Jessica, in fact, did not show up for ten minutes, the duration of which Adam spent standing outside the school, casually observing the students go by, laughing and talking between themselves as if everything was alright. After those ten minutes had gone by, a semi-large group of boys lest the school, the leader seemingly being Chad “the Chad” himself. Most people who had gone by Adam had either shot him an unsavoury glance or all-out ignored him, but Chad blew both of these responses out of the park by excusing himself from his group and actually running up to talk to him.

“There you are, bro! I got kinda worried when you just ran away, uh… you cool? You’re better now, right? You looked kinda tired back then, and I mean you still kinda do, but do you think you’re better?” Chad worried, his eyes glancing at Adam’s pale, boney fingers and angular, stubbled face. “Oh, um, yeah, I’m like a Kikirink in spring,” Adam answered distantly, craning his neck to look past Chad’s broad frame in case Jessica passed by. She didn’t. “That’s, uh, good? I’m not sure what that ‘Kinkyrinky’ thing is, but, uh… bro, what’re you sittin’ here for?” Chad asked, perking an eyebrow.

“Why? Don’t I usually?” Adam asked quizzingly, tilting his head. Chad shook his head. “Nah brah, you usually, like, either head home alone, or, y’know, go with me and Henry and the whole gang and like hang out or go work out at the gym,” Chad explained, without seeming too bothered by the fact that his friend had almost total amnesia. In fact, he seemed like the only one who wasn’t bothered by it in some way, which, to the trust-starved Adam, was really quite nice. He felt comfortable with this adolescent, something he really wasn’t with anybody, except maybe Pete or Tiftos.

The thought of Tiftos and everybody else he had befriended on Lutum set something off in Adam. He felt… lonely? Sad? He… he missed them, didn’t he? Kratos’ brutal earnesty, Ramona’s honest passion, Mirim’s devout fandoming, Pellons sagely wisdom, and Tiftos. Dear sweet young little Tiftos. In all his years, disregarding his time on Earth, Tiftos seemed to be his one and only true friend. If he ever met him again, he wouldn’t hesitate to tell him the truth. Tiftos had earned it.

“Uhh, bro, you cool?” Chad asked, waving a hand in front of Adam’s glazed-over eyes. “Huh? Oh, uh, yeah! Sorry, I was thinking,” Adam explained, rubbing the back of his neck nervously. “Thinking, you? That’s new,” Chad teased, chuckling slightly. Adam, who was the last person anyone would tease back on Lutum, did not know how to react. And, furthermore, how to react to the feeling of betrayal rising in his chest. “Hey, I’m just kidding! Don’t worry about it bro, if it’s made you a less thoughtless person, I can’t say this whole magic deal was a total bust,” Chad said with a warm smile. So far, he might’ve been the only person to say he had changed for the better. Adam smiled back, flustered.

“Thanks bro, that’s… that means a lot,” Adam mumbled frankly. “No problem man. Hey, if you’ve got nothing better to do, how about we head over to my place? The guys have all gone over to Tony’s, but they didn’t seem to keen on hanging with you, so… I just got the latest Superior Crash Siblings Penultimate installed on my Shift, so… we could play that?” Chad suggested, trying not to let Adam’s thoughts linger too long on the fact that none of his former friends really thought of this whole magic thing as all cool and dandy. Adam didn’t really think about it, so Chad won this round.

“...I don’t really know what that is, but… I mean, sure? I guess I don’t have anything better to do,” Adam grumbled, standing up to face Chad completely. Adam, the doofus he was, had at this point completely let his original reason for attending to school slip his mind. Tonight would be a night bereft of reading. Together, he and Chad headed out the gate and onto the streets of Humbugg.

Much like when Adam had found his way to Pete’s Lair, he could recognize small details about the road he and Chad were taking. But unlike when he lumbered in search of Pete, the roads he and Chad travelled were large and broad, with little stores all around, apartments situated above the shops gazing down curiously at the passersby, of which about 50% were students wearing about three or four different kinds of uniforms.

There were the classic black-and-white of Pristine High, but there was also a blue-and-purple uniform with small minty highlights, a red-and-orange one with yellow details, a green and earthy brown one, and, finally, an elusive blue and white one. Adam, as encapsulated as he was in staring at all the different students in wonder, failed to notice Chad’s countenance going grim.

“Bro, you listening?” he asked wryly, his usual smile replaced by an unhappy frown. “Huh? Oh, sorry, I was looking at the… everything alright?” Adam admitted, mimicking Chad’s inherent empathy from before. Chad’s lips turned into a thin white line.

“You remember that thing that happened yesterday, right bro? With the wormy boy in the the sky and that buff girl?” Chad asked softly, pointing a finger up at the spotless blue sky. “I didn’t see it myself, but I sort of understand what happened,” Adam said deceitfully, nodding up and down to prove that his words were totally true. Chad nodded back.

