Black Eyes

Chapter 11

When he reopened his eyes, from the small window he saw that the night was slowly disappearing to give way to the dull colours, covered by clouds, of Zraegan's dawn. Nothing spectacular, a sad and melancholy view that pushed you to imagine the beautiful purple and orange colours hidden behind the large clouds.

It looks like it's gonna rain. Nakir thought, then the same mantra popped into his mind. It always looks like it's gonna rain in Zraegan.

The boy turned to Eva. She was still sleeping, if one could speak of sleep. The orange light still shone intermittently beneath her ivory chest. Should he have woken her up? Would it have been wise to roam Zraegan in broad daylight?

Nakir had rested for a little more than four hours in such an uncomfortable pose that he was now feeling the consequences of. His shoulders and trunk throbbed in pain, a torture he had inflicted on himself by collapsing on the desk. Looking at the clean floor, the wooden beams shiny and free from the presence of termites made him think that perhaps he would have slept better on it. He stretched his back, feeling several bones pop, including his aching shoulder joints. He would have liked to get up and take a walk around, but the space was too narrow and in any case there was nothing to see in that small room except a locked wardrobe and the antique desk on which he had slept. Just under the countertop there were three drawers.

Nakir raised an eyebrow, then turned to Eva: she was still in charging mode. He gathered the courage and silently opened the first drawer of the desk: it was empty. Nakir closed it with as little noise as possible, praying that it wouldn't creak. He opened the second: it was overflowing with sheets of paper on which hundreds, thousands of ones and zeros had been written in pen. They were encrypted messages. Nakir observed the first for a few seconds. The paper had become yellowed and wrinkled, but he decided not to touch anything for fear of waking Eva or perhaps for fear that among those encrypted sheets there was something that he wasn't allowed to see. This was Eva's house after all. He wouldn't have liked it either if someone had entered his old apartment to rummage through his drawers, even though by now about twenty hunters had probably already done so.

The third drawer was locked and there was no way to lockpick it or pull it, no matter how old the desk was. He decided to check the second drawer better. Maybe he would find out something about himself, assuming it wasn't encrypted. He took a stack of papers that looked like a diary of zeros and ones and placed it on the desk. Below it were more sheets. It looked like they had been saved from a fire as they were burnt around the perimeter and yellowed in the centre. Nakir took a closer look at the image in the centre. It was the body of an android with the names of the various biocomponents and the functioning of the reactor marked next to it, the duration of resistance of an android without the reactor, without the posir flowing. There were details about resistance to heat or cold sources; others on how to replace the various parts and how to reattach the ivory plates to protect the biocomponents well.

While Nakir studied those sheets with almost laboratory precision, Eva stood up in total silence and stretched her joints. She saw Nakir with her notes in his hands and his eyes widened.

"Hey!" she almost shouted.

Nakir caught off guard turned purple on his cheeks, his freckles stood out even more. He stuffed the papers with the others into the drawer and pushed it shut.

"Were you going through my stuff?" Eva revealed, moving some blonde curls from her face.

"I was hoping to find something to eat in those drawers, or maybe a cigarette" it wasn't entirely a lie. Nakir's stomach was crushed by hunger and he had run out of cigarettes.

"You just had to ask" Eva smiled, the space between her teeth clearly visible again. The android put her hoodie back on, the orange light had disappeared and now her reactor was lit in blue, invisible under the dark red hoodie. Then she slowly walked to the other side of the small room, near the wardrobe and lifted a floor beam, picking up what looked to Nakir like a crumpled pack of cigarettes from underneath it. Without warning Eva threw it towards Nakir who with a quick gesture caught it mid-air. Inside the pack were three crumpled cigarettes.