Chapter 13: Confessions and Lies
POV: Adam
Two hours of Tommy's silent staring felt like eternity measured in heartbeats. Detection read his emotional state—determination mixed with confusion, military patience warring with growing suspicion. The younger Miller brother processed impossible healing like tactical intelligence, weighing explanations against observed reality.
Finally: "Start talking."
Adam had prepared this moment mentally for months, constructing layers of deception that used truth as skeleton for necessary lies. Time to sell the biggest fabrication yet while praying Tommy's distrust of authority would make the story believable.
"Deep breath. Control the narrative. Each lie built on truth's foundation. Make him want to believe me."
"Black ops program," Adam began, voice carrying exhaustion that didn't need to be faked. "Volunteer test subject for experimental therapies. Military trying to create enhanced soldiers for post-outbreak combat."
Tommy's eyes narrowed, processing details with intelligence that made deception dangerous. "What kind of enhancements?"
"Breathing techniques from classified martial research. Based on ancient fighting styles, modified with modern understanding of human physiology." Close enough to Stone Breathing to explain observed abilities. "Enhanced cellular manipulation technology for battlefield medicine." Near enough to Ope Ope functions to cover miraculous healing.
"Memory damage?"
"Side effect from the procedures. Fragmented recall, gaps in personal history." The amnesia angle explained why he couldn't provide details about background that didn't exist. "Face similarity to your family is pure coincidence. World's full of genetic echoes."
Each lie carried weight of partial truth, making the overall fabrication feel solid under scrutiny. Tommy's military background would understand classified programs. His experience with FEDRA would accept government experimentation on soldiers. The pieces fit together too neatly to feel completely false.
"Why hide it?" Tommy asked quietly.
"Because FEDRA wants me back in a lab."
That phrase landed with perfect resonance. Tommy's jaw clenched with recognition—he'd seen what military authority did to people who became inconvenient assets. The distrust of institutional power that had driven him to seek Fireflies made Adam's cover story click into place.
"He wants to believe. Needs to believe there's explanation that doesn't shatter his understanding of reality."
"They turn you into weapon?" Tommy pressed.
"They tried. I volunteered to save lives. They wanted me to take them." Adam let genuine emotion bleed through—the weight of choosing who lived and died, the burden of abilities that attracted the wrong attention. "Escaped during outbreak chaos. Been hiding ever since."
Tommy studied him for long moment that felt like judgment, then nodded slowly. "Makes sense. Government fucks up everything it touches, including the people trying to help."
The acceptance carried relief that Detection read as genuine. Tommy Miller believed the elaborate fabrication because it confirmed his existing worldview—authority corrupted everything, including attempts to help humanity. Adam represented proof that good intentions got twisted into weapons.
"Not entirely wrong, actually. Just wrong about the specifics."
POV: Tommy
The story made ugly sense. Tommy had seen enough military programs to know desperate times produced desperate experiments. Enhanced soldiers, chemical enhancements, psychological conditioning—all justified as necessary for national security.
But questions remained.
"Sarah lived," Tommy said quietly, sharing guilt that had eaten at him for eight months. "But she broke. PTSD so severe she rarely speaks. Wakes up screaming every night. Joel built fortress of protection around her, shut everyone else out."
Adam's face went pale beneath the hood he still maintained. Genuine pain crossed his features.
"Brothers divided by how to process survival," Tommy continued. "I wanted to fight for better world, make something good from all this horror. Joel wanted isolation for safety. Said fighting just brought more danger to what mattered most."
"And what matters most to Joel?"
"Sarah. Only Sarah. Everything else can burn as long as she's safe."
Adam's hands clenched with emotion that seemed disproportionate for someone hearing about strangers. Another piece of evidence that connections ran deeper than casual encounter during outbreak chaos.
"Haven't seen him in eight months," Tommy admitted, voice carrying weight of family fractures. "Don't know if he'd want to see me. Maybe thinks I abandoned them when they needed help."
"Family's complicated," Adam said carefully. "Especially when trauma changes how people process affection."
"He's speaking from experience. Personal knowledge, not theoretical understanding. What connections does this man have that he won't admit?"
But pushing too hard would drive Adam back into secretive shell. Better to let trust build naturally, demonstrate that acceptance didn't require complete honesty.
"Joel built isolation bubble," Tommy said. "I sought meaning through action. Both coping mechanisms for same loss. Neither right or wrong, just different."
"Different doesn't mean incompatible," Adam replied. "Maybe someday you find middle ground."
