After leaving the compound, Marcus felt unsure on his feet. His arms were tired from climbing all those rungs, his stomach was churning from eating too little and he was feeling a little faint from drinking too little. He considered taking a break, but then he remembered that he was nowhere near safe out here. If he just fell asleep out here, he might well never wake up again. And he still had to return home. Not just for supplies, but also because he needed to tell the others what he had found. With returned vigor, he set out towards the outer rim of the stone wall, but then he stopped. He had imagined himself telling his father about Ede. About what he had found. Would he even understand what it means? Did he himself even understand it? What did it even mean? Ede was a fascinating entity, that much was for sure. And Marcus was sure, that there were countless more stories he could tell, if given the chance. Countless secrets from the past he could reveal. But what would any of that change? He said it himself, Ede was incapable of changing the world into a better place. And there was no ‘Garden Eden’ to be found down there either. Just death and decay. And a seemingly immortal creature bound to an ancient cage. With fresh air streaming through his nostrils and lungs, with each step he walked away from Ede’s prison, the previously unquestionable conviction of ‘Everything was fine’ waned more and more, seemingly futile and even ridiculous. A terrible idea dawned upon Marcus, as he approached the small gate that had let him in. That Ede somehow made him feel that way. That ‘Everything was fine’. That he wasn’t dangerous. That it was perfectly okay for him to stay. And if had stayed longer...would he have been to leave? His fantasy kept spinning in ever greater circles, constantly fabricating even more terrifying scenarios. Eventually, Marcus had to stop again and force himself to stop thinking about it. Not only because he grew increasingly afraid of Ede, but also because all these scenarios distracted him from the dangers of the world around him, making him far more vulnerable to them than was healthy for him.

By the end of the day, he made camp in the remains of an abandoned building and, after installing an alert using some cans, went over the things he had learned thus far once more. The fact of the matter was, that he knew next to nothing about this creature. That he was capable of forcibly removing him from his body and drag him into some sort of ‘alternate reality’ did not help either. Everything he ‘knew’ about Ede was, what Ede himself had told him. There was no way for him to verify any of that. Sure, Ede seemed benevolent and he did wake him in time to take care of his body. Even let him leave to fetch more supplies. But what if he had some sort of agenda? A plan? What if Ede wasn’t as nice as he pretended to be? He did paint himself as ‘victim of circumstance’, but what if he was lying to his teeth? But then again, what would Ede even have to gain from feigning friendship? What could he even want from Marcus?
All his musings and thoughts spiraled down to one answer and he didn’t like it one bit. There was only one thing Ede could want from Marcus. His body. His life. He had proven, that he was capable of ‘making people see what he wanted to’. Was it really unthinkable, that he could kill Marcus and leave his prison on Marcus’ feet? Did he, by chance, already start doing that?

With all these terrible thoughts raging through Marcus’ head, sleep was very uneasy. He dreamed of himself slowly fading, trapped within a cage without bars, helpless to watch, as his own body got up from the dusty ground, faced the wall of flickering lights which were quickly fading and taking a bow.
‘Thank you for coming, Marcus. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a world to conquer,’ his body would say and walk out, laughing like a maniac.
Just as he yelled for Ede wearing his skin to come back, his body awoke with a start to the familiar noise of the can alert. The drills from his childhood kicked in and within seconds he was up and in arms, carefully monitoring the surroundings, when, suddenly, the voice of his father asked, “Marcus?! Is that you?!” a familiar voice called out to him.
Marcus blinked a few times, but shook his head. That was impossible. He was still multiple kilometers away from the bunker, there was no way for him to be here.
“Get lost! I am armed!”
“Marcus, it’s me! Don’t shoot! I’m coming in now!”

Marcus slowly backed against the far wall, his rifle trained upon the sole entrance, his finger dangerously close to the trigger. Only when his father rounded the corner, he slowly lowered it.

