The first thing he did was press the button on his Unmuter to Mute out all other sounds, open the diary he had found inside the house, plop down on his bed-which was slowly becoming his work desk-, then read like crazy. Most people are known to read 125 words in a minute, but since he was a Prodigy and was excited at the moment, Alex Mars read 500 in a minute, eyes in a frenzy, rolling freely and busily in his socket. The diary's pages were old and leathery and though he estimated it to be at least a single decade old, he wanted to ask Lyra her exact estimate, but she simply wasn't at best ties with her, and as the anger for her rose once more, he pushed it down with the contents he freshly read in the diary entry...

The diary, as he had expected, wasn't normal from the start itself.

1.
Finally-the Orion 09007 space probe 130ST equatorial reflector telescope has come to my hands.

74.
Finally, the new lens I developed works and I even spotted 'Sarah's large hole in the ground' on the Martian surface.

Alright, expected something extensive? That was one single entry-each of them only had one sentence, or simply a few words...

176.
NASA. Shit. Fuck. Launch. Revenge. Christ's sake.

It appeared to Alex Mars that the writer of the entries was quite like him-random and swearing all the time.
But he wasn't focusing on the vocabulary-he focused on the style, and most of all, if the content was kind of relevant to the content of the TV documentary he had just watched partially.

348.
Last visit. My Martian civilization is struggling. Tornado. Those Earth bitches. Fugitive. Fuckin' lord. Parents dead...

Holy shit, he is Ryan Marvick, he gasped when he found entry number 384(he now could guess that the numbers signified the days that had passed since the first day of the new year) was the last-but it was enough. Every story of each day Ryan Marvick had spent had gotten into his mind, getting assembled into some form of a short summary of himself, and personally, he thought the summary of his own was a bit more exclusive:
Marvick, a teen by then-ok, to be precise, 18 years old-wrote this thing a decade ago, so he's 28 now. He had started by buying telescopes, then found an interest in Mars and dreamed of sending the human civilization there if Earth became demolished. As soon as he got a uni degree in astronomy at the age of 16, he raced victoriously out of his house and got in NASA, then erected 'Mars: project no.1" and built rockets and sent people to Mars and slowly made up a civilization. When NASA requested to use the people for tests and how they had adapted to the environment and the plants Marick had managed to grow on the planet, he broke up with them and went to live on Mars after one last visit, in which he found a tornado had wrecked his town and parents dead. Then, he left forever...

He was in the midst of murmuring his summary when his fingers rubbed against each other with the last page between them, and, he found one last page left after all. And he was shocked to find the number back to 74, and the year recorded on it as, on another, one, real-last entry.

2070, 74.
New Earth year. I'm back on Earth.
I plan to stay hidden outside the U.S.
Sick of life...

