Beyond Evolution

Every since Luce had her marvelous brainstorm of planning in the art studio the other day, Adrien had found himself spending more and more time in there -- unwillingly. Luce or not, it was the last place he felt like being since he'd gotten his second injection of the cure. The first couple hours after the shot had been fine, once he let go of the initial grumbling about how much his arm tended to ache, but since then, he'd been feeling steadily less alright. Dizziness, mostly. Nothing quite so new; back at the beginning, in November, he'd felt similarly light-headed, but it usually went away once he remembered to choke down a real meal or cut back on his cigarette intake for an afternoon. That's why he hadn't bothered to say anything this time around. There was no reason to distract his girlfriend or make her worry, not when he could cope with the side effects perfectly well on his own. All it took was a little bit more personal attention to his body's needs than he usually afforded.

Or so he'd thought, at first. Pastries and clean air hadn't made the slightest difference to his whirling brain. No matter how much water he drank, or how many times he made excuses to go lie down in his room, it only seemed to be getting worse. Adrien was rarely opposed to complaining if he felt poorly, but this time, he sealed his lips into a tight line and put up with it as best he could. There was more at stake here. He had absolutely no desire to be a problematic case to the doctors, in case they should decide that he wasn't a suitable candidate to finish the trial, and thus it wasn't difficult for him to decide that he was better off saying nothing until it faded. Let Rogue be the one to call the doctors and ask for help, not him. Wednesday afternoon, he'd gathered up his schedule and Kevin's mail to take to the studio, where he found Luce already working. So much for conversation or post-class making out. With the clanking of metal ringing painfully in his ears, he settled at one of the work tables and tried to read.

At first, it was fine. He followed the scrawling, disorganized black letters spilling from between the lines as easily as ever, switching to the typed letters whenever his patience with his own cryptic and bilingual notes grew too short. But soon the words seemed to be moving away from his eyes, tracking across the page as he chased them down with his gaze, blending together in black smudges that had him rubbing his eyes hard to focus. Sometimes they disappeared altogether, leaving him with blank white pages that practically floated in his grasp, their edges fuzzy and spreading. Like it was actually his vision itself that was clouding over. His heart rate kicked up a notch in his chest, and he forced himself to breathe deeply through his nose to calm himself. The top of his head felt like it was trying to come off and drift away. "Luce," he mumbled as he put down the letter in his hand, or thought he did -- he wasn't sure where it was, anymore -- and when he realized his voice hadn't pierced the fog around him, he tried again.

The stool he'd been perched on clattered loudly as it tipped over, but it wasn't quite as loud as the sound Adrien's skull made as it hit the work table on his way to the floor.

[ NARRATIVE ]