The hope in his voice suggested personal investment in Miller family reconciliation that went beyond casual sympathy.
POV: Adam
Tommy extended his hand across the small table where they'd been sharing smuggled whiskey and painful truths. "You're fucked up by the same people who fucked this world. That makes you alright in my book."
Adam took the offered handshake, feeling weight of fraud that threatened to crush his chest. But Tommy's acceptance was genuine—saw Adam as victim of government experimentation rather than impossible transmigrant from another reality. The partial truth had become foundation for real friendship.
"Not entirely wrong, though. I am victim of forces beyond my control. Just not government experiments. More like cosmic accidents that put me where I don't belong."
They drank in companionable silence while Tommy explained Firefly ideology—fighting for humanity's future rather than accepting FEDRA's authoritarian control. Hope versus resignation. Active resistance versus passive survival.
"Your breathing techniques," Tommy said eventually. "Can they be taught?"
"Basic versions." Adam shared carefully edited instructions for Total Concentration Breathing, explaining enhanced oxygen flow and improved physical performance while concealing supernatural aspects that belonged to Stone Breathing's true nature. "Takes discipline to master."
"Show me."
They spent an hour with Tommy practicing controlled respiration patterns that enhanced strength and endurance within normal human parameters. Nothing that would attract attention or raise questions about impossible abilities, but enough to give Tommy tools for survival.
Watching him struggle with techniques that came instinctively, Adam felt pride mixed with guilt. Tommy deserved better than partial truths and calculated deceptions. But full honesty would destroy the friendship they were building on foundations of shared purpose.
"You're good teacher," Tommy said as they concluded the impromptu lesson.
"You're good student."
From the shadows near the exit, Tess watched with expression that Detection read as concern mixed with calculation. She understood Adam was building layers of connection while maintaining essential secrets. The emotional complexity worried her—too many relationships meant too many potential vulnerabilities.
POV: Adam
Tommy left calling him "brother," meaning comrade but hitting dangerously close to impossible truth about faces that carried Joel Miller's genetic markers. The casual intimacy of the word sent electricity through Adam's enhanced senses.
"Brother. If only he knew how literally accurate that accidental designation is."
Alone finally, Adam's Detection ranged toward where Joel supposedly lived—several sectors away in QZ's heavily secured residential district. The signature read as isolated, guarded, wrapped in protective paranoia that kept the outside world at careful distance.
Should he check on them? Sarah's alive because of his intervention, but traumatized by experiences she should never have survived. Joel isolated instead of smuggling with Tess, building emotional fortresses instead of forming useful alliances. Butterfly effects rippled everywhere, changing fundamental relationships that the timeline had established.
Did he save Sarah or doom her to worse fate than clean death on Outbreak Day? Was protective isolation better than canonical death? Questions without answers, consequences without clear moral value.
"I changed everything by trying to help. But change doesn't equal improvement. Sometimes survival is worse than the alternative."
Detection tracked Tommy's heartbeat growing distant as he returned to Firefly operations, carrying new breathing techniques and partial understanding of enhanced abilities. Another seed planted in soil that might grow into something beneficial or dangerous.
The cover story about military experiments would protect Adam's transmigration secrets while explaining observed capabilities. But lies required maintenance, elaboration, constant vigilance to prevent contradictions from exposing truth.
"How many stories can I keep straight? How many relationships can I build on foundations of deception?"
Through the clinic walls, sounds of Boston QZ continued—FEDRA patrols maintaining order through force, civilians struggling with daily survival, Fireflies planning resistance operations that would reshape power balances. All of it interconnected, all of it affected by choices Adam made while pretending to be someone he'd never been.
The weight of impossible identity felt heavier with each person who trusted the carefully constructed facade. Tommy Miller believed in enhanced soldier seeking redemption. Tess believed in mysterious partner hiding trauma. Marlene believed in useful asset with convenient abilities.
None of them believed in transmigrated surgeon carrying knowledge of fictional futures that had become painfully real. That truth remained locked away like radiation that would poison everything it touched.
But friendship with Tommy felt genuine despite fraudulent foundations. Brotherhood built on lies, but brotherhood nonetheless.
"Maybe that's enough. Maybe caring for each other matters more than complete honesty about impossible circumstances."
The thought provided cold comfort as Detection painted the city around him in tactical detail—thousands of heartbeats representing lives that hung in balance between survival and extinction, all affected by presence of someone who shouldn't exist.
Adam Collins, the greatest lie he'd ever told, closed his eyes and tried to pretend the friendship was worth the deception.
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