The Bullied Man's Hidden Legacy

Six years

When he got up again, there was a hazy, pale light, and Zachary braced himself, and it was like he'd been run over by a car, and after the shock had passed through him, and the soreness danced in every bone, and stabbed a little bit at his joints, and his arm collapsed, and he fell back down again.

"It was him." Keenan phrased, "Six months after you evaporated, he was arrested for illegal proselytizing, and when I was sorting through my materials, I found a notebook I'd borrowed from him, with a piece of paper sandwiched between it with a messy yardage drawn on it, which I thought at first was draft paper, but realized it wasn't any formulas or mind maps, and when I looked at it closely there was some regularity to it, very much like some kind of writing, and which I've since turned over to the police up."

He was all but as brooding as he had been when he arrived, but that oily, don't-touch-anyone-against-me asshole look was a turn-off.

Then the stomach growled.