Fabricated Chapter 6

 All at once, Pillow Central is no longer on the side of the road beside a car crash.

Instead, he is staggering in what he thinks is a bathroom from the white tiles and the black linoleum sink on one wall, blinking green light from his eyes. He steadies himself with the wall, finds he is panting. With one hand that shakes more then it should he reaches over and pushes the door lock to its ‘locked’ position. 

How lucky this is a single occupant bathroom. 

He moves the hand back to feel under his layers and down across body, his true body, and locates where the bullet went through. It’s a clean hole through his right hip; he can wiggle a finger in it, and that hurts more then it should, so he stops.

He slides the backpack off and sits, takes out Alice and Espeon, both of whom immediately start peppering him with questions which he ignores as he pulls out the sewing kit. He tries to thread the needle, misses.

“Central.”

He tries again, misses.

“Hey, we’re talking to you, dude!” 

Again, another miss. He is suddenly struck with how exhausted he feels. 

“Bradford, we are concerned.”

He looks over at them. There’s a rip in Espeon’s ear, probably from the flying glass. He glances back at his sewing kit- there’s dark purple, which will have to work.

“John.”

The name so rarely used shocks him to his senses. “Alice?”

She waves a small paw at the bathroom around them, her painted eyes more rounded then usual, a expression of worry and... he has never seen her look so scared before.

“John, what have you done?” 

It is not accusatory, but something in him feels guilt anyway.

“I’m not sure I follow,” he says.

“This is not our car,” she says. “Nor is it the street sidewalk. This is a bathroom. How did we get here.”

He has a choice, he realizes. They were in the backpack. They didn’t suddenly loose their sight to green vibrancy, didn’t suddenly just exist in this space. 

“Calm down,” he says, and hopes his voice is laid back enough to hide the shaking it must have, “I just walked.”

Alice frowns but says nothing; Espeon lashes her tail. “You’re a shitty driver,” she says.

“I was a bit distracted,” he says, and winces as he begins in earnest the process of stitching his wound.  Espeon jumps up onto his leg to peer closer.

“How will you do the back?” she asks.

“Not sure,” he says.

“I can attempt,” Alice says, “but I lack the nuance of fingers so perhaps...” She twitches her ears. “Maybe it is best I do not try after all.”

“One side will have to do for now,” he says, as he ties off the now closed seam; the scoots shake in his hands as he cuts the thread, and the shakes don’t stop as switches thread colors and then gently cups Espeon’s face with his free hand. “I’m gonna fix your ear.” 

“Oh,” says Espeon. “Ok.”

“So hold still. And don’t shout.”

“I’m not gonna—!” Her words break off into a yell as he begins to sew. He stops and glares.

“It hurt,” she says.”

“I know,” he answers. “Just give me a few more moments.”

It’s over in a few short seconds, and then he puts away the kit into the backpack before putting it on. With Alice in one hand and Espeon in the other he stands up. 

“Now what?” Espeon asks. “Our car’s bust.”

“Awakening will provide,” Alice says. 

“I don’t think it’ll be that easy,” Pillow Central says. Faintly beyond the door he can hear music, and people, and he isn’t quite sure what out there. 

All he really knows is what a dorm sounds like. Well, that and a Target. Everything else has been stories, and so many human things fit ‘people and music’. 

He puts Alice and Espeon into the hoodie pocket, each poking out slightly from either end. Espeon looks up at him. “Does it still hurt?” she asks.

(There should be blood. He should be dead.)

“Yes,” he answers, and leaves through the bathroom door. 

Fabricated Chapter 7

It’s a bar. 

Pillow Central sits in a corner of a booth, phone out. According to Google, he’s somewhere in El Paso, which doesn’t make sense, can’t make any sense, but he’s growing too tired to care. 

He lifts his eyes to the TVs mounted on the walls- sports. He knows it’s baseball, and then on another monitor football, but doesn’t recognize the teams. It must be some kind of game day anyway; the bar is packed with younger folks who chatter loudly and occasionally break into shouting when the sports goes whatever way. 

No one really pays attention to the man in the corner on his phone, which is enough. He leans his head back against the seat, and sorely misses the sleeping area of the truck. What he would give for that now... 

“Why am I even tired?” he asks, the whining mostly to himself. “I don’t have powerhouse cells or whatever, I shouldn’t get tired...”

“That isn’t how that works,” says Alice quietly from his pocket.

He grunts, idly paws at his phone; nothing about aliens, plenty about the government, things he knows the owner cares about, would yell about if they saw. A server comes weaving through the crowd toward him, a man with brushed up blonde hair and a name tag reading ‘Davey’. 

“Can I get you anything?” the man asks.

Pillow Central looks up from the phone, hesitates. He tried to eat, once, back on the dorm. Espeon had laughed and laughed at his disappointment, while Kitty assured him he didn’t want to deal with human things like that anyway. 

“No, thank you,” he says finally. 

Davey hovers. “Alright,” he says when it’s clear Pillow Central isn’t rethinking his choice, “but I’ll be around if you change your mind.” He walks off to another table.

Pillow Central kicks at the underside of the booth. Maybe eating would make him feel better, if he could eat. Another thing just out of reach in this damn half existence. 

“At least we still have the body,” Espeon says when he’s been quiet for a moment too long. “That’s good, right?”

“Makes us a target,” Pillow Central mumbles. 

“But it makes us believable as well,” Alice says.

“Shoulda just let the actual people who’ve been trained to do this do this,” he says. “I’m just wasting time—“

“They know not of the Elders, and would not believe us if we told,” Alice says. “With this we have physical proof that would otherwise be subject to the slow process of  human research. We don’t have that kind of time. We need it to get to the top, and we need it to happen now.” 

