A collective sigh hung heavy in the air as exhaustion set in on the roommates. Iris had been slowly leaning over into Byxx, who'd taken Alden’s place beside her on the couch. His internal furnace was in overdrive, warming Iris into a barely conscious stupor. Byxx intended to carry her into the bedroom, but Zayzann leapt at the opportunity, and scooped Iris up into his arms.
“I have her.” Zayzann insisted. “Don’t worry. I’ll watch her tonight, as promised.”
He padded delicately to the bedroom with the tiny, limp woman in his feathered arms. Iris stirred briefly but gave him no indication of being awake. Once she was laid onto the bed and under the covers, Zayzann rested beside her and observed the eye movement under her closed lids.
Without warning, Zayzann felt the grasp of her frigid hands clasp around him. She shivered in her sleep, clutching Zayzann tenaciously around his waist. The crest of cranial feathers on his head shot up, and his throat pouch reddened at the contact. Were she to somehow touch his sensitive tail, he worried he’d lose his mind entirely.
Warm tears wet the soft whitish feathers on his chest, as Iris cried into him. A few deep breaths later, and Zayzann calmed enough to hug Iris back.
“You’re safe, Iris.” Zayzann whispered earnestly into her exposed ear. “I won’t let anyone hurt you, I swear it.”
Her soft hair danced across his chest as she snuggled into his hug. The tickling sensation sent a tingle throughout Zayzann’s body, causing his heart to race, and forced a low-pitched rumble to vibrate in his throat. He would have no trouble staying awake and watching over her that night.
In the living room, a different kind of bonding was taking place. Khazmine felt comfortable enough with Iris out of the room to examine her damaged systems with the help of the battle-hardened archfiend. She doffed the wet bolero jacket and her brown shirt, revealing a dark bra and a shocking amount of damage to her plate structure. She looked more like a mishandled purple peach than a person, for all the apparent “bruising” that ran up and down her body.
“Old gods and new, Khaz…” Byxx exclaimed upon seeing her in such a heavily damaged state. “What did you do?”
“It was Cruxuss. He shattered several of my anterior thoracic plates.” Khazmine explained through an agonizing wince of her torso and arms. “D*mn, that hurts. Running diagnostics.”
Byxx hadn’t realized that Khazmine could feel pain. In his experience with Automata, they were emotionless, senseless beings, who felt no remorse, pity, or discomfort, let alone pain. He reminisced about their first meeting, and how badly he’d throttled her under his hateful grasp. Seeing how excruciating her damage was caused him to cast his gaze away in shame.
She didn’t say anything at all at the time. I thought it was all right…
“Who is Cruxuss?” Byxx asked, trying to distract himself from his discomforted conscience. “Friend of yours?”
“Hardly.” Khazmine snapped at the ignorance of such a statement and braced herself against the arms of a guest chair for stability. “He’s a much older Augment than me. Reckless too. He’d travel to distant realms without an Anchor or any support, only to return in shambles.”
“An Anchor?”
“Yes, it’s a way point we use to travel safely between realms.” Khazmine forced through clenched teeth. “Realms without Anchors need a Summoner for Travelers to cross over safely. And Wayward Travelers are like pioneers, setting up Anchors in unexplored realms. Cruxuss is the only one I know who would be foolish enough to volunteer for that job.”
Khazmine removed a black glove, separated the column of abdominal plates, and reached into the dark recess with a bare hand. She fished around inside, clanking metallic components together with her fingers, until she pulled a foreign object out from near her spinal support. Byxx watched in awe as Khazmine removed electrically charged chunks of metal detritus from herself.
“Does it hurt to do that?” Byxx let his rhetorical inner monologue leak out.
“Y-yes.” Khazmine admitted. “But it is better to remove them now, than risk having them fuse to my body while searching for a new power source. Here, help me with these.”
Byxx found a small plastic container in the kitchen to catch the debris, admiring the intricate construction of the twitching Augment pieces as she chucked them into the bin. They wiggled and jerked sporadically for a minute before dying out and going stiff. Byxx motioned a fingernail to poke one, but it failed to respond.
“They’ve lost power, that’s all.” Khazmine assured him. “If we were to reconnect them to a new host Augment, they would come alive again. I still have all of mine, and having redundant components installed is a waste of energy. We’ll hold onto these; in case I need substantial repairs someday.”
“So, you don’t have to worry about rejection, or compatibility, or anything like that. Interesting.” Byxx shook the tote to confirm that the pieces were inert. “Must be nice, having interchangeable parts like that.”
Khazmine had forgotten about Byxx’s wartime experience. He’d mentioned that he had basic training as a battlefield medic, but she hadn’t made the connection that he’d have any insight past that point. Perhaps he could help with Iris’s ongoing care. If anything, Khazmine could use an ally or a comrade to share her struggles with.
“Byxx, can I tell you something?” Khazmine paused from her navel-gazing and abdominal exploration, deciding to go for broke. “Iris is sick.”
“I know.” Byxx refused to make eye contact with Khazmine and pressed his tongue against one of the canine teeth in his closed mouth. “I heard…”
“It’s bad, Byxx.” Khazmine admitted while sealing up her torso and reconnecting her plates. “She’s deteriorating rapidly. Multiple failing systems, simultaneously.”
