by Josh Hayes
"At least," Michael said, picking up two components from the mat at his feet. The two pieces slid together with a click, and he reached down for another.
Wendy nodded agreement.
Irving reached up and touched the side of his face. His eyes never left the fire. His voice was distant and low. "Seems like a lifetime ago," he said, running a finger over the scarred flesh that covered the right side of his face. The doctor rarely spoke about himself, and according to Michael, he had never shared what had caused the dramatic burns that covered his body. The man was older than any of the other Lost Boys' members. His white hair was combed over in an unsuccessful attempt to cover his mangled skin. John, however, had come to the conclusion that Irving styled his hair that way as more of a joke than anything.
Michael grunted. "Several."
"So assuming they are actively searching for us, how long do you think we have?" John asked.
Wendy pursed her lips, staring into the fire. "Without knowing exactly how they learned about the Hideout, it's hard to say. We have no idea how badly our operations were compromised."
Irving choked a laugh. "I'd say quite a bit, considering."
John couldn't disagree with him. He stretched his legs out in front of him and crossed his arms. "So that brings me back to my original question. What do we do now?"
Wendy sighed. It was the first time John had ever seen her look unsure. She was about to answer when another figure appeared out of the night. John suppressed a groan as his blood pressure spiked. Marb.
He stood just at the edge of the light, hands in his pockets, staring directly at John, lip curled in contempt. His shirtsleeves were rolled up past the elbows, like they always were, showing off his overly hairy arms. Brown hair curled up from underneath an old worn-out hat, turned backwards. His thick beard was speckled with gray. He'd shed his customary leather jacket, but like Wendy's, his pants were tucked into dirty black combat books. He no longer wore the oversized pistol on his hip, but John was sure he'd have another equally deadly weapon stashed somewhere on his body.
"Well," Marb said, voice low and gruff as always. "We can't just pack up and go home, that's for sure, thanks to Michael's friend here."
"Quite," Irving said, giving an exaggerated nod, then giving John a distinct look. "Shame on you, sir, for living."
A grin spread across John's face.
"Oh, for shit's sake, Marb," Michael said. "No one wants to hear that shit. And not only that, but in the short time that he's been here, he's proved himself many times over that of some of the people who've been with us since the beginning."
"If you think it's just some sort of honest-to-God coincidence that the Regency decided to attack right after he got here, then you're not only blind but dumb. Wendy, I know you aren't that blind, we never should have let him in."
Michael finished piecing together the lower receiver assembly to the rifle he'd been cleaning, and pointed it at Marb. "You know the Rules, Marb."
"Don't give me that—"
Wendy cut him off. "Yes," she said, arm raised, "you know the Rules, and we've been over this time and time again, and we aren't going to sit here and hash out old arguments. If you've got some personal issue you need to work out, then for shit's sake work it out, I'm tired of hearing about it."
"You know you like to quote the Rules to me, Michael, but you conveniently leave one out when it doesn't suit your purposes."
Michael gave him an expectant look.
"Trust no one," Marb said. "You've all seemed to have forgotten that one. Well, I haven't, and for good reason."
"Well, you might want to review them again, then," Michael said. "Because there are a couple more that you should pay more attention to."
Marb waved a hand. "There is only one that applies here. I don't trust him." He nodded at John.
John cocked his head to the side and gave the man a one-sided smile. "Does it hurt to have an original thought? It sure has been a while since you've had a good one. In fact, I'd be willing to bet that if you put as much energy into that as you do into blaming me for this mess, you'd already have come up with a solution to this situation. Maybe we'd have this damn war won already."
"Oh, I give equal time to both," Marb told him. "But lately, I've had some extra time devoted solely to you."
Good to know I'm on someone's mind," John said.
"Tell me, what exactly is your plan anyway? Bide your time until Hook makes a mistake or gives up? By the look of things around here, I'd say that isn't very likely."