She pauses. “Fret not, we will be fine.”

“You don’t sound so convinced of that yourself,” he says. 

“Maybe not, but I know that fretting will not get us anywhere.” He feels her wiggles from his pocket, and he helps her up onto the table. 

“What now?” he asks.

“We find somewhere to rest, and wait for magic,” she says.

“And after that?”

“We need to confirm those items were fragments, don’t we? We will do that, providing those individuals have not been taken in for questioning.”

“What if they have?” 

Her eyes meet his. “You have already gone ‘full XCOM’ once, I am sure you can do it again.”

He groans, and she laughs, and for a moment, everything is alright.

Fabricated Chapter 8

 Eventually he grows tired of the noise and pulse of the bar, and steps outside to clear his head. It’s a cloudy night, and he blinks in the dark of the parking lot.

A pair of college kids are hanging out besides a truck bed, one of them lighting a cigarette. Pillow Central, standing near the doorway, feels nonexistent heartbeats skip, feels anxiety pulse in his stomach— Kitty calls it a instinct, to be so afraid of fire as they are, but he isn’t sure it would qualify as such when the beings aren’t alive. 

He sits down on the sidewalk outside the door, idly brining Espeon from his pocket and petting her head. Gravel crunches. He looks up into the dark eyed face of one of the college students. They’re obviously a little tipsy, and he stiffens slightly as they reach into their pocket, and then he settles again as they bring out a handkerchief and dab at their nose with it.  

“Pokémon fan?” they ask.

“Yeah,” he says. He can’t drag his eyes away from the single lock of bright white hair on the their head. 

“You getting the new game that’s coming out? Dweeb over there says it’s no more then a cash grab,” the college student says. The other one, leaning against the truck and inhaling on her cig, coughs and sputters indignantly at her friend. 

“Sun and Moon sucked,” she says as she comes over. “It’s nothing but gimmicks now.” She looks down at Pillow Central. “Aren’t from around here, are you?” 

“What gave it away, the clothes?” he asks. 

“Aren’t you hot?” asks the dark eyed college student.

“No, I have- I have a illness. I have to keep warm and covered up,” he says, and it’s not a lie, really. 

“Oh, shit,” says the girl, taking another inhale of her cig. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Pillow Central says. The bar light catches on the girl’s various pins, and he can’t help but gaze over them- there’s a bi flag, and a antifa symbol, and then a couple of enamel pins reflecting the likeness of cryptids. One reads ‘ghost hunters anonymous’, and the design matches the shirt the dark eyed student wears under their black unzipped hoodie. 

The girl catches his gaze. “Part of a club,” she says. “We’re ghost hunters. Eventually cryptid hunters too, but ghosts to start out.”

“Cool,” says Pillow Central. He suddenly remembers the human convention of manners, and almost bashfully goes, “Oh, by the way, I’m Bradford.” He shakes her hand. 

“Call me Tulip,” she says. One foot kicks her friend playfully in the ankle, they swear at her. “This nerd is Alex.”

“Freshman?” he asks. Then, quickly, “My nephew is a freshman at a college near Dallas.” 

“I’m a sophomore,” Tulip says, “nerd is a freshman, and Davey is a senior.”

Pillow Central tucks Espeon back into his pocket and hefts himself to his feet. “As in the server?”

“Yeah, he works here,” Alex says. “We’re waiting for his shift to end so we can go out hunting. We have permissions and everything.” They point a thumb back at the truck. “All sorts of equipment, a camera, sleeping gear—“

“We’re spending the night,” Tulip says. “Hey, if Davey’s cool with it, you could come with. Having a normie around to validate things would be sick.”

“That sounds... interesting,” Pillow Central says. He hasn’t got anything else to do, does he? 

He feels Alice shift in the pocket, the gentle tap of her paw against his body; he realizes she’s speaking in Morse.

CAREFUL, she says.

He shoves a hand into the pocket and finger spells I KNOW back at her. He feels her paws pat at the fingers, no words but gentle feeling, and he softly runs a fingertip against her forehead. 

Espeon’s tail lashes at him moments later, driving his hand back out from the pocket. He looks back at Tulip and Alex, who are both checking their phones. “Point me where you need me,” he says. 

“You carry the camera, ok? It’s easy enough to work it,” Tulip says absently. “I’ll carry the EMP reader and other electronics, and Alex and Davey can carry the sleeping stuff.”

“Ah, that’s boring work,” Alex says. 

“You wanna sleep on haunted wood?” Tulip asks, looking up over at them from her typing. 

“Spooky,” Alex says, putting away their phone. Tulip follows suit. 

“Davey will be coming out any minute,” she says, only to be cut off as the bar door opens and the man himself comes walking out. He runs a hand trough his hair and sighs.

“Busy night?” asks Tulip.

“Feel bad for the late shifters,” he says. “Think some fights are brewing. Among other things.” He notices Pillow Central. “Hey again.”

“Hello,” Pillow Central says.

“Davey, this is Bradford, Tulip’s new pack mule,” Alex says. Pillow Central laughs, Tulip snorts. 

“He’s the normie to our weird,” she explains. Davey looks like he’s going to say something, and then shrugs. 

“I mean, I’m glad to have a extra hand around,” he says. “And someone else to make sure these two don’t do anything super stupid.”

“Hey we’re young, not dumb!” Alex protests. 

“Arguable,” says Davey. He looks at Pillow Central, and then back at his friends. “Let’s get going then; ghosts don’t like to wait.”

As he follows the trio to the truck, and clambers into the back seat next to Davey and some equipment, Pillow Central can almost forget the nervous feeling in his chest. 

Almost.