The day went on at the same rhythm as always… as if everything happening in the shadows remained there.
And for Louie, it was no different.
— Ugh… my head… — he muttered, lightly moving the tips of his fingers. — My eyes… it feels like someone sewed them shut… I can't even open them, it hurts too much.
He let out a heavy sigh, still keeping his eyes closed, as if he didn't even have the strength for that.
— This pain is worse than a hangover… — he smiled faintly, wincing. — Not that I'd know how that feels… but it must be less painful than this. Otherwise, you'd have to be an idiot to drink something that leaves you like this… right?
The silence of the place was terrifying. So quiet he could hear every beat of his heart, like a drum pounding inside his chest.
— This has to be that bastard's fault… Seixos, Seprus… whatever the hell his name is. — He forced his voice, patting his own face lightly. — Wake up, Louie! Get up, damn it!
With a grimace of effort, he slowly opened his eyes.
His vision was blurry, hazy… and when he finally regained focus, all he saw was a dense darkness. Nothing else.
He ran his hand across the floor, as if searching for a lost coin in the middle of the night.
— What?… This floor… it's weird. Smooth and rough at the same time. What material is this?
He sat up, stretching his legs out, running both hands across the surface, trying to figure out what it was.
He tapped it three times quickly.
— Damn… this floor is freezing cold and hard as hell. — He brought his hand to his chin, like a detective solving a mystery. — And that smell… metallic, sour… I don't remember anything like this, not in Porto Alegre… not even in Áurea.
He sat there, focused, trying to force his brain to work.
— Hmmmm… Hmmmm… — he muttered, squeezing his thoughts, forcing his two neurons to cooperate. — Got it… I have no idea!
He pulled a goofy face.
— But in that Detective Conan episode it worked… Maybe my fingers are in the wrong position? — he said, trying to change their placement, but with no success.
He set his hands back on the floor and sighed, as if giving up thinking.
— Aaaah… forget it.
He stood up, pacing around the small, dark square room, trying to understand where he was.
— But what even is this? A cell? There's no opening anywhere… — He questioned his own mind, searching for a way out. — How long was I unconscious? Nina and Emi must be worried sick. — he said with a faint laugh.
But "this" around him wasn't just a simple dark cell. It was an impossible construction, beyond all logic.
Something that even Áurea, with all its technological advances and mastery over Kaelum powers, wouldn't be able to design — at least… not yet.
The walls around him — soft to the touch, and at the same time absurdly solid.
Far from anything like concrete or common metal…
They seemed to fuse the metallic shine of iron, the absolute hardness of diamond, and the malleability of carbon.
No… this wasn't a mere fusion of elements.
It was a complete reorganization, an atomic architecture never before seen by modern science — a material with utterly inhuman resistance.
As if the very foundations of matter had been realigned under new laws.
And all that matter now compacted into walls at least thirty centimeters thick.
And only someone with a Kaelum power could achieve such a thing — bending and reshaping matter at its rawest level.
Disassembling it, misaligning and realigning, controlling each bond as if they were threads of fabric in their hands.
Louie still felt dizzy. His head throbbed endlessly, each second worsening, while the environment around him — the stench of rust, the heavy air, and the lack of light — seemed crafted to drain every bit of willpower, both physical and mental.
With no clear idea of what to do, he sat down again, leaning his back against the cell's cold, unyielding wall.
— Agh… this damn pain won't stop… — he muttered, resting his forehead on his hand, as if trying to hold his brain still inside his skull. — What should I do? What would Kael do?… What would my mother do in this situation?
He went silent for a few seconds, breathing deeply.
— …
— Mother, huh… but can I really consider her that? — he whispered, closing his eyes tightly and turning his face up toward the cell's dark ceiling. — Technically, I'm her son… but at the same time, I'm not…
He pressed his hands against his face, trying to escape the pain, even for a moment.
— I know Sethros' goal is to make me think like this… but… what if he's right about what he said?
