I quickly catch him, and am about to pick him up until he mumbles some gibberish. I can't tell if he's awake or not. If he's still awake, trying to pick him up might throw him into another fit. Which we really need to avoid right now.

"Hey Ivor, can you get on the other side and loop your arm under his shoulders like me?" He grunts, but complies. Jesse's feet are dragging behind him, but it's only a little ways.

"Gosh, I'm so sorry about your friend. Being apart of P.A.M.A. is rough, taxing on your very soul, but 'Pets' generally exhaust their usefulness in only a couple of days."

Petra clears her throat. "So is there anyone who could possible bandage my arm, or could help at all?"

Harry leads us in front of a tri house complex. "Yes, I'll ask someone to come over and help with that right away. To be honest, we don't have a lot of food or water. We'll spare what we can, but it probably won't be much."

I nod, smiling a bit. "Hey, it's okay. We don't exactly except royalty treatment from a newly liberated town."

He wearily smiles back before dashing off. The stairs are unfortunately for one person, so Ivor and I have to do this uncomfortable side step thing. We carry Jesse into the closest house and plop him on one of the beds.

Jesse's still muttering some nonsense, somehow looking even worse. Now that he isn't awake to hide his pain, it's painstakingly obvious. Constantly writhing, as if trying to do something but something holding him back. His face scrunched up in torment as his head flings itself back and forth onto the pillow.

I sigh and turn to Ivor. "Can you grab the other beds in the other houses? And check to see if there's anything we might need in any of the chests."

Ivor nods and Petra turns to me, sitting on the other bed. "Stealing? Really Lukas?"

"It's a small price for them to pay for their freedom." I look back down at the now sweating Jesse. "And we really need everything we can get our hands on, for Jesse's sake."

"Agreed, but how do we even help Jesse? It's not like I don't want to, but we don't even know the roots of the problem."

I give her a quizzical look. "Isn't it obvious? Clearly over stressed, absolutely drained, sleep deprived, starved, probably dehydrated, Jesse could even be sick, or P.A.M.A. could have-"

"No, I don't mean any of that. But what caused him to become like this. This must be a long term problem and I don't want to solve it now only for it rise again. We need a solution, pull out the roots of this problem."

"Don't say it like that." I sideways glare at her. "You're talking as if we're fixing an object or some weed issue. This is Jesse, our friend. Since this a long term problem it might be a long time until he permanently gets better, but that's fine. We need to be there for him though."

She sighs. "I didn't mean it like-"

"I got the beds!"

I smile tiredly at Ivor, gesturing for him to put the beds in the other corners. He also pulls out a crafting table a puts by the stairs leading out. I draw in a breath to say something. but he must have expected it.

"Always good to have a crafting table, never know when you might need one Lukie."

I groan and don't even bother to correct him, he's probably doing it just to get on my nerves or something. I just go over and sit down on one of the beds. Just now noticing how much pressure my feet have been under, oh man it feels good to sit again.

Yawning, I stretch my muscles out. I yawn again, but this time I rub my eyes to keep myself awake. Can't fall asleep yet, when the nurse helper person comes in I have to be awake for that. Hopefully they come soon.

Finally some good luck as a redhead woman walks in. "I was told you guys needed help, what can I do for you?"

Petra wastes no time waving her attention over. "My arm's broken, can you put it in a cast or something?"

"And hey..." It's such a struggle to talk now, when did my mouth get so heavy? "You have to look over Jesse after, he really needs it."

The women pulls out some cloth and begins to make a sling around Petra. "Okay, and we figured that you all needed some rest too. When you awaken we should have some food for you."

"Aww food..." Petra plops down on a bed, eyes already drooping. "That would be amazing."

Ivor too settles into the bed, muttering something about chicken or eggs. I sigh and turn to the woman, who is currently checking Jesse's temperature.

"You don't have to check me or Ivor..." I yawn, collapsing down into the extremely soft bed. "If there's anything it can wait and you're needed for the other townspeople."

"That very kind of you. And regarding the p-p... Jesse, he seems to have a slight fever. I would continue to check him but I suspect it is caused by what P.A.M.A. did to him and I wouldn't want to disturb him. Since there's nothing better than to rest after the sort of things P.A.M.A. did."

I weakly nod, lazily waving an arm to the stairs. I'm too tired to actually say she can go now, but I think she left. I don't know, everything's getting dark...

...

...

...

Groggily, I blink into consciousness. I sit up and scratch my head, looking around out of habit instead of actually focusing. I know I went to slept, moonlight is seeping into the room. Yet, I feel more sore and out of it than when I went to slept.

Perhaps that's a sign I need to sleep more. Everyone else is asleep anyway. I can't see Ivor, but I can hear his snores. There's a lump in Petra's bed and Jesse's has...

