\chapter{13}

Almost half of the day was spent in a state of shock between speechless horror,
bewildered disbelief,
and anger.
Ten days?
Apparently he laid there in a fever for \textit{ten days} without noticing it?
Other than that it was hard for him to believe it,
he just didn't \textit{want} to.
The consequences would have been too frightening.

Just like before,
Andrew was convinced that his father would try anything to find him.
Surely he had already started the largest manhunt the country had ever seen,
and he wouldn't rest until his people had overturned every stone,
searched every lake,
looked in every well,
and grilled every applicable previously arrested wannabe-criminal for any information.

But ten days was an unbelievably long time.
Of course Andrew had never been the subject of a manhunt,
but he wasn't the first person to disappear,
and he had followed other manhunts on the news:
Hundreds of policemen and thousands of volunteers that searched woods and marshes,
supported by airplanes,
helicopters,
and sometimes even fighter jets that would scan the ground below them with thermal cameras and all sorts of other technical equipment.
Regrettably, he also knew that the longer the undertaking took,
the less likely it was that they would be successful.
Missing people were mostly found quickly
--- or not at all.
Most of the missing people that weren't found within the first couple of hours or days would only be found after weeks or sometimes months;
Buried in the woods and found by people walking by or in a plastic bag that got caught in the dam of a sewage treatment plant.

It took some effort for Andrew to reign in his rampaging fantasy.
In the end he was still alive,
and with some luck it could stay that way.
But not here.
He just couldn't imagine that his father would give up before he hadn't found him
--- or held the definitive proof that he was dead in his hands.

Andrew didn't want it,
but the thought created a reality in his head that he would have loved to deny:
The men in the black outfits that had collected the wreckage of the Cessna and loaded it into the helicopters that had landed on the plaza.
Maybe they \textit{had} convinced his father of his death a long time ago,
and instead of a search party he was standing in front of an open grave with an empty coffin in it,
just like they did in some symbolic burials.
Maybe he was already dead and this was hell,
or at least the purgatory where he would spend the next six hundred thousand years or at least until Judgement Day.

Just that as far as he knew he had not done anything bad enough to deserve this.

The sound of naked feet on a hard stone floor tore him out of his sullen contemplations.
He looked up and noticed that Katt had come in and was slowly approaching him with an almost shy smile.
He returned it,
even though it was more out of relief that it wasn't her sister,
but not \textit{just} for that reason.
Ratt had come in two or three times and he was happy when she left every time.
He didn't have anything against the rat-girl;
It was quite the opposite.
Once you got used to the way she looked she was kinda cute in her own way.
But she was also a complete pain in the neck:
Her character had inherited a healthy amount of the non-human parts of her heritage.

``How are you doing?", asked Katt.

Andrew shrugged.
Katt wasn't just making conversation, he knew that much.
She was actually worried about him.
``How am I supposed to be doing?''

Katt slowly got closer and stood still two steps away from him.
Andrew could see how hard she was debating what to say.
Eventually she shrugged her shoulders and made an awkward hand movement behind her,
towards the exit.

``I have water duty'', she said hesitantly.
``Do you want to come with?''

What ever \textit{water duty} was.
Andrew shrugged,
letting the motion seamlessly transform into a nod and standing up.
He had sat here half a day and felt bad for himself;
maybe it would be good if he got some fresh air and let the bleak thoughts blow away with the wind.
``Why not?''

Katt looked at him questioning for another moment,
but then she nodded and went outside,
Andrew following close behind her.

The sun was shining down so brightly from the cloudless sky that he was forced to close his eyes and raised his hand over his face.
It was very warm, almost hot,
and there was not even the slightest breeze.
Andrew let a moment pass for his eyes to adjust to the change in light conditions,
then motioned to Katt with a nod that she should keep going.