if you hate lawan you will die and go to hell

“When did you find it?” they add, now holding the book up, the cover pointing at him and showing him a figure with a skeleton mask, surrounded by, well, actual skeletons. He assumes it’s meant to be the titular Gideon.

Shrugging, Aiden fumbles for what he’s meant to say. Is he supposed to tell them he’s been carrying the book around for a week now? Where it’d grown heavier with every passing day, reminding him why he’d picked it up in the first place? Or is he meant to downplay it? Aiden really wishes he had a clue, because here he is, panicking.

He settles for, “I wasn’t sure you’d like it. Do you?” Which doesn’t answer their questions, but—

“Aw, Aiden. I love it,” they say and straighten by enough to place a kiss on his cheek before they’re back to putting the book on their lap and keep reading.

It’s when Aiden’s entire world slams to a halt.

This. This. This is the perfect moment. His moment. All he needs to do is repeat the words back to them, changing them up by just a little bit.

“I—“ love you. “—‘m glad.”

Oh, god.

He’s useless.

His hands are fucking clammy and his heart is rabbiting against his throat like he’s stepped into a Volatile nest—not sat his ass down on his strategically chosen roof on top of that factory next to that wide river with that pretty blue water and the warm sun on their backs. Because who doesn’t love a pretty river? Who doesn’t love the peace up here, their only company the birds hanging out in the nearby trees and the soft murmur of the water lapping over rocks.

Who doesn’t love Max.

He scoffs. Quietly. Anyone in their right mind would. Just… look at them. There’s a joy in their eyes he hardly ever sees people carry anymore, including himself. Because, yes, he’s looked in the mirror—at the thing he’s become; that thing wrapped in human skin that doesn’t deserve the way they see him.

He takes a deep breath.

Come on, he’s faced monstrosities five times (or so) his size. He’s almost been hung (more than once). He’s been shot at (more than once). He outsmarted and beat up Volatiles. (He’s lost a sister. He’s lost family. And he carried on, in no small part because of Max. He. Can. Do. This.)

Someplace below, there’s a muted, hollow, almost groaning pop. He notices, but—

“Max?”

Their chin comes up and the way their eyes lock on to him and how their mouth curves with a soft—but cheeky, it’s cheeky, isn’t it?—smile, tells Aiden he might have given the game away already. Maybe with the roof. Maybe with the book. Maybe with the damn flowers, because they know, don’t they? Meaning there really isn’t a need to be terrified.

“I—“ he starts again, this time determined to finish it, when the pop from before repeats itself. It’s sharper. Louder. A second one follows. A third. Aiden knows instantly that he shouldn’t have ignored it the first time, because it only takes one blink before there’s a deafening, grinding moan beneath them.

The ground angles backwards and down, tilting before Aiden can as much as brace himself. Max reacts. They grab him by the arm, their fingers tightening in the crook of his elbow and there’s a second—no more than a quarter—where he knows that if they let go and get to the edge, they might be fine.

“Max, don’t—“

Too late.

The roof gives in.

They both fall.

---

There’s dust in his eyes and his lungs. His ears ring.

Aiden coughs and immediately regrets it: pain radiates outward from his ribs, quickly joined by a laundry list of aches as his body responds to every single impact he’s felt coming down from the roof.

No, wait. That’s not right. It hasn’t just been him. His stinging eyes catch the figure with their skeleton mask staring back at him, the upturned book covered in dust.

He hasn’t come down here alone. Down here, into the dark. Down here, where the light won’t reach, the windows boarded shut and the hole above plugged with rubble.

“Max!” Aiden is up. He scans the debris rising in the shadows crowding in from all sides, every shape wrong and twisted. He can’t see them. He can’t see them! “MAX!”

“Hrrrmaidn?” is their response. Their voice is dazed, barely audible through the ringing in his ears. It’s why it takes Aiden an impossibly long second before he finds them lying on the factory floor; dropped just like the damn book. But they’re moving. They’re getting up.

And so are the shadows around them. With the roof and at least one more factory floor having collapsed around them, the Infected trapped in the building are strewn around them both in a scattered, rotting mess. There’s too many to count already. There’ll be more. It’s a big factory.

Doesn’t matter.

Aiden dashes across the rubble to Max. He swipes up a length of bent steel on the way. His fingers cramp around the metal; a warning he doesn’t immediately acknowledge, not when he’s already swinging it at the first Biter closing in on Max. Its chin snaps back. One more crack to its skull and it falls.

A second Biter almost reaches them. It dives, clumsily, fingers nearly touching their shoulders on the way down. Aiden aims a kick at its head. The Biter flies backwards. A third takes its place and Aiden switches to a two-handed grip on the steel, snapping it against the Biter’s throat with enough force it trips on its ass.

And all the while, the ringing in his ears grows louder. His heart races. His fingers clench again, pulled together by his muscles contracting without his explicit say so. That the whining in his ears isn’t only coming from inside his head hits Aiden about as hard as whatever Infected just tackled him. It’s his biomarker. It’s screaming.

