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“Hey, Red?”
Felix looked up from his phone. “Yeah?”
Bel began to speak, but quickly clapped a hand over her mouth. “Oops! Sorry, I meant Felix. Haha!” She waved her hand, then went back to typing on her phone furiously. “Anyway, Tryce is at the Mall right now, he’s asking if we want anything for lunch. Pizza, maybe?”
Vinyl shrugged one shoulder.
“U-um…” Solace poked his head out from under the coffee table. “Pizza sounds really good… if that’s okay with you guys…”
They all turned to look at Felix, and he realised they were waiting on his answer.
“Sure,” he said, even though it didn’t really matter to him.
Bel smiled. “It’s settled, then!”
Felix took his feet off the table. He didn’t feel settled at all.
He was standing at the top of the tower in Millennium Square, boostpack snug against his back as he sprayed thick lines of yellow on the wall. It was kind of crazy—knowing what had happened to him, and having regained the memory of it to boot, he probably shouldn’t be this comfortable with heights.
Well. He wouldn’t really call himself ‘comfortable’ right now.
“Solace?”
The angel-winged youth, perched easily on the edge of the roof, turned his head to give him a too-wide grin. “What’s up, Felix?”
He hesitated. The thing was, Bel’s slip of the tongue hadn't started it. Then again, what was it? The feeling that these clothes that were his felt too loose, too scratchy, both too thin and too thick at the same time. The itch under his skin every time he looked in the mirror and saw what he knew was his face. The shock when he realised he’d fully been expecting to see something else.
Felix didn’t know how to put any of it into words. He wasn’t sure if he even wanted to.
He shook the can a little harder than usual, adding a few more blotches of yellow.
“I’ve been having… some weird thoughts lately,” he said.
Solace continued grinning up at him. “What kind of thoughts?”
“I don’t know if you’d wanna hear them. They don’t really make sense.”
“That’s fine! I don’t mind that. My thoughts are pretty weird too… to be honest…”
Felix sighed, staring at the half-done Quick Bing in front of him. He put his spray can down.
“It feels weird,” he said. “Being me…” He swallowed. “Being Felix again.” His throat hurt. “It doesn’t feel… wrong, not really. But it also doesn’t feel all the way right, you know?”
Solace wasn’t looking at him anymore. He was gazing down at the people milling about in the square, swinging his legs absently. Somehow, Felix was grateful for it. He didn’t think he could keep going with the kid’s eyes on him, eagerly drinking up every nonsensical word spilling from his mouth.
“Like, don’t get me wrong, I’m happy I’m not dead. I’m glad I got my head and my body back. I’m glad I can remember who I am.” Glad I still know my roots. “But I just...” He looked down at the spray cans by his feet. “It’s not all that I am now. Not anymore, anyway.”
The sky above them was cyan blue, puffy white clouds hanging scattered here and there. Felix thought the conversation was over, but then Solace got to his feet, shuffling furtively over to where he stood by the wall. The look on his face was uncharacteristically sombre.
“Y’know, Felix…” he said. “When… that guy killed you… it made me really sad, because I thought that my best friend in the city was gone forever. But you weren’t gone! You came back, and even though you had a new body and you looked different, you still ended up being you, right? And you still came to save me in the end.”
Solace looked down, scanning the spray cans, before scooping up the green one and holding it out with a smile.
“So, whether you’re still Felix or not, it doesn’t really matter,” he said. “I’m just happy that my friend is here with me, and that we’re still friends!” Suddenly, his brow wrinkled, and he looked at Felix a little desperately. “We are still friends… right?”
Felix couldn’t help the snort that burst from him. “D’you even need to ask?” He took the can. “Thanks, kid.”
“Sure thing!”
It wasn’t as simple as Solace made it sound, though. It had been an uphill battle to get him back to where he was now, to put it lightly. And not just on his part; Tryce, Bel, Vinyl, Cyber, all of them had fought tooth and nail to bring him back from the dead.
Was it really fair for him to spit in the face of all that? To say…
What?
What did he even want, to begin with?
Rietveld cursed, kicking at the chassis of the busted mech. “Can’t figure it out…”
Felix watched her grumble from where he was leaning against the entrance of the Versum Hill inner court. Even from here, it felt as though the red cyberheads in the trash heap were glaring at him. Or maybe they were… speaking to him?
It was a crazy thought. Felt as though crazy thoughts were all he had in his head these days.
Then again, some might have said that going All City was a crazy thought. And here he was, having gone All City twice.
Funny how that happens.
“I just don’t get it,” Rietveld said, now approaching him. “You guys already wasted Faux, so where is the corruption coming from now?”
“You’re probably better off asking someone else that,” Felix replied. There was probably a writer out there with some kind of expertise in that area, but whoever it was, it definitely wasn't him.