“Dad?!” Marcus exclaimed, completely caught off guard.
Behind Marcus’ father, a number of scavengers from the bunker slowly filed into the room, while his father charged forward and pulled Marcus into a big hug, muttering, “I thought we had lost you!”
One of the scavengers, a bear of a man called Gary cleared his throat and said, “Chief, I hate to interrupt this touching reunion and all, but the raiders probably will be here soon.”
The chief let go of his son and said, “Right...Marcus, grab your stuff, we’re leaving.”
“T-the raiders? But how? Why?”
“How do you think we found you? That fire you made is smoking like crazy! It’s like one of those neon sign labeled ‘Hey, I’m here and I have no idea what I am doing’!” Gary spat, while one of the others extinguished the smoking remains.
“Calm down, Gary. Must I remind you of your first night out? Besides, Marcus only received the basic training, because…” the chief turned from Gary back to Marcus, “He was not to leave the bunker in the first place, much less without telling anyone! Do you have any idea what you’ve put the lot of us through?! We turned the whole bunker upside down, fathoming that you fell down into one of the decrepit pits with broken bones, slowly fading away with nobody to hear your cries for help! If not for Claire finding and deciphering those notes of yours, we’d still be searching!”

Marcus forcible removed his father’s hands from his shoulder and said, “So the entire bunker was in an uproar because I had gone missing?”
“You got that right, you stupid—“ Gary starts, but Marcus cuts him off, “And you even rallied a search party, just to find little old me, did I get that right?”
Caught off guard by Marcus’ sudden change of behavior, his father replied, “Well...yes, as you can see.”
“Why?”
“...why what?”
“Why do you keep doing this to me, dad?! Okay, you’re the chief, everyone does what you’re telling them, but this?! If I had been the kid of anyone else, you wouldn’t have ordered the bunker to be searched and most definitely not a search party!”
One of the other scavengers commented, “The kid’s got a point. When my brother went missing after that storm, your pops forbade us to go looking. All we got from him was a ‘sorry for your loss’ and a half-assed ceremony.”
Another one asks, “That was the reason why you signed up for the scavengers, right?”
“Damn straight it was.”
“This and that were completely—“
“Different things?!” Marcus cut him, an unknown courage surging through him, “They were not. You keep treating me like a little kid who can’t do anything right and who couldn’t possibly survive in the outside world! Well, as you can see I am in the outside world and fit as a fiddle!”
Gary smirked, “Well, I guess he’s in that age.”
Surrounded by frenemies from all sides, the chief huffed and proclaimed, “We’ll be talking about this again...later. At home. Pack up everyone, we’ve got what we came out here for. We need to be gone before the raiders drop in on us.”
“Amen to that,” Gary commented and rallied his troops to be ready to move out.

By the hour they were gone, shooting a bunch of raiders who had also seen the smoke signal in the moonlit night. The sight of the human bodies falling limp after being riddled with rifle bullets made Marcus’ stomach churn and feel faint.
Gary walked up next to him and asked, “Not a pretty sight, is it? Remember it though. These people are now dead because you ventured out alone. Be grateful that we lost none of ours thus far. Else you’d be having another thing coming for you.”
“Does it...ever get easier killing people?” Marcus asked.
“...I try not to think of them as people. I think of them as raiders. Enemies I need to shoot before they can kill me. And don’t think they wouldn’t just because you’re a kid. These savages have long since lost any right to call themselves ‘human’.”

Back in the bunker, Marcus was ‘escorted’ into his room by two armed guards, much like a criminal would have been escorted to the prison cells. In front of everyone with two armed guards walking behind him.
Claire, his childhood friend rushed up to the small procession and shouted, “Thank goodness they found you! What were you even thinking, running away like that?!”
Gary, who was leading the procession shoved Claire out of the way and said, “We intend to figure that out, don’t worry. And don’t worry. We’ll take good care of your boyfriend.”
Marcus groaned silently. Everyone thought that Claire and him were ‘more than just friends’, just because he was a boy and she a girl around the same age who had spent most of their childhood together. While it was true that the two of them were good friends, there never was more to it. And now, that Claire had essentially ratted him out by using the gift he had given her against him, there never would be.

After being thrown into his room, Gary slammed the door shut and locked it from the outside, shouting, “Best get yourself comfy. You’ll be in there for a while, until the elders have decided on how to deal with you.”

After being alone again, Marcus sat on his bed, closed his eyes and asked quietly, “...you’re there, aren’t you Ede?”
“In fact, I am. Very well spotted, Marcus,” Ede’s voice echoed from some distant corner of his mind.
Marcus let out a long sigh, dropped on his bed and wondered, how the heck he was supposed to deal with all of this...and whether the voice he had just ‘heard’ was really Ede, or just his imagination wanting Ede to be there.