It shouldn’t be—oh god, it shouldn’t be, he just fell down here. How—

Aiden hits the ground, his entire left side one big pulsing ache from where the Infected knocked into him with a shoulder that might as well have been made from stone. His muscles respond by clenching even tighter, even as a shock of searing heat races through him. The heat springs from his heart; a heart that pumps fire through his veins and pulls a scream from his throat.

The Infection is quick to tear him from his mind after that, allowing him no more than two simple thoughts before the end. They’re at odds with each other, those thoughts. Disagree. Fundamentally. The first one tells Aiden he needs to get away from Max. Far, far away. The second won’t let him, because even as thin, blue tendrils web across his vision, he sees Biters pool around them. Closing in. They’re hungry. And they’ll kill them. They’ll kill them and he can’t allow them to.

There’s no way he’ll let them have what’s his.

That’s when hunger tears what’s left of him away, twisting his wants, his love, into nothing more than an insatiable need.

---

A searing lance of UV light slams his name back into him.

The light scorches a path through his mind, and grating him no more than a moment of clarity. The moment is enough. His fingers hurt from ripping into the bodies now broken all around him. His muscles pull, strained by how they’ve responded to the Infection. Worse, there’s blood in his mouth. Flesh, too. Most of it is tainted and old.

Most.

Not all.

A shape crawls away from him. They’re out of reach behind the UV light throwing a wall up between them.

The shape has a name. A name which has gravity, pulling on him, and Aiden almost remembers it. Almost; just like he almost knows why the sight of them, their eyes wide and fearful and their hand pressed to their neck, blood welling between their fingers, makes his heart wail.

They flee.

The light goes with them. So does his name. Their name (or the beginnings of it, anyway).

Starving, he gives chase.

---

Pain. Pain. Pain.

Aiden is made of nothing but, his body convulsing beneath a merciless sun. How’d he get here? Here, into this patch of tall grass. Or at the very least it used to be tall grass, since now that Aiden is thrashing around in it, it’s flattened to the ground and slick with blood. The touch of it—the faint lick of no more than a blade—feels as sharp as an actual knife sinking into his skin.

He swears he sees smoke curling from his exposed arms.

“Aiden!”

Hands land on him. They dig into his shirt and they pull—and now Aiden remembers how he got here. Max. He’d collapsed coming into the light and Max had to drag him the rest of the way, even while his body had been pulled apart by the seizures running through him.

“Aiden, please. Are you okay?” Their voice is so damn thin. Thready. Something is wrong. “Please, I need you to be okay.”

He fumbles to clasp a hand around their arm, to give him an anchor he could focus on. An indication where to look, because all he sees right now is the glare of the sun that makes his eyes tear up and smudges of color where there should be distinct shapes.

“I’m okay,” he finally croaks, the words tasting of— iron? He chokes around them. Something slides into the back of his throat, sticky as it goes down. Wide eyed, Aiden finally sees them. Max thumps back on their rear, but they don’t let go of him. No, one hand stays right where it is, holding on to a fold of his shirt with a weak, shaky grip. The other hand is pressed to their neck.

Blood soaks their right shoulder. Soaks half of them. There’s too much of it. Too much of it, because he sank his teeth into their neck and tore them open.

With their lips quivering—as if they’re trying another smile, why—why?—Max finally topples backwards. Aiden shoots forward, quick enough his head spins with the motion, but not quick enough to run him backwards in time and undo the moment in which he killed them. An immeasurable cold fills him. It freezes his mind. Won’t let him think. Won’t let him talk. Won’t let him do more beyond desperately clawing at the first piece of loose clothing he can find and tear it up so he can press it to their neck.

This can’t be happening.

He’d had a plan for today.

This— this hadn’t been it.

This couldn’t be it.

“I’m so sorry,” he catches himself sob. “I’msosorryImsosorry.”

“It’s okay,” they say, the words faint. “Aiden. It’s okay.”

What? “No, no. It’s not, Max, please— I—“ You what? YOU WHAT?! You monster. What are you going to do? Watch them bleed out, yes. That is what. Watch. Watch close.

Max doesn’t hear the screaming in his head. “It’s okay,” they repeat, mumbling, their fingers hooking around Aiden’s wrist where he’s pressing the cloth to their neck as if that’d help. As if that’d make a difference. As if he could save them. As if he could save anyone at all. “You know why it’s okay?” Their eyes have drifted until now, unfocused and searching, but now they find his, and they hold them in a grip so resolute, Aiden couldn’t look away even if he’d have wanted to.

His heart twists in his chest; a beast of its own, dying as the weight of his failure crushes it.

“Are you listening?” they ask, going on as if none of this was real. But isn’t that what dying people often do?

“I—“ Aiden chokes again. He nods.

“Good.”

He can’t breathe.

Max’s fingers tighten. They won’t look away. They won’t let him go. And they say, their voice finding strength he couldn’t, three simple words in a row: