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Warning! Warning! Warning!
The blaring of alarms feels like it's stabbing him in his brain, and opening his eyes isn't any better. He's immediately assaulted with the dire flashing reds of emergency beacons and sirens, the kind that send an ominous thrill down his spine. Those sirens mean that the ship has gone through a critical engine failure. He has to find the escape pods.His first attempt at standing is an abject failure. His vision swims, and his side stabs with pain so bad he goes breathless. He very nearly dry heaves at the sudden bombarding sensations, but he forces it down. Vomiting in a helmet is a terrible idea.... Not that his is in any condition for wearing, he realizes, as he tries to focus on a fixed point on the floor (or maybe the wall?) in front of him. The front of it is cracked and broken away, exposing his face. There's no hope of fixing it. He’s doomed if he’s exposed to a vacuum.The second attempt goes better, now that he's expecting the pain, but he has to brace himself on the wall as he sways. He doesn't recognize this corridor. The thought forms a little bubble of panic inside him. He doesn't recognize it, and he doesn't remember how he came to be here. With an alarm like that going off, he's not going to have the time to figure out why, either. Casting around, he catches sight of the emergency lights. There should be pods nearby, if he can just...His second stumbling step sends him to the ground again, barely catching himself on hands and knees. It doesn't take long to see what he's tripped over. There's an arm lying in his path, dangerously still despite him falling over it.Dizzily, he looks over it and the person it's attached to. Dark clothing, though it's hard to tell colors in the emergency lighting, and a helmet that hides their face. He can't see any obvious burns or dark patches, and when he reaches out in sudden fear he feels the person’s chest moving under his touch.The person—the man, he seems to be, he’s broad-shouldered and flat chested under his touch—doesn't move at his first clumsy shake, so he kneels down instead and pulls the arm over his shoulder. "I'm sorry," he babbles, his voice strained. The man is taller than him, and lifting him is not easy. "I hope I'm not making your injuries worse, but if we don't get to a pod now, you're sure to die. Please suffer my clumsiness for just a little while..."And so, staggering and leaning against the wall, he drags the other man along, following the path of emergency lights.He doesn't know if there's anyone else on the ship— there are no voices on the comm, no people flooding past to escape. He can only spare the energy to be thankful that the capsules are not far down the corridor. Wheezing, feeling something trickle ominously down his face, he manages to pile the man into a capsule, then collapses into it himself. His side hurts so badly that he can hardly breathe. He can hear an automated message giving some kind of warning, but it's overpowered by the sirens. He doesn't need to hear it to know that he's running out of time, though.His fingers are clumsy in gloves he doesn’t remember how to move in, or maybe the throbbing of his head is making it hard to connect what his eyes show him to what his hands are doing. He manages to work through the process of sliding the man’s arms and legs into the safety harness and buckling him into place. The man’s head lolls in a way that makes him worry, but aside from arranging it on the padding, there’s little he can do right now.“Please hold on just a little while,” he mumbles as he struggles into a seat of his own and buckles himself in. The pod is tiny, he will just barely be able to reach the other man when they’re both strapped in. “This thing should have a first aid kit. I’ll look you over as soon as we’re clear.”Talking to an unconscious man. He’s probably being silly, but it’s easier to concentrate on the sound of a voice, even his own, than the alarms that made his head throb.He straps himself in, then turns to the control panel as he readies the little ship to eject. For a moment nothing responds, and he has a moment of panic—is the pod broken?—before the monitors slowly flicker to life. He shuffles through the preparations for the pod’s ejection, stumbling every time he starts to think about how he ended up in that unfamiliar corridor with a broken helmet and a man unconscious in front of him.It’s much easier to focus on the immediate disaster.When he doesn’t think about why, he can shuffle through the commands of the little escape pod. He finds himself detouring from the launch sequence to check a sequence of diagnostics, a row of numbers that he catches himself staring at only moments after finding them. Now’s not the time for a pressure check on the door seals. Still, it’s nice to know that they’ve been serviced recently.He feels the pressure change in his ears when the door seals itself shut behind him. The sudden absence of sirens is a relief, but a