I felt guilty walking in front of Brian empty-handed as he was sweating carrying my bulky, and hopefully still functional, PC. The heat was oppressive, the kind that could drive a sane person to murder.
We were headed to a PC repair shop that was unfortunately somewhere between walking distance and a bus ride away. And of course, we didn't have a car and nor could we afford a taxi.
"Are you alright, Brian?"
I asked for the umpteenth time, knowing that the answer would be 'yes,' but still, I couldn't help myself.
"No."
He was breathing heavily. It wasn't just the weight of it, but its awkward size and the stupidly 'cool' shape I thought it was when I bought the case second hand.
"Let me help you."
"You will die trying to carry this yourself. That'd be far more troublesome than this."
He had a point.
After about half an hour of walking, with some breaks in between where Brian poured more water on his head than he actually drank, we finally arrived at the McRepair.
I'd never been in this store before, so I sort of hid myself behind my younger brother as he placed the computer on the counter.
"Good morning. How can I help you?"
"Hi, we had a bit of… a power problem and the PC gets stuck during boot-up now."
"What happens when you turn it on?"
"It goes into some Windows disk recovery mode and gets stuck around 70% progress."
"Well, we will see then."
The man opened the case, looked inside and asked in confusion,
"What REALLY happened?"
"Excuse me?" Brian asked.
"Have a look at this."
Brian looked into the PC and I came forward a little to take a peek as well.
"What is that?"
"Beats me. Looks like a melted jelly or something."
The shop owner was right. There was, for lack of better words, something thick and gooey—simmering cold in black—that was covering one of the hard drives.
"So it's that drive that's causing the issue?" Brian asked.
"Looks like it."
"I should have checked it earlier. So the PC should work if we just take that out, right?"
"Yeah, Windows probably got stuck trying to read something off that drive. I've never seen anything like that before."
"Right, thanks. Maybe we could just take that out."
"I'm sorry, but I'm not touching it." The shop owner shook his head. Firmly.
Brian sighed and said, "I'll do it."
But when he reached inside and touched it, he let out a little yelp.
"What is it?!" I asked, concerned.
"It feels super weird…"
He groaned.
"Like, how weird?"
"I don't know. It's like… I really don't know."
He looked almost scared. Very unusual for the little brave man.
"Let me try," I said. Although it looked strange as hell, something about it had a familiarity I couldn't quite pinpoint, and I wasn't afraid of it.
"No, Bree! Don't!"
Before he could stop me though, as soon as I touched it I saw a black flame flicker before my eyes—the same kind that covered Senne's face.
Welp.
I'm sorry you had to see that, Brian.
"Are you okay?" Brian asked.
"Yeah, I'm fine."
With that, I detached the cable and pulled the drive out. The thick gunk felt weird to the touch, but didn't feel disgusting. Somehow.
"Maybe you want to clean it up." The shop owner said and passed me a cotton cloth.
I started to rub the goo off the drive, and Brian and the shop owner were getting increasingly confused.
"Just what the heck is that?" Brian uttered as the black jelly was coming off but no stain was being made on the cloth.
I had no idea what this was either except that it must be somehow connected to Senne.
After a few minutes of wiping it clean with the shop owner and Brian watching in fascination, it was finally clean.
"Could you please test it now?" I asked.
"To be honest, Miss, I wouldn't use that again."
"Let's try to turn the PC on first and see if it works."
As I clutched onto the drive, the shop owner connected the PC and it booted up without an issue this time.
"Yup, all fixed now," he said, clapping his hands.
"Thank you so much. How much would it cost?" Brian asked.
"I won't charge you for it. I didn't have to do anything."
"Oh, that's so nice of you. Thank you so much again."
Brian expressed his gratitude, but—
"What about this drive?" I asked, getting nervous.
"You probably should just throw that away," the shop owner said, shrugging.
"NO!"
Both him and Brian were taken aback a little.
"This… this drive has… things on it I don't want to lose," I said.
"Eh? It's not like we got many family photos or anything. And I probably have them all backed up in the cloud anyway, Bree."
Brian tried to assure me.
"No… I have other things…"
There was a bit of silence. Then the shop owner said.
"Well, we do offer data recovery service."
"Really?!" I exclaimed, hopeful.
"But it won't be cheap," the owner added.
"How much?" Brian asked.
"It starts from $80."
"EIGHTY DOLLARS?!" I shouted, and was met with another shrug. I looked at Brian as if he could do anything about it.
Brian looked into my eyes for a second, then closed his eyes.
Pinching the bridge of his nose with his fingers, he let out a sigh.
"Please give me a few minutes. I will be back."
With that, he left the shop without saying anything further.