My eyes pop out of my head as I look at the empty bed. I know it's really dark but I don't see any form of a body here. I stagger out of bed, my legs heavy and sluggish. I tumble and fall onto the end of the bed, my balance hasn't woken up yet.

But my sleepy eyes did not deceive me, Jesse is not in bed. The Jesse who exhausted very cell in his body, has been tormented by being a pet to a super computer, and has a storm raging in his head is NOT resting. That's bad.

Panic shooing away my drowsiness, I head to Petra's bed. But as I suck in, I realize something and slowly exhale. Taking a second to make sure this is what I want, I walk out into the night.

I have to find Jesse, and I know Petra and Ivor would help me if I woke them up. But there's just this feeling, this gut feeling that waking them up will just be bad. Bad for them and bad for Jesse.

Shivers crawl up my back as I gaze at the town. I was here last night too, running and terrified for my life and the lives of my friends. A red haze that followed my everywhere, plaguing all my thoughts.

Shaking the depressing thought out of my head, I pause to think about where Jesse went. I'm only one searching for him. A guy who's muscles are giving him grief about not being in bed and a gut telling me not to ask for help. Maybe this is what Jesse feels all the time?

Still, it wouldn't be anywhere in town. He lived in a treehouse in the woods near a city, close to civilization but distanced. Since Jesse doesn't know the area very well and he is pretty tired, it can't be too hard to pin down the locations.

So places where one can be alone that's close to town but won't be disturbed. P.A.M.A.'s cave? Definitely not, the place probably horrifies Jesse. In the valley? It's pretty easy to be discovered there. Top of a mountain?

My eyes flicker up to the top of the mountain, where only twenty four hours ago we descended to save the town. It might have been a hard climb up, but Jesse's body is battered and broken. If he found enough motivation to move in the first place it probably held out long enough to get him to the top.

I take a deep breath and start the journey up. It's amazing how five minutes before I feel asleep I didn't feel too terrible. I knew I was in shock and riding the remains of an adrenaline wave, but this is brutal.

Every time my right hand so much as twitches, daggers of pain shoot through it. My thanks to the lady who must've removed the glass shards, but I can't believe I hardly took notice of it yesterday. Or I suppose earlier today.

Simply swinging my left arm as I walk or climb sends the bite I got into a fury. I completely forgot about it seconds after I got it, but now it's always there to remind me that it definitely exists. Reminding me with lots and lots of pain.

And I'm going to be surprised if any of my skin isn't gray or purple to some degree. How many times did I get whacked, fell, get hit, or anything to cause this many bruises?

That isn't even mentioning all my stiff and unstretchable muscles. Half way up and I'm already feeling like I'm going to faint from muscle exertion. Every muscle tense and quivering if I even put a wisp of pressure on it.

My head must be the worse though. A persistent force squeezing onto my skull from all angles, trying to turn my brain to mush. Worry causing a ruckus and the cries of a whinny child begging to go to sleep or drink something or eat something or just stop everything.

None of that matters though. Not one bit. This pain could be doubled and I wouldn't hesitate to still climb up here on the chance Jesse might be up here. Anything could be thrown at me in fact, it wouldn't change a thing.

I remember what I said to Petra once we got to Harper's lab. Jesse does everything and we took it for granted. That's not what friends are suppose to do. Friends aren't suppose to take advantage of one another, and I'm not going to let that happen anymore.

A grunt faintly reaches my ears, along with the pop of something turning into smoke. Forgetting all my pain, I stagger up the rest of the mountain. Panting heavily, but too excited to care.

I wasn't expecting to see what I saw, but I suppose I wasn't expecting anything. But the only normal sight would be two pieces of rotten flesh floating on the ground.

I totally forgot about the bright green sword with the orange handle Jesse had. Even so, I wouldn't have ever thought that Jesse would plunge the tip into the ground, letting it stand there while Jesse is vulnerable to attacks.

Although I suppose Jesse doesn't care about that because he's just sprawled out on his back on the ground. I'm not sure if he's resting or star gazing, but I'd thought I would die before I saw Jesse being so careless out in the dark.

I don't want him to panic, so I walk noticeably against the ground. His head tilts to me, dull tired eyes looking me over. He doesn't do anything else so I continue to walk closer, praying that I don't mess anything up.

Before I go to Jesse, I pull the sword out of the ground. To my surprise, it's extremely light. It cut through Ivor's sword like nothing so I imagined it would be quite heavy and hard to swing.

Now is not the time for those thoughts though. I sit down next to Jesse and hold the sword out to him. "I believe this is yours."

Jesse's hallow green eyes bore into me, his quiet mumblings hard to catch. "Throw it in a well for all I care."

I set the sword down, dread prickling the insides of my stomach. I've never known Jesse to go anywhere without his sword, sometimes it's the only thing on him. Why would he suddenly not want one?

Although why do I get the dreadful stomach churning feeling that there's a very complex answer to that simple question?