“Really? You sure.” She replied looking at him intently, guilt written all over her face.

Arthur shook his head wearily.

“Yes, yes. You don't have to worry anymore; you and Mathew both. I've told you so many times already,” Arthur sighed, exasperated, “I'm not that little kid you always had to take care of anymore.”

“I'm not so sure about that,” Elizabeth replied, a familiar grin returning to her face.

“You won't get me out of your life that easily.”

Arthur sighed, again. He seemed to be doing that a lot today. Elizabeth suddenly grabbed his coat sleeve and began enthusiastically pulling him towards the university gates.

“Liz. Where are you going? Exams in half an hour,” Arthur protested, half-heartedly trying to escape her grasp.

“Exactly.” She called back carefully enunciating each word. “Half. An. Hour; we’ve got loads of time left.”

“This is why you've always been late for everything," Arthur retorted in frustration.

Elizabeth continued walking, seemingly oblivious to his protestations.

“Stop being such an old man.” She eventually replied, her voice quieter, shaking a little, “There’s this new cafe I’ve been dying to try out and I skipped breakfast today.”

Arthur could feel that something was wrong with the way Elizabeth was speaking but he still voiced his annoyance.

“And. What's that got to do with me?” He asked, pulling himself free of her grasp.

Arthur suddenly shivered. It felt like someone had just walked over his grave and a cold chill crept down his spine. Almost like he was under the scrutiny of a microscope, every cell and facet of his DNA up for observation. The moment passed as soon as it came but it left him with an acute sense of discomfort.

“I’ve waited long enough for you to open up,” Elizabeth interrupted his inner musings.

“You said you’d tell me why you kept blaming yourself for your sister’s death. It's stupid, you know. It's not your fault a crazy bastard decided to shoot up a school.” She shouted angrily.

Arthur was a little taken aback by the strength of her response. He did vaguely remember something along the lines of a promised explanation whilst enamoured in a medication-induced high, but he’d thought that Elizabeth would have forgotten all about that by now. The damn idiot had the best memory for remembering the most useless things.

“Where’s all this coming from,” Arthur eventually replied.

“It’s not like it really matters now anyway,” he added, instantly regretting the words as soon as they left his mouth.

Elizabeth was a real stickler when it came to your given word and she was positively livid that he was being so dismissive about something she obviously considered a big thing. Arthur sighed again for the umpteenth time that day. Things just weren’t going his way today.

Taking a deep breath, Arthur prepared himself to tell Elizabeth about the dark secrets he carried with him. Not all of them, never that, but enough to satiate her curiosity. A lie and a truth, something to take the sting away and keep him out of a jail cell. If she didn’t want to know him anymore after hearing what he was about to say, Arthur couldn’t blame her. Even he was sickened with himself, after all. Preparing himself to lose one of his oldest friends, Arthur looked down at the ground and began to speak.

“It’s because of the gun he was using…” He mumbled, quietly, waiting for the inevitable tirade of questions that would no doubt follow his ambiguous statement.

Arthur felt the familiar twinge of horror as he recalled the sight of the murder weapon the police had retrieved from the crime scene. It wasn’t something Arthur would ever forget. After all, that wasn’t the first time he had seen that particular pistol. Its unique model had a particular charm to it, along with the scuff marks depicting its history. No, that honour belonged to a time nine months prior when he had held its cold steel in his hands.

When he had sold it.

Arthur looked up in surprise when the expected questions didn’t arrive. Why wasn’t Liz asking him anything? It was then that Arthur saw a scene that would stay with him for the rest of his life. A huge airliner, about to crash down, the horizon around it alight with the smoke of numerous fires.

Elizabeth couldn’t ask him anything.

Of course, she couldn't.

After all, she was gone, simply disappeared without a trace. Poof. As if she'd never existed in the first place. Before Arthur could even begin to panic at the craziness of what was going on, he went flying through the air, soaring a dozen feet away from where he'd been standing. Arthur didn’t feel anything as he fell back to the concrete with a juddering crunch, the structure of his ribcage now an interconnected mess of flesh, bone and tissue. He’d lost all feeling long before then, all sensation gone the second the massive truck had crashed into him.

Delirious and dying, Arthur struggled to keep his eyes open as crimson, hot blood flowed from a particularly nasty gash on his forehead. A concussion was the least of his issues, however, considering the fact that his insides were mixing in a disgusting soup of blood, half-digested food and excrement, interlaced with a topping of pebbles.

As his vision flickered, Arthur saw a strange blue message suddenly superimpose itself over his eyes. He barely even registered what it said.

SYSTEM INITIALISING...