by TW Iain
And they did. As fast as they could while staying hunched over. As fast as they could to get away from whatever had just taken down the warth.
Brice refused to think of anything but moving. He focused on Keelin’s boots, a pace in front of his own. He ignored the wet leaves that slapped his face, and the smell coming from Cathal. He pushed aside the noises of the storm and the forest and whatever followed them in the trees. And he only looked up when Ryann sussed.
Before them stood a concrete block, slightly larger than a Proteus. But where their craft had curves and angles, the hold-out was a monolith, like someone had dumped a huge block of stone in the middle of the forest, all right-angles and coldness. There were no windows, only a dark metal door in the closest wall. It sat in a clearing, almost like the trees didn’t want to come too close to something so imposing.
In that moment, Brice thought it the most wonderful thing he’d ever seen.
He turned, and saw a gap in the trees, where they arched over to form a tunnel. Beyond was another clearing, but here the ground rose in a ramp.
“Landing pad,” Keelin said, her lips close to his ear, telling him what he already knew. But he basked in the warmth of her breath, and the way it blew the rain over his skin. He realised it was the first voice he’d heard, actually heard with his ears, since the cave.
“Come on,” Ryann said to Brice, her voice so low he barely caught it. And he stepped into the wonderful, cool, dry hold-out.
The door slid shut behind him, and Ryann gestured towards one of the bunks that lined the side of the room. “Let’s get Cathal comfortable,” she said, her voice louder this time, ringing with a slight echo.
With Keelin’s help, Brice lowered Cathal onto a bunk. The mattress was clammy, with hardly any give, but just touching it made Brice realise how tired he was.
He looked around, even though he knew what to expect. Hold-outs were all the same. Opposite the five bunks were metal storage units and a work-top with a simple cooker. The table sat in the middle of the room, flanked by a couple of benches. And at the far end were two doors, one leading to the heads, and the other to the hatch. Just like the Proteus, this place had a second exit, up through the roof.
This place made the Proteus look like the height of luxury, but that was more down to how impersonal it was. The bunks held exactly the same bedding. There were extra blankets in the storage units, all of a uniform grey, the cheapest the company could find. The hold-outs were not designed to be lived in. They were a place to rest, or to hole up if a crew found themselves stranded. Like if their Proteus wasn’t working properly because the company didn’t care enough to make simple repairs.
Keelin made for the heads, and Tris started rummaging in one of the units, crouching and pulling boxes from drawers. Some kind of tech, Brice assumed, but it would keep him happy.
Ryann knelt by Cathal, a medi-kit open on the floor by her side. She reached over to his bandage and started to ease it off.
The smell was strong and pungent, and Ryann flinched, one hand over her mouth. But she didn’t stop until the bandage was free.
Brice moved closer, peering over her shoulder. “My lenses playing up, or is that black?” he asked. Around the ragged wound the skin was discoloured, and initially Brice thought it must be blood, or maybe a bruise. But the patch looked thick, and it had spread not only down his arm but also up his neck and across his chest.
“It’s black.”
“That’s not good, right? That’s more than a simple wound.”
Ryann nodded. “Far more. I need to test it.” She dove into her medi-kit, pulling out a swab. She rubbed this on Cathal’s wound and slotted it into the analyser. Her eyes half-closed as it fed the readings to her in, Brice assumed, a string of numbers and graphs. She sucked on her lower lip, oblivious to the rest of the room.
Brice turned to Tris. The drawer Data-boy had opened held about six items, and Brice smiled as he recognised these. Torches. Good old-fashioned flash-lights. Not much use when lenses and filters let everyone see in the dark, but Brice had used them before, training dark. Tris opened another drawer, and this one held more torches.
Did a hold-out really need so many? It annoyed Brice that the company wouldn’t fix a dodgy Proteus, but they wasted money on things like this. Probably someone high up getting a kick-back, or old guidelines that had never been updated.
