The Pacifist and The Destroyer (malexmale)

2. Zuuro

**Sorry i'm late, I just wanted to do a little explaining at the end of the chapter.**

Fifteen Minutes Earlier...

"Hey. Hey, kid. Kid!"

I jump, my head snapping up from where it's resting on my arms, just barely missing the man standing behind me, prodding at my shoulder. "Wha -" I look around, rubbing the sleep from my eyes and trying to get my bearings.

"You can't sleep here." The man says, leaning against the mop in his hands.

I blink up at him, still in a bit of a sleepy stupor. Here...where is here? The library. I remind myself, looking around. I was in the library. Back in one of the research cubicles. I rub my hands over my face again, trying to wake up. "What time is it?" I ask, trying to locate my phone.

The man glances at the glowing display panel projected onto his arm. "Just before two."

Two in the morning?! "Fuck..." I flinch. "Sorry...I meant, thank you." I tell him, quickly gathering up my things and darting out.

I didn't mean to stay so late. I just...I just wanted to check the computers again. The ones here in the research center have more access to the usually restricted news sites, than my phone. I just wanted to see if there was anything new...I just...I just must have underestimated how tired I was.

I haven't been sleeping well. Not for months now. Not since Lane...not since he disappeared. I do sleep, but it's fitful, and sporadic, and sometimes at inconvenient times when my body just becomes so overwhelmingly exhausted that I end up nodding off wherever I'm currently sitting. Like tonight.

Tonight, when I should have been spending my time digging. Digging for something – anything – on Lane. Anything to tell me that he's okay. That he's still out there. That I'm not just wasting my ever-dwindling time hunting for a ghost.

I haven't seen Lane since the night they came for him. The last memory I have of him is watching his slowly disappearing, limp form being loaded into the back of that van outside the hospital. That's it. I thought they would let me see him again if I cooperated. I thought I could convince them while they questioned me if I was good, but...I couldn't.

All I got from the twelve hours of being locked in that windowless, cement cell was that he was gone. He wasn't my concern anymore. That I needed to forget about him, and them, and everything that happened that night because it was grown up stuff. That I needed to move on, or I might find myself disappearing too...or on a one-way trip back to Gav'yx.

They fed me some fake story about Tsubasa being involved in something illegal, and I pretended to believe it. Because to them, I was just another stupid teenager. I didn't know anything. I wasn't a threat. They just wanted to scare me enough that I wouldn't want to question what was going on.

I promised I wouldn't go digging anymore to get myself released, but that was a lie. A lie they believed because they didn't know Tsubasa and Dr. Edwards told me everything before they were taken away. They believed me because they didn't know about me, or Lane, or what he meant to me. They didn't understand that I was a Gav'yxian, and that meant I would never stop searching for him. I would never stop digging. I would leave no stone unturned, and I would chase him to the very edges of this universe and beyond into the unknown if I had to.

What I wouldn't do is stop. What I wouldn't do is forget about him. What I wouldn't do is move on. I would find him again. A few months from then...a few years from then...it didn't matter. I'd waited seventeen before that, so I could do it again if I had to. I'd just have to bide my time and be patient. I'd just have to keep my head down, and make it look like I'd given up, even though I hadn't. I still haven't.