Awakening - The Last Science #1

Chapter 21 - Waking Up - II

  They laughed at a few of Ian's jokes as Hailey retold them. He got furious at Weston right alongside her. When she told him about what had happened to Jessica, he cried. She was a good storyteller, and he was so caught up he didn't realize there was someone else listening in until Hailey finally caught him up to the day they'd met.

  "Miss Winscombe," Boris said gently from the doorway. They both jumped—or rather, they leaned up suddenly in their beds.

  "...How much did you hear, Boris?" Hailey asked shamefacedly.

  "Quite a lot, in fact. Rest assured, there is no one else nearby—not even my young grey-eyed friend." Boris shrugged. "I am an old man and could easily grow senile and forget the whole tale, if you wish."

  "I... no, you don't need to do that." Hailey grimaced. "I didn't know you were there."

  "I learned long ago that silence is among the most useful tools we have ever discovered." Boris sat down on a stool near her bed. "May I check your bandages? I apologize for not asking before, but it was an emergency and you could not answer me at the time."

  "That's... yeah, that's fine. Thank you, by the way," she added. Alden turned over to stare at the wall while Boris lifted her sheets.

  "You are on the way to recovery, but I would not advise walking for the time being, or attempting to use your left arm," Boris said a few minutes later. "Now, the young man." Alden rolled back over, and Boris checked on him as well. "You should be fine soon enough. I believe you have a concussion, though I do not have the sophisticated tools to accurately diagnose one. You were thrown quite far from the building headfirst. It is a miracle that she caught you."

  "She meaning Grey-eyes?"

  Boris hesitated for only an instant. "Yes, her," he replied—but Alden could tell he'd been about to say something else at first. "Is there anything I can get the two of you? I'm afraid I don't have much here at the store, but if you are hungry or thirsty, I can provide that much at least."

  "A little to eat would be great, yeah," Hailey said. Alden agreed. Boris went through one of the cabinets and found a few boxes of crackers. They looked old, but Alden was surprised to find them tasting fresh, if a little bland. Boris inclined his head slightly, then retreated from the room while they ate.

  "Is he like a spy or something?" Alden asked quietly.

  "He just snuck into his secret medical room hidden in his store without either of us noticing and speaks a bunch of languages perfectly, and he's in a dead-end town like this for no apparent reason." Hailey laughed. "He's probably a spy."

  "Don't say it so loud!" Alden hissed.

  "Boris is a good guy. If he's spying, it's for good people." Hailey started munching down the crackers. "What about you, though? Are you a spy?"

  "What?"

  "If you were a spy, who would you be spying for? Where are you from?"

  Her line of questioning was strange, but it ended up leading them both to sharing their own personal lives in great detail. Hailey just brought that out in people, it seemed. She shared a bit about herself, growing up in the suburb mess between Seattle and Tacoma. She'd lead a charmed life, passing through high school with flying colors and with the option of hundreds of colleges open to her. But she'd chosen Rallsburg, to her mother's dismay, and she'd decided once she arrived in town that she was going to do a complete one-eighty on her former life and become an outgoing social queen and pass all her classes with flying colors.