Rietveld shot him an apologetic look. “Sorry. It’s just… frustrating. Sometimes it feels like there won’t even be a good answer at the end of all this.”
All he could do was nod mutely. Rietveld nodded at him as she left, riding the skateboard Bel had lent her, and now it was just him. Alone.
Slowly, he walked toward the trash heap, the sensation overlapping with his memory and blurring together in a haze.
Felix bent down, picking up a red cyberhead at random from the pile of scrap. The vermilion plates were dull under layers of dirt and rust, the four square lenses dark and cloudy with smudges. The uneven, slightly jagged edges of the elongated crown and chin threatened to puncture his skin.
And yet, holding it in his hands… it felt familiar.
Not any different, huh…
He ended up bringing the head back to the Hideout. Tryce raised an eyebrow at him, clearly weirded out, but Bel was the one who let out a squeak of surprise, skating over excitedly to peer at his paltry prize.
“Ooh! Is that a cyberhead?” She immediately whipped out her phone, snapping a few pictures of it in quick succession. “It looks just like your head, Felix! Back when you had a cyberhead, anyway. Sort of.”
“Yeah,” Felix agreed. It was why he had taken it, if he was being honest with himself. Briefly, he considered going all the way back to Versum Hill and tossing it back where it came from. He hadn’t thought about how the crew might be about it, if they would be any way at all, but…
Maybe he was just overthinking it. Bel didn’t seem to be reading into it too much, after all, and Tryce didn’t look like he was about to comment, despite his initial reaction. Solace was looking at him from his favourite spot under the coffee table with a tiny smile that promised his silence.
And Vinyl—
Vinyl was sitting on the couch with her legs stretched out in front of her, arms crossed as she stared at him. Felix knew that silent look, and he knew that the thoughts were rushing through her mind a mile a minute. He felt his body tensing up as he watched her, waiting for her to do something, say something, make a move, anything.
But she didn’t. Just continued looking at him with her dark, searching eyes while Bel yapped about how they could probably clean the cyberhead up and find a nice place for it in the Hideout somewhere.
It was only a day or two later, when they met up in the food hall of Millennium Mall, that he got to hear her piece.
“So.” Vinyl gazed at him placidly over the top of her soda cup. “Wanna tell me what I’m doing here?”
Felix huffed out a breath. Best to get this over with. “Did you—”
“I didn’t tell the DJ, if that’s what you wanted to talk about.”
His shoulders dropped instantly at the reassurance. They were at a table near the parapet where they could look down into the lower levels with ease. Vinyl sipped her drink with her typical measured calm, eyes moving from Tryce riding his bike over a long billboard to Rise and Shine dancing with the Oldhead near the metal palm tree at the top.
“Only because,” she said, setting the paper cup on the table, “it’s not mine to tell.”
Felix frowned. “But he was your boss.”
“Was,” she echoed. “And he is your friend.”
He leaned back heavily in his chair, the words resounding with a hollow pang in his chest.
“He’s helped you out before,” Vinyl said. “‘Help’ being an understatement, obviously. Do you really think he would turn his back on you now?”
Felix shook his head. “It’s not like that. I just can’t help but feel like—” Rietveld’s outburst flashed across his mind’s eye. Frustrating. “Look, you guys brought me back, and I can’t ever repay you for that. But it’s like… right now, it feels like…”
Vinyl’s eyes were on him, searing through his skin and bone like lasers.
“Like, I’m Felix, y’know? The Felix of the Big 3 and all that. And it feels like if I… don’t want to be, I’m being, like, ungrateful or irresponsible or something. Like I’m taking something away from everyone.” He pursed his lips, stretching out a hand to flick Vinyl’s straw wrapper off the table. “Feels kinda selfish. I dunno.”
Vinyl didn't say anything for a moment, instead opting to finish her drink in silence. The sound of skates sliding against metal rails drifted up to them from below.
“Listen, Felix,” she said, leaning her arms on the table. “You died. You were killed. And against all the odds, you found your way back.” Her eyes softened a bit as she looked at him. “If you ask me, you probably deserve to be a bit selfish.”
Felix felt his eyes widen in surprise. Vinyl shrugged, and stood up from her seat, picking her empty cup off the table.
“And even if you don't,” she continued, “you've always done whatever you wanted anyway, so why stop now?” She grinned. “‘Graffiti would be hella boring if it was legal’ and all that, right?”
She patted Felix on the shoulder as she walked past.
“Just talk to the DJ. I think he could help you out for real. And,” she glanced back at him, “I think he would really appreciate it.”
Felix heard her cup clatter into the bin behind him as she left.
Being around Cyber wasn’t awkward for him. After all, they had climbed the ranks of New Amsterdam’s writers together one tag at a time, had stood both alongside and against each other countless times. Knowing him so personally meant that Felix, despite all the love and respect he held for the man, never felt the same kind of intimidation or awe that most writers did around the DJ.