"If it hadn't been for you, you son of a bitch, we wouldn't be out here in the middle of nowhere hiding our tails between our legs," Marb barked, face contorting in a mask of hatred and rage. "It's your fault our people are dead now, good people, who spent their lives fighting for something you don't have the slightest idea about."
He gave the rest of them a disgusted look. "And you all welcome him in with open arms, and kiss his ass for shit that our people do every day. So what, he can fly a skiff? So can Tim, and I don't see you guys patting him on the back every time he shoots down a Regency bastard. This jerk-off hasn't done anything for us except destroy everything we've built for the last twenty years. Hell, he's probably single-handedly lost the won for us before it even got started."
"Lost the war? Tell me this, you sanctimonious prick, what exactly did you have in place to win this war before I showed up and ruined everything?" John mimed air quotes at the last part. "Even if the Regency hadn't attacked, you didn't have anywhere near the amount of personnel and resources to fight a winning battle against Hook."
Sparks shot up from the fire with a loud crack as one of the logs abruptly shifted position. Tiny glowing embers drifted into the air. The fire flared briefly, but died down as the logs dropped into their new places.
"We weren't planning to win against Hook," Wendy said, without turning from the dwindling flames. Her voice was tense and measured, as if she was consciously trying not to lose control of herself. "We were planning to win against Pan."
John considered her for a moment in the silence, seeing the obvious pain on her face.
A metallic clank reverberated through the silence, and Michael lifted the fully assembled rifle in both arms, looking down the sights. "But is that still the plan? Does the fact that they attacked first change anything?"
"It changes everything," Wendy said. "Without Pan, we don't have a chance in hell of defeating Hook, and without an army, we don't have a chance of defeating Pan." She paused for a moment, breathing slowly through her nose, then said, "Our only chance at winning this war was taking Pan out of the equation, and I just don't see how that's a viable option now."
"We can't just sit here," Michael said.
Marb laughed. "So, what, you just want to go charging in with a few under-strength skiffs and a handful of fighters? By now Pan's got reinforcements already here or on their way, and there's no way of telling how many sympathizers he's been able to raise in Baytown. I bet Smee already has a militia of a few thousand, all of them angry and looking to kick our asses right out of the city."
"You know what, Marb, go fuck yourself," Michael said. "John's right, you haven't done anything but bitch and whine since we got here, and you've done nothing to bolster our position at all. I'm pretty fucking sick of your constant negativity. So how about you just shut the hell up for a while?"
Marb stepped toward Michael. "You're the son of a bitch that brought all this on!"
Michael was on his feet before Marb had finished, tossing the now fully assembled rifle to the ground. "Tell me about it, Marb. Tell me what you've done."
The two men stepped to within inches of each other. John felt the urge to intervene, but decided against it. Better to let this play out.
Marb waved a hand at Wendy. "Well, I don't spend all day licking her boo—"
John barely saw the punch. Michael connected with a crack and the larger man let out a bellowing cry. The force of the blow forced Marb to take a step back, two h
ands protecting his bleeding nose. He bent over, groaning and cursing, then straightened, eyes ablaze with hatred.
Michael stood ready, but didn't advance further. His stance was relaxed but aware, a stance of someone who'd been trained to fight. He stared down his target, not with hatred, but with a determined strength. "Don't do that," he said.
"Enough," Wendy said. She stepped up, but didn't move between them.
"You've all lost your way," Marb said, his voice nasal and pained. "And the worst part is, none of you can see it."
"Marb, give it a rest," Wendy said.
All three stood, none waiting to back down. None wanting to show any kind of weakness.
After a few long moments, Irving stood and started around the fire. "Let me take a look—"
Marb waved him off. "Forget it, Doc, I'll be fine. Like everything else around here, I'll take care of shit by myself." He nodded at Michael. "We're not finished."
"You let me know when, I'll be there."
Marb grunted, then turned and left without another word.
"Ignorant ass," Michael muttered, returning to his seat.
