Victor turned sharply, quickly placing the object back where he had taken it from. Duncan stood under the doorframe, watching the scene in confusion. Victor stared back at him with equal unease.
He couldn't answer. Every word would have come out as a stutter.
"Why were you sniffing the Rehabilitator?" Duncan asked.
Victor nodded. In that moment, every excuse that came to mind would have been out of place and easily dismantled.
"Dunc, do you remember any specific scents? When you inhaled through these things?"
"Specific scents...?" Duncan looked even more puzzled. "Bro, that's air going through there. It keeps you alive. There aren't any 'specific scents.' It's just air. Oxygen."
"But you don't remember anything else? Like... I don't know, some strange smell?" Victor was sounding stranger by the second.
"No...?" Duncan replied.
Victor exhaled sharply. He first looked down at the floor, toward the lower corner of the nightstand. Then, slowly, he shifted his gaze to the mask, which, from a potentially nightmarish device, now appeared for what it truly was: a hospital recovery mask of advanced medical technology.
"But what are you doing here?" Victor then asked, looking at his friend with equal surprise.
"Honestly?" Duncan said. "I was following you. I saw you leave your room and, to be honest, you didn't look like yourself at all."
Victor remained still, staring at his friend in confusion.
"Don't you think you're exaggerating?" he replied.
"You looked possessed, Vic," Duncan answered. "You were wandering the corridors with no direction. Sorry if I spied on you, but you were acting too weird. I thought you were sick."
Victor stayed motionless. Only his face moved, glancing around for a few seconds, always ending up back on the mask with every look.
"But then... what scent are you even talking about?"
Victor looked back at his friend. By now, he didn't even know why he was there.
"I don't even know..." The answer was blunt.
Then silence returned for a long, heavy minute, made of glances, expressions, small looks. There were no words to add. No explanations, lies, or comments to make. There was only confusion, on both sides, for more or less similar reasons.
"Let's go back to sleep. Come on," Duncan said, stepping out into the hallway and waiting for his friend.
Victor lingered a little longer, just enough to cast one last look at the mask, which, for a brief instant, became again that paranormal device that had so strongly drawn his attention.
He kept looking at it even as he headed toward the door. As the object grew smaller, Victor felt calmer about looking away.
Finally, it disappeared completely from his sight. The door was shut for good.
***
It was 1:42 p.m. Victor, along with Nikita, Raiko, and Duncan, was already having lunch in the common mess hall. The place was very crowded, and just as numerous were the voices in the background—a mix of shouting, laughter, whispers, and serious conversations that made the environment feel almost claustrophobic, enclosed within invisible narrow walls. The mass of people made it difficult even to move. Some tables were completely full, with two or three extra people squeezed in. When there are that many mouths to feed, it can only mean one thing in a mess hall: very poor-quality food, mass-produced and most likely badly cooked.
That was exactly what Victor's tray looked like: yellow, dry pasta—rigatoni, to be precise—topped with white ragù, the meat grayer than the dust bunnies you find around the house; the slice of beef was thick and well done, probably boiled, stripped of any juice that could have made it appetizing. It too was a very dark gray. Victor tried to cut into it: besides being tough, as he suspected, it was gray inside as well. Maybe the vegetables—carrots and green beans—were the only things remotely edible, boiled and heavily salted but still somewhat seasoned.
Even so, the boys ate, almost with enjoyment. They didn't allow themselves even the slightest look of disgust. If they didn't like something, they looked away or washed it down with water.
Victor wasn't disgusted. He had been eating that stuff for two years. Actually, in Italy the food was good. In the United States, food was often scarce, and they made stews from carcasses and infused bones, or meatloaf made of cartilage and pork scraps—and when that ran out, insects to make up the difference.
He simply wasn't very hungry. He ate in small forkfuls, picking up two or three rigatoni at a time, putting them in his mouth and chewing for several seconds, his gaze completely elsewhere.
Raiko noticed. In fact, she had been noticing for a while, especially since Duncan had told her. Indeed, both of them—except for Nikita, who was eating at a steady, moderate pace—stared at him for several moments.
"Don't you have something to tell me?" the girl asked Victor, who looked at her immediately, giving a simple "Hm?" while chewing his pasta.
"About what you did last night?" she added.
Victor swallowed, startled that his friend knew. Then he looked at Duncan with a pronounced expression of disapproval.
"Why did you go around telling people?"
"We're all your friends, Victor," the boy replied. "We worry. You'd never done something like that before."
"And you're all acting like nothing happened, because in the end that's what it is. Nothing happened."
"Vic... honestly, it was weird, at least from how Duncan described it. Could you tell it again? So I can understand."
"Raiko, listen," Victor said, taking on a firm tone, trying not to get irritated or let his nerves take over, even though he slammed his fork down a little too hard against the pasta. "And you too, Dunc... I'm fine, okay?" He forced a wide smile. "Nothing important happened last night. I couldn't sleep, so I walked around the base..."
"While creepily and mysteriously sniffing a Rehabilitator... totally normal everyday stuff," Duncan interrupted, and Victor sighed, going back to eating, this time less slowly.
"I do it too, you know?" Duncan added to Raiko, jokingly, trying to make her laugh.
However, the girl only gave him a quick neutral glance before turning back to Victor.
"Alright, Vic," she said in a calmer tone. "If you don't want to tell us, we understand. But do you swear you're okay?"
"As always. Don't worry," Victor replied after a brief pause, staring at her for a few moments.
A few seconds later, a girl approached from behind Victor at a rather brisk pace. As soon as she reached him, she tapped his right shoulder three times in quick succession. It was meant as a prank. Just moments before, she had signaled Duncan and Raiko not to say anything, making a "shh" gesture with her finger, lips puckered, giggling silently.
As soon as he felt the taps, Victor—who had secretly noticed Raiko's suspicious looks, her eyes slightly narrowed and aimed in his direction a little higher up, along with the hint of a smirk—turned the opposite way, catching Toria off guard. She stared at him in surprise.
"Hi," Victor said with a slight smile.
"How did you figure it out?" the girl asked, puzzled, smiling too, though out of embarrassment.
Victor then looked at Raiko, who still wore that same little smirk.
"Next time you coordinate, don't let the smirks or glances give it away, okay?" he said, taking a sip of water.
"And next time don't look, that's how you keep the surprise," Raiko shot back, smiling.
Toria was smiling as well. She was still standing.
"Aren't you sitting down?" Raiko asked her.
"No, it's okay," Toria replied. "I just came to tell you your friends woke up. If you want, you can go see them."
The boys—except for Nikita—immediately lit up. Even Victor, though his smile was less forced than usual. Duncan and Raiko, on the other hand, were openly happy and grinning.
"We'll finish eating and then go," Victor said. "Thanks for letting us know."
"No problem!" Toria replied, leaning closer to Victor's ear and whispering something to him, covering the left side of her face with her hand. After that, she straightened up, smiling at him as if to say, "Don't worry." Then she gently rubbed his back, careful not to touch any possible wounds, applying slight pressure near his right collarbone as her hand moved.
"Bye, guys. See you later!" Toria finally said, walking away, greeted with equal enthusiasm by Duncan and Raiko.
A few moments later, as Victor resumed eating slowly like before, Raiko called out, "Hey." He looked up at her with an expression that said, "Yeah?" letting out a small "Hm."
"What did she tell you?" she asked curiously.
"That she needs to talk to me later, when I'm available," he replied bluntly, going back to his food.
"Oh... I see," Raiko said at last, returning to her own meal as well, even though it had gone cold.