Felix hurried over to the bench where Kip sat in front of the lake. "Kip! You took forever to reply to my text—"
"I don't think we should meet up anymore," Kip cut in, his voice entirely flat.
Felix froze, staring at him. "Are you serious? We're from Intermarium. I barely have any friends here—you're one of the only people I can talk to."
"Yeah... but I've been talking to Nova, and she brought up that you refused to sell her a loaf of bread at your grocery store back in Intermarium."
"But that was ages ago!" Felix threw his hands up, pleading. "I already explained it to her! I had no choice. My mom was watching the register—"
"Felix, we were starving." Kip's voice didn't rise, which only made it colder. "Do you actually not get it? Our father was dead. Our mother couldn't work. We were begging in the streets to stay alive, and you wouldn't even let her buy a loaf of bread with the coins she begged for."
"I tried to make it up to you!" Felix argued, desperate. "Remember the military? I gave you that extra piece of bread—"
"Yeah..." Kip looked away, his jaw tightening. "But it just makes me think. Maybe if we'd been able to afford groceries back then, we wouldn't have had to enlist in the first place. And maybe Fox would still be alive."
"I miss Fox too-"
"No, you don't," Kip said, his voice dropping to a harsh whisper. "Don't pretend you do. When it mattered, you prioritized Carter's well-being over Fox's. You're always spending your time with Carter anyway—and that goes to show me who you really wanted to survive that day."
"Kip, if I didn't care about Fox! I won't have carried him on my back-"
"Yeah, you carried him," Kip said, his eyes flashing with old anger. "But you pretty much abandoned him once we were down in that wine cellar. You left him to look after Carter."
"If I hadn't gone looking for Carter, we never would have gotten that bag of medicine!" Felix yelled back, his voice cracking. "That medicine helped ease Fox's suffering!"
"You didn't look hard enough for someone from our own division," Kip countered, his voice dripping like melting ice. "I recall there was an injured guy on our side who had a medicine bag right on him. Why didn't you try to get to him first?"
"Kip, are you serious? He was a two-hour walk away!" Felix fired back. "Fox and I spotted him before he took a bullet. I couldn't leave Fox bleeding out for four hours just to go on a trek for a medicine bag!"
"I don't remember him being that far," Kip said, his voice lowering into a venomous hiss. "Maybe if you were in actual shape—if you could actually run instead of dragging your feet all the time—it wouldn't have taken two hours."
"Kip, you need to let it go," Felix pleaded, his hands dropping to his sides in sheer exhaustion. "I did everything I could at the time to keep us alive. Every single thing."
"Really?" Kip sneered, taking a step forward. "By bringing us a guy who tried to kill us? A guy who lied straight to our faces about taking his sedative?"
"I confronted Carter about it!" Felix fired back. "He told me the truth—there wasn't enough in that bottle to kill us anyway. It wasn't a lethal dose!"
"How can you be so sure?" Kip crossed his arms over his grey sweater. "Felix, you spared his life. You have to believe him when he says he was harmless—otherwise, you'd have to admit what you did to us."
"He's a trained medic!" Felix shouted back, his voice cracking with desperation. "He saves people, Kip! I know he's a good person at heart!"
"I don't understand how you can stay friends with someone who literally drugged us," Kip said, his voice deadly quiet. "And then you have the nerve to claim he was trying to save us. Do you not think I miss my mom back home?"
"I miss my mom too," Felix said, looking down at his trembling hands. "But I don't know what happened to them after the flood. Carter told me... he said all the sectors on our side went black. There's nothing left to go back to."
"What?" Kip raised his voice, then stopped, a look of pure disgust dawning on his face. "How do you know he's not just saying that to make Intermarium look weak? Think about it, Felix. If you think our entire faction is wiped out, who else but him?"
"He saw the casualty logs," Felix said, a solitary tear slipped down his cheek. "I know he's not lying, Kip. He kept it to himself at first because he knew it would destroy us."
Kip shook his head. "I don't believe a word of it. He drugged us because he was too damn scared to face us standard-issue. Knocking us out cold was the only way he could control the situation. After all, he was at our mercy when you rescued him."
Felix said, "Kip, you did point your rifle at him-"
"Yeah, because he was the enemy!" Kip cried out, his voice echoing across the water. "You were too busy treating him like a guest to even notice Fox bleeding out in that cellar! You looked me in the eye and guaranteed he wasn't a threat—and I believed you! But he played us both, Felix. He lied straight to our faces and drugged us until we were out cold!"
"Carter wasn't trying to play us, Kip—"
"Save it," Kip muttered, shaking his head. "I'm done with this conversation. We've chosen different paths in this life, Felix. You follow yours. I'll follow mine. Goodbye."
Felix watched Kip walk away, stepping onto the sidewalk that led into the city. The only warmth he felt was the hot tears running down his cheeks.