“Yes, just like her mother.” Byxx grimaced. “Only faster.”
“How do you know about that?” Khazmine leaned forward.
“Educated guess.” Byxx clenched his jaw. “Amaranth died two years ago. She must have been sick for much longer, without a clue as to why. Did she know that you were a Traveler?”
“Yes and no.” Khazmine confessed. “But she was already sick when I answered her calls for help and had been for some time. Byxx, I think there’s at least one more Summon on Earth, and I haven’t the faintest idea who it could be.”
“What about this Cruxuss fellow?” Byxx sealed the tote with the plastic lid and shoved it into the base of the storage ottoman with his bedding. “Do you think it was him?”
“Unlikely.” Khazmine guessed. “I’m certain that he’s a Wayward Traveler. Otherwise, he would have hunted Iris down long ago.”
“Did you… destroy him?” Byxx asked, knowing that you can’t really “kill” someone that’s technically no longer alive. “Is he gone?”
“Not yet.” Khazmine clicked and whirred, testing each of her plates and systems. “He’s in much worse shape than me though. Plus, I have a few of his essential nodes in that container now, too. It sounds awful, but I hope he perishes on his own.”
Khazmine retracted the metal plate cluster in her forearm and allowed the long power tendril to snake towards the baseboard wall socket. It crackled readily as it inserted into the terminals. Byxx shook his head at the sight of it. He hadn’t realized that was how his back got burned from their sparring outside.
“Thank you, by the way.” Khazmine glanced up at Byxx with tented brows. “For letting me spar with you. Cruxuss is about your size, and I was lucky to be ready for so impressive an opponent.”
“Well, at least something good came out of that.” Byxx chided her playfully. “It still stings back there, you dirty cheater.”
Khazmine stifled a laugh, snorting briefly at Byxx’s played-up anguish. Her revelry was interrupted by the completion of her system diagnostic, and she stared off at the floor to evaluate her findings.
“Multiple damaged systems. Critical damage to six thoracic plates.” Khazmine’s eyes darted at unseen results. “Camouflage matrix holding at forty-eight percent. Localized camouflage intact above sternum, holding at ninety-seven percent.”
“You’re losing me, Khaz.” Byxx scooched closer as Khazmine’s eyes narrowed at her laundry list of errors, damage, and malfunctions. “What’s going on?”
Khazmine inserted her fingers between two imperfectly aligned plates and pulled against the most damaged among them. It broke off in jagged pieces like freshly smashed crème brûlée, leaving a powdery, light blue colored dust in her hands. She was about to dump the discarded plate into the living room wastebin, before Byxx’s hand shot up to intercept her.
“No, wait! Don’t!” Byxx insisted, grabbing onto her bare arm with an enormous hand. He recoiled with force, pulling his throbbing hand away from Khazmine. “Blast! What was that? What did you do to my hand?”
“I apologize, Byxx.” Khazmine raised her shoulders and tilted her head at him with interest, still holding the damaged plate above the wastebin. “It’s my rough skin. I warned you not to touch my plates. They’re abrasive and can hold a charge.”
“Old gods and new, woman, that stings.” Byxx examined his tingling hand. The pain was more from shock than anything else and didn’t leave much more than a few scuffs on his palm. Nevertheless, Byxx pouted and grumped on about his ‘grave’ injury. “Remind me not to hug you shirtless.”
“I doubt we’d ever get that close.” Khazmine released a defeated sigh upon realizing Byxx was uninjured. She laid the shattered plate on the coffee table and brushed the powder from her hands. “Besides, what about your human friend, Curtis?”
Byxx choked on his own saliva, not expecting to hear his name associating Curtis with anything like a hug or “getting close.” Khazmine smirked and narrowed her eyes at Byxx, content to have struck a nerve in him. Byxx sputtered and fidgeted, trying not to give himself away.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Byxx protested as his magenta cheeks flushed. “We only met once. You were there. We don’t have that kind of relationship.”
“You don’t need to hide it from me.” Khazmine needled him, then produced the emergency phone from her pocket and dangled it in front of Byxx. “I’ve read all the messages you’ve exchanged. He sounds very interested in getting to know you better.”
“Are you sure you didn’t suffer any cranial damage from that fight?” Byxx scoffed as he wrenched the phone out of her hand. “You should definitely get your head checked.”
“You’ve got a bit of a mean streak to you, archfiend.” Khazmine clucked at Byxx’s barbed comment. “But I much prefer that over forced pleasantness. Honesty suits you better.”
“Same to you.” Byxx stowed the phone in his pocket and reached for paper towels for Khazmine’s fluid leak. “You should try it more often.”
The pair bantered back and forth, long into the night, while Khazmine made repairs to her faulty systems. Byxx stayed up with her, learning as much as he could about Augment systems, and kept Khazmine company. The rains subsided by early morning, and the first rays of daylight cast vibrant beams through glistening droplets.
Iris stared out the kitchen window to admire the sunrise, grabbing her belongings as the time drew near for her to leave. She dropped the spare apartment key on the laminate kitchen tabletop and locked the door as she departed. As promised, a dark sedan arrived promptly at seven thirty to chauffeur Iris to work, leaving her three exhausted roommates behind.
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