Yes - find Chris

Chris was leaning against the glassy wall, facing the pool outside in his white Versace boxers.

“Chris?” I called him. I felt it was time to pick him up on what he knew about us in the VR.

“What the hell, Michael?! I thought you were going to sleep.” He nearly jumped to the ceiling. After recovering, he faced me.

The dim lights of the outside outlined the happy trail and the V line out of his abs. My brother was a hot motherfucker, no questions asked. And something had changed inside him since we escaped the game, I could tell.

“Want to enlighten me about those memories?” I went to the double door fridge to get a glass of water.

“I don’t want to talk about it now.”

I placed the glass on top of the stone counter, poured and took a sip, looking at his face.

“It was just a made up thing I tried to make you see for you to wake up.” He said.

“Our parents aren’t dead.” I confronted him. “At least not our father, for sure.”

“Michael, let it go. It worked. We’re alive and well.” He crossed his arms and turned his back at me again.

“Chris, look at me.” I requested him and he reluctantly turned back. He sported a major boner this time and didn’t want to rearrange it.

“When Carl showed up to my room, he said you had something important to talk about with me. I didn’t know what then. When we got to the lab, I was shocked to see your body on wires. I didn’t have time to react or take you out of there, because Jeff injected me with something that made me really dizzy. I fell on the floor, seeing everything, but unable to move or speak. So he put the ring on my finger.” He paused. “I saw everything, Michael. When it stopped shining and I regained consciousness, he threatened me about the things I felt. About you. He made me reinforce the spell and hooked me in too. So that’s why I thought you knew. I thought he did the same to you.”

He gulped and looked at the floor. The sadness on his face was unrecognizable. I don’t recall ever seeing him like that before. He dropped a tear on his left eye, but quickly cleaned it up.

“What is it that you know and I don’t?” I left my glass on the counter and took a few steps in his direction. All I wanted to do was hug him, tell him he would be fine, but he stopped me with his fist closed on my naked stomach.

“Please, don’t!” He closed his eyes, yet dropping another tear. “I thought you knew it inside there. For a moment, when I showed you all that, I thought you already knew everything.”

I gently pushed his fist aside and got closer to him, brushing the side of his wet cheek. Anything he could’ve seen in there was something really horrible for him to be like that. It made me want to know what was inside mine too.

“Please, don’t touch me.” He asked and I abruptly backed away in internal pain my own brother was rejecting me. He opened his hand and showed me my green stone ring next to his. His one was pink, but it wasn’t anymore. It was dull like it had leaked all the fluid from inside it.

I extended my hand, palm up. “I want to see it too. Whatever the hell it is.”

For a glimpse of a second he started moving his hand to mine, to give me my kryptonite, to make me feel the taste he felt before. In a second, I would know what he felt and sympathize with him, knowing what he was going through alone. I trusted that my brother would only give it to me if he felt I needed to know that secret too.

“I can’t.” He stepped back into a portal and closed it before I could even think to get in too.