Jesus, Alex! He's on Earth...what's the date today? June 22nd, 2070. He had written the last entry about 3 months ago before I found it! He is a Prod, so he may still be alive out there somewhere... if he had just left some clue on where he had gone...he exclaimed in his head, a clear exclamation point bubbling up inside his head and thought whizzing around like pingpong balls all going crazy.
He was planning to find out where the man had gone on Earth right there and then via the Internet when a yawn escaped him drowsily-it annoyed his brain, which was already set to making it to his goal. However, just then, it also yawned and waved the physical form of him to go to bed early tonight-the fatigue of yesterday night and the fatigue of having to deal with both girls, Lewis, and the examination of the long diary entry had become combined, pressuring his brain down. So, sighing, he slumped down on his bed and took deep breathes, letting his brain trying to decide whether to just sleep or try to clear his head, when his Muted ears caught a tiny sound. Sighing, he felt curiosity urging his brain to command him to just get the hell up from the bed and stay alert, and find the heck of what had made a noise.
He obeyed and pressed the Unmuter once more and let his ears catch up everything going outside of his brain and hopped off his bed, trying to hear what had pricked his curiosity up.
But all he could hear was the snores of Miles and Thomas inside the house, their sounds resonating off the walls and bouncing into his room.
No, no. His brain was smarter than being stimulated by their snores. There must have been another noise which had wakened his senses up...
Then it came again.
It was if a person coughing, Alex noticed, but not in the way of just coughing because saliva had gotten in the person's throat. The person was coughing as of he or she was about to puke or something.
Alright, it had to be one of the girls, and that conclusion gave him a 50 by 50 bet that the person was Lyra, and he didn't want to fight again once more, but he was worried, and had no other thing to wake himself up.
-So he walked out of his room, eyes hazy and slow to adapt in the dark, but anyway, they adapted soon.
However, even before he could peek into Melanie's room if she was the one who was having breathing fits, someone stepped out of a room and hurriedly sped out of her room, hunched over-and by her subtle speed and small frame, Alex just knew that it was Lyra.
Shit. Enough, Al. Go back. You don't want to wrangle with her in the middle of the night-wait, it's 2 in the morning. Do not. Don't follow, no. Fuck! His brain swore when he shook his head against it and followed Lyra down the stairs quickly, somehow, the lessons he had learned from the Martyr, how to be as light as a air when walking, speeding back to him like a loyal servant, back from his memory, and making him soundless as he did so.
He found her moving to the kitchen(silently) and before her hand could reach the switch for the light, he threw himself onto the couch(silently), waiting to see what she would do.
Lyra's eyes hopped to him the second the lights went up and even though she was one of the fastest and acute majors among the Raiders, she couldn't help herself from jumping back a little bit. Alex, though he was supposed to be angered by her, couldn't stop being amused by her same reaction with Miles and Melanie-who had all jumped because of him.
"Jesucristo, Al!" She harshly whispered, and he waved his hand smugly. "Uh-huh, it's me," Lyra smiled, then stared back a bit ashamedly. "Well, I'm sorry, Alex, for saying my thoughts out loud like that. And hell, no, I'm not excusing myself. You were simply so unprecedented that I felt so confused. I wish you could understand," If he took in and nodded, he would be recognized as a soft guy, too easy to impress, and if he shook his head, he would be able to receive her sincere apology again and again until he nodded...
Do NOT nod, Alex, he growled to himself.
Just then, Lyra's shoulders hunched over as if depressed, and his head nodded.
Ok, shit, why did I do that? As his head was wondering, Lyra shot him a grateful look, then quickly walked over to the counter and quickly opened and closed the cabinets beneath it until she found the right one and pulled up a small box of pills which Alex recognized as Pepto-Bismol pills.
"What's wrong?" He asked, jumping up from the couch and walking over to her. Now that he looked at her, he found her pale and green like a dead body about to puke, and watched as she wordlessly swallowed the pills without any water(Jesus, the taste's gonna be gruesome, Alex thought), grimace at the taste(of course), then turn her head to her, the light once more giving him the impression that her hair was golden or shining or something.
"Just a bit of nausea," She answered, before throwing the box back into the cabinet.
"Shit. Lyra, I'm smart enough to know that. Is nausea a side effect of eating only food pills instead of real food? Or is it a side effect of eating too much of them?" He rapped like Thomas, and she smirked, not in the annoying way that Thomas and Miles had used, but in a really humorous and laughing kind of smirk. After three seconds of it, she shook her head, suddenly back to serious.
"Nah, Al. It's um, just because of a few hallucinations," She finally spit out, staring at the polished countertop, waiting for him to respond.
"Hallucinations?" Maybe it was part of her mental disorders or somehing, he thought with true pity. "Yeah. Well, some bad childhood memories," "But you're Lyra Cannes," He pouted. She sighed a if she was exasperated by him. "Al, look. Yeah, I do have good memories, but there are a few, horrible, terrifying horrible, gruesome ones. Don't you?" Turning off the light, she walked over to the couch and sat back, sighing for seconds that the situation became quite awkward. "I guess. And come to think of it, though I'm sleeping like a log these days with on dreams, I had some awful nights before I was expatriated,"
If the person he was talking to wasn't Lyra, he would haven't even put the subject out of his mouth and clammed up until the other one was bored and went upstairs to sleep. But she was Lyra, the only Rebel smarter than him, the only one who had an alive back name like him, and a logical one. And for now, it justified himself confessing to her, among all the others.
"It was all about this normal boy named Andrew," He murmured, sitting back down on the place which was a bit pressed because of his previous weight, forcing his brain to extend its hands down to the horrible memories and let the mouth take over from then and tell her the whole story. But his brain and body were quite uncooperative these days, so he had to pause minutes before Lyra nodded and told him to go ahead.
"I'm all ears," She uttered the illogical idiom(well, most idioms are illogical all the time, to point out a fact which everybody knows), and strangely, in contrary to its illogic, it prompted his mouth to do its task of talking.
"I originally thought that going to the military and getting out of it safely could boost my family's wealth and give me a chance to get rid of his Muters since they would have fulfilled their original obligation-hiding my skills-by then. So I hopped into the military and on the first day, met Andrew. We shared a room, and he was a serious and nervous, introvert type and read comics and sci-fi books during his free time. So, his actions soon got attention, making him look like a Prod, instead of me. Meanwhile, appointed as the second-in-hand of my general, I undertook the obligation of his helper as he loaded the convicted into the back of his truck to get executed or be forced to labor," his brain wheezed desperately and tried to make it sound stoic and simple, but just as usual, his mouth wasn't obeying and he stuttered a few times and as he took pauses, Lyra let him be.
