"I demolish my bridges behind me...then there is no choice but to move forward."

- Firdtjof Nansen

03:39 p.m

12 days earlier

Tim rubbed his eyes as it dried in the air-conditioned reading room. Cornered by white walls, tables, and chairs, with a one way mirror that showed the library interior as the only source of other colours. The fluorescent light blinded him as he readjusted his visual to focus on something other than the layers of newspapers and books sprawled on the table in front of him.

VASHMIR OUTBREAK KILLS THOUSAND

“I'm the dumbest asshole on Earth,” he whispered under his breath as he leaned back in his seat.

SIN OUTBREAK: PRESIDENT REMAINS CALM

For the last two hours, Timothy Kleve had combed through dozens of articles and skimmed through four books on the Vashmir Pandemic. Scribblings on a notepad had statistics of numbers and words circled and crossed off. The newspaper directly in front of him was one of the most recent. On the front , splattered across the entire top half of the page, wrote:

SIN FIGURES COVER-UP

After a knock on the door, Howard Galloway, the librarian, slid into room. “You've been in here past lunch my boy. Aren't you hungry.”

With his pen, Tim tapped on a page of one of the opened books. “Continuous usage may cause mania, fatigue and addiction,” he mumbled to himself.

“What?” Howard walked over to the teen, leaning over his shoulder.

“Somnidin. The miracle drug against Sin,” he recalled yesterday's news that reported a shortage of the drug in the country.

Howard placed a caring hand on Tim's shoulder. “You okay?”

“One third,” Tim said, more to himself again. “One third of the world estimated to die from Sin by the end of the month.”

Howard picked up the notepad the teen was writing on. Flipping the pages, there were several graphs that plotted the number of infected against the time since Vashmir Commons's death in different states and countries. He looked to the newspapers and books where keywords and figures were circled across the pages.

“Tim, this is...very...very detailed,” the man set the pad down. “But kind of obsessive. And...one third of the world is kind of a long stretch don't you think?”

“The rate of increase has been accelearating,” Tim buried his face in his arms, revelling the peace of the darkness that only closed eyes provided. “The next two weeks will be the steepest increase. After that, half the world would be walking corpses.”

“Look,” Howard pulled up a chair beside him. “I know you're a sharp boy but-”

“Sharp?” Tim sprang straight in his seat, looking at Howard for the first time in the conversation. “If I was so sharp it wouldn't take me so long to make the connection. If I was so sharp, I would have paid more attention to the world going to shit! If I was so sharp, why...the fuck...did I not act sooner!?”

Silence fell between the two. Their eyes crossed, but Tim felt neither compassion nor confusion from the man. Instead, it looked as though the librarian's eyes were filled with a sort of pride.

Howard broke the air. “Someone you know have Sin?”

“Tsk,” Tim clicked his tongue and turned away from the librarian.

“It's not your fault you know.”

After a short pause, he replied, “I know.”

“This is too big for you. There's nothing you can do.”

“I've got to try.”

“Good,” Howard said, much to Tim's surprise. The man got up from his seat and headed for the door. “You're a sharp boy Timothy Kleve. Maybe you've forgotten it, but you used to be able to make the connections between things faster than anyone I've seen. You just need to remember why you forgot.”

Tim watched as the door closed behind the man. Turning back to the piles of information on the table, he wished Howard wasn't so cryptic all the time. Then he remembered Clay and Stella, and from there, his father. Then he cried for he remembered his mother.

XXX

07:22 p.m

12 days earlier

Clay sat on the couch in his living room in grey shorts and a white shirt, his laptop on one side of the arm rest. Newspaper clippings, magazine articles and his father's tablet covered the wooden coffee table. He could hear Stella preparing the drinks in the kitchen, the light clinking of ceramic plates and teacups setting the slow tempo.

He shuffled through a series of websites before picking up one of his notes and comparing the details before letting out a frustrated sigh and putting the paper back down. He zoomed out of the mind-map that was opened up on his tablet and swiped away one of the notes attached to a box titled ‘school’.

From the kitchen, Stella floated out with a tray of two teacups and a floral ceramic steaming teapot. She wore her red-white striped long sleeve pyjamas and matching trousers, her strawberry blonde hair combed and flowing freely.

“You really should rest,” she said, setting down the tray on a lone empty corner of the table before sitting down beside her brother and pouring them two cups of tea.