jarring one. His entire head feels like it’s ringing in the silence. He rubs at his forehead as he pulls up a trajectory away from the ship. He has no idea what’s waiting on the planet down below, what to aim for—instead, he lets the ship’s standard trajectory apply, hoping that it will take them clear of any debris. He has the gut feeling that choosing a place to come down himself won’t do them any good.The entire pod jerks with some final spasm of the ship, and he gives himself no more room to doubt. He hits the command to eject them from the ship, and then is forced to clutch at the straps as he’s jerked around by the force of the pod being pushed away from the ship. The pressure of the strap against his side makes him gasp against the pain, and he closes his eyes and presses his hand against his face. Taking slow, shallow breaths seems to help with both the pain and the feeling of disorientation.The pull of acceleration slows, leaving him with the still-nauseating sensation of being left weightless and pinned only by the straps keeping him in his seat.One final rub at his forehead and he finds his shoulders relaxing. He’s—they’re—safe, for now.But they’re not in the clear quite yet. The throbbing in his side is beginning to worry him, and he thinks there must be an injury on his face somewhere, still dripping blood. He can feel some of it drying tacky and unpleasant on his skin.More concerning than that, though, is the man strapped in across from him, who still hasn’t begun to stir. The lighting in the pod isn’t very good, but it’s the white-blue of LEDs rather than the eerie red and orange of the ship, enough for him to see that the man is wearing the same black uniform edged in green that he seems to be, though his is much less ragged. In fact, there’s no sign at all that the man is injured, except that he still hasn’t woken up.“Thank you for your patience,” he murmurs, and begins to carefully hunt through the escape pod for the first aid kit. He finds one—also recently serviced, thankfully—attached under his chair, but hesitates after opening it. There should be bandages, but without looking the other man over more closely, he’s not sure what he can do.He checks the console quickly—they’re still on their trajectory away from the ship, not yet falling into the gravity well, so he doesn’t have to worry about being jostled about for a little while. So he leans forward against the straps keeping him from floating free of his seat.And stops.It’s not that he’s nervous, exactly. Well, he is nervous, it’s just that he isn’t exactly sure why! It’s all catching up with him, a little bit, the panic and the pain and the confusion. He takes one shaky breath, then another when the first does little to help the burning feeling in his eyes. When he thinks about it, he doesn’t remember much before the ship, either.There is still the man to help, he reminds himself. And maybe he’ll have answers to share.He is just reaching for the fastenings on the helmet when the man begins to stir, shifting in the safety harness. He yanks his hands back guiltily, just as the man lifts his head and goes stiff."Please be careful," he starts, his hands hovering in the air before him. "I didn't get a chance to look you over before pulling you into the pod, but you were out for a while."The first sound the man makes is a shaky rasp. This has him frowning. It doesn't sound good, but he can't lean forward much with his own harness holding him to his seat. "Please don't strain yourself..."The man is still holding himself stiff. It's impossible to tell behind that dark helmet, but he feels like the man's gaze is pinned on him, and something about that makes him want to squirm.“Who are you?”"I'm—" he can’t help the laughter that bursts out of him. He cuts himself off with a hand over his mouth, trying to quell the edge of nerves that even he can hear in it. "Ah, I don't actually think I know."The man turns away. He can't see his expression, but something about the man's shoulders relaxes into a downward slope."You don't know," the man echoes.He doesn't know what to make of the tone in the man's voice. "No," he admits. "I must have—must have hit my head or something. Everything is a jumble. But we must be allies, right?"The man sucks in a breath. The helmet tilts up toward him."We're in the same uniforms," he explains, gesturing between himself and the man quickly. Sure enough, he’s in the same black and green body suits, though his helmet is shattered beyond repair. “And we were on the same ship, before we…” he gestures to the escape pod around them.“What happened?”“I don’t remember much,” he admits. “I woke up in a corridor, in this state. I found you lying on the floor," He winces. Tripped over would be more accurate, but... "The ship was going into critical overload, so I just dragged you to the first escape pod I could find." He looks over the man. “Do you…”“No more than you,” the man says, with the slightest shake of his helmeted head.He slumps in disappointment. “Ah. I’d hoped that maybe you knew more. I don’t have any clue what’s going on.”That helmet turns toward him again. “Don’t worry, gege,” the man says, and something in his voice is remarkably soothing. “We can figure it out together.”