The Eden Projects (EDITING)

The Letter.

They took nothing with them.

Nothing.

Riley hadn't stopped crying. Ace was a quiet wreck, and Kasper's body was asleep, healing. Crammed in the back seat of their truck, his tail wound up around one of his legs. Blood stained him from head to toe and the whole of him smelt like death, so the windows were down and Ace had elected to sit in the trucks bed. Kasper looked like a stygian wayfarer who had lost some essential part that made their ghostly goings easy. He was lost, and when he woke, he would only be that much more. 

He had killed Zak, and they had left his body there, bloodied and in pieces. There was no point to a burial, there were too many parts to try and they had nothing to dig with. Most of him had already been soaked up by the rocks and soil. The rest had been drained pale. Neither Ace or Riley saw any benefit to bringing him along. He was with the trees, to be reclaimed by the wilds of that forest.

They didn't want Kasper to see what he had done. They couldn't bear it.

Kasper shifted in his nightmarish fever.

Ace poked his head through the back window. "Hanging in there?" He spoke over the wind to Riley who drove.

She wiped her eyes. "Yeah." Her voice shook.

Ace let his wings open and he felt the last of his bones shift and click into place. He was still aching, but the largest of his injuries had healed. "Pull over."

She nodded and slowly let off the gas. They coasted to a stop and she threw the truck into park. The whole of it shuddered when Ace leapt from the back. They had driven well over a few hours and neither of them had said much. They were thinking. It didn't make sense. All that had unfolded at the house buried in trees. Now, Ace couldn't bear it. He had to talk.

He strode to the window quietly. "Are you alright to drive or should we pull off."

"We need to get as far away as possible." Riley wiped her nose on her wrist.

"We can only go as far as you can bear. If you're tired, don't push yourself. We've gone far enough. We left that bullet, they'll think he's dead.

Riley looked to him, then in the rearview. "We're still too close to that place."

Ace studied the slump that was Kasper. "We'll always be too close." He fiddled with the lock on the door. "Riley... can I ask you something?"

She looked at him. "What."

Ace let the wind howl through the windows and he looked at the overgrown fields, he debated voicing what he thought. "Maliver had to have known a bullet wouldn't kill him. Even with the possibility of it being an Ark light. He had to know that if it didn't kill Zero, he would be fine."

Riley's grip tightened on the wheel and he knew she was thinking the same thing. "He... let us go."

Ace listened to the engine whir for a few seconds, keeping itself warm. "He did, and I don't know why." Ace ruffled his feathers. "It doesn't make sense... he could have taken Kasper then and there. So why didn't he..." He looked back in the direction they had come from. "We should pull off, it's getting late, you need to sleep and I need to re-bandage your arm. I could use some time to think too... if he wakes up, the road probably isn't the best place to be."

"Okay." She straightened and Ace hopped back into the bed.

They drove another few miles until the first turn off led them down an overgrown dirt road. At its end, they pulled over. Parked, and began setting up camp in the roads center. Riley had packed a tent and as luck would have it, it was large enough for five but with Ace's wings, two was the most it could manage. So Kasper would stay in the truck with the alarms set. If he tried to get out, they would go off and hopefully wake everyone before he got too far.