Transmission

She sat there on the sofa, not putting the TV on, neither of them daring to open the curtains. Eventually, Kevin went up to his room, sitting there in the dark so his mother wouldn’t worry about him quite as much.

After a while, he took out the headphones that Ted had given him before he left the institute, putting them on more to shut out the sounds of the reporters outside than because he truly thought something would happen. Maybe he did hope for it. If he could get another message that would help to make sense of all this, maybe he could go out to the reporters there and explain it all. Maybe he could make people understand again that it was real, and that he hadn’t been lying.

There was only silence, though. No signal, no words in his head, no sign of anything that would help. Taking off the headphones, Kevin threw them aside and settled down to sleep. Maybe in the morning, things would look better.

***

Kevin went over to his bedroom window, looking out the way he might have if he’d been looking for snow anywhere other than California. He was looking for journalists, hoping that by now, several days later, they would have gotten bored with waiting around the house and gone home.

They hadn’t. There were still cameras out there in front of the house, still reporters with microphones waiting for whatever the next step would be in their story. Kevin wished that they would go away, and thought for the hundredth time about going down there to tell them to do just that, but he didn’t. It wasn’t the same thing as translating the messages while people watched in a press conference, and anyway, Kevin suspected that was just what they were waiting for.

Instead, he went to get dressed, and staggered slightly as a wave of dizziness hit him. Pain followed, flaring through his skull, and Kevin felt wetness against his lips. When he put his hand to his nose, it came away red with blood. He even felt sicker today, the effort of going to the bathroom and cleaning up almost exhausting him.

He still did it though. He didn’t want to worry his mother. He made sure that he looked okay when he went downstairs, and tried to hide the faint tremor in his hands that wouldn’t go away now.

He hadn’t realized until then just how much care he’d been getting in the research institute. He’d complained about all the tests and the scans and the rest, but maybe somewhere in all of that there had been something that had been slowing down his illness. Or maybe he’d just been so busy he hadn’t noticed its progression.

“I can’t worry Mom,” he told himself.

When he went downstairs, he could hear voices.

“I’m sorry, Ms. McKenzie, but this is not a joke. Proceedings are being brought against you for using your son to defraud people, and we need to take them seriously.”

Kevin hurried down there, and saw a couple of people in suits talking to his mother. She looked as though she hadn’t slept at all, and when she looked over at Kevin, he could see the purple shadows around her eyes.

“Ah, here’s your son now,” one of the men said. “Maybe we could take a statement from him now, and that might help.”

“No,” his mother said, “not now, not like this. I just want people to leave my son alone.”

“I don’t mind, Mom,” Kevin said.

“Well, I do,” his mother said. “Go into the kitchen, Kevin. I need to talk to these people.”

If she’d shouted, Kevin might have argued. Instead, she just sounded incredibly sad, and Kevin did as she asked, going through to the kitchen and sitting there at the kitchen table. All the time, he tried to listen to what was happening through the walls.

“I’ll have to sell the house,” his mother said. “What this will cost… I can’t think of another way.”

“I understand that this is difficult, Ms. McKenzie, but it is important that we deal with it. The alternative could involve imprisonment, for you, or for your son.”

Kevin’s fingers gripped the edge of the kitchen table hard enough that it hurt. They couldn’t do it, could they? They couldn’t throw his mother in jail, when he’d been telling the truth. He sat there, part of him wanting to burst in there, part of him knowing that it was all far too important to do that.

He was still sitting there when he saw the figure sneaking into their backyard, a beanie hat covering their head, a thick coat pulled up to obscure their features. They leapt over with the grace of someone who had done that kind of thing plenty of times before, landing neatly in the yard.

If it had been a reporter or some stranger clambering over the fence, he didn’t know what he would have done. Called for help, probably. Interrupted his mother in spite of the seriousness of what was happening. Instead, he unlocked the back door, letting Luna into the house as she hurried over.

“Hey,” she said, hugging him so suddenly that it almost took Kevin by surprise.

“Hey,” Kevin replied. “I’m guessing you couldn’t get here the front way?”

“Too many reporters,” Luna agreed, stepping back. She pulled away the beanie cap. “Like my disguise?”