Irving reached down and tossed another log onto the fire. "Forget about him, my friend."
Michael grunted and picked the assembled rifle back up. He pulled the bolt back, looked into the chamber, then sent the bolt forward again. It slammed closed with a metallic clack. He pointed it into the darkness, flicked off the safety and pulled the trigger. Click. He cycled the action, engaged the safety again, and set it down next to the other finished weapons.
"He's becoming more of a liability every day," Michael said.
Wendy lowered her head. "I'll talk to him."
"I didn't mean to start anything," John said softly.
Wendy shook her head. "It's not you. We're all on the edge out here. We've been asking these people to give us their all, and haven't been able to give anything back to them in so long. It was only a matter of time before something like this happened. I'm surprised it took this long."
"John is right, thought," Michael said. "We don't have the resources to take on Hook's entire regime, much less Pan and his damned Revenge."
"What about other clans? Hell, what about just other normal people?" John asked. "You're going to tell me that everyone in Neverland supports Hook? I don't believe that at all, not with what, a hundred thousand people in the city? There's got to be people out there that don't want to live under Regency rule."
"There are," Wendy said, staring into the fire. "And we're going to find them."
Chapter Three
Now
John finished screwing the panel into place, then straightened and stretched, pushing a hand into the small of his back. He grunted, feeling several vertebrae pop, and rolled his neck. It had been a long day. A long couple of days, actually.
"Okay," he said, leaning around the hatch between the skiff's cockpit and cabin. "Finished, ready to test."
"One sec," Tim answered, his voice muted slightly by the hull.
A metallic clanging echoed through the skiff's chassis and John grimaced. "You okay?"
Tim appeared just outside one of the cabin doors, wiping his hands on a soiled rag. He shook his head. "Damn converters, they don't ever fit right."
John grinned. "When they don't want to, force them. That's what I always say."
"Give it a shot."
John turned back to the control panel he'd just installed and blew out a nervous breath. "Here goes nothing."
He flipped the switch, and the orange light next to it began to blink slowly. A low harmonic whaaa filled the compartment, its pitch ever increasing, until two dull thunks cut it off after a few seconds. The Fuel Status Display panel to John's left flickered, then vanished, replaced by a blank screen.
John counted off five seconds.
"Come on," he muttered, tapping the newly installed panel with a finger. When his taps of encouragement failed to bring the display back to life, he slammed the heel of his palm down hard on the metal dash. "Come on, work, damn it!"
The orange light turned a steady green and the display gauge came back on, this time showing new information. A green bar slowly rose from the bottom of the screen, showing him how much fuel he had in the new secondary tank.
John laughed and glanced over his shoulder. "See, told you."
Tim rolled his eyes. "Yeah, your ideas always work, sometimes."
"Well, it's true."
Even though they both knew that wasn't entirely accurate. Their refit on Skiff One had taken several more days than they'd originally estimated, mainly because John had to learn the craft's mechanics from scratch as they moved through the project. Tim, however, had admitted several times that without John's help, they wouldn't be anywhere near where they were now. And honestly, they were almost finished.
John let the indicator bar fill completely, then flipped the switch back off. This time the harmonic whaaa came after the clanking and the fuel screen flickered and returned to the display.
Not too bad for two guys who have almost no idea what they're doing, John thought, tossing the small screwdriver back into his tool bag. I just hope all this is worth it.
As it turned out, Wendy's plan to track down additional forces hadn't been strictly limited to the population of Barreen. With the exception of Marb, no one had really commented on her idea, and John didn't know if that was a good or a bad thing. A few had mentioned the First Ones, but hadn't elaborated on what exactly the First Ones were.
"So," John said, hopping out of the skiff. "These people we're going to look for?"
Tim sniffed and pulled his gloves off. He ran a hand through his hair, which after two days of hard work was now more brown than blonde. "The First Ones?"
