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I Don't Trust Them

"Eat."

"No."

"Now."

"Where'd you even find that thing?"

"I killed them."

"Well that's not true."

"Look at it." Matrix opened the paper bag and cowered, repulsed at the charred head. "You chopped it off Austin's dead body?!" he hissed.

"His name was Arthur, first of all, and second of all no." The Nat paused. "It just sort of fell off."

"Hershey—"

"Matrix," Hershey interrupted, grabbing his arm roughly. "I saw how you looked at those bodies...you were hungry."

Matrix looked Hershey in the eye, obviously offended by what he had said. The boy pushed his glasses up, Matrix having grabbed them before leaving the library. The exchange was rather awkward, but both friends liked to not think about it. "That Sync who almost took you? Yeah, I'm sure she was hungry too."

Hershey sighed. "You're not like them—"

"How do you know?" Matrix countered. "Cannibalism is one label, and labels are used to group people together, are they not?" Matrix awaited a response.

Hershey's initial response was going to point out that technically Syncs weren't cannibals because they weren't eating the same species, but he set that thought aside. "Labels are just...crap," Hershey said lousily, unable to think of anything else to say comfort-wise.

"You're a higher-up, Matrix."

JuJu bit her nail as she held the phone to her ear. "You don't exactly have to ask politely."

Matrix sighed, turning around to see if Beta and Hershey were still in Hershey's room talking. He stood in the mansion's hallway, talking to JuJu in a hushed voice. "Yeah, whatever, just make sure your Tenties don't go so hard on Beta and Hershey when we get close to ship, all right?"

"As long as you guys don't go so hard on us."

"All we're doing is spraying you, you should be thanking me," Matrix said, lowering his voice again once he realized it was rising.

JuJu chuckled. "We'll be waiting."

Matrix tilted his head and shook it. "No...labels are everything." He looked away from Hershey and Hershey just sighed and continued scrolling through the computer they stole from the traffickers. The toilet flushed and not long after the sink ran. Beta walked out feeling refreshed and jumped right back into his laptop on his own bed.

"Find anything?" Beta asked Hershey.

Hershey looked up. "Nothing. Literally, nothing. There's a gap between the two houses next to the 'so-called address' your creepy voice friend sent us. It just leads to woods, woods, and more woods," he reported. "But, when I typed it into a search engine it was like the internet buzzed with familiarity. But, every time I try to figure out why the spot's so popular, there's some bug hijacking all of the websites. It's like the Illuminati lives here." Hershey sighed. "Something's wrong."

"Matrix, do you have anything?" Beta redirected.

Matrix smiled and looked up. "Glad you asked. I have actually found a lot on this 'business' Austin and the gang were running, not so much on the Syncs. All I can find is an email from an anonymous source saying, and I quote: 'One piece of merchandise per week for a whole lot of money. Come if you're interested.' and then an address. The address is just some coffee shop and I still don't know what the meeting was about. Whoever started the meet-up was very careful that no one else knew about it. I—" But Matrix stopped, seeing the sullen look cross Hershey's face as he spoke about it. The two hadn't had a real conversation about what happened since it happened, and neither really wanted to. Hershey wanted to forget it happened, and Matrix wanted to forget he let it happen. That was it. "Never mind," Matrix finished off.