‘What have you
done?’ he
asks.
‘Nothing,’
he says. ‘Only saved your friend.’
I
look to Graham. His face is screwed up, his teeth clenched. He holds his side
like something is about to burst out of it.
‘Tell
me the truth, Teague,’ I say. ‘For once in your miserable life.’
‘I’m
so glad we met, Easton,’ he says. ‘I just know this is the start of a beautiful
friendship.’
‘Your
ideas on friendship are extremely twisted.’
‘Perspective,’
he says. ‘Your friend is saved, if you make a decision. The only way to hold
his atoms together if is you cross him to your side.’ He swivels the laptop
round. ‘The only way to do that is if you share your being with another.’
A
window on the laptop shows three lines of what looks like a computer code.
HTML. Long lines of indecipherable letters, numbers, slashes and dots. It’s
another language.
‘If
you look closely, I’ve made it easy for you,’ he says.
At
the end of each code is a letter. E, Y and E again.
‘You’re
at the top,’ he says to me. ‘Simply select a letter and Graham will be saved.’
‘But
he’ll be dead!’ I exclaim. ‘How is that a solution?’
‘It’s
the only solution,’ he replies. ‘A warning. You must never leave each other’s
side. You will have him bound to him forever, otherwise he’ll befall the same
fate as I was going to.’
He
smiles, like the worst fairy godmother in history. Offering a magic solution
with the worst sting in the tail.
‘Farewell,’
he says.
Without warning, he slips an
item from the side of the laptop, a sort of memory stick I hadn’t paid
attention to before. He flicks a switch on the top of it and is gone in the
blink of an eye.
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