“Gege?” he echoes, the faintest edges of a smile tugging at his mouth. “If we don’t remember anything, then how can I be gege?”“Because you woke up first, of course.”This time, when he chuckles, it comes much more freely. “Right,” he says, reaching for the first aid kit again. “Well, then, if I’m gege, I should be looking after dixiong’s injuries, shouldn’t I?”“There’s no need to worry about me,” Dixiong says. “I’m all right. You’re the one injured.”Gege frowns. “You’re sure? You were unconscious for a while. If you took a blow to the head, it could be dangerous.”“If it makes gege feel better, he can check me over,” Dixiong says. Gege nods.Dixiong releases the straps on his seat, and pushes away from it until he’s floating in front of Gege. He finds himself flushing, unexpectedly taken aback by the closeness. Dixiong is taller than him, despite the names they’re using for one another, and well-built.“Ah,” he stammers, looking away. “It seems that Dixiong is fine, as he says.”“Then will gege let me look him over?” Dixiong says carefully. “His injuries don’t look good.” “I think they’ve stopped bleeding,” Gege says, but he obliges. He’s put it off for too long. He’s lucky that he isn’t feeling dizzy from blood-loss or pain as it is. Carefully he reaches up to his neck. His fingers fumble blindly with the unfamiliar catches. Ruined as his helmet is, there's no point in wearing it, especially not since wisps of his hair keep seeming to get caught around the ragged edges. But something about the suit seems odd. There’s an extra ridge tight around his neck below where the seal of the helmet should fit against his jumpsuit."Here, let me," Dixiong says suddenly, reaching out. There is a snap to his voice that startles Gege into stillness. His breath comes quickly, but he holds obligingly still.Then pain explodes through him.It is as though someone has taken every nerve in his body and started to pull it slowly and painfully from his flesh. His scream tears out of his throat, his body thrashes all out of his control, trying to curl up and prevented by the straps holding him into his seat. His vision is gone, or maybe he can’t open his eyes. He burns, he burns! Nothing could be worse than this, he doesn’t understand what’s happening or why.He hears a curse, past his own screaming. The scrambling of buckles and scraps being cast aside. Then there are hands on him, forcing him up out of his curl. They maneuver him like it’s nothing, as if all the strength in his flailing body is nothing. Another curse, another shift, and then something jabs, hard, into the back of his neck.Unconsciousness is a blessing.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
His side hurts.Moreover, his cheek is pressed up against something. His first thought is that it’s the floor again, that he’s collapsed for a second time. But whatever he’s pressed up against, it’s firm but not unyielding. Nor is he entirely sure that he’s laying down, now that he thinks of it. He feels dizzy in the light, spinny way he thinks means he’s in zero-g.Whatever’s under his cheek, it’s warm.“Gege,” a voice murmurs near his ear. “Are you awake?”He jerks his head up and opens his eyes. After a heart-pounding moment, he recognizes the inside of the escape pod. With that awareness quickly comes the rest of it, of Dixiong and escaping and the sudden overwhelming pain. His hands fly up toward his throat, but his forearm bumps into something before he can get it there.Dixiong’s arm is curled around his shoulders. The man is using that arm as an anchor, his other hand holding onto the chair that Gege is still strapped into. He lets go of Gege’s neck the moment he sees that he’s awake, and Gege is left to stare in surprise at that featureless black helmet. The stale air of the emergency pod suddenly feels as heavy as if a storm is brewing in it.Gege swallows. “What happened…?”The tension eases. Dixiong turns away, and begins methodically packing away supplies that Gege hadn’t noticed floating around their little capsule. It looks like not only the medkit, but also a toolkit and the shattered remains of his helmet have been left to drift around their weightless craft. Gege finally finishes reaching for his throat, and finds a thin, unbroken line of metal tight around it. There’s the sticky feeling of medical sealant on his face around his eye, and he can feel some sort of bandage pressed against his side.“Gege must forgive me. I didn’t notice them before, but he is shackled.”“What?” He traces the metal around his neck again. “This? What does it do?” “It caused gege’s sudden pain,” Dixiong says, sounding vexed. “They must be meant to activate once gege gets a certain distance away from the ship. If they had not been disabled, it would have been bad.”He shivers. He can imagine how that might have ended up. “How did you deactivate them?” he asks.