Cecil and Yaeh’s second night together passed without incident.

  Cecil woke to the pale golden light of morning and felt a small hearth of warmth pressed against him.

  He turned and found that once again Yaeh had drifted to his side while they’d slept. Today though, she was cocooned snugly in her new blanket under the sheets and was radiating warmth to an almost uncomfortable degree.

  He pulled the hot bedding off himself to rise from the bed, realising as he did so that one of Yaeh’s legs had tangled with his own. He extracted himself delicately.

  As he rose to his feet the room began to spin around him. He panicked, thinking for a moment that he was about to fall. He reached a hand out and steadied himself on the bedside unit until the sensation faded a few moments later.

  As he stood by the bed recovering from the spell of dizziness, an intense wave of nausea washed over him, causing him to dry heave.

  Cecil exhaled a laboured breath, trying not to wretch.

  What is going on? He thought to himself in panic.

  He arrived at the only logical conclusion. Withdrawal had begun in earnest.

  Once recovered, he hurried to the kitchen as quickly as he could manage to access the medicine storage then, with two anti-withdrawal tablets on his tongue he held his head beneath the water dispenser and swallowed them both with the stream of water.

  He kept a finger on the sensor and held his head beneath the cool rush of water which splattered into the sink below after running along the shape of his aching skull.

  The sudden appearance of and intensity of the sickness worried him. But not as much as the prospect that these symptoms were going to get severely worse before they got better.

  Thankfully, the tablets kicked in within minutes but the experience had left Cecil without much of an appetite so he decided to skip breakfast to just lay on the sofa and listen to music through the console’s headphones.

  Yaeh awoke almost an hour later.

  Her head hurt terribly, but the bed was so soft and warm it made up for that.

  She noticed that Cecil had already gotten up and took the opportunity to migrate towards the centre of the warm bed.

  She realised that she could smell the place where Cecil had been sleeping.

  A new smell. The smell of a person. It was subtle, like most smells in physical reality, but not unpleasant.

  With nothing planned for the day she could think of no valid reason for her to leave the pleasant sanctuary of the bed, so she went back to sleep.

  “Alright, listen up.” Isla began, brandishing a finger at Hereon. “Sana has to move back in with you starting today. If you hurt her, or do anything bad to her at all, then I’ll make sure it comes back to you doubled!” She threatened.

  Hereon raised his head, revealing puffy red eyes rimmed with dark circles. He looked dreadful. Had he slept at all last night?

  Isla recoiled slightly as those dark eyes met her own. The boy seemed like a thunderstorm, coiled up with his back to the wall and his arms around his knees. There was a tension to his posture that seemed to imply that he was just a trigger away from pouncing.

  The apartment was trashed. Hereon had destroyed everything that he could get his hands on during the night and pieces of broken glass, ceramic and plastic littered the floor.

  Sana stood behind Aeon and Isla, thankful that her friends had agreed to come with her to provide backup. Once they’d all seen the state of the apartment, they knew it had been a wise decision.

  Hereon said nothing. He buried his face back into his knees and ignored his classmates.

  Aeon stepped forwards, the soles of his shoes crunching debris under foot.

  “Why did you attack Ms Amelie, Hereon?” He asked in a level tone. “You could have seriously, seriously, hurt her. She didn’t do anything to you.” He accused.

  “She took her away from me.” Hereon answered from between his knees.

  “Ms Amelie didn’t do this to us.” Sana explained, trying to be patient. “The City are the ones who set this project up and forced us to do this. They’re the ones who unplugged us.”

  “She’s with them.” Hereon countered darkly. “She’s not… She could have stopped all of this but didn’t.”

  Isla wanted to contradict him, but there were more pressing concerns.

  “Regardless Hereon, Sana didn’t do anything. She’s in the same boat as the rest of us, right? You understand that, right?” Isla prodded.

  “Promise me that you’re not going to hurt Sana.” Aeon demanded cooly. “Look at me Hereon.”

  Hereon didn’t raise his head.

  “Look at me!” Aeon almost shouted.

  The boy slowly raised his head. Tears streamed from red and swollen eyes. He rubbed them away aggressively.

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  “Promise me. Promise all of us that you won’t hurt Sana.” Aeon demanded.

