-20-
“Is this what a hangover feels like?”
-Fury
It didn’t take long for Fury to come to.
It did take him a good while to stop trying to kill Eighty-Three. What finally broke him is when the bear grabbed his mask, and the not-a-robot just lifted him off the ground like Fury was a child. He held him there, feet dangling and kicking, and said, “Please stop trying to kill me.”
That was that.
For the rest of that first day, Fury’s entire existence seemed slow and lagged. He was nursing a painful hip, but as the hours passed, his condition noticeably improved. Every so often, Eighty-Three turned around and scanned him, which always drew the bear’s ire. Although one time, he let out a whistling sound that, once again, sounded like someone had explained to him what a whistle was.
Claire laughed again, but that time, it wasn’t drug induced.
“I whistled in surprise,” he said. “Why do you laugh?”
She just shook her head, and grabbed Fury’s hand. He clutched hers, seeming to draw strength from her, stability.
And so they went on until dark. There was an argument about who was going to take which watch even though their strange, goggled companion said many times that he required no sleep. Fury insisted on taking second watch, although about five minutes into it, he got tired of Gasmask, as he called him, staring at him, and crept back over to where Claire lay. He wrapped his arms around her waist, kissed her neck, and when she murmured her comfort and snuggled backward against his body, the bear finally gave in and let sleep take him.
When they awoke, the shadowy figure was sitting in exactly the same place that he’d been when Claire fell asleep.
Fury rose first, tromping off to the woods to take care of his morning toilet needs.
Without a word, Eighty-Three stood. “Good,” he said. “Your need to sleep has always confused me. Not from a scientific standpoint – I understand the need for the brain to rest – but the things you do while you sleep.”
“Were you watching us all night?” Claire asked, feeling slightly embarrassed, though not really knowing why.
“Yes.”
“That’s... sorta creepy,” she said, instinctually pulling her coat closer around her neck.
“For instance,” he said, moving right past what she’d said. “He kissed you when he went back to sleep, and you made a sound. Then you got closer to him, and he smiled. He kissed you again.”
Claire was nodding slowly. “Is this like a cataloging thing you do? I mean, I’m a scientist too, don’t get me wrong – but it seems like you’re very surprised by things that you shouldn’t be surprised by. You’re human, right? One way or another?”
Eighty-Three emitted a humming sound. “Why does he groan with such vigor while urinating? You would think that Fury was having some kind of sexual climax from the way he carries on.”
Claire listened for a second, and chuckled. “He is getting really excited about it,” she said. “It feels good, I guess.” For some reason, while having him watch them sleep gave her the creeps, clinically discussing the pleasure of a good pee didn’t bother her at all.
When Fury reappeared, Claire went off and took care of her needs and when she made her way back, the camp had already been completely erased. Not like someone kicked ash on the fire – the whole thing was just wiped out. If you didn’t know there had been one, it was indistinguishable from wilderness. Hell, she knew it was there, and still couldn’t find any traces that anyone had been there – bear, human, robot or otherwise.
After checking something on his little whirligig, Eighty-Three simply walked off.
“Where are you going?” Claire called after him, shooting a quick glance to Fury, who shrugged. “Wait up!”
“No time for waiting. We have to find your other friends. I hope the other one was as stalwart as your mate.”
It took a moment before the two of them realized that he intended them to follow, and took off in his gliding, impossibly smooth wake.
*
Their trek took them across two days, over a mountain ridge, and through a pair of unsettling dales. The fact that the dales were unsettling didn’t really enter Claire’s mind until they crept into the second one just as dusk was beginning to fall, and she happened to brush against a fir tree.
“Are these fake?” she asked with a start.
Fury looked back, his eyes burning in the darkness. “Fake trees? Why would—?”
“Yes, they are fake,” Eighty-Three said.
He chose not to expound on that, instead just gliding forward, legs moving with that impossible deftness. He didn’t even seem to disturb the grass as he went, more like he was water flowing through everything. Only once or twice did he bother to duck out of the way of a low-hanging branch, but even then, the ducking motion was silky smooth.