“I was only able to disable the one part,” Dixiong says. He’s pulled further away from Gege now, leaving the space between them cooler as he turns and begins to pack up all the tools he used. “It seems like that was attached after the rest of it. I can’t do anything to disable it, let alone remove it.”He sounds frustrated. Truth be told, Gege is unsettled himself. “There’s not much that can be done about it now. Dixiong has my thanks for his help.” A thought occurs to him and he sits forward in his chair, pressing against the straps. “Does Dixiong—“ “Hm?” The other man turns toward him with a casual grace as he starts to swing himself back into his seat. “Ah. No, I don’t have any, while Gege has two. He must have faced quite a bit of resentment on that ship.”And so saying, Dixiong gestures toward Gege’s ankle.He blinks, and feels down the length of his right leg. Sure enough, under the heavy material of the boot, he can feel some smooth metal pressed up against his leg.“I can’t imagine what,” he admits. Truly, it’s worrying. “And I can’t imagine what they’re suppressing, either.”Well… no, that’s not quite true. He can feel some kind of potential in him, leashed and unreachable, now that he thinks about it. When he tries, it feels as though his hand simply scatters through whatever power is there.“Don’t worry, gege,” Dixiong says. “I’ll look after you.”That makes him smile. “Dixiong is so solicitous. We’ll look after each other, how about that?”Dixiong inclines his helmeted head. “As Gege says,” he offers kindly, and straps himself firmly down into his chair again.It happens not a moment too soon. The pod blares a warning at them, but Gege doesn’t need that to know that they’re beginning to fall in earnest, now. He can feel the weight catching up with him, and he can feel the capsule beginning to twist a little bit. His stomach swoops with the feeling, as “down” starts to assert itself as being some point over his head. He clutches as the straps of the seat, trying to keep from being jerked around. Across from him, Dixiong is doing the same, though with his expressions hidden by that smooth, faceless uniform he looks to be managing it effortlessly.Gege’s own hair is loose, freed now from whatever kept it confined in the helmet. It seems to be doing a very good job of getting everywhere, especially in his face. He can’t spare the hands it would take to tame it so instead he closes his mouth and eyes, and focuses on keeping his breathing calm.It actually takes much longer than he expected for the descent to happen. The first jolt of hitting the atmosphere rattles him. If he had a view of the outside of their pod, he knows the little craft would be lit up like a firework, or some beautiful dying god.For lack of a window, he focuses his attention is on the screens instead. He certainly hopes that this capsule lives up to its recent service records, but if something goes wrong he needs to be ready to act quickly. The descent continues with only minor shaking and no alarms, though, and though there are plenty of uncomfortable jolts as the craft repositions itself or further slows its descent. Still, he sucks in a breath and curls himself tightly into his padded seat when they drop to earth with a bone-shaking thoom that makes the straps dig into Gege’s flesh.Pain leaves him breathless again. He takes careful little sips of air in through his nose and waits for the burning sensation in his side to fade. He’s held sideways, he realizes, held in place mostly by the cupped arms of the seat and the straps. If they suddenly released, he’d probably fall right onto the floor. His hair has fallen in front of his face, but he can hear movement from the other side of the pod. “Is everything all right?” he says.“I’m fine.” Dixiong doesn’t sound the least bit strained.Gege gives himself a moment to prepare, then unbuckles his straps and twists to land lightly on his feet. Finally free to move, he tests his range of motion, glad to feel that the only thing still hurting him is his side. His head still aches, but that’s easily ignored. Finally, he finger-combs his hair back from his face, and twists it into a loose plait behind his head. It won’t stay there for long when he has nothing to tie it with, but it will keep it out of his face for a little while.When he looks up again, Dixiong is reaching out a hand toward him. He freezes, startled, as the fingers brush over his cheek.“There’s still some dried blood,” Dixiong explains, pulling his hand away. “But it doesn’t seem to be bleeding any more.”“Ah! Right!” He pulls back, his hands clutched tightly at his sides. His heart is hammering a little. “You startled me, Dixiong.”