Chapter 94: Don’t Make The Same Mistake...

Madeline’s mouth opened, and then it closed again, and she looked at the floor between the two of them for a moment.

"I understood all that without you having to say it... but still, we can’t just..."

No one said anything for a few moments thereafter, and as he glanced back to them, he continued.

"The wind sounds like it’s gradually easing off out there, so we need to go out again," Dion said. "And the reason I did all this is once more only to say, I’d hope that every one of you understands that if I’m the only one leaving here and heading in Novamed’s direction when it’s calmed down enough, then I don’t expect me to be coming back. I’m not sacrificing what is important to me to carry the sixty lives you’ve taken in, on my back."

’It’s harsh, but once again, this is the reality we have to live in. The number of things near and above level twenty are only increasing, and it seems they are getting stronger at a faster rate than that as well.

I’d say I’m stronger than all of these guys right now, and even I don’t find fighting anything above level twenty easy at all. Staying here means falling behind, and making yourself suffer to catch up later, if you can even survive the effort of it by then.’

Anton’s eyes went down to the floor. Yara’s hands closed over the edge of the desk on either side of her. Basil’s jaw worked once, and he said nothing at all, and beside him Madeline had gone very still.

While Paris stood silently, his lips pursed tight through all of this.

As someone who had been one of the normal people just then, he felt a lot more turmoil within himself, finally being a part of these conversations.

He understood both sides after all, especially what Madeline had said.

If Mr. Dion had, after everything, suddenly told them all that he was leaving, then even he would have been one of the people who would have been looking to understand why and even try to leave with him.

But being awakened now, even if he hadn’t fought yet, he also, to some extent, understood exactly what Mr. Dion was saying.

Then, suddenly, Irvin spoke.

"Before we talk about going anywhere," he said, "I want to talk about what happened in here while we were gone."

Dion’s attention moved onto him, his brow raised a litt.

Irvin hadn’t come off his wall, and he hadn’t looked at anybody while he said it either.

His eyes were somewhere up on the far corner of the ceiling, his machete hanging down along his leg.

"We should be talking about that plant that grew the fruit and brought the birds hunting here," Irvin said.

Paris’s arms tightened against his chest.

"What about it?" Dion said, raising his brow a little.

"You found something that could awaken a person, and you recklessly fed it to a teenager that none of us know." Irvin’s voice was flat, though somewhat disbelieving, "While Marcus was out there losing his arm."

Nobody said anything to that.

"It hardly replaces him, does it?" Irvin’s attention went over to Paris. "So what did it give you? What ability did you awaken with? What are your dimensions?"

"I, um... "

"He doesn’t have to answer that," Dion said.

And that was when Irvin’s head came off the wall, and his eyes came onto Dion for the first time since he had walked into this room.

"Why not? He’s one of us now, isn’t he? If he’s awakened, then he’s part of the group that fights. And if he’s part of the group that fights, then the rest of us have a right to know what he brings to it."

"No," Dion said. "You don’t. He has no reason to trust strangers with his numbers and grades. Same thing that you said about yourself to me in the car on the way here, isn’t it?"

"That isn’t the same, and you know it isn’t. My numbers are my secret to keep from you because I’ve fought with everyone here, and back then, nobody in this room had watched you do anything but jump in to kill-steal a gnoll. That plant was definitely something rare and powerful for it to draw all those birds in, and it grew in our base. Whatever it was, it was never yours to hand out."

The quiet after that was tighter than anything that had come before it.

"You weren’t here, Irvin." Dion’s voice didn’t go up at all. "Had I not been here, there wouldn’t have been anything of your base to return to. I fought what came through those windows, and I found the fruit because of it. That makes it mine. So what right do you have to stand there and tell me what I should have done with something that was mine?"

"The fact that you chose to use it on a kid who hardly looks like he has the balls to fight anything." Irvin’s chin jerked towards Paris. "Instead of somebody with experience and could actually use it to help do the shit we need to do to survive.."

"Somebody like you?"

Irvin looked at him and said nothing at all, though his jaw tensed and his brows furrowed..

"Irvin."

Basil said it from the middle of the room without lifting his voice at all, and every head in there came onto him, because he hadn’t put a single word into any of this since Anton had started talking.

"A few hours ago I had a gun in his face over that fruit. If it wasn’t for him I would have tossed it out of the window, and no one would have known what it could do."

He turned his head properly towards Irvin then.

"My judgement about it was wrong. So whatever it is you’ve been working yourself up to over there, I would rather not stand here and watch you make the same mistake in judgement I had in the same night."

Irvin didn’t answer him, scoffing as he returned to lead against the wall.

"It doesn’t matter either way at this point. The plant itself is gone. I destroyed it."

Anton’s head came up. "You what?"

"Or you’ve still got it, and you’d rather all of us went on thinking it was ashes." Irvin spat with a scoff.