Even so, this interaction was absolutely skewing towards more uneasy territory than most.
They were at the bottom floor of Pyramid Island, the music blasting from the Oldhead’s speaker walls faint from where they sat at one of the random patio tables on the landing. Cyber’s mask lay face-up on the table between them. His eyes were on the tag that Felix had thrown up back when they were still beefing with Devil Theory. A Messenger Mural.
“I think,” he began, “I may know what your issue is.”
“‘Issue’ is putting it lightly, dude,” said Felix. He knew the humour was out of place, but he didn’t know how else to cope with the sudden flash of fear he’d felt when he didn’t know what his friend was going to say.
Cyber frowned at him. “Is it? It’s not as unfathomable when you approach the facts one at a time. You have had your head severed from your body, fitted into a cyberhead and reattached to a different body for a considerable period, then severed again and reattached to the original body. You have effectively lived a second life, however brief, and yet,” his eyes roved over Felix’s form, slouched stiffly in the uncomfortable plastic chair, “your current appearance reflects none of that exceptional and harrowing experience.” He nodded, as if confirming the theory to himself. “I can only imagine how a less stubborn head might be coping with such a thing, or indeed, if they would be able to at all.”
“I’m taking that as a compliment.”
“By all means.” Cyber tilted his head, a troubled look taking over his face. “But now that we have identified your problem, the only question that remains is how to resolve it.”
Felix looked up at the Messenger Mural. “I… may have an idea about that,” he admitted. When he’d first approached Cyber, he had, as expected, invited him to take a joyride through his mind in his buggy. It had been… interesting, to say the least. The dreamscape he’d traversed, much like the others, had been built out of random bits and pieces of New Amsterdam’s environment, painted strange colours by the swirling, neon-marbled sky.
But the face he’d seen when he reached the end of his journey, or rather the head, had confirmed what he’d suspected all along.
Cyber said nothing, and for a while they gazed silently at the fiery, bright graffiti, popping against the dark olive green of the wall.
“Is it really…” Felix swallowed his words, searching for the right thing to say. “Are you really cool with all of this?”
Cyber didn’t look at him. “Well, you’re not planning on getting decapitated again, are you?”
“Hell no,” Felix said immediately. “I just meant… you know what I meant.”
At that, Cyber smiled, small and short. “Guess I do,” he replied. The smile slipped away, and he exhaled slowly, closing his eyes.
“It doesn’t matter if I’m cool with it,” he said. “But if it makes you feel any better, I am.” He glanced down at the mask that sat on the table between them. “You’re not the only one who’s changed.”
Felix took it in, the smooth white curves, the six glowing eyes bleeding into one another, the sharp point at the bottom. The mask had been Felix’s back in the day, sure, but after that whole business with Faux, Cyber had never offered it back, and Felix had never asked. It was Cyber’s now; it just was. And as much as the man had sworn never to kill again, the fact was that he had. Faux’s headless body, attached to Felix’s bodiless head, had been walking proof of that.
This wasn’t the same Cyber that he’d painted the city skyline with. That wasn’t the Faux whom he’d trusted enough to hold his ladder. And he wasn’t the same Felix that had fallen from that rooftop that night.
It wasn’t all as bad as it sounded, he supposed.
Tryce folded his arms, brow creased. “So… what do we call you now?”
He thought about it. “Felix is fine. But honestly… Red is fine too.” He thought about it a little more. “Actually, I think I’d kind of like it.”
“Really?” Felix had no idea how Bel was managing to type on her phone while staring at him so intensely.
“Yeah.”
“Cool!” She looked down at her phone again, and Felix knew almost nothing could make her look up from it again.
Tryce sighed, walking over to him. “Well, whatever floats your boat, man,” he said. “Just glad you’re doing alright, yeah?”
He raised a hand, rapping playfully against Felix’s cyberhead. His knuckles made a hollow clanking sound against the metal.
“Hey,” Felix said, the laugh in his voice echoing as he swatted Tryce’s hand away. “That tickles.”
It had taken a few weeks, and honestly, Felix felt kind of dumb when he thought of how simple the solution had been. All it had taken was a visit to the Flesh Prince and some extra help from the few DOT EXE members they could find around the city, and a few weeks later, they had come up with this. It was much like the cyberhead he’d unknowingly worn, except this time, he was completely aware of it.
And he could take it off without decapitating himself, too. That was a nice bonus.
“So, about lunch,” Vinyl called from her spot on the sofa. “What’s it gonna be, Red?”
The sun was beating down on him, and he knew if he put a hand on the surface of his head, it would be burning hot to the touch. He looked around at his friends, his crew, and wondered if they could see him smiling.
“I could do with some pizza,” he said. “On me?”
The cheers that went up all around him felt just like a home.