He spoke softly, his voice almost swallowed by the void, as his eyes stared into the darkness, as if it might answer him.
— Do I… really matter as I am now? Or am I just… a broken toy that, if it can't be fixed over time, loses its charm, loses its use… and no one would care about it anymore?
Louie ran his hand down his face, closing his eyes for a moment. His head boiled with pain, hunger, and doubt.
It was as if his mind was a vast, empty white room… with only a few shards left from what it once was.
But those shards were buried beneath thousands upon thousands of questions and fears that no one promised to answer.
A future not only uncertain and unpredictable… but… undesirable.
— Why do I have to get caught up in all this out of nowhere? I don't even know who these people are, let alone what they want with me!
He sighed slowly.
— And I don't even… know who I really am… Maybe I should just… give up already.
His eyes sank deeper, almost vanishing from the world.
— If I can't even live a normal life… I never even wanted to exist—
But before his mind could fall completely into that pit of doubt, a sound cut through the silence.
A metallic clank, jammed, like a rusty cage door forced open.
Alongside the sound, a faint tremor ran through the cell walls.
CLAAAC.
A tiny hatch opened in the massive door of that strange material he had never seen before.
Through it, a weak light spilled in — more like from a flashlight than any real lamp.
And through that narrow opening, a plate of food was shoved inside.
The plate seemed wooden, screeching annoyingly as it scraped against the floor, like a knife grating on metal.
Louie stared at the plate sliding in. He wanted to shout or at least call out to whoever had pushed it in.
But his body refused to obey. Too heavy, his throat locked up. It felt like every muscle screamed at him to stop.
With little choice, he pressed a hand against the wall and dragged himself toward the plate, almost crawling across the freezing floor.
When he finally saw what was on it, Louie didn't think twice.
He lunged at it, like a starving animal pouncing on prey.
He grabbed the rice, beans, and vegetables with his bare hands and devoured them right there.
No hesitation, no manners — pure instinct took over. For a moment, he was nothing more than an animal.
After tearing through the food in desperation, Louie paused, regaining a shred of awareness.
Not understanding what drove his body to attack so violently, he asked himself:
— "I… I really don't know…"
His eyes welled up, tears falling straight into the food, but he didn't care. He couldn't stop.
— "If I was just talking about giving up… Then why… why am I still fighting to survive? Why is my body still clinging to life in a world where I don't even know who I really am?"
— "Why do I… want to live so badly?!"
As he ate, Louie didn't care about the muffled sounds from the corridor beyond his cell, drowned by his own thoughts.
But there, in that dark corridor, two voices whispered to each other.
— Disgusting, he's eating in such an… unelegant way. — said a deep voice. — He looks like an animal devouring carrion…
— So what? What matters is he's eating. That's already a good sign. — the second voice replied. — It'd be a huge problem if he starved himself just 'cause he didn't want to eat…
— You're right… Fine then, let's go. I don't want to watch this disgraceful sight any longer.
— You'll never let go of that elegance crap, huh?
— Never.
— Aaaaah, whatever, screw it. Let's just go.
When Louie finally noticed the voices echoing down the corridor, he paused his eating for a second, lifting his eyes toward the hatch.
It slammed shut with a sharp bang — but just for a split instant, before it closed, he caught a glimpse of two pairs of eyes.
One glowed emerald green in the dark.
The other… a blazing, shocking hot pink.
And then, once again, only silence remained in the corridor beyond the massive door.
The ground trembled faintly with the footsteps retreating.
And Louie… shoved the food back into his mouth — this time less desperately than before, but still carried by that strange new will to keep living, refusing to let go of the world just yet.
When he finally finished, the empty plate cast aside, Louie leaned back once more against the metallic wall of the cell.
Alone again…
In that darkness, which felt more like a reflection of the invisible prison he carried since waking up as his "current self," with no memory of who he had once been.
And bound by chains unseen to the naked eye.
With only faint sparks left of that… heinous massacre at Peninsula High.