Since Judas.

Since the beginning, Elio had been the perfect son. He had been born in the town, he wasn't able to see things on the outside progress. He was told what he was told and he listened. He didn't leave the border, he got good grades, he didn't drink or smoke or cause trouble. His mother told him the Sugar Rush Virus had started in the sugar- that's why nothing was sweet the way it used to be, not that he would know.

He was glad he hadn't seen a live one- an infected- never in person. Projectors in school showed them clear as day, but it wasn't the real thing. It could capture the way their jaw would rot off their body, only threads of gum and a few lucky teeth remaining, or the way their knees bent the wrong way, but they were always safe in the walls of the town. Comfortable.

Elio would think it common sense not to want to see one in person. Some kids his age weren't as smart. The lucky ones got back, telling the stories to some younger kids who would be dumb enough to follow in their footsteps when they were teens. The unlucky ones went missing or got shot.

If you lived in Primesvine, you'd be told infected got shot on sight. They didn't disclose much more. It was when Elio's classmates dropped like flies he began to understand. They wouldn't care if you were a resident. If you were bit, your own father would shoot you right then and there. Everyone had guns. Nobody was stupid enough to kill someone healthy, though.

That was another story his mother told him. Once in Primesvine there was a feeding. Some man decided to shoot his wife in a fight, a lovely, thin woman with pretty red hair all curled like the 60s called Mrs. Flynn, in front of their boy no less. Mr. Flynn, they decided, was to be made an example off. They rounded up all of the infected with a Sugar Rush. That's what a feeding was. He was fed to them publicly, and well, seeing an infected rip someone's eye straight out would be enough to scare you stiff, hm?

If that's what they did when you shot someone not for shooting, it made him sick to think what they did for not shooting someone for shooting.

'Not someone,' he reminded himself. Infected weren't people once they were infected. They were dangers. One of the two kinds out of the wall. The other was other people. Wanderers. Travelers. They played by their own rules, that's what made them dangerous. They didn't have threat of a feeding to keep them in check. As inhumane as it was.

Elio was the perfect son until he saw an infected get shot. That's what they said, anyway. He was walking by the gate heading to school- he went to the one near the border- the good one, with the matching chairs and an actual library- it was hard to find books these days, after all. It was the day some man got a bit too close and it shook him. The infected looked like Elio, dark skin, a wide nose but sunken, soulless eyes that he could've sworn looked at his own before the bullet reduced his head to chunks.

He kept walking, but he couldn't stop thinking. The man near the border. He way some of his head smacked against the wall. He ducked into the alleyway and purged his breakfast. It left him shaking but when he got to first period he didn't say a word. He kept his head down. He stayed quiet, but he kept listening.

This time, not to what he was told, but to what he heard in the very back corner. The only student in his math class to see an infected and make it out, Athena Quex. She was a bragger and incredibly cocky, but anyone who saw her had to admit she was cool. She rocked another retro cut, 80s bangs and hair up to her shoulders that shimmered gold.

"Of course I left the border? An infected wouldn't last five minutes inside of it. There electric fence around Fuga Avenue is particularly weak. If you're fit enough to jump the wall past that you're good as gold. I wouldn't recommend it for a pussy like you though, Bastien." She bragged to the boy across from her.

He wouldn't act on it, though. Of course not. He'd just test it. Fuga Avenue was only a minor detour, though. He had no intention to actually leave the border.

He just found it funny that the "electric" fence felt like nothing, and the wall wasn't hard to jump at all.

"Holy shit, I'm outside the wall,"

He blurted, realising the exact gravity of his situation. He had mindlessly jumped the border and was now in the exact place nobody had expected him to be. Elio Johnson, outside of the damn wall. He thinks his mother would faint at the mere idea. He admires the air, the trees and the infected charging at him. Wait- the infected charging at him?

His breathing became erratic as he froze up, his limbs feeling impossibly heavy at the notion that he was going to die a slow, painful death purely over a good-intentioned accident. He spends his moments trying to rationalise it, saying he was simply testing it to report immediately. That it wasn't his fault. That maybe if-

BANG.

One shot directly through the eye of the infected, their face falling to Elio's feet. He squealed realising there was now blood on his boots and jumped to the side.