“Sorry, Gege,” Dixiong says, particularly unrepentant. “If you’re all right, we should get moving. We don’t know if anyone saw us come down.”He nods. “I’ll check the console for more information,” he offers. “If it has a GPS, it can probably tell us what’s nearby. You check the outside?”Dixiong nods and moves toward the exit hatch set in the round top—now the side—of the capsule. Gege turns his attention to the console. It hasn’t been damaged in the landing, which is fortunate, and the screen bears the path of their flight in strings of altitude measurements and ground coordinates. There’s a notice, too, about a rescue beacon that’s about to be deployed. He hesitates, but eventually deactivates it. If there’s reason to, he can always reactivate it, but for now… something is itching at the back of his mind, something about the whole situation that he doesn’t have enough information to make add up.His green and black uniform doesn’t have many markings, when he looks it over, just a little green flame badge on the chest. It looks no different from Dixiong’s, aside from the fact that his helmet is destroyed and the side is torn and bloodied. There’s no symbol like that on any of the emergency pods, and he can’t remember enough of the ship’s corridors to tell.Where were they, and why? How did he get injured, and how were the both of them knocked out? There’s too many questions, and he has no way to be sure he will find the answers.And then there’s the matter of his companion. Dixiong says that he can’t remember, either, but his questions when he first woke up had been… odd. And there’s the issue of the shackles—he has no idea what Dixiong has done to them, though he can at least admit that he did stop the very real pain of them. He wants to hope for the best, but reason tells him to not let his guard down. Even Dixiong has no memories, he’s still an unknown. Looking over the console doesn’t give him much. They’ve landed in between mountains, he can tell that much from the readings, but there are no labels for cities or towns. They might have come down in a city, or the middle of the wilderness. Looking outside will tell him more than the screen does, so he goes to the exit.“Any luck?” he calls, and steps outside of the pod into a world of brilliant red and orange.The mountain is covered with plants in fall colors, their intensity only dulled by the light mist that obscures portions of the surrounding peaks. It lends their surroundings a quality of unreality, just as disorienting as the zero-g but more intangible.Standing in the midst of the vista, Dixiong’s black body suit looks like a tear in reality. He might suck in all the light, the world itself, and destroy it.Then his helmeted head turns toward Gege, and despite the eerie image, his voice is warm. He extends his hand. “Did gege find anything?”“Nothing of use on the console,” Gege admits, stepping forward. He pats the hand as he takes another look at the place their pod has come to rest. They’d managed to land on a relatively flat stretch of slope, devoid of trees—perhaps an old terraced paddy that’s fallen out of use. He can see the remnants of stone walls along the edges of it There’s a blackened circle in the grey-green dirt around the pod, where any ground cover has been blown and burnt away. At the edges of the clearing, the trees stand with trunks and branches just as vividly red as their leaves. “I don’t see much out here, either…”“There’s a road down there,” Dixiong says, pointing further down the mountain. “Can you see the gap in the trees?”“I… think so.” If he squints, he can make out a break in the canopy. “Should we follow it?”“We can’t survive out here forever,” Dixiong says. “They may not have much to share in a small village, but even if we find one, we can ask them more about where to go next.”It’s true enough, but Gege hums and considers the scene before them. “We’ll be even more noticeable in these uniforms, though,” he observes, plucking at the dark fabric on his own arm. “Unless there’s something to cover them with in the pod.”“Hm,” Dixiong murmurs, then ducks back inside. Gege follows him curiously, and finds him rummaging around in one of the compartments tucked under the console. He emerges again to hold out a small packet toward Gege. Taking it curiously, he unravels it to find a poncho—the kind meant for survival, a thin waterproof material that can reflect light or hold in heat as needed. It’s a drab grey, nothing particularly eye-catching. He pulls it over his head, then on second thought pulls at the fabric around his wrists until he finds the seals attaching the gloves, and pulls them away. They’ve continued to feel awkward on his hands, anyway, and if he needs them later, he can still bring them along.