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They watch him closely. “What happened?”
“You were screaming in your sleep,” Lauren?iu says softly.
They stared, scrutinizing him, searching his hands for weapons.
“What did I say?”
“You were screaming for your father, and you were asking to be let out.”
Silence. Then, a scoff. Adrian shifts away, cross-legged, their back to Lauren?iu. “I suppose you want to know everything about me.”
“I might want to know more, but you don’t need to tell me anything. You don’t owe us anything. I...I don’t want you to think there’s any kind of debt.”
They don’t immediately answer, so Lauren?iu almost prepares to leave, though he tries to think of a consoling parting word.
Then, back to his face: “My father was Kenneth Vergil.”
The name doesn’t mean anything to Lauren?iu, but the heavy pause makes him think Adrian expects him to know who that is. “Who is that, exactly?”
“He was the leader of the North Georgia Anti-Reanimation Task Force.” NGARTF. Doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue.
“That’s different from the one that rules Terminus, right?”
“Yes. He led a smaller region, to the northwest of Atlanta before it was renamed. He tried to take over Terminus; he won a few battles, but he was pushed back. They fought because Father—Father was harsher. Crueler. Both of them were, of course, against the reanimated. But Father’s methods were worse, and he wanted the complete eradication of them instead of, his mind, wasting time to find a solution. As far as he was concerned, they were ‘cursed’ because they were damned. They did something wrong to deserve their fate.”
“I imagine he was a fundamentalist,” replied Lauren?iu.
A breathy laugh. “Oh, yes.” A long pause. “As soon as I was four years old and started remembering basic tasks, he took me up to the wall of our house—this massive compound—and let me watch him and Mother shoot the undead. Monsters, they called them. Sinners. They insisted the dead rising was part of a prophecy that signaled the End Times. I couldn’t hold any kind of rifle, but when I was five, he began training me with a revolver. Dogs. Before my father had me kill people...prisoners. Reanimated persons. Before them, there were the dogs.”
“How old were you, then?” asks Lauren?iu.
“Nine,” Adrian states. “Old enough to understand.”
Lauren?iu tries to suppress his horror. He doesn’t want this person, this lonely person, to think he’s horrified because of them. He remembers at times being so cold that he didn’t care if he shoved anyone away, despite wanting more than anything for one person to stay. Maybe Adrian acts as they do because they figure, inevitably, he will be disgusted and abandon them.
“How did all that make you feel?”
He wonders about Adrian sometimes, how much they internalize that, before, he couldn’t even guess. Lauren?iu is much more worried about the rampant militias than the undead.
Adrian will set up on the balcony with a sniper rifle and headshot the occasional reanimated person ambling between trees.
There’s really no need, since they don’t attack vampires or a fallen angel, but Adrian says that they find it relaxing, and Lauren?iu is all about finding the coping mechanisms that work best for you.
Adrian stares ahead unblinkingly. “I don’t remember. Then, I didn’t feel much at all. Even my need to always make him pleased with me stopped feeling so happy. It was what I had to do.”
Lauren?iu’s default frown deepens. “You were a child soldier.”
“I was a child, and I was a soldier. Then again, I don’t remember much about being a child, but a lot about being a soldier. To me, it was good. The world was unflinching, and I needed to know how to fight back, especially if one day, I was going to take over.”
“Did you have anyone?” Lauren?iu asks. For a moment, Adrian looks over their shoulder, their eyes narrowed.
“I...there was another soldier at the compound, training under one of my parents’ bodyguards. This soldier, the same age as me, her name was Isabelle, or Izzie. She saw me for who I was, but she had a secret.”
“She was a vampire.”
“Yes, but we’d sneak into one of the secret underground halls that connected the main compound to her barracks. Naturally, we were found out, but only after she lost control.” Adrian phantoms a hand over the side of their neck. “She drank so much from me, and then, she worked to save me.”
A chill goes down Lauren?iu’s spine. His chest constricts.
