Natalie's Legacy [sequel to Natalie's Diary]

[7] Dread

[7] Dread

Jane

The trouble with knowing someone so well was they became predictable. 

Rhys left, taking Bia with him and that left Lucas and I alone in the apartment. The android in question returned with enough blankets and pillows for Bia to make a nest for herself on their threadbare couch.

It had come from Kian, maybe, or Lucas could've brought it. So much happened in the flurry of moving in that I forgot what belonged to who. 

It was supposed to be a perfect arrangement. Nothing so scandalous as moving in with my high school prom date, but Rhys would never be far. 

Unless, of course, he drifted so far into himself he stopped turning to me for help with his visions. 

Lucas took a deep breath, hands running through his hair. There must have been too much exposure to human emotion for him for one day, between this morning and this evening. 

"Okay, well, I'm sorry you have to go through all this," he said vaguely, "goodnight?" 

Androids did not know how to fashion words into comfort. 

He ducked away, back down the hall and I followed after him. 

"Lucas, wait." 

He stopped hesitantly in his bedroom doorway before letting the door remain open behind him as he stepped in. 

I'd never seen the inside of Lucas' room before. Whatever I expected from Lucas, maybe anal retentive neatness or a subterranean sleeping cavern, it definitely wasn't the flurry of paper or the milk crates of discarded computer parts. His desk lamp lit up a torn apart laptop, pieces of it pulled out. An intact computer rested on top of a filing cabinet, closed.

I knew Lucas put on a blue shirt every day and went to work telling people how to work their iPhones, but I didn't know he was waist deep in technology at home, too. Laundry cluttered the rest of the space, like all he owned nothing but computer pieces and clothes.

"I'm worried about Rhys," I said. 

Lucas' brow furrowed. "No one's leaving handprints on his windows. Maybe you should be worried about yourself." 

That may have been true, but no hauntings of the future took up the space of my dreams. We each had our crosses to bear. Lucas may have had a point, but it didn't diminish mine. 

If Rhys kept things from me, maybe something had slipped around Lucas. There wasn't a lot of hope to stake on that, but it was all I had to go on. 

"Has he said anything to you?" 

Lucas inhaled, pushing his glasses up to his forehead to rub his face. "He asked about different ways to look things up without proper reference. Like cars. And hands. Rhys did ask about searching symbology."

He let his glasses fall back into place, but Lucas didn't look any less weary. 

At this point, it was hard to be surprised by that, except that Rhys had asked Lucas for ideas. Considering the piles of computer parts lying around, Lucas may have been the exact right source of information on some subjects. 

"What about red lines and landmarks?" I asked. Anything lead I could get was more than I started from. I could only go off notes when Rhys had more distinct memories and visuals to at least match to. 

Lucas' head tilted. His arms crossed tighter, flexing as he silently considered something. Boston had it's own trail along landmarks, but Rhys specifically said something about red lines on bricks.