The Altered.

Chapter LVIII.

Miles woke with a pounding headache.

For a moment, it felt just like any other weekend, waking up after a party that ran into the early hours of morning. The headache was definitely familiar. But he was reminded quickly that that wasn't the case when he tried to move and a renewed pain from all of his other wounds dizzied him.

Ty was dead.

It was late afternoon - nearly night. Eira and Aaron were talking quietly by one of the windows, Lia was lying on her stomach on one of the lounges reading a book quietly, Percy was sitting on top of a bookshelf.

"Percy," said Miles. "What the fuck."

"Morning, sleepyhead," teased Percy, dangling his legs over the edge of the shelf.

"What are you doing?"

"There's nothing to do around here," Percy complained with a dramatic roll of his eyes. "And it's a challenge to climb a shelf with only one good arm, let me tell you that."

"No shit," grumbled Miles, still finding Percy's feat absolutely pointless and absurd. Pulling himself into a sitting position with a groan, Miles lifted one hand to rub his aching head.

Lia looked away from her book to Miles. "How are you feeling?"

"Like death." Miles leaned back and closed his eyes, letting out a long sigh. After he'd fallen asleep on the floor, somebody had moved him onto one of the lounges, which he was grateful for.

"You look it, too," Lia put in.

Miles just stared at her. She apologised. Eira and Aaron, seeing that Miles was awake, started moving away from the window and into the main part of the room, still talking quietly. It was hard to hear their conversation, but the bits and pieces that Miles caught were in relation to their concern about their parents. The thought of how his own parents were doing made Miles' heart ache - worsening when that thought eventually drifted back to Ty. All of his thoughts seemed to be doing that, lately.

"How did you sleep?" asked Eira, slinging herself over the back of the lounge.

"Okay." Miles was surprised to find that he wasn't lying. He'd been so desperate for sleep that he'd hardly dreamed at all, and when he had dreamed it hadn't been horrible enough to wake him up.

"Are you hungry?"

Yes. "No." Miles wasn't in the mood to eat anything with his stomach stirring as it was; he'd probably throw anything he ate right up again.

Aaron said, "Liar."

"I didn't ask," said Miles, "for your fucking input. I'm not hungry."

Lia looked up at Aaron with an expression Miles couldn't read. Aaron didn't say anything else, but with a sigh, he clambered over the back of the couch and flopped onto it beside Miles. Miles didn't mind this, but when Eira seated herself on his other side, he felt suddenly like he'd been trapped between the two of them. He was sure that was unintentional, but it didn't really matter whether or not it was deliberate.

"We still haven't found anything on the e-Screen," Eira said. Miles was grateful for the change in conversation, no matter how stark it had been.

"Maybe there's just nothing here," Miles replied. "What specifically are you looking for, anyway?"

"Either a book on e-Screens," she answered, "or a book that might help us decipher the code that the e-Screen has written on it right now."

Miles thought for a bit. "I'd say that second option is your best bet," he advised. "If there's any information on the e-Screen specifically, it'll be an eBook. We don't have access to those right now."