CHAPTER 47: The Fugitive Part 18

CHAPTER 47: The Fugitive Part 18

The sterile white light was the first thing he registered. A low hum, the smell of antiseptic and aggressive cleaning. Fénix blinked, his eyelids heavy as lead. The white ceiling of the Enid Corp hospital slowly came into focus. Pain. That was the second sensation. A dull, generalized pain that enveloped his entire body.

He turned his head, a movement that cost him a titanic effort. Enid was sitting in a chair next to his bed. She wasn't reading, she wasn't looking at her datapad. She was just there, sitting very straight, her hands clasped in her lap. Her face was pale, her eyes, usually filled with tireless determination, were dark, with deep circles and a contained fury that froze the blood.

"Awake," she said. Her voice wasn't a soft whisper of relief. It was flat, cold, sharp as a knife's edge.

Fénix tried to speak, but only a rough, broken sound came from his dry throat.

"Don't speak," she interrupted him, standing up. "You don't have the right to speak yet. You're just going to listen."

She walked to the head of the bed, looking down at him. Her expression was impenetrable.

"The audio devices on Irene's cars that you and Marcus placed. I heard everything, Fénix. Every damn word. The trap. The transformation. That... four-armed thing. That thing's voice coming out of your mouth." She paused, and Fénix could see the hand gripping the bed rail tremble slightly. "I heard him beat you. I heard him transfer to Marcus. I heard him leave you behind like trash."

Her voice broke for a fraction of a second, not from pain, but from pure rage.
"Why, Fénix?" the question sounded like a whip crack. "Why the fuck didn't you tell me?"

Fénix closed his eyes, overwhelmed by shame, guilt, and pain. He couldn't hide anymore.

...The words came out haltingly at first, then in an unstoppable torrent. He told her everything. The death at the Berghain. The limbo. The pact with Adam. The price: the full moon, the tumor, the symbiote. The fear. The shame of being a pawn, a vessel. The terror of being seen as a monster. He told her about the voice in his head, the mockery, the constant threat. He confessed every secret, every piece of rotten truth he had carried alone.

When he finished, he was exhausted, panting, as if he had run a marathon. The room fell silent, broken only by the sound of his ragged breathing.

Enid said nothing. For a long minute, she just looked at him, processing the torrent of demented confessions. Then, her severe expression broke. Not into tears, but into a deep and devastating understanding. It all fit. The strange transformation, his erratic behavior, the desperation.

She sat on the edge of the bed carefully. Slowly, with a tenderness that contrasted brutally with her fury of minutes before, she reached out and stroked his cheek, brushing a sweaty lock of hair from his forehead.

"Oh, Fénix..." she whispered, her voice now soft and laden with immense sorrow. "Idiot. My brave, stubborn idiot. Why didn't you come to me? Why did you carry this alone?"

Fénix couldn't hold back anymore. A dry, painful sob escaped his chest. Then another. And another. The tears he had been holding back for weeks, the fear, the helplessness, the rage, everything erupted in a silent, convulsive cry that shook his weakened body. He buried his face in the pillow, ashamed, but unable to stop.

Enid didn't try to quiet him. She just leaned over and wrapped her arms around him, holding his shoulders tightly, allowing him to fall apart against her. She held him as he shook, stroking his hair softly.

"It's alright," she murmured against his ear. "It's alright. You're not alone. Never again."

When the sobs subsided, leaving him empty and exhausted, Enid pulled back just enough to look him in the eyes. Her own eyes shone with unshed tears, but her expression was one of fierce and terrible determination.

"Fénix, listen to me," she said, her voice soft but unyielding, like steel. "I understand now. I understand everything. But there is a truth we cannot avoid." She paused, searching for the words. "Adam... has to be stopped. Excised. Forever."

Fénix nodded weakly, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand.
"Yes... I know."

"No," Enid squeezed his hand, her gaze intense, relentless. "I don't think you understand. To stop him..." her voice broke for an instant, but she recovered "...there may be no other option but to... end the vessel he inhabits."

Fénix froze. His eyes widened, the pain and fatigue replaced by a renewed horror.
"W-what? No... Enid, no! It's Marcus! We can't! There's another way, there has to be!"

"FÉNIX!" Enid's voice cut like a whip, firm and full of an anguish he had never heard from her. "Listen to me!" She grabbed his face with both hands, forcing him to look at her. "The one in there is no longer Marcus! It's the thing that tortured you, that used your body, that killed who knows how many! That manipulated us all! If we don't stop it, it will do much, much worse things! And it will use our friend's face to do it!"

"But it's him!" Fénix shouted, desperate. "There must be something of him still in there! We can't give up! We can't be like them!"

"Sometimes the choice isn't between good and evil, but between the terrible and the apocalyptic!" Enid shot back, her tears finally escaping and tracing paths down her cheeks. "I don't want to do this! Believe me, I don't! But my job is to protect this city, this world, from threats that cannot be contained! And Adam is the greatest threat we have ever faced! And he's using Marcus's body as a shield!"

Fénix wanted to keep protesting, screaming, cursing. But he saw the absolute pain in Enid's eyes. The horrible certainty. She wasn't saying it out of cruelty or cold pragmatism. She was saying it because it was the most devastating truth either of them had ever had to face.