"You're welcome,"

The man holding the gun, inspected Elio. He was a pale man who looked like he hadn't got enough sleep, his hair was a dead straight black mop upon his head that he had somehow tamed wonderfully and it complimented his deep brown eyes magnificently. He had to be around Elio's age. Elio didn't respond, but made a dash to the wall, climbing over and skipping the electric fence, ducking into the very same alleyway he had thrown up in earlier and running his boots under a tap in the secluded space. 'Stupid Elio, stupid idea, going over the fucking wall?' he thought to himself bitterly, 'trying to make your mother catch an early death?'.

He walked back home with his boots soaking.

But the next day he didn't go to math class. He remembered the stranger who had shot the infected. The second he had seen that day. But this person was supposed to be dangerous. Maybe that's the real reason he went back.

This time he was sure to check for infected, but he was distracted by the smell of smoke. Eyes narrowed as he noticed the source and his heart, just for a second, stopped as he saw the same stranger.

"You're going to get yourself shot," The words poured out of Elio's mouth, as if they couldn't fit in his brain anymore.

He blew a cloud of foul-smelling smoke in Elio's face and let out a charming grin that made Elio... angry? He couldn't tell yet just how he felt.

"Thank you, by the way for the uh.-"

"You can go back inside now," A chuckle echoed through the trees so tall the sunlight barely peaked through. The woods were empty today. other than the two. Elio didn't go inside.

Not the next day, either.

Or the next.

Or the day after that.

The raven-haired teen didn't speak much, though. It was endearing, helping him with things, learning how the outside had grown to survive, all with very few words. Elio had learn his name was Judas, and every time he let slip his name, it made his cheeks red, the care he said it with. Judas. Judas. It took him a week to earn that.

At nights he had to separate from Judas, and after a month it grew his least favourite time of day. His mother and father sat in the living room, prodding him for details of his school hours. When he was perfect, it didn't feel like prodding. Now it just felt draining.

Inside the border, Elio slowly began to leave his life behind.

Outside the border, Judas began wanting Elio back.

Judas felt a twinge of guilt tug on his heartstrings. He could tell Elio was a good kid, made for school and sport and other perfect, golden child activity. Elio, in his opinion, was not made for him, and yet he was insistent on coming back. And regretfully, he wanted him to. Judas reveled in seeing Elio jump over the border around the same time each day, there just for him. Just their moments. He hadn't had moments like that for years.

Since he turned seventeen and migrated Elio's way, he had been truly alone. His pin jacket inherited from his brother was what he gave to Elio, and it made him a little sick, knowing he cared enough to bestow such a gift when Elio had no idea how much it meant to him.

He was worried the gifts, the teaching, it was all too alluring for Elio.

He couldn't stop. But he wouldn't stop for Elio, either. He had a plan to migrate for months before he got to the border. He had to see it through, to find his sister, to see his friends. He shouldn't stop for Elio. He wouldn't. So he prepared to break his heart.

"I'm going south,"

He said it plainly while he dug a stick into the mud, like it was a fact of life. He shot a nearby creeping infected, shoving Elio's left ear against his chest and cradling his right to stifle the sound. He let go when the infected dropped and glided his pinkie over Elio's as a gentle 'sorry'. He knew Elio hated seeing infected die. He was a bit shaken before he responded.

"So you're not gonna stay?"

"No,"

Elio hummed for a second in thought.

"When do we pack?"

"What? No, Elio I-"

"I want to go with you,"

Elio's hand took Judas' silently and it made his heart break a little more than he thought it would as he realised just how hard it was to ditch Elio when he had lost interest in the mundane life he was handed. Judas, just for a second, felt a little displeased.

"You shouldn't,"

"I don't care."

Hands pressed together, Elio's curls resting on the black shirt Judas had worn. Judas looked down at Elio in concern. He was not at their usual spot the following day.

That was when the missing posters started flooding in. There had to be thousands, each with a smiling Elio sporting the brown jacket Judas had given him. Should anyone be passing through the area, they might step on the white and printed paper, the wind carrying his face all throughout the area- one print making it to the north camp.

His mother wept, his father stone faced. They didn't go outside- every pole, blank wall and shop window carried Elio's image. Where had the golden boy gone? It was Elio Johnson.

They said the last place he'd be is over the border.