Harry slowly backed away from Aaron, whose clenched fist made it obvious he wasn't exactly in a good mood. This marked the second time in three days that Aaron ever witnessed a Deadman show fear. Even Kyle and Jade seemed a little on edge.

"Why aren't you happy, mate?" Harry asked. "We're long-lost brothers. Isn't it great that we've finally found each other?"

Aaron shoved him away. "You don't even know who I am!" he shouted.

"What do you mean? You're Aaron O'Connor. And I'm your brother Harry O'Connor."

"Did you even know my last name before reading that document?" Aaron asked coldly.

"Of course. I heard Bloodletter screaming it at the top of his lungs the other day."

"I don't give a shit who you heard say it! If you really loved me, you would've remembered me! My name, my face, how you left alone in London since I was five years old!"

"Hold on, mate," Kyle chimed in, extending his hand out to maintain peace between them. "You didn't seem too excited to see him either, bruv. I'm not trying to start anymore conflict, but I'm just saying that it took you some time to realize the two of you were related."

"There's a difference, Kyle!" Aaron growled. "I didn't recognize him. That doesn't mean I've forgotten him!"

"So now you're saying you didn't even recognize me?" Harry asked, slowly growing agitated. "You're starting to sound very hypocritical, mate. I know you're angry, but at least plan out your arguments first."

"Smart realization coming from a wanker who didn't even know what a fucking deer was."

"But Harry's got a point," Kyle continued. "You're making a big deal about a problem that you're equally guilty of."

"I don't think that's gonna help, guys," Jade said.

A vein was popping out of Aaron's forehead. No one could tell if it was part of the Ambrosia or his anger. "The only mistake I made was not knowing your name and face, and the face thing was because of how long it's been! But I still knew I had someone out there! I still knew that I wasn't alone in an orphanage for all my life!"

"Then why are you mad then?" Harry asked. "You said you had your friends. You had your Jonah and your Nika and the others to be your family."

"I'm mad because everyone I know disappears in the end! Mum and Dad are dead, Mr. and Mrs. Hecox are dead, Natalya hates my guts, and all of my other friends are either gonna hunt me down or get hunted down by Colonel Schaefer! Even you are dead!"

"I didn't want to die, mate!" Harry replied sorrowfully. "I know you don't want to, either. And even though I can't recall anything from before my resurrection, I have no doubt I loved you as a brother. I might not remember the concept of family, but I do understand the desire to be a part of something."

A single tear left Aaron's eye. "Oh yeah?" he said. "You love me so much, huh? Then tell me what you were even doing here. I remember exactly what you said the night you left me behind in London! If you really love me as a brother, tell me why you left!"

Harry couldn't respond, neither could Kyle or Jade. Harry was the only who would've been able to redeem or ruin it for himself anyway. But his silence spoke volumes as he gazed at the floor with the kind of sadness one could only find in a man who had lost everything. And in a way, Harry was that person. He didn't ask to be trapped in this grey area between alive and dead with a limited amount of humanity until his hunger took control. He didn't ask to wander the world for eternity without a single memory of the days when he could still feel. He didn't ask to be transformed into this quasi-immortal creature whose only purpose was to feed on his former allies.

"TELL ME!" Aaron screamed, grabbing Harry's shoulders. Kyle and Jade assumed cautious stances in case they had to hold Aaron back.

"I don't remember, mate," Harry croaked.

"You said you wanted to join the British Army anyway!" Another vein appeared, crawling up Aaron's neck to his eye, like a crack in the pavement. It was dark green and continued its path up to Aaron's eye as if poison was flooding his bloodstream. "You saw Mum and Dad's deaths only as an excuse to run away! You just—"

Aaron slammed into the wall, a sharp migraine piercing his skull. His left eye was drained of color, and his pupil remained as a dark spot in a pool of milky white emptiness. The vein trailing up his neck to his eye darkened into a deep purple. Even his skin grew more pale in appearance, to the point he could've blended in with the white concrete walls of the laboratory.

"Aaron!" Kyle exclaimed. "Your condition is getting worse!"

"Leave me alone," Aaron growled in a voice that could hardly be described as human. "That's what I always end up anyway. Alone."

Then he grabbed the suitcase full of evidence and bolted out of sight, disappearing into the seemingly infinite darkness of the laboratory.

"Aaron!" Harry called out.

"Hold on a minute, mate," Jade replied, placing her hand on Harry's shoulder. "Maybe we should give him some space. It worked for Bloodletter. Maybe it'll work for him."

The three Deadmen stood in the middle of the hallway, watching their friend vanish into the unfamiliarity of this new location. And in that moment, as they made their decision of leaving their friend be, they had a somewhat uncanny resemblance to the humans they used to be.

* * *

For a full hour Aaron sat alone on a balcony overlooking the facility's garage from the second floor. Just like the corridors, the garage was shrouded in darkness, with only the flicker of a few fluorescent lights keeping it from feeling like an endless void. In fact, the garage was the first room in the facility Aaron found with windows into the world outside, medium-length ones embedded in the garage doors. A dozen unblemished military vehicles remained stationary on the bottom floor. There wasn't a single person in the room aside from Aaron.

