The Eden Projects (FINAL EDITING)

Chapter 63. The final Drive.

He had wanted nothing but the warm spring sun, and now, Zak begged it to leave.

He regretted so much.

If it mattered now...

Either way, he was moving again. 

Zak walked back to his room, and packed nothing. 

As he stood there, looking over all the little trinkets he'd collected... busied with folding his few sweaters, and finally piling everything up on his bare-bones bed, only one thing stuck out to him. One of the only things that they'd chased since the very beginning. There it sat, glinting on the windowsill like an innocent scrap of silver tone metal. Rounded and waiting to be used. 

Birds, batteries, and bullets. 

With a sniff he picked it up. Here he was, still standing. The thought of it nearly brought him to his knees. His hand found its way to his side. The crisp sound of pressed paper shifted through him. 

Moving, he was moving.

Out the door with nothing, and toward everything.

Kasper's room. 

With a deep breath, he let himself in, flicked on the light, and the weight of it all dropped him to his knees.

He saw it.

Scrawled over and over, carved into the floor. Tracing the doorframes and spattering onto the ceiling in frantic spikes. Just how wrong he'd been. No one in history could ever have been so wrong- and there... sitting on the terrible little shelf under the window was Adam's gun. Even now it hoarded the light. The air smelled like iron.

It would never have been enough. 

Kasper was an endless well dug deeper and deeper. Never bottoming out, never giving way. 

Cold, dark, and empty. 

Look how different we were... 

So, so, empty...

He grabbed the gun and stooped under the desk. Reaching for the backpack that laid there.

"Wow-"

Zak jumped. What about this room felt so wrong? "Riley- you scared me." 

She took a step in. "Was he always like this?" Her boots crunching on the myriad of pale toned broken glass.

Zak's voice shook, "No." Why can't I break anymore? "...Maybe."

"There was nothing you could do."

 Zak zipped Kasper's bag after tucking Adam's gun away. "He just didn't understand."

"You couldn't make him even if you wanted to." 

He looked to the window. His hand tapped his side and he rocked from foot to foot. 

It's all come apart. 

"Hey-" 

He couldn't look at her.

Riley took the backpack from him and set it down on the side of the turned up mattress. "Come here."

"Why-"

"Because I know you." 

His heart hammered in his chest. Pressure built behind his ears and his skin chilled. His eyes shifted around the room. "You don't know me." He tipped his head down. Zak felt the weight of it all break him against the very earth he clawed at daily. Begging the soil for one more chance to grow, to change, to dream, to hope, to be...