Asher just nodded.
“But I’m not leaving.” Levi shook his head, blinking away his own tears. “Because if I leave I’ll be alone and you’ll be alone and they’ll still be in there, and none of it will get better. And I promised — I promised myself on that stupid space station that we’d get out together, and we wouldn’t be lonely ever again and nothing would hurt. I know that’s not how the real world worksbut I’m —” His chin trembled. “I’m going to try anyway. To make it hurt less. For both of us.”
Asher’s hands found Levi’s wrists and held them gently, and when he breathed in, his chest stuttered like it didn’t remember how to breathe in properly. Levi’s pulse was fast under his fingers. The fast pulse meant Levi was scared, but he was scared and was staying.
“Let’s go home,” Levi said.
Three words. The three best words. Better thanI love you.Better than the sounds Levi made in his room on the good sheets.
Levi’s hands dropped from Asher’s face, took Asher’s hand, and held it.
They walked to the elevator.
Asher’s hand stayed inside Levi’s the whole way down as the wet on his face dried and the new thing in his chest sat warm and bright.
And underneath the warmth, very quietly, a smaller part of him was already noticing what had worked. The way his face felt when it did something new. The crying he had not known how to do out here until he had done it. The way his chest moved and his lip trembled. The part of him that built things was taking apart what happened, sorting it into components, and the components were on a shelf now, in case he ever needed to assemble them again.
50
The Developers
Thec-suitedidn’tscarehim anymore.
The keypad code was in his fingers now, muscle memory, the way his gaming hotkeys used to be. The door opened and the ventilators greeted him —hiss-click, hiss-click, the chorus that had made him gag sometimes until he reminded himself that it was just the room itself breathing. Like something alive. The room was alive because the people in it were alive, and Levi had made sure the room reflected that.
Tyler’s corner had a Knicks pennant pinned to the wall behind his bed and a pair of running shoes on the shelf Levi had found in Tyler’s desk drawer. Owen’s bedside table had his coffee mug — the stained one, the one with a circuit board printed on it — and a stack of sci-fi paperbacks Levi rotated every few weeks because Owen struck him as someone who would hate seeing the same book cover for months. Zoe’s space had her purple mug, a framed photo of her with her parents Levi had found in her office, and a small succulent that Levi checked on everyvisit even though Zoe couldn’t see it. Maddie’s wall had three of her own concept art prints — the forest, the asylum’s exterior, and the observation deck — mounted in frames Levi had bought himself because the art was beautiful, and the artist deserved to see her own work when she opened her eyes.
If she opened her eyes.
Elliot’s space was harder. Levi had put up a photo of Elliot and Jasper from the documentary — a still frame he’d captured from the video, the two of them laughing, Jasper’s arm around Elliot’s shoulders after they roped Paul into getting crew shots of everyone. He’d put Elliot’s headphones on the shelf — expensive ones, the kind a sound designer would own. He didn’t stay long at Elliot’s bed. He couldn’t. If he stayed too long, he started thinking about Asher’s jaw on Elliot’s face, about Asher’s voice sayingI thought about killing themand the thinking turned into a heat in his chest that wasn’t grief. It was the anger Levi promised would last a long time and the promise was holding.
He checked the medical records. He made sure they were being repositioned every two hours to prevent bedsores, he checked that Tyler, Jasper, and Owen were being shaved. He checked the IV lines, the feeding tubes, and the catheter maintenance logs, and the checking was thorough and precise because it was the most important thing he did every week.
He replaced the old flowers in each vase. Sunflowers for Tyler because Tyler was big and bright and sunflowers felt right. White roses for Owen because Owen was quiet and clean and the roses were simple. Purple dahlias for Zoe. Wildflowers for Maddie — a chaotic mix, the kind of arrangement that looked like someone had grabbed a handful from a meadow, because Maddie’s art had that quality. Something wild and alive and unpredictable.
Jasper got whatever was most fragrant. This week it was gardenias.
Levi put the gardenias in the vase on Jasper’s bedside table and pulled the plastic chair to its usual spot and sat down.
Jasper’s face was the same. It was always the same.
Levi picked up the hand.
“Hey,” he said, the way he always started. “It’s Thursday. I brought gardenias. They smell really good — if you can smell anything in there, I hope it’s these.”
The ventilator breathed. Jasper’s hand was warm in his.
“I’ve been thinking about the sanitarium this week. The safe room — God, you were always so…calm. Even when everything was terrible. I’d be losing my mind and you’d be making jokes like we were hanging out in someone’s dorm room instead of hiding from things that wanted to kill us.”
He squeezed his hand.
“I think about that a lot. How easy you made it feel. I used to think the game generated that — the calmness, the humor. But Paul showed me some of your employee reviews and your coworkers all said the same thing.Jasper makes the hard stuff easier. Jasper’s the one you want in the room when everything’s on fire.“ He let out a small, watery laugh. “You were like that before the game. The game just — showed me the real you. Without knowing it was the real you.”
He wiped his eyes with the back of his free hand. The crying didn’t embarrass him anymore. Not here. Not with his friends.
“We’d be best friends, you know. Out here. If you were awake. I know that. You’d come over to the house, which Asher would hate, because you’d make me laugh. Asher gets jealous when other people make me laugh, but I bet you’d think that was hilarious and you’d do it more on purpose.” He was smiling. Crying and smiling. “You’d be the worst influence. We’d play games and smoke your terrible weed and Asher would sit in the corner being weird about it and we’d both ignore him.”
He looked around the room and tried not to let the weight of all of them crush him.