As he sulked in that little corner of the garage, he did what he could to prove himself useful and study as much of the evidence as he could. The venomous vein running to his eye had vanished back into his flesh, but he could still feel his humanity slowly departing him. He no longer had his friends or the radio in his flat to comfort him, so keeping himself busy was his only coping mechanism. And fortunately for him, he managed to learn a lot.

Before encountering that corrupt training dummy, there was no way in hell Aaron would ever believe that a machine could be infected by the Deadman virus. But that's because the Ambrosia was no ordinary virus, starting with the fact it is not even a sickness. According to the documents in the binder Aaron found, Ambrosia was a nickname for AMBR-051A nano-robots designed to completely null a person's pain sensitivity while greatly enhancing their durability, super-strength, and healing. Sickness could be cured in seconds. A broken arm could be pieced back together like a puzzle. Entire missing limbs could grow back no matter how many times you lost it or how gruesome the injuries were.

Unfortunately for the test subjects, which meant Harry, Bloodletter, and the rest of the poor souls trapped there, Colonel Schaefer—going by the alias Zeus—thought the powers of the Ambrosia would be best exercised through the one thing it was designed to prevent: pain and major physical damage. The result was a series of brutal test fights concluding with broken bones, endless mutilations, and many cruel and unusual deaths. And the worst part was that the deceased were tossed down the garbage chutes as if their lives meant nothing.

He passed by the list of the test subjects' real names. He found Harry's name again. He found out that Hermes's real name was Archibald Dyer, but he felt it would've been too coincidental if he was related to the psycho-bitch Lavinia Dyer back at Matheson. No one else was familiar to him, but he knew keeping a list of the victims was the best thing to do, as it could remind people of the atrocities that went on there if this would ever come to light.

And then came the audio logs.

He wanted to listen to them chronologically, but he was still missing the second and fifth recording, assuming the other three had found them. Since time was of the essence, he skipped to the third one. He was then greeted by the soft sound of a young woman's voice.

Ambrosia Log Number 3 here, she spoke. This is Abi—er, this is Artemis. Schaefer and Benning—wait a minute, was I supposed to say their real names?

Why are you so timid? asked another woman, this time deeper and more composed. Just say what's written down on the clipboard notes.

Sorry, Hera. Artemis cleared her throat. Over the next few weeks, the test subjects will be put through the Advanced Trials to test the full extent of the Ambrosia's power. Walter—oops!

Yes, you can say their real names, Hera interrupted. Just Schaefer and Bennington. Everyone else remains anonymous.

Okay. Artemis cleared her throat. These trials involve carefully executed mutilations of the test subjects' physical bodies to test the speed of the Ambrosia's healing qualities, by order of second-in-command Walter Bennington, AKA Hades. We will also study the effects of mass hemorrhage on both the Ambrosia nanites and their hosts. There was a pause. Don't you think he'll go too far, Hera? We've all seen what happens when we leave him alone with his enemies, especially when he has a knife.

I think that's enough for today.

The recording concluded with the crackle of static. Aaron laid the recorder on the floor beside him. "Well, that was helpful," he said sarcastically.

The only thing that stuck around in his mind after hearing that was the name Walter Bennington. The document he found in the binder claimed he was infamous for his sadistic nature and constant resort to violence, even saying he wore bloodstains like medals of honor. There were even multiple reports in his file reporting that he botched some of the Advanced Trials on purpose just as an excuse to shed some blood. However, Aaron hadn't found his corpse anywhere in the building. At least not yet.

"Feeling better, kid?" Jade asked, startling Aaron.

"Absolutely not," Aaron grumbled. "It feels like someone is branding me in the eye, and the information I've been finding has been derivative."

"What have you found so far?"

"Well first off, the Ambrosia is actually a swarm of nanobots flowing through our bloodstream that grant us advanced healing and strength. Secondly, there is no way to deactivate them, as they self-reproduce way too quickly to eradicate. And third, Schaefer might've actually been the least insane culprit responsible for this mess."

Jade's eyebrow raised. "Huh?" was all she could utter.

Aaron gave her a dirty look before simplifying his research. "Ambrosia is a manmade virus without a cure that grants us superpowers and was set off by a psychopath."

Jade snapped her fingers. "Better."

"What are you doing here anyway? Where are the other two?"

"Looking for more evidence. We were trying to find the other recorders since we remembered you were missing the second and fourth ones."

"What do you mean? The fourth one is right—" He looked down into the open suitcase, only to find that the fourth recorder was gone. He still had the first, third, and sixth recorders.

"Harry has the fourth one," Jade said. "And you have to go to him to get it back."

"Why should I?" Aaron snarked.

"Because the three of us listened to it. And let me just say if you need further proof that Harry really was a good brother, that recorder is your best bet."

"I'd prefer it if I didn't skip through the series of recordings."

"You mean like how you skipped the second one and moved on to the third?"

Aaron remained silent. She caught him red-handed. Literally. He punched a few walls on the way to the garage, so his hands were darkened a deep crimson by his own blood. "Fine," he said. "I'll come."

