Maliard's constant lectures.

"They're patrolling the perimeter as planned to avoid any possible interference. They've asked me several times to put them in contact with you, but I thought that was a terrible idea."" Maliard! We want to hear how both of you are doing. This is an Ord-" Maliard's past self was surely grinning.

"Remarkably, I agree with you." Lance replied, surprised to find they agreed for the second time.

"I don't know what I would have done if I knew Monica was eavesdropping on our conversations!"

"Explore the faculty a bit more. Find some contact with the target and try not to derail everything." Maliard's criticisms did nothing to make the prospect of exploring a university of academic geniuses any easier, given his zero experience in the field.

"Sure—" Lance tried to close the conversation, but a detestable yet familiar metallic taste struck his nostrils.

"Lance, what's happening? Your heart rate has exceeded normal." One of the many monitors inside Maliard's dark room lit red, flashing as it listed the changes occurring in Lance's body.

"There's a smell… It's blood." He murmured, gripped by a wave of revulsion.

"I can smell it clearly now..." He ran toward the origin of the smell, ignoring Maliard's orders to ignore it. He vaulted plants, rocks, and even the fence of the Institute's storage yard, making certain to avoid the eye of the security camera. He found his path blocked by a heavy, yellowish door, though calling it a door was entirely inaccurate. The metal had been deformed, or rather had collapsed in on itself, splitting in two. The sharp edges of the sheets were almost as if torn.

"The Frequency… Has been altered." His eyes began to ache in the futile attempt to reconstruct the sequence of events that had led to the disaster. Every band and line of the Frequency had been corrupted and rebuilt in some entirely incomprehensible way. He picked up a piece of metal still wedged in the ground; his gaze flared with a dreadful revelation. The sensation of devastation and calamity he had faced at Arden Ring took hold of him again.

"This… is Malcolm's work." He raised his gaze and let the fragment fall from his hands. The metal met the floor with a dull thud, illuminating the grotesque scene for a brief instant with sparks.

"Maliard… I've found a victim." He murmured in the dark, his watch casting light over the body of a woman half reduced to ash. Even as he spoke, the black corruption continued to devour her flesh, leaving behind only dust. Before she disappeared entirely into the air, Lance noticed the hole in her forehead, and for some reason, he felt a strange relief at the sight of the horror he had looked upon.

"Damn it!" Maliard exclaimed, striking his desk hard, nearly toppling his electronic equipment.

"No idea of the culprit? No clues?!" Lance pressed him, combing through every file in his possession for a possible lead.

"Malcolm van Jir… The Verwirrend vice-commander of Changeant." Maliard went pale the instant that information struck him, sinking back against his chair.