At Time's End

Chapter 7 - Progress!

"Yes! Finally!" I cheered as I held the chemical compound in my hands. "I think this might work, Mr. Engarde! Hold still!"

I dropped the chemical in his eyes. The flames died down immediately. He blinked a couple times. "Huh? Whoa. I can.. see things."

Unfortunately, the flames came back in a few seconds. "Ah, goddammit. Guess we need to make it stronger, huh?" I was still in awe of our slight success.

"... Huh? Oh, right. Yeah, I wonder what could help... Any ide-" As I was saying that, the lights began flickering, and eventually blinked out. "Uhh, what's happening?"

"Eh, probably a power outage. Some Proximian probably spilled their coffee into the gears." I laughed. "So, what do we do now? It's not like we can see the blueprints. My eyes may be on fire constantly, but they don't generate enough light to read them."

"Uhh, well, do you have candles?" I tried.

"What are those?" Right, not everyone can just travel to the very beginning of the Ring System when they were struggling to make enough energy.

"Ah, nevermind," I gave up. "I guess we just chill then."

"Yeah. Let me go make something." He went to his kitchen to make something, but quickly came back after I heard a bunch of stuff falling over. "Uhh, I can't see."

"Yeah, uhh.. noted. Let me go try." I almost sunk trying to get in. I just made some 'tomatoes' with 'lettuce'. Apparently it was called 'salad' on Earth, ages ago. Useless knowledge finally becoming useful? "Here we go."

"What- is that? It looks good."

"It's an ancient dish called 'salad'. It just has some old Terran greens in it." I began eating it. 

"Huh, this is actually decent. Try it." He tasted it.

"Nah, these red things do not taste good," he said, scrunching his nose. "The hell are you on?" He asked as I was gobbling the tomatoes down my throat like a maniac.

The lights began flickering again. "Hey, the lights are.. back?"

They shut down. "Aw. So I guess I'm stuck with someone whose tastebuds are too young and childlike to enjoy tomatoes. Damn."

"Goodness, can you shut up?" he laughed. The lights began flickering again, and finally turned on. "Finally!"

"I'll just go grocery shopping then. Your cold unit is pretty empty. Uhh, don't die." I got in his trave to get to the Central Ring.

It wasn't too far, but it still felt like ages. The traffic wasn't bad, it just felt like... time had slowed down. I wondered why.

As I finally got to the Central Ring and the market, instead of wondering why time felt so slow, I wondered what to buy. My thoughts consisted mainly of things like "What even is this? They made rice.. out of a Proximian plant..? Huh. Maybe I could try that out... Even if we didn't like it, Eterna probably would."

"Where the hell even am I? Man, these labels just yell 'We're afraid of 19G and opt our kids out of the Rings' Health Program because they could get cross-contaminated with Proximian!'. What a bunch of weirdos. How do I get out of here?"

...or some thing along those lines.

On my way out, I bumped into someone. They looked a lot like Lucy, and hell - they probably were - but I was too exhausted to start conversation. They did seem to recognize me, perhaps they realized who I was, but nobody said a word.

I paid for my things, got out, got in the transport vehicle, and left for our Station. Lucy's appearance did play over a couple times in my head, but ultimately, I forgot once I checked the time. It was LATE. "Damn, Ignus must be really worried right now," was all I thought as I sped up.I made it home in about 5 minutes. When I got out of the trave, I noticed the lights were off. 

"Goddammit, he probably went to sleep already! I'm really late." I got in. Nobody could've expected..

There were bloodstains everywhere. The carpet had even burned from some spots, like cigarette burns. A chair was upside down, the documents had been shuffled - and even they were bloodstained. "He probably just got a bloody nose and fainted, right? Ha, silly me for thinking negatively. I should calm down."

...it was exactly as I thought. I walked into his room, and my hand immediately rose to my mouth.

He was lying on his bed with a deep wound in his stomach... and there was a knife lying right next to him. He was... already gone.

What the fuck happened here?

AN: oo cliffhanger.

AN 2: it's great remembering how i wrote this cliffhanger and then proceeded to wonder the exact same thing you're (hopefully) wondering right now: "damn, what the hell will happen next?"