  “I won’t hurt her.” Hereon hissed through gritted teeth. He rose to his feet, eyes furious. “Must be nice to have people who actually give a shit about you.” He spat at Sana.

  He stormed over to the kitchen and took three sleeping pills from the medicine storage. He swallowed them dry then strode to the bedroom door, hesitating on the threshold before turning to Sana.

  “You sleep on that!” He declared, jabbing a finger towards the sofa. The bedroom door slammed shut behind him.

  “Gladly!” Sana spat after him. “What an absolute slab!”

  “Yeah, he’s a piece of work.” Aeon agreed, feeling relief at the tenuously peaceful outcome.

  “Let’s clean this place up.” Isla said with a sigh. “Did you see where Ms Amelie got that sweepy thing from the last time he smashed something?”

  Sana fetched the broom.

  Yaeh pointed to a word in the recipe. Egg.

  Sana leaned in to see the word that Yaeh was indicating, then looked inside the bag of ingredients. She retrieved a plastic carton that contained six bone white, slightly oblong orbs.

  The packaging said: “Eggs.”

  Yaeh opened the packaging and inspected one of the orbs while referring to her manuals.

  Apparently the object was an edible ovum from a chicken. Gross.

  How did something like that turn into cookies?

  The recipe also listed butter, another byproduct of an animal's reproductive system.

  If Yaeh had an appetite she probably would have lost it, but she made a conscious effort to ignore the peculiar origins of the ingredients. Apparently milk and eggs were in almost all traditional baked goods.

  She supposed that in the past, humans would have consumed these things without a second thought.

  The idea had been Sana's. She had found a recipe repository on the tablets and decided that she was going to make cookies. The snack did feature pretty commonly in older media and the liquid food supply had almost run out, indicating that the VC37 students were ready to transition to solid foods. Cookies had seemed as good a place to start as any other.

  With a list of required groceries, Aeon and Cecil had made another trip to the superstore to stock up on food for everyone. They’d even offered to shop for Petal and Forger who had eagerly accepted.

  All of the food storage units on the third floor were now fully stocked.

  Sana cracked open one of the eggs over a glass bowl, following a video tutorial that she was watching on her tablet, then shrieked when disgusting goop poured from the brittle egg to run along her fingers.

  Yaeh took a step back, deciding that Sana was on her own for this part.

  “No, listen! I’ve figured out how to get my muscles back!” Aeon announced excitedly from the other room to Isla, Cecil and Lulu. “I’ve been reading up on exercise and protein and stuff. It seems really easy so I bought some weights and some proteiny foods. I bet I’ll be jacked again in like, a week!”

  “He’s already spent all of his money.” Lulu explained, forcing the words past the fluid in her throat making each one sound strained and crackly.

  Despite the difficulties, her tone was cheerful. “Looks like I’ll be covering expenses-” She coughed for a moment to clear her throat. “-For the rest of the month.” She finished.

  “Well I did chip in for the fashion tech so it’s all fair.” Aeon retorted merrily.

  “I think it’ll take a lot longer than a week for you to grow muscles.” Cecil confessed to Aeon who looked back at him confused.

  “So, what like two weeks?” Aeon asked, crestfallen.

  “No, more like, months... Maybe years if you want to get as big as your avatar was.”

  Aeon deflated. “Please tell me that you’re lying to me, brother.”

  “No, I think that that’s true actually.” Isla added. “I’ve definitely heard that bodies change slowly here.”

  “Does everything about living physical just suck?” Aeon whined.

  “Yep.” Isla answered flippantly. “So anyway, what are we gonna watch?”

  She turned to Aeon as she asked the question. They were assembled in his and Lulu’s apartment and he had been the one to suggest gathering to watch media and to eat some food together.

  “Well if it’s up to me, any of the Crag Hardshot movies! Oh, or Zara the Ender, those ones rock too. Or if we wanna watch something really retro, the John Wick films are all badass.” Aeon listed off enthusiastically.

  Isla rolled her eyes. “You only like media where someone kills a ton of people. Why not something interactive, or AR? We have all the peripherals.” She asked, gesturing to the controllers and AR headsets in the storage unit of the console.

  “I mean I wouldn’t be against it, I’ve just always preferred old fashioned non-interactives more.” Aeon shrugged.