“Well, um, as weird as it can seem, uh… I feel kinda weird, like, since yesterday? I mean, I saw it, man. Like out the window of Pristine, I was looking, and it just kinda happened y’know, but… I dunno man, like, when I looked at her, I kind of recognized her? Like I just knew immediately we had something in common, but, like… I don’t know know what? And like, also? Sometimes I feel weirdly warm? But it’s not like a fever everywhere, it’s just in one place, like my hand or foot or head or something. I asked my mum about and she said it was probably nothing to worry about but… I feel like there’s something new in me, that isn’t quite, like… me? Does that make any sense?” Chad said.

Adam recognized it immediately. But that couldn’t be, could it?... Sure, there was that red ant girl who’d definitely been doing some weird things, but… It shouldn’t have gone out over anybody else, right? And, even if it did, the chances of something like this happening should have been even rarer than back on Lutum, but… it wasn’t for sure yet! It could just be some weird disease, and getting worked up over something like that wouldn’t be too befitting of a creature such as Adam.

So, turning back to Chad after the little moment of silence, he started questioning him. “When did this start?” “Yesterday, about ten minutes after the wiggly boy went away,” “Where is the feeling mostly?” “I dunno, like, in my lower throat-y place?” “...Does the warm feeling increase with time?” “Well, it did like all of yesterday, but now when I woke up I guess it kinda capped, cuz it’s really warm but it ‘ain’t getting any hotter,” “Uhuhuh…” “Uhh, how’s it looking, doc’? Am I gonna die?” Chad joked, knowing that Adam knew something about this whole mess that he didn’t. He did, but admitting this wouldn’t be a very good move, however… if he didn’t, things could go very south very quick. He had to check if what he feared was true. But how?...

Chad did not like how grim Adam had become. He couldn’t say he was very much used to Adam being quiet and serious, but it made him happy he had placed his trust in him. Adam as he knew him would no doubt have laughed or made joked about him catching the gay, which he was used to, but… nevertheless, walking in silence for ten minutes while Adam thought about something he didn’t know about was a bit weird.

“Dude, we’re here,” Chad said, breaking the silence as he pointed to a small, nondescript house that was perfectly identical to every other house on the street, the only difference being the purple door and hoop by the driveway signaling that the owner of this house was a jock and so was their son. “Huh? Oh,” Adam mumbled, still a bit stuck in contemplation as he stumbled to a stop. The house, as much as it should have, did not ring a bell.

“Don’t just stand there man, come on in!” Chad urged, already having gotten the purple door open as he motioned to the inside. Adam nodded and entered the house, his eyes searching curiously for any detail he might recognize, anything that might make him remember his days with this swell young man. The house, much like his family’s, was overly neat, with minimalistic white design, and an open kitchen plan, with floor covered with either tiles or hardwood. The only part of the house that exuded any form of personality were the countless awards, trophies, placards, photos of sports teams etc that littered every wall, nook and cranny of the place. On top of the fridge? Trophy. Above the telly? Photo of some old baseball team in black-and-white. Beside the family photos? Baseballs and baseball bats signed by so many people it was more black than white.

Adam leaned in on the family photos, his eyes bouncing from photo to photo, grandparent to grandparent, beloved pet to beloved pet, Chad to Chad. There were a lot of pictures of Chad. There were also two or three photos of some little girl with dark hair and dark eyes, but her appearances were few, even in photos of the whole family. Going by these photos, it was easy to see that the mother of the family was some sort of baseball player, while the man was… Adam’s eyes wandered over the chock-full wall of awards and diplomas and master’s degrees… a scientist of some sort. Both were blond and blue-eyed, happy and content. A nice loving family of many successes and few downfalls, in other words.

At first, Adam couldn’t honestly say he recognized much of anything. He should have figured one of Chad’s parents was an athlete of some sort considering how buff he was, but other than that, nothing really made him think much of anything. That is, until he saw that one thing. Or rather, that one person within that thing. It was a photo of the whole extended family, with grandparents and cousins galore. Among them, Adam could spot Chad and his family standing off to the side, but on the very other side, he recognized someone. He, who couldn't even recognize his former best friend, recognized someone.

She seemed to be tall, about 175, and had long, dark hair hiding a beautiful, mask-like face. Her slender yet curved body, possessed with a dream-like charm, was wrapped in a tight, black dress, like the uncovered night sky. Adam could not rell what he recognized or why, but… he knew her. Somehow, her face was entirely known to him. “Dude, what’cha looking at?” Chad asked, creeping up behind Adam to take a closer look. He’d been following Adam around for the past couple of minutes, making sure everything was in place and that he didn’t do anything weird. And now, seeing Adam so interested in some old picture, he decided to take the time to intervene.

“Huh? Oh, I , uh, I was just… who is this?” Adam asked, pointing to the dark stranger. “Oh, that? That’s, ummm… Aunt Evita, I think? Bro I dunno, this was taken like five years ago, I don’t remember shit,” Chad explained, drawing Adam’s attention to just how young Chad was in the picture. And, to be sure, Chad’s younger sister was but a toddler in the picture, being held tightly by Chad’s father. “Aunt Evita…” Adam mumbled, hoping it might jog his memory. It didn’t.

