Page 77 of Omega's Formula

I type back:Waiting for boarding. Gate 7.

I love you. Be safe.

I love you too. Take care of yourself.

I smile despite everything and tuck the phone back in my pocket.

“Now boarding at Gate 7,” the PA system crackles. “Bus 247 to Portland, Oregon. Now boarding.”

I stand, grab my duffel bag and join the queue. The night stretches out ahead of me, dark and full of uncertainty. But for the first time in months, I feel something other than despair.

I feel free.

20. Erik

“That was terrible,” Anna announces as we push through the cinema doors into the evening air. “Like, genuinely terrible. I’m embarrassed I made you sit through it.”

“You didn’t make me do anything.” The street is busy with the after-work crowd, people rushing toward dinner reservations and evening plans. I fall into step beside her, hands in my coat pockets. “And it wasn’t that bad.”

These movie nights have become a regular thing now. Every Thursday, without fail, Anna drags me to whatever’s showing at the independent cinema three blocks from her apartment. She says it’s good for me. Says I need to do something that isn’t work or brooding. Her words.

I haven’t told her that I look forward to these evenings more than I want to admit and that for two hours in a dark theater, I can almost forget the disaster my personal life has become.

“Erik, the main character just walked away from a mushroom cloud like it was a mild inconvenience.”

“The cinematography was decent.”

“Oh my god, you’re such a liar.” She elbows me, grinning. “You hated every minute.”

I didn’t hate it. I barely registered it. For two hours I sat in the dark while images flickered across the screen and my mind kept circling back to the same place it’s been circling for days.

Nolan’s face at the Bureau meeting. The hollowed-out cheeks. The way his clothes hung off him like he’d lost fifteen pounds in three weeks. The grey cast to his skin that made him look like he was fighting something his body couldn’t beat.

Not your problem, I tell myself for the thousandth time.You ended it. He’s not your concern.

Except I’m still paying for Ellie’s medical treatment. That’s the one string I haven’t cut, and I won’t. Whatever Nolan did or didn’t do, his sister is innocent and shouldn’t suffer for his choices.

Or maybe I’m not as detached as I’d like to believe.

“You’re doing it again,” Anna says.

“Doing what?”

“That thing where you’re physically here but your brain is somewhere else entirely.” She steers us toward a quieter side street, away from the crowds. “You’ve been weird all evening. What’s going on?”

“Nothing.”

“Erik.”

I should have known better than to think I could hide anything from her. Anna has been reading me since we were children.

“I saw him,” I say. “At the Bureau meeting last week. The follow-up appointment.”

“The omega. Nolan.” Her voice is careful, neutral.

“Yes.”

“And?”