“Find anything good?” he asked.
“You got anything useful to do?” Tris didn’t even turn his head.
“Just asking.”
Tris pushed the drawer of torches closed and opened the next one down. He let out a satisfied little grunt (at least, that’s what it sounded like to Brice), and reached in to pull out a small box, about the size of an outstretched hand, but about twice the thickness.
“What’s that?”
“Something useful. Unlike you.”
“Brice.” Ryann’s voice cut through the air. “I could use better lighting over here.”
“No problem.” She could use filters, and he knew she was trying to separate him from Tris, but he didn’t step away. Not yet.
He looked at Tris, then at the storage unit. “Torch?”
“Use the bloody room system, green.”
Green. Coming from Tris, that was just feeble. If it wasn’t so pathetic, Brice might have been angry.
“Thanks for your help.” Brice stepped away as a hand shot out. He timed it just right, and Tris’ fingers only brushed the sleeve of his jacket. “I’ll go do something useful. You stay here and play with yourself.”
He expected retaliation for that, and was ready to respond, but Tris turned towards Ryann, his mouth open. Ryann gave him a firm look, like she was telling him off. And Tris at least had the decency to look sheepish. Brice so wanted to be in on that conversation.
The atmos controls were by the door, accessible through the usual panel. Brice placed his hand on it, and waited for the options to appear. There was a tingle in his fingers, but that was all.
“Am I doing this right?”
“Should be straightforward,” Ryann said. No help there, then.
“I’ll do it.” Tris said. “Bloody grunt can’t cope with tech.”
“I’m fine,” Brice said, pushing with his lattice. He wondered if lightning had hit the hold out, like it had struck the Proteus. That would be about right, the way things were going. Goddamned useless tech. They’d be better off without it.
He sussed at the panel, even though he knew that would have no effect, but the stream of curse words at least felt good. He willed his lattice to connect, imagining red lines of invisible energy flowing along his arm.
And then everything exploded in white-hot pain, and a thousand punches slammed into Brice, flinging him to the floor. Everything went dark.
His flesh burned, hot and cold at the same time, but beneath the surface. He sensed it contracting, crushing his body, and he couldn’t breathe. His heart muscles hammered and then stilled, and for a moment, for the shortest of seconds, it stopped pumping.
He saw his lattice start-up levers, and they were dark and silent. A surge of power gripped him, and the levers vibrated, the movement growing in violence until they started to buckle. A couple snapped, the sound sharp and metallic, and broken handles crashed to the floor.
A blinding white light engulfed everything, flaring up with a sharp pain that remained when the darkness engulfed it.
“What the hell have you done this time, Brice?” Tris sounded angry. But Brice couldn’t see him. And he sounded muffled, like he was too far away.
There were other sounds now—tapping maybe, and some muttering. Brice concentrated, and his ears popped, like he was coming out of water. The tapping was sharper, and close by. And whe
n Tris spoke, his voice was clear.
“This thing’s done for. I can reach through to the power circuits, but there’s nothing to work with. Looks like our resident screw-up did it again.”
“Then find a solution,” Ryann said, but she sounded too far away.
Something pushed hard against the sole of Brice’s left boot. “Found some rubbish. Think we should throw it out?” The pressure on his boot increased.
He might not be able to see, but at least he could feel.
Brice focused on that sensation, and he pictured where Tris must be standing. With one foot pushing his own, he must have his other one set back to keep his balance.
With a grunt, Brice kicked out, hard. His boot connected, and Tris yelled. Then something slammed into Brice’s shin, and he winced at the pain. But he didn’t cry out.
He willed his lattice to compensate, but it did nothing. There were no updates on damage done, no sensation of internal movement.
“You always attack people when they’re down?” he said, shuffling back until he felt the wall, then pushing up it until he was sitting. He wasn’t sure if he could stand, not yet. His head swam, and he felt nauseous.
“You think you deserve anything better? Bloody screw-up.”
