Chapter 101 - 111| The Drive

Chapter 101: Chapter 111| The Drive

They reached the cars with eleven minutes to spare.

Kira didn’t slow down when she hit the forestry track — she went straight to the driver’s door of the primary car and had the engine running before anyone else had finished deciding where to sit. The specific efficiency of someone for whom departure was always the most important part of an arrival.

"Car arrangement," Sable said. She was already at the second car. "Twin with Damian. Mara with me and Elena."

Nobody argued.

The twin looked at the car.

Not with fear, with the focused attention he brought to everything new. He’d seen vehicles before. Facility Nine had a maintenance yard visible from certain upper floor windows and delivery trucks came twice a week. But seeing a thing through a frosted window at distance and being asked to get inside one were different propositions.

He got in.

Sat in the passenger seat. Looked at the dashboard. At the seatbelt. At the window beside him.

Damian got in behind the wheel. Kira was in the lead car, he was driving the second, he had learnt how to do so previously from Kira ’you know gat to be flexible’ he remembered Kira’s voice as clear as day. He started the engine and pulled out of the forestry track without ceremony.

The twin said nothing.

The forestry track gave way to the regional road and the regional road opened up around them and the twin looked at the world moving past the window with the specific quality of attention he’d been applying to everything since the door of his room had opened — total, methodical, missing nothing.

Trees. Fields. A farmhouse set back from the road. Another vehicle coming the opposite direction, the twin tracked it automatically, his eyes moving to it and reading it and filing whatever he read before it disappeared behind them.

[Flux: 5%]

Damian felt the number and felt the Flux Synchronization passive sitting ready at its threshold and decided not to wait for it to fire.

"I need to make a stop," he said.

"How far," Kira’s voice came through the low-tech communication arrangement they’d established. Two short taps on the horn meant copy, three meant abort, her voice through the window when the cars were close enough.

"Now," he said. "By the Roadside."

Two taps.

He pulled over at the first viable point, a widening of the road with hedgerow on both sides and nothing coming in either direction. Kira pulled in ahead of him. Sable’s car came in behind.

The twin looked at the hedgerow. At the stopped car. At Damian.

"What’s happening," he said.

"I need to refuel," Damian said.

His twin looked at him. "You said that in the tree line. I said I didn’t know what it meant."

"I know," Damian said. "I’m about to show you."

He got out and went to Sable’s car and knocked once. She was already opening the door.

They used the gap between the two cars. It was atleast enough privacy, not enough time to waste finding more. Sable sat sideways in the passenger seat with the door open and Damian crouched in the gap and the hedgerow held its position on both sides and the road stayed empty.

She reached behind herself. The clasp came free. She pulled her top up and over and her chest came free in the afternoon light and she looked at him with the direct unhurried expression that had replaced the clinical distance so long ago it felt like another person’s history.

The system flickered in his vision.

[Grade Scan: Sable Wren — Grade A. Flux restoration available: 65%]

He leaned forward.

His mouth found her left side. He drew, purposeful and direct, working against the specific urgency of 5% and a highway that needed covering. The milk came immediately. Rich. Full. The ×2.0 ceiling present in the first draw the way it was always present — deep and certain, the accumulated quality of weeks of consistent cycle.

Above him her spine straightened then released. Both hands found the door frame on either side of her — gripping it, her knuckles whitening, her body’s honest response to something that had stopped requiring management a long time ago.

He moved to the right.

Her head dropped back. A sound left her that was genuine and entirely hers. Her right hand released the door frame and found his shoulder instead — not directing, just present, the weight of it the specific weight of something established.

He stayed until the system confirmed.

[Flux: 5% + 65% = 70%]

He sat back. Drew his mouth from her. Her nipples flushed and erect. Milk remnants at the corner of his lips.

She looked at him with the flush in her cheeks and reached for her top without rushing.

Ding!

[Milk Memory: Refreshed. A-grade bonus reapplied. Duration: 24 hours.]

[Bonus compounding: ×2.0 — ceiling maintained.]

"70," he said.

She nodded. Made a note. Pulled her top back on.

He stood up and looked at the primary car where Kira was watching the road with her eyes in the mirror and not commenting on anything. Then at his own car where his twin was sitting in the passenger seat looking at him through the windscreen with the focused attention he brought to everything.

Damian got back in.

His twin looked at him.

"That was the refuel," he said.

"Yes," Damian said.

His twin processed this for a moment with the methodical thoroughness of someone integrating a significant new variable into an existing framework.

"Breast milk," he said.

"Yes," Damian said.

"That’s your Flux source," his twin said.

"Yes," Damian said.

His twin looked at the road ahead. Then back at Damian.

"Hm," he said.

Just that. The specific sound of someone who had decided to file something for later examination rather than unpack it immediately on a roadside in the middle of an extraction.

Damian looked at him.

"That’s it?" he said. "Hm?"

"I’ve been inside a facility for twenty two years," his twin said. "I’ve encountered stranger things than an unusual Flux source." He looked at the road. "I have questions. I’ll ask them when we’re not parked on a regional road eleven minutes after leaving a Nexarion facility."

Damian looked at him for a moment.

Then he started the engine.