John nodded, leaning back on the skiff's hull. The skin was warm to the touch after baking in the hot afternoon sun, but had cooled as evening came on. "You've mentioned them before, back when you all first brought me back to the Hideout. What's the story there? Why won't anyone talk about them? Some kind of taboo?"
Tim shrugged. "No, nothing like that, it's just…" He paused for moment, eyes darting around, scanning the area. "How do you talk seriously about something you've known your entire life was a myth?"
"I don't follow."
"The First Ones were the First Ones to come through the Portal, right? The Graft brought them here. Well, the mythos is that way back in the day, when the Graft disappeared, so did the First Ones—or Redleen, if you prefer."
"Redleen?"
"It's what they call themselves. 'The First Ones' was just something people called them because of what they represented. And from what I hear, they were pretty hated back then, which is probably why they left."
John popped the cap off a water bottle and took a drink. After taking several long gulps, he poured the rest over his head, relishing the cold water flowing over his sweaty body. He shook his head back and forth, sending water spraying in all directions. "Hated?"
"A lot of people believed that the First Ones helped the Graft. That they were a kind of liaison between our two races, like trustees in a prison or something." Tim shrugged again. "I'm not sure how true that is, but there are still a lot of people that won't ever mention their name unless they're using it as a curse."
"And we're going out there to look for these people?"
Tim chuckled. "That's the rumor."
"Now," John said, frowning, "this might be a dumb question: but if these First Ones really are out there, don't you think someone would have found them already? With the resources Hook has, it would seem to me that if they were out there to find, he would have done so. I mean, do we even know they're still out there?"
"Not much gets by you," Tim said, grinning.
"What can I say?" John asked, arms spread. "I'm a wonderer of things."
"Well, I don't know if I have the answer to that," Tim admitted, shoving his gloves into a back pocket. "As to whether or not the Regency has found them or not, I don't think so. We certa
inly haven't come against any information that would suggest otherwise."
"Do you think they're still out there somewhere, then?"
"You know, at one point in time I did, but that was a long time ago. Now?" He slapped the skiff's hull, and a hollow twang reverberated around them. "I guess we'll find out, won't we?"
"And if Hook is out there looking for them?"
They both looked up as Irving, Wendy, and Michael came around the nose of the skiff. The Doctor carried a small duffle over one shoulder. Wendy all but ignored them and began to inspect the work they'd done to the aircraft.
"Looking for who?" Irving asked.
"Come on, Doc," Michael said, "you know who."
"Ah, yes, the mythical First Ones," Irving said, his tone thick with sarcasm. "Here." He unslung the duffle and tossed it to Tim.
Tim caught it with a grunt. "Easy, Doc."
Irving made a tsk-tsk sound and waggled a finger at Tim. "Need to work on your reflexes, my friend."
"Or, maybe just a little bit of a heads-up," Tim countered, turning the bag over. "What's in here anyway?"
"Well," Irving said, stepping around a small work table covered with tools and spare parts. He nudged a half-empty sack of bolts off a crate next to it and sat. "I'd tell you what's in that bag, but I'm pretty sure you could figure it out if you thought about it hard enough."
Tim had already pulled the zipper back, balancing the brown bag on a raised thigh. John looked over Tim's shoulder, watching as he rifled through the contents.
"First aid kit," John said.
"That's right," Irving said, crossing his legs. "It's not quite as good as having me around, but let's face it, something is better than nothing. And I figure where you bunch are headed, you might want a little bit of something."
"You're right about that," Michael said.
"Not going, eh, Doc?" John asked. "A learned man like yourself not interested in a little scenic tour of the world?"
Michael cut in, answering for him. "Kind of hard to enjoy a tour when you're terrified of flying."
Irving grunted. "I think terrified is stretching the truth just a bit, Michael, it's more that I'm simply not the adventurous type, I'm afraid. I've seen more than my fair share of those, and have no desire to willingly put myself through more than necessary. Besides, some of my patients here still require a great deal of care."