  “Why don’t we select something at random?” Cecil suggested.

  They turned to look at him and he suppressed the urge to shrink back from the attention.

  “How?” Isla asked. She seemed interested.

  “Um, well we could select a year at random, then pick a number between 1 to 10 and watch the corresponding best rated media from that year, from 1st place to 10th.”

  “Oh that sounds fun!” Aeon accepted. “But we should all get a veto just in case whatever we pick sounds super boring or like, weird or something.”

  “Sure.” Cecil agreed, glad his suggestion had landed well.

  Aeon slapped him affectionately on the shoulder, grinning.

  “Ouch!” Cecil cried out, wincing from the unexpected flare of pain from the almost healed wound where his hardports had been removed. He’d almost forgotten it was there.

  “Ah, sorry brother. I forgot.” Aeon apologised sheepishly.

  “It’s Ok.” Cecil answered meekly through the pain.

  Eventually, a media was agreed upon and the cookies came out of the oven smelling a lot better than they tasted.

  The media was an old 22nd century epic fantasy interactive about warring houses on a desert planet.

  The students all gathered around the sofa to watch the interactive media, inputting a series of branching decisions via a group vote between themselves.

  Yaeh found herself growing tired as the four hour long epic marched on, and ended up resting her head gently on Cecil’s shoulder as they sat on the floor by the sofa together under their blanket.

  The media ended with a successful and satisfying outcome as the protagonist's house eventually triumphed, thanks in no small part to several clutch strategies proposed by Yaeh in the final act.

  The students bid farewell to each other as the final night of the weekend fell over Venus.

  Tomorrow classes would begin, and who knew what else lay in store.

  “Are you comfy?” Aeon asked as he helped Lulu into the bed.

  Isla had helped her change into bed clothes before she had left.

  Lulu was grateful that she had developed the ability to talk even if it was still a struggle, but she remained debilitatingly weak and still needed a lot of assistance.

  “Comfy enough.” Lulu answered through bubbling lungs.

  She hated hearing the rattle when she talked. It was yet another way she was different from the others.

  At least this part of her condition didn’t hurt.

  Aeon had been delighted when she’d first spoken though and had showered her with praise.

  He made a lot of things easier for her. Not just physically, but emotionally too.

  Lulu shuddered to think about the possibility that she could have been partnered with Karkos, or Hereon.

  They might have grudgingly helped her with her physical needs, but she knew that their hopelessness would have infected her if she’d had to live with either of them.

  Aeon was a bright light in her darkness, and she knew that as long as he was trying his best on her behalf, she could never allow herself to give up like Hereon and Karkos had.

  “Hey.” Lulu started while Aeon got into his side of the bed. “Don’t you think Cecil and Yaeh seem really close?”

  “Do they? Hmm, I guess so?” Aeon mused absentmindedly. “I didn’t really notice.”

  Lulu would have called her partner oblivious, but that wouldn’t have been accurate. His attention had simply been elsewhere. Where it always was when Isla was around.

  Lulu sighed, trying to ignore that a fledgling thorn of jealousy had begun to take root.

  “Stop touching me with your cold-ass feet!” Isla snapped, breaking the silence of the dark bedroom.

  “You’re the one moving around.” Karkos sighed.

  “Move over more.” Isla countered grumpily.

  “I’m on my side of the bed.” He protested.

  She kicked him.

  “And who told you that your side of the bed was a whole half?” Isla taunted, then kicked him again.

  Karkos sighed again loudly, then conceded and moved closer towards the edge of the bed.

  “I really hate it here.” He groaned.

  “Good.” Isla sneered, then pulled the sheets.

  Cecil couldn’t sleep.

  Yaeh lay next to him. This time she hadn’t even waited until sleep before cuddling up next to him.

  He was amazed by how quickly she could fall asleep now. Amazed and envious as he lay awake staring at a ceiling dimly illuminated by the light of the Milky Way.

  If Yaeh hadn’t been gently holding onto the fabric of his shirt as she slept, he would have gotten up to take a sleeping pill, but as it was, he didn’t want to risk waking her.

  A sense of homesickness had settled over him, separate from the more primal need to get into a tank and plug in, although that was there too. Always.

  Cecil couldn’t sleep, and he missed his parents.