The Eden Projects (EDITING)

Chapter 52. Maliver's Game.

- One Month Later -

Rain always came when it wasn't wanted. This was no different. Whether it was another odd Michigan norm or rain simply followed them in clouded droves made hardly any difference. Either way, winter had given up its hold on the land. Now the rain came. Plucking, picking, scraping and scratching at the earth. Filling up ferment chasms, rending pavements clean of their deposits. Again. Again. Again. Trace elements sending white billows in the tempest. 

It was raining,

It had been a month,

and people were vanishing.

It wasn't lost on them just how strange the disappearances had been. The missing were always on watches, the number of men they sent didn't matter, and the time between goings never repeated themselves. One thing remained the same in all cases. The bodies were never found, and unless Kasper hunted in his sleep, it hadn't been because of him. Nor was it because of Zero who had spent well over fourteen days locked in a back room. He hadn't eaten in his time there, and never asked for a thing. It was an un-named retribution on all the death that had been dealt by them. Now it returned tenfold. 

It was raining, and things were odd. 

Life, was strange.

They were all worried.

No one said a thing. 

Kasper and Zak jogged down the residential street at a slow speed. They had widened their search radius, if some new creature had adopted the space as its hunting ground then they would find it. They both knew it wasn't a creature. It had to be Ark, but this satisfied the humans they now guarded. They pressed on silently...

Zero wandered the warehouse. He couldn't leave its confines, not alone. So he wandered about the dimly lit space until every crag and crack in the cement walling that made up the structure was known. He thought, he slept, and he thought again. It was all he could do. He watched the light play over the window sills and he imagined mercy for the flies and small beetles wrapped up in the spiderweb duvets that rounded the glass. He thought over his mission. No matter how hard he tried, he knew that Kasper would never go willingly, and he was too weak to drag the man in himself. But the less of a threat he appeared, the more likely the people were to trust him. So he refused food and slowly, he felt his body begin to waste. Maybe that was why he slept so well now. Goals slipped into dormancy and his necessary systems fed off of everything else. 

The world outside had all but melted. The snow was gone and in its place was a days long rain. It bathed the land and flushed from the trees tiny green buds. Life was returning to the woodland. Zero couldn't explain the feeling that accompanied his concerns whenever Kasper came to visit. Though at first it was only a few minutes at a time. Now he came more often, for longer periods of silence. He would stand and stare at Zero with a sadness unlike any other. And then he would leave, just as he came. Quiet and alone.

Brothers.

Kasper said they were brothers. 

Zero scratched at his arm. 

Each time Kasper came to stare, he got a better look at the man. Maybe they did share some small part of resemblance. Not their hair, not their bodies or noses. But some other odd part. Hands, sure. But their eyes. Their predatory sharpness. That's where it was. Fire and water. Shadow casting on a lingering light. Somehow opposite of one another and somehow the same. An expression of a greater objectiveness to everything that happened around them. Days no longer crept by in linear strands. They leapt from one moment to the next, creating small buzzing circles culminating in events that meant nothing to Zero. None of the tasks, or objects, or minute goals made by the humans mattered.