by J. Rock
11.
"She's coming around," a high pitched yet familiar voice says, shaking me. "Hey, you alright, Juno? Can you hear me?"
I open my eyes.
Traylor is leaning over me, grinning like an idiot. I scowl at him hard. "Yup, she's alright," Traylor says with a smirk.
I sit up.
The world swims across my vision. Disoriented doesn't even begin to describe how I'm feeling.
"Careful," another voice says. "You're gonna wanna watch your step up here." It's Altair. I can't see him, but his voice comes from the left. I turn my head that way and find I'm leaning against a wall, cold and smooth, pulling myself up against it. I get to my knees and sway, falling over in the other direction. My hands grope but find nothing as I tumble headfirst, the rest of my body following–
I stop.
Something's snagged me by the belt, pulling me back. I come to rest against the wall again, seeing that it’s Altair that saved me. We're sitting in a cleft in a rock face, the floor a mere three feet wide from the edge. I lean out, guessing we're about halfway down the canyon wall. Above, a narrow chimney in the rock indicates that we’d actually climbed down here. I don't remember doing it.
"What happened?" I ask, still in shock. "How did we get down here?" The last thing I remember is seeing those men falling from their horses.
"The Bleaklands saved us," Altair answers nonchalantly.
"Yeah, and that iron lung of yours," Traylor interjects.
Iron lung? I stare at Altair incredulously, my eyes falling to the dull grey object on the ground beside him. Traylor goes to it, grasping the clear, triangular object at the end of the tube. He puts it over his face and twists a knob, a hissing crackle the result.
"See?" Traylor says, taking a mouthful of gas. "An iron lung! It lets us breathe when there is no air!"
"Okay, Traylor," Altair admonishes, going over to the lung and twisting the knob back shut. "It's not a toy. There’s a limited supply inside of it."
Traylor shrugs, stepping away.
"That's amazing," I say, recalling now that I had seen Altair put the mask over my face just before I'd lost consciousness. "Where did you come across such a device?" I ask, both curious and wary. This surely is an artifact of the Forerunners.
"It came from Everwinter," Altair answers, as if that was sufficient. "I always keep a few supply stashes ready in case I must travel across Bleaklands."
I take a deep breath, the air seeming just fine where we sit. "I can breathe. Does that mean we're out of the Bleaklands already?" I'm hoping I missed most of the trip whilst unconscious.
"The Bleaklands are everywhere," Altair replies through tight lips. "They cover the entire world, Juno, but only in patches. There is not one definitive area that one might call the Bleaklands. We’ve made it out of one patch, but there will be others."
"I see," I say, nodding. "You learn something new about the world every day."
"You can say that again," Traylor agrees wholeheartedly.
"The iron lung will get us through the worst of it," Altair continues, "but we should get moving again. Those men do not have iron lungs, but it will not take them long to get around the Bleakpatch once they have recovered."
I sag visibly. "So they're not dead, I take it?"
Altair shakes his head. "Only one met his end. They passed out once the air got too thin but, as I said, they will recover."
"Too bad," I grumble.
"Come on," Altair says, slipping the iron lung back into his pack. "Another day, maybe two, and we’ll be in the southern cities." With that, he disappears into the large crack in the wall, just wide enough to accommodate him. Traylor looks at me, shrugs, then follows suit.
"I hate working with men," I say to myself, following Traylor into the crack. The shaft seems to stretch from the top of the cliff all the way to the bottom. Below me, Traylor and Altair are already down quite a ways, climbing the shaft as if it were a simple ladder. I mimic their movements and find the going fairly easy.
I look up a final time. "How the hells did you guys get me down here anyway?" I call after them.
Altair just looks up at me and smiles.