Clay smiled at her. “I know. But I feel like I'm so close to making a connection here,” he leaned back into the cushion, resting his head against the angled seat. He glanced grimly to the two pill bottles of Somnidin on the table. One for himself and the other for Stella. He redirected his attention away to his sister. “Any luck with Tim?”

With graceful movements, she separated the cups for his and hers, nodding slightly as a reply. “He just texted me. He's on his way home now.”

“That stupid kid, making us worry like that,” he picked up his cup and sipped from it before quickly sticking his tongue out to cool after being burnt by the steaming hot drink.

“Careful, it's hot,” she said with a mischievousness grin.

“Yeah I got that!” he replied with a joking snap.

She smiled gently, scanning across the data sprawled across the table. “What do you have so far?”

“Next to nothing,” Clay placed his cup down with a cling. “I've crossed all baseball teams in half the country that wears the same uniform colour, home or away. There's five different Smiths, two of them coaches, one girl, and the other two looks nothing like the guy. There has to be a link. What if I can't find it in time? I'm not as good at this research thing as Tim.”

Stella lovingly kissed her brother on the cheeks and rested her head on his shoulders. “You'll find it. You're my brother.”

He chuckled at the comment. “That's not a very good argument.”

“On the contrary. It's the best in the world.”

XXX

08:32 p.m

12 days earlier

Standing outside the apartment door, Tim stared at the cracks of the frame where light from the inside was seeping through. His father was home, probably with a mouthful for where Tim had disappeared to. He held his key in the keyhole, contemplating whether to turn it when the door swung open from the inside, the rusty hinges calling as it did so. His key, having slid out of the lock, held in his hand, hung in the air limply as Tim stared at his father, golden hair backed by the bright interior light, sloppily dressed in his white singlet and shorts.

For a second, Tim thought his father was going to explode in rage, but the man instead spoke calmly with nonchalance, a look of relaxing daze that he did not think was possible from such a rugged face. “You had dinner yet?”

Stunned at the lack of bulging blood vessels and thrown furniture, Tim shook his head without a word.

“I've got take-outs,” Joshua gestured into the apartment before heading back in. Tim followed warily.

On the coffee table were two cartons of Chinese food, one already opened. Joshua sat on the couch and un-mute the television where a comedy film was showing and ate his share of the noodles with a fork. Tim took a seat on the floor and took the unopened box in hand. Opening it, he found it too contained noodles. He broke apart the given wooden chopsticks and began eating while watching the show, slurping with each mouthful.

When the shows' protagonist stubbed his toe on a chair and began cursing and knocking things over, Joshua let out a laugh. “Hah. Ain't that the truth.”

Tim quietly watched the show and could not help but smile.

As they slowly ate and the night grew deeper, Tim, for the first time in years, felt at home. The clock on the wall ticked into the next hour.

“We should do this more often,” Joshua said. “Maybe once a week? I could come home early and-”

“Dad?” Tim cut in, as if he expected his father to speak for awhile now.

He could hear his father's breathing stopped, the soft shuffling of utensils digging through the cardboard box ceased. “Yeah son?”

“I'm still angry at what happened to mom,” Tim paused, the ensuing silence between them drowned out the television where the protagonist ripped his pants while riding a bike. “But it's not your fault any more.”

He could hear his father snort through his nose, perhaps tearing up. Tim continued eating, speaking through the remnants of noodles and meat in his mouth, never turning to look at his dad. “That night, when mom died, I blamed you. If you weren't drunk, she wouldn't be driving. That was my reasoning,” Tim finished the last of his noodle and placed the empty carton back on the table. “But it wasn't your fault. I just wanted it to be. I needed it to be, to make sense of it somehow. But I realized, with the things that have been happening lately, I was just being selfish. I've been that way since mom died, I knew that. But I know it now.”

The comedy's protagonist is shown trying to sneak into a VIP lounge dressed as a clown. Joshua, after a period of silence, realized his son did not know how to continue and began, “Tim. About yesterday, that protest-”

“I know,” the teen cut in again. “You weren't skipping work. I've figured out the details. Read the stupid newspapers. And no, we don't have to talk about it. Nothing we can do now.”

“Okay then,” was all Joshua could say.

“We should go on a vacation sometime,” Tim said matter-of-factly.

“Yeah.”

“Maybe visit mom's grave together one of these days.”

“She'd like that.”

Tim got to his feet and went to his room's door.

“Son,” Josh said, stopping Tim at the threshold. There was a pause as he attempted to form the words. “I...I love you.”

Without denying or accepting the words, Tim silently closed the door behind him.