“What the hell’s that supposed to mean?” Brice felt his chest rise and fall. He couldn’t sense his lungs like he normally could, but he knew they were working. Just like he knew his heart was pumping blood, and his muscles were ready.
“Come on! You started all this when you fired at that warth. You’re the reason we had to climb the cliff. If you hadn’t been so bloody stupid, we’d never have come across that…that thing. And we’d never be in this mess. It’s all your fault!”
“Yeah, like I was going to ignore a charging warth. I probably saved your life back there. Beginning to regret it now, though.”
“They weren’t a threat.”
“No?”
“No. You made them dangerous. You’re dangerous. And now…”
The next kick struck Brice’s thigh, and instinctively he lashed out with an arm. It hit something solid, and he winced. He swallowed, his mouth dry now.
Tris laughed. “Thought you were good at fighting. Thought that was your speciality. No? Looks like you really are useless. Don’t know why the hell you’re with us anyway.”
Brice pushed his back against the wall and bent his legs, bringing his feet underneath his body. The wall was cool against his hands, and he took a long breath in preparation.
“Yeah, so useless I carried Cathal the whole way here.” He pushed with his legs and started to rise. “So useless I rigged the rope to get him down.” The burn in his thighs lessened as his legs straightened and he stood tall. He kept his hands flat on the wall. “What the hell have you done?”
“Both of you, stop!” Keelin shouted. Brice had no idea when she’d come back from the heads. “We’ve got more important things to deal with.”
“Like sorting out the mess this waste of space put us in.”
Tris’ voice was closer, almost in his face, and with a grunt Brice launched himself from the wall, pushing the nausea down as he brought his fists up. There was no finesse in the move, and he had nothing to aim at but a voice.
It was all he needed. His body followed his fists, and he felt contact as Tris cried out. Then they both fell—Brice forwards, Tris backwards. The world spun. The impact slammed through Brice, and his head hit something hard. Probably the floor.
Then there were hands clamped on his shoulders, pulling him back. He tried to stand, but the movement was too sudden. Fingers dug hard, and where they bit into his bruise from earlier a shard of pain screamed through his mind.
He rolled over and sat up. The hands still held him.
“Both of you need to stop.” Keelin’s voice was practically in his ear. He could feel her hair on his cheek.
“Hold him like that, and I can get a perfect shot in.”
“Yeah, because you can’t cope with a moving target.”
“Stop!”
Brice jerked his head to one side as Ryann’s voice ricocheted round the room. She said that single word loudly, and her voice was strong. But there was an edge to it, high-pitched, where it almost cracked.
Almost, but she kept it together.
“You two need to sort yourselves out, but not like this.” Her words were quieter now, and she sounded tired, or maybe weary. “We work together. We’re a crew. A team.”
Brice opened his mouth, but caught himself in time. Saying ‘he started it’ probably wouldn’t be the smart thing to do.
“Fine,” Tris said, spitting the word out. “But I don’t want anything to do with him unless I have to.”
“Works for me too.” Brice tried to keep his voice as civil as possible.
“Tris,” Ryann said, and only now did Brice realise she wasn’t sussing, but using her voice. “Any chance of getting power sorted?”
“Not likely. He wrecked it, the….”
“Enough!” She was close. Brice wondered if Ryann was holding Tris back, just as Keelin still had her hands on his shoulders. “Whatever happened, we need power. I need to do what I can for Cathal, and I’d appreciate better light.”
“Torches?” Brice said. “Tris found them earlier.” He said that through his teeth. It hurt to give the waste of space credit for anything.
“That’ll work. Bring one over, Tris. You can sort out the power later.”
Tris exhaled. “Okay.” Footsteps echoed, and a drawer opened. Then light shone, and Brice saw a beam angled to the floor. He squinted, letting his eyes grow accustomed to the light, even as it moved across to the bunks. Ryann returned to Cathal’s side, and Tris held the torch over him.
