Marcus' Sixteenth Birthday

What Time Is It?

Marcus' pov:

I didn't know for how long I already sat here. When I ran away from Chase's house I hadn't bothered to check where I was going at all, I just ran and ended up somewhere. I was in the middle of a small village. Not a single person was outside at this time in the night. I had found a bench in a small park that was placed in the heart of the village. The bench was nearly overgrown by plants and it stood in the shadow of a large oak. It was rather cold outside but I didn't really notice that, I never really did. I wondered if my father was thinking about me now, if he was wondering where I was. If he checked my location, as he used to do before. I have always hated that, his constant checking, he did never really give me the chance to go anywhere he didn't want me to be. Was this small village a place where he wanted me to be? Or did he just stop caring, 'cause I was already dead to him. Was that how Chase thought of me now too? A living dead-man? I couldn't blame him, it made sense. I've hurt their family so much, they're probably just celebrating this now. I wished Chase and I could've been real friends. Not only him, Adam and Bree too, hell even Leo. If I only were the person I pretended to be, but I wasn't. As Leo has said, I'm evil. What's happening to me now is just what I deserve. I felt tears in my eyes, they had come and gone over the past hours. I hated to give in to my own sadness. I had almost always managed to push any kind of emotion aside. And now it was my last day to walk around on this earth and I wasted it crying and feeling sorry for myself. What else was I supposed to do? There was no one to spend my last day with. I was ripped from my thoughts when I heard an engine roaring, a car was coming closer. Strange, this whole village almost seemed dead and then suddenly a car arrived in the middle of the night? I looked up in the direction of the noise and saw a car that I vaguely recognized. Well, that wasn't all too weird of course, 'cause there were a lot of the same cars using the roads. I watched the person who stepped out of the car and was shocked to see that I recognized him too. It was Chase. What was he doing here? Chase looked around himself, he probably had his locator app on, so it wouldn't be long till he found me. He walked around the car and stared into the dark surroundings I had covered myself in, his eyes were adjusting to the sudden change of light and then he recognized me. A smile of... was it relief? Appeared on his face as he walked closer to me.

"Hey," he said when he was no more than two metres away. "Do you mind?" he asked, gesturing to the bench I was sitting on. I shook my head and he sat down. I looked away from him, not wanting him to see the state I was in. "Quite a peaceful village," Chase stated. I didn't react. After a few more minutes Chase broke the silence again. "I owe you an apology, Marcus." That made me look up at him.

"How do you owe me an apology?" I asked, 'cause it didn't make sense at all. I was the one who had made all the mistakes, I was the one who had tried to kill Chase and not only him.

"For not helping you before," he looked me in the eyes and it suddenly became very hard for me to withstand that. "When Douglas held us captured, he told us that you're an android. He told us that you'd probably... 'burn out' when you turn sixteen... then we escaped and for a few weeks I actually believed you hadn't survived those rocks. When we heard you had survived it, the thought about what Douglas had told us didn't occur to me anymore. We should've started helping you weeks ago but instead, we didn't."

"It's not your fault, you didn't have any reason to help me even if you thought of it, so it's okay."

"No, it's not okay, Marcus. And we're going to make things right, I'm not making the mistake of not helping you again." I laughed at that, a bitter laugh, filled with emotion I so strongly tried to hide.

"You can't help me, no one can," I said, staring at the ground again.

"Douglas can."

"Dad won't help me, if he wanted to, he could've done that a long time ago."