“Bro, you done here? The Shift is over in my room?” Chad suggested, jabbing his thumb to a hallway that probably lead to his room. Adam reluctantly followed, despite wanting to learn more about this “Aunt Evita” character. The hallway was a short one, and lead to three rooms, two of which were bedroom and the final one being that weird all-white ceramic room that had been in Adam’s family’s house as well, with all the white porcelain things that did weird things he couldn’t comprehend.

Chad confidently pulled open one of the unmarked bedroom doors and strode inside, with Adam following him closely. Chad’s room was an unholy aesthetically distressing mess of yellows and oranges and reds, giving off the impression that the whole room was on fire. The wallpaper, which was the only one in the house that wasn’t a paramedical white, was just… fire. And, even worse than that, it wasn’t just one single wallpaper repeating endlessly. No, it was an impious collage of different styles: pixelated fire, cartoon fire, semi-realistic fire, photographed fire, fire from a lighter, forest on fire, every sort of fire you could imagine had been frozen and stuck to Chad’s wall like some poor soul chained up in a torture chamber. Even Adam, who had spent years upon years in different situations, all with the common denominator of darkness and lack of nice things to look, at found the sight almost too much to bear.

Once Adam had stopped hiding his eyes like a vampire in sunlight, he could properly understand the room beyond the whole fire thing. In a corner, a well-used boxing bag hung from the ceiling, and around it, a pair of boxing gloves and a bunch of dumbells laid strewn about. Beside this work-out corner stood a bookcase, with two of the five shelves dedicated to an unreasonable lot of gleaming golden trophies, none of which were standing up, instead all lying piggly-wiggly over each other, which a few being dangerously close to falling over the edge. The rest of the shelves were all filled up with comic books, most of which were thin, single issues, all well used. Adam couldn’t really make out much about them due to the nature of single issues contra anthologies, but they seemed to mostly be green or black, which contrasted the rest of the room quite sharply.

Adam was horribly curious about what this was, but wasn’t sure if Chad would be okay with it . So, as sneakily as a sneak can possibly sneak, he glanced over at what Chad was doing. Chad was sitting on the other side of the room, by his fire-patterned car-shaped bed, holding a strange device in his hand, looking at a large, flat moving painting. Definitively distracted. Adam, cackling to himself, deftly pulled out one of the comics at random, and displayed it to himself.

The cover itself was of a mostly black variant, with the actual artwork only being in the bottom right corner. This part was illuminated by a single lamp showing two people, one young black man lying in a hospital bed of sorts, with a larger, muscular green man standing beside him, holding his hand. The scene was exceedingly grim, and gave off the sort of feeling the final moments between old friends would. Other than this, there was a title that Adam could barely read. It was clearly in Demonic, which Adam was fluent in, but even so, the words didn’t make much sense to him. He couldn’t connect these written words to any language he knew, even English, and so, he was left scratching his head at their meaning. Regardless, the title seemed to be made up of white bricks in a blocky pattern, and off to the side, smaller text could be found, as well as the most colourful thing on the whole splash page, which was a red bow of sorts, which probably had some sort of meaning. Above this, small white text spelled out “420 AUG”, yet another mysterious phrase Adam could not decipher.

Flipping the comic over, Adam found the back portraying a rather grisly sight, with a large, rather inhuman red dude looming over a reddened cityscape, much like the one he had seen yesterday. Adam couldn’t understand the text describing the context of the image, but it probably had nothing to do with the actual comic. Opening up the comic itself, it seemed to mostly follow that buff green dude on the cover as he hangs out with the black youth on the front. The style was very different compared to the Angel comic he had read during the night, with more stylization and colours, and less soft tones.

“Hey bro I think I got everything working,” Chad called out, still glued to the moving painting. Adam snapped the comic shut and shoved it back into the bookshelf before turning around to face Chad. “Dude, you cool?” Chad asked, a little confused. Adam nodded, “oh yeah man,” and quickly came up to sid next to him on the fire-painted bed.

“Here bro,” Chad said, smiling as he handed Adam a small, blue device with a tiny subtraction sign on it. Chad himself held a red one with an addition sign, and Adam found it very quaint. But, at accepting the controller, Adam’s attention was drawn to the buff youth’s hands and fingers.

As a sorcerer, Adam, at viewing a human, usually pays attention to three things: their mouth, their eyes, and, most importantly, their fingers. It is through the fingers that Magick penetrates and comes into the world to be transfigured to whatever spell the sorcerer wishes to use. So, most sorcerers have quite a lot of wear and tear on their fingers, depending on how old and proficient they are. Had Adam been an actual human, his fingertips would most likely have melted into nothingness by now due to how acidic his Magick is. This does not occur in the throat and lips since sorcerers have since long learnt how to keep the path from the Cerritulus to the lips clear.

So, at finding his thoughts flooded with Magick trivia, Adam realized what he needed to do, no, what he needed to confirm.

Putting aside the blue device, Adam stood up once more, pulled the flame-patterned covers together over the window, closed the door tight, made sure there was nobody else in the room and went back to Chad.

He could already feel panic rising in him like the flow of the tide.

He would hate this, but if he didn’t make sure of it now…

His friend might not live much longer than tomorrow night.