Page 59 of Garbage

An ambulance came whirling in, and Quincy watched as Evan was strapped to a thin mattress and wheeled away.

Soon, he was strapped to something, too. His body was lifted.

Everything went dark.

Chapter 14

Quincy

Quincy stared at the cement wall. There were forty-eight large bricks. Well, forty full bricks, and sixteen half-bricks on the sides, which made up eight more full ones.

He traced the lines between them with his eye, still getting used to the change in perspective. The bricks had been painted over so many times that even the lines were faint. The room also held a table and three chairs. He was sitting on one of them now.

He’d forgotten, during his colorful life with Evan, what it was like to look at nothing but gray.

Maybe that was why it was so horrible now. He hadn’t known before how glorious and full his life could be.

Though even when Quincy had spent his days collecting garbage, at least he’d had his nights to explore his ragged little corner of the world. At least he’d had the moon.

Now he didn’t even have that. His cell didn’t have windows.

The police had pulled the device off his shoulder as soon as they had him locked away in the gray room. He could walk and talk and move now, but there was nowhere to go, and any attempts he made to connect with the outside world were blocked without a trace. He thought it was because of the much smaller device the police had locked on to his shoulder and told him not to remove, but there might have been more damage to his communications chips that he couldn’t detect.

So he’d spent most of last night, sitting on the single, hard chair, watching videos of Evan. Stupid little videos, like the very first phone call he’d made to Evan, from a few feet away in the apartment. Or the one where Evan had shown him how to find a ripe tomato on their first trip to the grocery store. Evan sitting down to the first breakfast Quincy made him, adorable in his lizard pajamas and mussed hair.

Quincy had made some recordings last night—could it really have been last night?—of Evan looking up at him while their bodies came together… but he couldn’t bear to look at those, now.

He hadn’t looked at the video that he’d managed to record before he’d been attacked, either. The timestamp only showed thirty-two seconds, and he’d handed it over willingly.

Everything after that had been lost, though.

He would have been happy to never think about it again, either. But the different officers kept coming in, asking him to tell his story.

So he did. Four times. The attack last month. Evan scaring the Bad Men off. Looking up for only a moment before he felt the sting on his shoulder. He couldn’t remember exactly what anyone had said, just the hateful intent behind it. The trapped feeling of being locked in his own body. Evan showing up to save him, followed by the realization that Evan was in danger. Then the escape route through the Rescue protocol.

They’d asked him a lot of questions about that.

Then they’d asked him even more times if he knew what had happened to the people who’d attacked him.

He hadn’t looked. He had no idea.

He wasn’t sure why they kept sending in different people to ask the same questions, but he answered anyway.

They wouldn’t answer any of his questions, though. Especially not the most important ones. Where was Evan? Was he safe?

Every time they didn’t answer, his motors revved faster with nowhere to go.

So now he was just staring at the wall. He couldn’t even look at the videos anymore.

The door clicked open, but he didn’t turn.

“Quincy?”

Was it possible? That sounded like…

“Ben!” Quincy lurched up and flung himself into Ben’s arms, hoses and limbs tangling. It wasn’t quite the same as hugging Evan, but right now, Ben felt like safety—the only person he could cling to in an overwhelming world.

There were a few people behind him, but Quincy barely looked, bending down to bury his face in Ben’s shoulder.