Free Fall (Pyramid of Gold)

I must have dozed off for a few hours, enough at least to make me feel alive again. My dream journal wasn't by hand, and it made me nervous. The sun was up, and it wasn't snowing anymore. I climbed off the bed and looked out of the window. The lake looked black under the gray winter sky. The events of the last night seemed like a strange dream, too unbelievable to be real. But they were. I remembered the muffled sounds of bodies hitting the snow, the dark shapes of rusting trains in the abandoned railroad museum, and the acrid smell of burnt wool in the small room that served Zero as shelter.

Gaunt, mad Zero. Will I be like him one day? The thought scared me.

I went to the other room. Mickey was sleeping on the couch, curled up under a blanket. Asleep, he looked even younger than usual. His computer was rustling quietly in the corner. I moved a mouse a little and it woke up. Mickey's desktop was well organized, with icons neatly assembled into small groups in the corners. There was a group for various video games, another one for work-related folders, and so on. Separate from all the icons, a lonesome text file labeled 'Count Zero' loomed in the middle of the screen. But I didn't touch it yet. Instead, I just looked at the background image for a while.

It was an old photo, digitized with care. On it, a little blond boy was laughing, sitting on the shoulders of a large man. Beside them, a delicate woman was smiling into the camera. She had very beautiful blond hair. The man was the only brunette in the picture, but I could see the resemblance. His eyes were gray, like Mickey's, and they had similar shape to their jaws. He was wearing a green sheepskin coat.

'That's my dad.'

Mickey yawned and sat up, stretching.

'How is he?'

'Dead.'

Tʜe sourcᴇ of thɪs content ɪs NovᴇlFir(e).nᴇt

I sighed.

'And your mom?'

'Yeah, her too. Hey, do you want some ice cream?'