“What’s it saying now?” Marnie hugs Cedrick’s arm with both hands.

Cedrick’s sigh makes him slouch, and he takes his hand out of his pocket. It’s like a watch, a small thing banded to his arm that’s the color of a band-aid. He can’t take it off and just let Marnie play with it, and instead deals with the pain of her. It aches his skin and it hurts to have her interact with it, but it’s a bearable pain though— like a shot from the doctor. Still. He wishes she’d leave it alone. The screen is dim in the direct sunlight so the words are hard to see. Cedrick twists his wrist back and forth to catch it in the right light for her.

“Probably just your Starbucks order,” Cedrick nods to the building ahead, “Does it even matter?”

“Of course it does! What if someone has a bomb here? This thing could be the difference between life or death.”

“You sound like my mom.”

“I sound reasonable.” Marnie stops walking to look at his wrist directly, shielding it with her hand to cast a shadow. Cedrick lets her but, due to the crowd around them, makes her move to the side of the walkway at least.

“Found anybody interesting?” He asks, not looking at her.

“Something about street fruit from the lady with glasses.” Marnie whispers, the said woman still in listening-distance as the crowd streamlines around them.

Cedrick smiles, but his voice sounds bored and monotonous. “How scandalous.”

Marnie doesn't meet his gaze to confirm his tone is just teasing, but by her pout, she knows Cedrick is just needling her. “Shut up. You’re so cool like this, you’re like a cyborg superhero." She lets go of his arm to dig through her backpack. "You should be happy your mom has this kind of money, mine wasted our’s on those stupid new iPhones.” Marnie gets out her phone, and begins to complain about how it wasn't even that great or different from her old one.

As Cedrick tunes her out, the next closest person to them showed up on the screen and Cedrick looked at it curiously. It’s a man that Cedrick's peripherals tell him is standing directly behind him. He lightly nudges for Marnie to keep walking as she waves her phone around while she talks. The stranger has some really cool piercings, but before the screen could finish the man's sentence or Cedrick could walk out of range, another face was popping up. Some kid their age. He was wearing a red beanie and he had a broken nose, Cedrick was reading something about “thanks”, but the glare of the sun was omitting the rest of the words. Cedrick shifts his wrist a bit to try to read it better until Marnie is suddenly shoved into his arms.

“Hey!” Marnie’s already pushing off from Cedrick. She's pointing at some kid with a red beanie running off ahead of them. “Hey! That guy stole my phone!”

••● ════ ••◆•• ════ ●••

Cedrick grits and bares his teeth, eyes tight, and is frantically shifting his shoulders. The woman on his back is a lot stronger than she looks, keeping him successfully pinned down on the grimy ground of the garage.

Cedrick flickers one eye open briefly before snapping it shut when the man in the yellow suit grinds his heel into Cedrick’s wrist again. It hurts so fucking much, yet Marnie is screaming before Cedrick is.

“Stop it! Stop, you’re hurting him, please!” She’s trying to throw her arms toward Cedrick. He’s squirming on the ground and Marnie’s eyes prick with tears at the red warning-flashes that are blaring out from the seams of Cedrick’s skin.

The kid with the broken nose is holding her wrists tighter now. His face is covered, hiding in her huge mass of hair, with his red beanie being the only thing visible on his head. “I’m sorry, just stay here, please, I’m so sorry.”

The yellow man puts more of his weight onto Cedrick's wrist and, finally, Cedrick wails. Cedrick claws desperately at the man’s yellow shoes, and he can see sparks behind his eyes. This is worse than a broken bone, it feels closer to the man having the tender flesh of Cedrick’s brain slipping through a clenched fist or as if the yellow-suited man is tearing at the neurons of Cedrick’s nervous system with the canines of his teeth. It’s a sledgehammer slamming into his heart’s ware again and again and again with every drill-like grind of the man’s heel. Cedrick’s eyes are blinded an electric white by the pain and he feels like he's full of smoke, brain whirring frantically for a plan— any kind of plan, anything odd he could stack back into his favor, as he screams with his face slick with tears.

And then, the screen cracks.