The Egg Shell

 

The hum of the university felt different now—less like a cage and more like a cocoon they were finally outgrowing. Javier sat on the brick planter outside, the evening air cool against his face. He pulled out his phone. He didn’t call a peer; he called the only man who had ever made him feel solid.

Tio Pedro was a man of fragments, a person you had to decode by the weight of his pauses rather than the volume of his words. There was no performative show in him, only a quiet, steady warmth that sat beneath his simple words like the steady heat of a pilot light.

"Tio Pedro?"

"Javier? Everything alright? Your mom said you were knee-deep in finals." The voice was a low rumble, punctuated by the rhythmic clanking of a metal hull in the background.

"Everything's fine, Tio. Better than fine. I just... I had this class today. A janitor named Gus came in. He talked about the work. About the things that happen when no one is looking." Javier’s voice caught a genuine emotion. "I realized I’ve been looking at the world like a textbook, Tio. I haven't been seeing the people who actually keep it upright. I haven't been seeing you."

There was a long silence on the other end, just the sound of the wind whipping across a distant pier.

"That's a hell of a thing to say, kid," Pedro finally said. His voice was soft, devoid of the usual grit. "We all get caught up in the stories we tell ourselves. I'm just glad you’re finding your own way. Gus is a man who's seen the tide come in more than once."

"He's a good man," Javier said, looking over at Gus, who was currently leaning against his broom by the dunes, staring out at the surf with a solemn half-smile. "He’s out there now, Tio. Protecting something real. Something that matters."

"I’m proud of you, Javier," Pedro whispered. "You got spirit. Don't let the professors talk you out of it. Carry on, kid. I gotta get to my watch."

"Thanks, Tio. Talk soon."

Javier hung up, a tear hitting the screen. He felt lighter. He felt like the loop had finally snapped.

Hundreds of miles away, the "Great Machine" of the offshore rig stood like a rusted god in the black water.

Pedro tucked his phone into his heavy canvas jacket and spat into the foam below. He turned back to the blue hiss of a butane stove. The "Spirit" Javier talked about felt like a ghost he used to recognize in his own reflection before the salt and the shifts had scoured it away.

"Spirit," Pedro muttered to himself, a dry, weary chuckle escaping his throat. "Kid’s got plenty of it. But spirit’s just a fire you start when you want to stay warm."

He looked at Gus’s shadow in his mind—the man he’d known for years, the man who had chosen to stay in the "shade" of the university, sweeping floors and playing the martyr for the children of the elite. Pedro didn’t hate Gus; he just knew Gus was still painting his own shell, even if he used "silence" as an invisible paint.

The system had broken them both. Gus had retreated into the holiness of the "Work," and Pedro had retreated into the necessity of the "Raw."

"Maybe the kid will finally break it," Pedro murmured, his eyes tracking the flames not for their beauty, but for their utility. The blue light flickered in his pupils.

He reached into a bucket at his feet. Inside, nestled in a bed of sand, were the small, leathery spheres. To the professors, they were a specimen; to Gus, they were a legacy; to Javier, they were enlightenment.

To the "Great Machine" and Pedro's body, they were fuel.

Pedro didn't think about the sovereign ocean. He didn't think about the King’s Eye or the "Bright Defiance." He didn't think about the history written in the growth rings of a mother who had dragged herself through currents just to leave something behind. He just felt the hunger in his stomach—the same hunger that had driven the Fox and the Institution.

"But for me," Pedro sighed, a faint, melancholic smirk touching his lips, "it’s breakfast time."

Pedro looked at the empty shell in his hand, then out toward the horizon where the university sat unseen. He wasn't just hungry; he was empty. He had given Javier the "Spirit" because he had none left to keep. He was eating the future because he didn't know how to build one, and he was betting everything on the hope that the kid would eventually break the cycle.