He tried to continue, at least tried.
"Then, he was wordlessly captured and sent to a center and tested to be proven as a Prod. Seeing his scared mood and weak nature, I think they concluded he was a Prod. Stupid brats, deciding stuff on their own 'cause they're just hungry for blood... Anyway. I learned that and when I went for him, I found him jailed, and merely minutes away from getting executed by our general. He was mad, weak, and bloody. As he became strapped to the pole, I couldn't move because of those shitty guards standing there. Then-" Fuckin' god, he thought, now his entire heart and nose wheezing like hell.
"I watched him die-a a single bullet through his heart, and his life full of lies and wrong opinions were over, snuffed off like a single candle. Fuck, sorry, Lyra," He wasn't ashamed since he was wheezing so avidly in front of her, just ashamed since he had done such a thing, let it happen in front of his eyes, and wanting to kill himself once more. So he buried his head in himself and stared at the small threads on his jeans, eyes cloudy from some unfamiliar moisture, the close distance between his eyes and clothes, and of course, shame.
"Oh," Lyra said, and he heard her biting her lip, then roll her brown eyes to maybe, stare at the ground.
Then,
"That must have been traumatic," See? She knows the same feeling that I know, he said to himself. And he was right-if he had somehow told Miles or Thomas or Melanie of this, they would have said 'oh', then left, looking for food or back to their room to further finish their steel, pigeon-airplane.
"I wanted to suicide, several times," Alex Mars added, then let his muscles loosen and looked up to see her eyes on him, instead of his presumption that they may have been on the ground. She looked away, sighing.
"We Prodigies are simply so piteous," She groaned. "Yeah, I guess. What of you?" Those were the only words he could say right then without sobbing, so he said them out loud as his last straw.
Lyra Cannes fixed her eyes on the windows, on the glimmering grass outside before starting, as if she needed some harness to pull her down from getting too emotional like Alex-she was smarter and thinking of the future than him, that was true.
"My dad was a drunkard, my mom was half out of her mind, and my sister, Sarah, was simply caught between them like me. She just knew what drugs were even before that, for dad loved to introduce ourselves to that stuff, though we managed to escape every single moment. The rest of my family were normal guys, and only I was a Prod. When mom found that out-she was unfortunately on the state of 'out of her mind' and decided to ignore my state as a Prodigy. But after a few weeks, when she was on the state of 'normal', she decided to get me Muters to Mute down my calculating abilities and let me see things as they really are, and also to slow my quick movements down. But we had no money, and she and dad fought over it-well, that's become a routine since I was 2-then, mom went back to the state of 'out of her mind' and she decided to just let me be. She ignored me, then that ignorance spread to Sarah, and we became abandoned kids with the only place to go a house full of alcohol, drugs, shattered and untidied glass fragments, cut and ripped wallpapers. I wanted to escape, Al. So me and Sarah left home, bullied by our own parents, scarred on the outside and inside, hungry and insane ourselves. No one took us in, so though we knew how harsh they were, I turned us into the hands of the government. During the periods of their 'help', we got a small apartment to live in until they would deal with us for real. But Sarah was a small kid, 4 years apart-so she was only 11 or something. She wanted to have friends and finally got one, a kid with her dad as a worker in politics and I was able to send her there and wreck my head on how to get ourselves a more stable life alone in the house until the politician started to get suspicious of her-Why she screamed when his daughter threw a ball for her to catch and throw back, whenever her daughter offered Sarah juice. We went through the same things that Andrew, your friend, went through, Al. The freak reported us and suddenly, lashed by his words of suspicion about the tired, homeless gals in a room they rented for us, the officials leaped and put us under the tests that you and Andrew went through. Sarah barely survived, but what could I do? Acting like a slow person is fine, Alex. But my calculative habit had been with me for too long-they noticed, and I got banished...and here I am. But all my hallucinations are not on what happened to me as they banished me, but what happened to my mom and, especially, Sarah. In my life, she was the only person to understand and encourage me, until...you, Alex. I don't even know if she's dead or back in the hands of my devilish parents whose names are only parents because they conceived us somehow with no capability to raise us well. In my dreams, I always think of the scars we got as children-the drugs we were forced to ingest, the shards of glass we were forced to get hit within mom's tantrums, then the scenes would flick over to my Sarah, lost and being tortured. It's almost the same, every night. And today, it was quite intense. I felt like puking for sure,"
He was speechless after her speech. Behind her perfect brown hair and eyes had been such a horrible childhood, so violent. So, maybe her habit of trying to look small and not brave came from such a childhood, while the courageous form of now is her original attribute, he finally realized as he stared at her as she had done for him, understanding her well at last.
At least he had had a good childhood, getting well-treated from his parents, and the Martyr...
"So you keep your last name because of Sarah?" "Yeah. I couldn't erase her from my life just yet," She now turned her gaze away from the grass and took a deep breath.
"It has passed for now. I'm afraid of sleeping. I don't plan to sleep tonight-for me, it's a habit," "Jesus, Lyra. You can't sleep none at all," he swallowed back a yawn, but Lyra noticed it. "Nah. Al, go to bed. I think being alone might help-it always did till now," She said timidly, resting her chin on her arm.
Knowing that Lyra won't bend in any way, Alex Mars inevitably got up, but before going back up the stairs for his bed, he walked over to her side and gave her a single pat(awkwardly) on her hunched shoulder, and she took it gratefully.
"Good night, then," He said and walked back up, sensations mixed up with amazement and pity and sadness for the perfect major.
And the only reason Lyra Cannes didn't reply was because, she was just too grateful for him to be the first-ever, sincere, and serious listener of her past.
Thinking about Alex Mars' equal agonizing past and of Sarah, she simply fixed her stare to the pale moon shining its light on the moist grass(she was reminded for a moment, on that day when Alex had been amazed by the simple and trivial moisture on it) and spent her entire night like that, calculating the moon, then thinking, thinking, and thinking.