10.11

Ten hadn’t left the house for a few days. He had to read books and watch movies to learn the common sense of this world. Even if he didn’t want to, Darius would test his knowledge and had said he was only allowed to leave the house after he had learned it all.

Naturally, Ten could simply run away, but Darius always gave him delicious food so he put up with it, no matter how boring it was. Besides, after the two slept together in the first night, Ten noticed that he wasn’t able to sleep without Darius. Since it was like this he could simply stay here, eat delicious food and be spoiled as the child of the house, even if he was nearly twenty years old.

But all good thing had to have an ending.

The first time Darius allowed Ten to leave the house was to get him a new hair cut. Of course, you could call a robot barber for something like this but Darius took it as an opportunity to show Ten around for a bit.

Ten starred out of the window as the hover car drove through the city. Though he had all this seen at the drive from the institute to Darius’ house it still felt fresh to him since it was completely different from everything he knew about. The whole city was clad in a silver color, buildings reaching into the clouds and hover cars everywhere. Ten was surprised that there wasn’t any accidents or traffic jams. But since the cars drove by themselves you naturally didn’t have to worry about that kind of stuff. There were no pedestrians besides those who waited for their hover car to pick them up. It wasn’t anything strange since a taxi costed nearly nothing, you didn’t have to pay a driver. Those future people were so strange, didn’t they know that going on a walk was healthy?

Ten stroked his hair, it was now shorter than before and he liked very much how it fell over his eyes. His thoughts were only broken as Darius’ light brain chimed.

Darius’ brows wrinkled, he had told his second in command that he didn’t want to be disturbed today since he would be out with Ten. After reading the message his brows only furrowed stronger.

“I need to go somewhere before we can go home. Can you stay alone in the car?”

Ten nodded, since they informed him on his day off it had naturally to be something important.

Darius let the hover car change directions and drove north.

The car came to a halt at a square in front of a round building. Many people came out of the building, some of them soldiers.

“Wait here for a moment.”

Darius got out of the car and walked over to one of the soldiers who saluted to him.

Ten, who was bored alone in the car, observed the people outside the car since he had nothing to do.

It seemed like the people here were scared, something bad must have happened.

“What happened here?”

Darius asked the soldier.

“It was a terrorist attack, marshal. After the beginning of the concert a few individuals barricaded the doors and the people inside were held as hostages. We were lucky that a major and a general were inside with their families or else we would have a serious situation here. Everything is under control, don’t worry marshal.”

“If everything is under control, why was I called?”

The young soldier froze and stared at the marshal for a moment.

“Marshal, I thought you were here because you heard the news and were worried. Nobody called you.”

As soon as the soldier had spoken the car door behind the marshal opened and Ten jumped out.

Ten, who had observed the whole place from the car, saw a strange glint from the roof of the concert hall. Without much of a thought Ten jumped out of the car and in front of Darius, as long as he was here nobody would be able to harm his feeder.

Darius froze as the soft Body of Ten covered his own. The world turned slow for a moment until Ten suddenly stumbled back, blood flooding out of a deep wound.

Darius hurried to catch him so that he wouldn’t fall onto the cold floor.