Aaron packed the evidence back into the suitcase and followed Jade out of the garage, taking one more glance into the room as he was confident he would return soon. They traversed through the labyrinthine corridors, avoiding as much contact as they could with the hideous Deadmen calling this facility home. They passed by the holes in the wall Aaron left behind with his fists, and Jade looked back to see his bloodied hands. "You can do a lot of damage with just your bare hands, y'know," she said. "Better be careful, kid."

Aaron didn't say a word. Just followed silently behind her.

Eventually, the two of them reunited with Harry and Kyle in an infirmary, quite possibly one of the only clean ones in the whole building. Kyle sat on the exam table as if he had arrived for an appointment. Harry leaned against a shelf with the fourth recorder in his hands. But as soon as he saw his little brother, he jerked up from his position and ran to him, almost excited enough to be considered alive.

"Listen, Aaron!" he said frantically. "I know I made a little mistake by forgetting everything about my past."

"Yeah," Aaron retorted. "A little mistake."

"You probably think I have no knowledge of you because I simply don't care. Well that's not true, mate. One thing I've started to notice is that we Commoner Deadmen, as slow as we may seem, have the ability to redevelop ourselves. The more I learned about myself and the world around me, the more I feel my mind has begun to evolve. Meeting you has made me feel alive again."

"What is this, a love story? Get to the point."

"I'm saying that this recording," Harry continued as he held out the fourth recorder, "has opened my eyes completely. I may have found a missing piece no other Commoner Deadman can find. I've found the meaning of my existence. And one thing I know meant everything to me was you, Aaron."

Harry's unexpectedly intelligent conclusions helped diminish some of Aaron's anger. Out of all the Deadmen Aaron had ever encountered, Harry had proven to be the most harmless. He was kind and forgiving, two traits hard to find even in humans nowadays. There was no way anyone could have anything against him.

"Show me the proof," Aaron said calmly. "I know I have no reason to stay mad at you, so please help prove that statement right."

Harry held out the recorder. Aaron took it from him and pressed the play button. Following the sounds of static were the voices of Artemis and Harry.

Good evening, Atlas, Artemis greeted, sounding more confident than in the last recording. Now that the Ambrosia Project is finishing up, we wanted to interview a few of the test subjects on what they plan to do once they've returned to the outside world. Since this is a private session, feel free to tell me your real name.

So I don't need to go by Atlas anymore? Cool! said the voice of a slightly more lively and still innocent Harry. He cleared his throat. Well, my name is Harold O'Connor, but you can call me Harry. I'm nineteen years old, my birthday is July 25th, and—

Artemis chuckled. Your excitement is absolutely adorable, Harry, but I'm afraid we can't let you go into too much detail. We have a schedule to fulfill.

My apologies.

No worries. But nice to meet you, Harry. My name is Abigail Maddox, but you know me as Artemis. Could you please tell me what you plan on doing once you return to your hometown?

Of course, m'lady. I'm not sure if you knew, but I had a little brother back in London. His name was Aaron. I'm not sure if he still remembers me, but I sure as hell remember him. I had to leave him behind in a children's home since our so-called "guardian" sent me off to a military camp. Then I ended up here.

Do you regret becoming part of the Ambrosia Project, Harry?

My only regret is not being able to write back to Aaron like Ares did for his daughter. Shit! Schaefer doesn't know about that, does he?

There was a pause. I'm afraid that information is private, Artemis replied.

Oh...well anyway, once I get back to London, I'm gonna personally track down my brother and get him back. Raise him like how our parents couldn't. Bless their souls, they died in a fire trying to protect the two of us. And I hope that wherever Aaron is right now, he's having the best time of his life. Tons of friends, a good education, caregivers who love him like a son, maybe even a girlfriend. Harry paused. Okay, maybe not a girlfriend yet. He's only ten years old, but still.

Artemis laughed again. You really love your brother, don't you? He must be a lucky boy to have a brother like you.

Actually, Miss Artemis, I'd say he has the worst brother in the world. I didn't write to him, I hardly talked to him back when we lived together, and he didn't even know my name. And instead of being there for him when our parents were gone, I just vanished. As far as he knows, I'm just a stranger.

You won't be anymore, Harry. I wish you the best of luck in finding Aaron. Treat him the way you've always wanted to treat him. If he needs a hero, you be that hero.

I'm not a hero, Miss Artemis. I'm just Harry O'Connor.

The recorder finished calmly with a click, not with that discomforting static like the other recordings. Aaron didn't even realize his cheeks were moist with tears.

"I would've come back, mate," Harry said softly. "Coming back was my one mission once this whole thing was over. But...I guess I wasn't strong enough to overcome the obstacles."

He placed his hand on Aaron's shoulder. Aaron's gaze met the floor as more tears began streaming down his cheeks. Once again, he had made another mistake. Both he and Harry were guilty of forgetting each other.

"Come here, mate," Harry said, and he pulled Aaron in for a hug. For a zombie, he had as much warmth and caring as any other family member. And once Aaron acknowledged that, he broke down. The floodgates had to open eventually.