The Altered.

Chapter LXVI.

Miles woke with his face buried in the crook of Aaron's neck. One of his arms rested atop Aaron's chest, which rose and fell steadily as he slept. Miles' other arm was underneath Aaron. Said arm was numb, thanks to Aaron's weight resting atop it for the majority of the night.

Miles lifted his head groggily, trying not to wake Aaron up just yet. They'd fallen asleep together, curled up on the carpet. Turns out the floor wasn't a very comfortable place to sleep. Miles' back ached. When he wriggled his arm free from beneath Aaron, Aaron obliviously rolled over and continued to sleep. Miles massaged his arm in hopes to get feeling back into it.

"Oh my fucking god."

Miles whipped around when he heard the voice to see Eira standing at the end of the aisle of bookshelves. From beside Miles, Aaron sleepily murmured, "Language, Eira," but he was smiling.

"Is this where you two were all night?" she asked, approaching the boys who still sat on the floor.

Aaron, who was pulling himself into a sitting position and rubbing his eyes, muttered, "It has nothing to do with you, Eira. What do you want?"

Eira didn't seem to like his answer very much, and her freckled nose scrunched up. "We found something."

This knowledge immediately woke Miles up. "What? What did you find?"

"It's easier to show you," Eira replied. "It's... on the e-Screen."

Miles and Aaron exhanged a surprised, excited glance, and simultaneously scrambled to get to their feet. Eira backed up a few steps to give them space, then fell into place beside Miles.

He was never going to get over the fact that Eira was nearly taller than him, and he was a year her senior.

No, almost two years - he was sixteen now. Sixteen.

"What time is it?" Miles asked, starting to walk around the shelf. In the process of doing this, he reached for Aaron's hand to find that Aaron had been searching for his, too. He took the blond's hand while staring expectantly at Eira.

"Late morning," she said. "None of us could find you. Why did you have to come down here?"

"Because what we do doesn't concern you," Aaron answered before Miles could.

Eira let out a small gasp. "Did you two -"

"No, Eira. We're fifteen." Well, he himself wasn't, but Aaron was. He was ready for the conversation to conclude - the time he'd spent with Aaron last night didn't have to interfere with the discovery the others had made on the e-Screen.

Eira lifted her hands. "I'm sorry. I had to ask."

"Did you really?"

"Yes," said Eira, sounding oddly protective. "Aaron is older than me, but he's considerably more naive." She said this with a pointed glance at her brother. "You have to take good care of him."

Aaron reached around Miles to give Eira a shove. "Oh, shut up."

The three of them moved around bookcases until finally arriving at the escalator, and Eira took the lead as they ascended it. Aaron looked at Miles as they walked, staring thoughtfully for a few heartbeats before saying, "This doesn't have to mean forever. You know that, right?"

Miles slowed down with a frown. "What do you mean?"

Aaron looked quickly flustered. "I mean, if that" - he waved a hand back down to the area where they'd been last night - "meant nothing to you, then I get it. With what happened to Ty... and just, everything that's happening right now."

"Aaron." Miles wished Aaron hadn't brought Ty into the conversation, but he tried not to let it influence his response. "It meant something. I promise. What, you think I just go around kissing boys I don't like?"

Aaron tipped his head in mock consideration. "I don't know, do you?"

Miles laughed and knocked his shoulder against Aaron's. "No!"

"I'm glad." A grin spread wide across Aaron's face. "Really, though. What happened... it doesn't mean forever. Or commitment. I can wait. Or not. Whatever you want. Maybe after this, we'll never see each other again. That's okay."

"Fuck, Aaron. Cut it out." They reached the top of the escalator behind Eira, and Miles looked up at Aaron. "I like you. I'm not going to just forget you exist or pretend that never happened."

Aaron said, "Okay."

Before the pair of them and Eira could move a few feet away from the top of the escalator, Lia was stomping over. "Miles!"

Miles already knew what she was about to say. "I'm sorry, okay? I was distracted!"

"Distracted won't help us if an Altered comes walking on in and nobody is on shift! If you wanted to get off your shift early you could have at least woken Percy!" Lia had once been the third shift, but she and Percy had swapped days earlier.

"Why isn't Percy the one yelling at me?"

"Because it doesn't bother him like it bothers me!" Lia was exasperated and furious. "Miles, you can't skip half your shift and also not wake up the person after you for theirs."

"Get over it, Lia!" Miles snapped, losing his temper. "Percy woke up anyway, didn't he?"

"By chance!"

A new voice joined the argument. "It doesn't matter!" Miles wasn't sure he'd heard Aaron raise his voice like that before, but even when he did, he looked more worried than angry. "It was last night! Nobody came in! We're all safe. Lia, do you have something to show us with the e-Screen, or not?"

With a final glare at Miles, Lia whirled around and stormed back to where Percy was seated nervously on the floor, having just watched the argument play out. Eira glanced over her shoulder at Miles and Aaron and winced. "Sorry. I didn't know she'd do that."

Miles just shook his head and let go of Aaron's hand, stomping after Lia just out of curiosity for what they'd found on the e-Screen. If he had no reason to be up here, he'd just go back downstairs and hopefully take Aaron with him.

With a completely unnecessary huff, Miles sat down beside Percy, ignoring Lia who was on Percy's other side. Percy looked too nervous to say anything to either of them, so he waited for Aaron and Eira to arrive before saying, "We figured out the message on the e-Screen," looking from Miles to Aaron specifically. "... We think. The message makes sense, but it doesn't really help with anything."

Aaron leaned in over the e-Screen, which was switched off and sat in the center of the circle the group had created. "What did it say?"

Eira twisted her lips. "It was sort of odd."

"First off," Lia put in, "you have to understand that we directly translated it from that book Miles and I found. Miles was right - the symbols that were on the e-Screen were practically an alphabet in a different language. Each of their letters corresponded to one of our own."

"What did it say?" Aaron repeated.

Lia got to her knees and crawled to where the book she'd found sat on one of the sofas, and then she sat back down beside Percy. Opening to a dog-eared page, she narrowed her eyes to read the messy writing that somebody had quickly scrawled along the bottom of the page. "'There are Vega Sector towers, which regulate the Alteration, in every city of the world'."

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