The grips on his shoulders lifted, and Brice allowed his muscles to slacken. He hadn’t realised how tightly he was holding them. Then the hands were gone, and he heard a rustle coming round from his left. When Keelin spoke, her voice was in front of him. He saw her silhouette, strands of hair hanging down, and one arm reaching out. But not quite touching.
“You dark again, Brice?”
He nodded, like he didn’t want to admit what was happening. And her hand, the one she held in front of him, wavered. She was scared. No, she was terrified.
And he understood. She might have her lattice, might even still be in contact with her baby. She might have her body warmth, and be able to communicate with the others. She might be able to pull up filters and share data. But she didn’t know what had been in the cave. She didn’t know what condition Cathal was in. She didn’t know what else was outside, waiting for them. She didn’t know if they’d be able to reach Haven.
None of them did. None of them knew a thing.
He wasn’t the only one in the dark.
Ryann turned her back on the rest of the crew and returned to Cathal. She didn’t know if that would come across as weak or strong, and to be honest she didn’t care. Because she’d come too close to losing it with Tris and Brice.
Violence solved nothing. The only time Ryann inflicted harm was in training sessions, when it was expected. But when they started fighting, she’d felt her fingers roll over into a fist, and had wanted nothing more than to punch some sense into both of them.
If Keelin hadn’t stepped in and pulled Brice back, Ryann knew she would have given in to that urge.
They were selfish. Or maybe self-absorbed. Tris was terrified, and was hiding behind his bravado. And Brice was struggling without his lattice. True, he was trying hard, but his surges of aggression indicated a lack of self-control.
These might be reasons, but they weren’t excuses. Both of them needed to pull themselves together.
And Ryann needed to lead. She needed to set the example, and guide them. But she was failing as much as they were.
She hadn’t felt this alone for a long, long time.
But she would do what she could. That was another thing she’d learnt from Cathal—you did what you could, t
o the best of your ability. And if you failed, then the fault was not yours to bear. The situation was whatever it was.
Cathal’s condition was deteriorating. The disease—and that, she found, was the easiest way to view it—continued to take over his body. The dark patches were spreading fast. She probed them with a finger, and felt the hardness beneath the soft outer layer.
The beam wobbled, but didn’t move as much as she’d feared. She’d have to remember to keep Tris more occupied in future. He avoided looking at Cathal, and she saw his nose twitch a couple of times—understandable, with the rank odour that came from Cathal’s wound.
The smell worried Ryann, and it brought up memories of the time one of her father’s animals had fallen, far off on the hillside. By the time they’d found the poor thing, gangrene had already set in, and there was no other option but to remove the limb—and, a few days later, put the creature down when it failed to recover.
She wouldn’t be able to do that to Cathal, though. Not put him down, but amputate his arm. The wound was too deep into his shoulder. Besides, the wound itself was, strangely, clean. When she examined a sample of blood, there was little out of the ordinary, apart from a strange anti-coagulant. Whatever that was, it seemed to be working in conjunction with his own blood in stopping any infection.
She undid Cathal’s shirt fully and parted the material, careful where the blood stuck it to his shoulder and chest. She lifted his body by rolling, and freed his arms. Then she folded the garment as best she could, knowing this was classic avoidance strategies, but accepting that for the moment.
Without his shirt, and with the extent of his wound clearly visible, he was no longer Cathal but a patient. She scanned him, reading the data as it scrolled across a lens. Then she zoomed in on the dark patch closest to the wound, and saw tiny hair folicles, each strand a wiry couple of millimetres. She pulled one using tweezers, and it came free easily. She placed it in a sample bag, holding her finger over the chip to label it.
Ryann used a scalpel to take a biopsy of the skin itself. She didn’t dig deep, stopping before severing any blood vessels. The small sample she removed was pliable, but it contained a strength unlike normal skin. It was, in fact, closer to the leathery hide of many animals.
