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Noah squeezed Al's hand back, searching for words. He knew Al was worried, but there was a cold bubble of dread growing in his stomach. He'd decided to tell Al, but how could he? How could he tell the guy he loved what he'd done during those nightmarish days he'd been gone? How did he even start to bring it up? Al knew he had nightmares, but not what they were about.

He'd been quiet too long. He said, forcing the words out of his mouth, "I'm sorry I got all, all weird. Laz reminded me I was having meat." He swallowed, aware that the statement sounded like a non sequitur. But it was a place to start.

Instead of going towards the cafeteria to get dessert, he turned toward the outskirts of the camp. He didn't want an audience for what he was going to have to explain.

Noah shook his head, flushing slightly. "No, I'm, I'm still, that's all okay. I mean, I was sort of embarrassed about talking about it in front of someone, but. That's okay. I just, it was the meat thing, because. B-because." He ground to a halt verbally, though he kept walking, and ducked his head a little, trying to find a good place to start. "When I, when I had the mission and I was in the infirmary for a while, you remember that, right?"

Noah breathed deeply and glanced up to meet Al's eyes for a moment before his gaze slid away again. "Did - did you notice there was a guard posted on the room?" he asked.

"There was." Noah stuck his free hand into the pocket of his hoodie. "I. I had a trial after I was okay to be out of bed," he confessed. "There's this thing that happens, sometimes. At outposts where there's a few hunters. It's called red-eye." He snuck another look at Al to see if Al seemed to recognize the term.

It was maybe good that Al hadn't heard of it, because that meant that maybe not a lot of people did know about it. On the other hand, that meant that Noah had to explain. "It's," he started. "It's a kind of state of mind, that overtakes you. They don't know why exactly yet. Or where it comes from. Your eyes go red, and you have this. This urge to." He swallowed. "To hurt people. To, to kill them. More so if they're not also feeling the red-eye thing. Because if they're not then they're not like you and they're, they're wrong."

He took a deep breath and exhaled slowly, his grip on Al's hand loosening in case Al wanted to let go of him once he realized what Noah was implying.

"I'm -- the red-eye's gone, yeah," Noah said. "It went away while I was still out there. It ... Jess vanished." He pulled his hand loose himself and crossed his arms, hugging himself. "She, she killed most of them. I ... on some of them ... " He looked around rapidly to make sure nobody was around to hear this. "On some of them I helped." He'd committed one kill all by himself, but that had happened out of range of the outpost's cameras, out of range of any evidence, and as far as he knew that hadn't been weighed in the information that had cleared him, and so nobody was ever going to know about that. Not even Al, who he trusted with everything in him. Dana, he thought, and, I'm sorry.

He breathed deeply again. "The, the red-eye influence. It also made you feel. Hungry."

"We ... I ate them," Noah burst out, the words escaping him almost of their own volition. He hugged himself tighter, gripping his hoodie to keep his hands from shaking, and stared at his feet.