Keeper of the Lost Cities: Rebuild [COMPLETED]

Chapter Twenty-Seven - DEX

Dex couldn't stop thinking about Biana's face when she'd told them about the murder.

In that moment she had seemed so dejected, so... void of hope, as if she were already convinced they had lost.

And that hadn't used to be her.

He didn't like to think about the Neverseen, or the times during that period. He had learned to block the memories from his mind—with help from a Telepath he didn't know and was pretty sure wasn't connected to the Black Swan or any of his friends—but he still remembered sometimes.

Was that when he had fallen in love with Biana? He couldn't really pinpoint a specific moment. Some days it felt like he'd been in love with her his whole life.

Whether that was a good or bad thing depended on the day.

His tactic was distraction—it was what he had used all those times he'd been left behind. Most often he would work on a gadget or do research or brew an elixir or play a game with the triplets. He had spent countless hours of his life like that, pointless, doing nothing, no direction save for what he was told to do.

He didn't like to complain about things—that didn't do anything for anyone, much less make him feel better—so he bore this burden silently.

But it had been eight years ever since he manifested as a Technopath, and the cauldron was about to bubble over. He felt it happening to him slowly; every day he distracted himself was a day in which his resolve grew weaker. Even yesterday, he had left Widgetmoor feeling okay—but then Biana had called, he'd been told to stay away yet again, and he was back to before.

At this point he wasn't sure the problem was with his last name. What if it was with him? What if he was the problem?

It wasn't like a lot of people didn't want to be around the Dizznees. His family had a lot of friends.

So maybe people just didn't want to be around him.

He let the steady noise of bubbling concoctions and Kesler's laughter and the Slurps & Burps door belching swallow the fear. He took apart the addler he'd messed with earlier, put it back together, did the same thing with Tinker's muffler. It was to get the feel of the gadgets, which in turn could help him understand how they could be mass-produced.

He really wished Sophie were there with him, or at least that they were together...

But she had left him behind too.

Everyone always left him behind.

He picked apart the muffler more aggressively, concentrating on what the pieces were saying, how he could make the model better. This time, when he put it back together, it was jagged instead of smooth.

That would definitely hurt a lot more, so the design wasn't very practical—but maybe the Purities somehow managed to make them effective and hidden? He tried to remember if he saw any Purities not wearing shoes, but... who wouldn't wear shoes?

His eyes wandered to his lab table, where an assortment of ingredients cluttered the surface in no particular order. There was also a photo of him and Biana in front of Slurps & Burps. It had been back when they'd first started dating, and that day they had walked around Mysterium, shopping and playing games and kissing every time they left a store.

The memories pulled on Dex's heart, rattling it to remind him there was a gap there, somewhere in his love. They pulled it down, not into his stomach but to a place that couldn't be described. But it was dark, and he was alone, and the will to climb back to a happier place was abandoning him. Just like everyone else.