“Good thinking,” he says, nodding. “I’m sure there’s some other food in here. And while we’re at it, we could probably bring along a few parts…” He can feel Dixiong’s gaze on him as he reaches out to trace a hand along the outer shell of it. “The pod isn’t useless, after all. It would take us too long to move the whole thing, but some things we can surely trade for money or food, as long as we keep them light enough to bring with us.”Dixiong finally nods. “It’s good reasoning,” he says, and ducks down to start rummaging through the cabinets again.Gege follows him into the capsule, starting to work himself. He goes for the medical kit first, casting aside a few useless items, but keeping the kit itself intact. The same goes for the toolkit Dixiong had started with, then starts dismantling parts of the console.The work feels easy and familiar in his hands, taking off covers and rifling through the components until he finds a piece that catches his eyes. He doesn’t know exactly what’s guiding him, but he knows they’re useful. Soon he’s accumulated a small pile of junk to sort through and bring along.He’s working on the underside of one console when he finds the compartment.Well, “finds” is generous. It pops open as he’s trying to unscrew the casing around it and dumps its contents right onto his chest.“Ow,” he mutters. He sorts through it all, ready to set any useful parts aside, when the way that the device is shaped catches his attention. As soon as his fingers have wrapped properly around the grip, he’s sure that it’s a handgun.Probably just a weak stunner—it’s too small to carry much charge, but it seems to be in working condition nevertheless. It sits easily in his hand, too.Quickly, he slips it under his poncho, tucks it into the front lapel of his body suit where the fabric will hide the shape of it. He doesn’t look around. He can already hear Dixiong outside, working on the sensors the way he suggested.Piling together the materials they’ve collected doesn’t take long. Dixiong managed to uncover packs from somewhere in the escape pod, so Gege lets his strange instincts carry him through sorting out their finds until they can pack them away into easily carried loads that his instincts tell him will still be valuable.When he finally looks up from shouldering his pack, Dixiong has his head tilted as he watches. It’s hard to read him, even if Gege doesn’t think he seems suspicious. He just adjusts the straps of the pack and tilts his head right back. “What is it?”“Gege has a number of surprising talents,” Dixiong observes. “They surprise me just as much,” he admits. “And so do Dixiong’s. But maybe it means we’re closer to remembering something.”“Hopefully,” Dixiong says, his voice surprisingly quiet, as they finally start down the mountain.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
The hike to the road isn’t difficult, in the end. The trees are young enough that the undercanopy is still open and bright, but there’s not much undergrowth to make walking difficult. The slopes are steep enough that they have to go in switchbacks rather than making a straight line down, but they’re free to do so without getting snagged on branches and thorns.The path isn’t a true road, either, but it’s wide enough that vehicles must come along here occasionally. Dixiong chooses a direction and they set off along it. Maybe it’s not wise, but Gege doesn’t know what way is the right one.He lifts a hand under his poncho to make sure the handgun is still secure.It’s easy to forget about, though. The landscape is truly breathtaking, if a little lonely. The mist doesn’t clear up, but as they start to descend to lower altitudes, the trees are different colors—paler and paler, until they’re pink and cream. Once, as they’re crossing a ridge with a better view, Gege looks down and sees trees that are pure, ghostly white.“It’s like we’re walking on clouds,” he observes to Dixiong, whose response is to nod.They’re neither of them too talkative as they walk. They keep pace easily with one another, and although Gege can feel the hours in his limbs as they follow the path, he isn’t tired. It’s the sort of thing that should feel awkward, but that manages to feel companionable instead. After all, what could they say? They could review their circumstances endlessly, but that won’t change them, and there’s only so many ways to comment on the beauty of their surroundings.He does have questions, though none of them feel appropriate to ask of someone whose measure he does not yet have. Every so often he’ll steal a glance at Dixiong and that mask-like helmet. What does he look like under it? What does he think of all this?Dixiong doesn’t seem to notice or mind. His helmeted head turns occasionally to glance at the landscape around them, or toward the sound or rustling leaves or the occasional chirping cry of some sort of animal off in the forest. If he has any hesitations about his traveling companion or their situation, he hasn’t voiced any of them.“You’re quite the reserved type, aren’t you, Dixiong?” he says eventually.That gets the helmeted head turned toward him. “Am I?” he says, in a voice that Gege can tell is too guileless to be true even without being able to see the expression that must accompany it.“Nothing seems to phase you. Even as we were falling to earth, you were so collected.”“Hm,” Dixiong hums, his head tilting. “Gege compliments me. But I’m not that stoic.”“Oh? Why didn’t I notice this?” Gege asks, peering curiously at his companion.“Because you were in pain,” Dixiong says, grave.Gege blinks, struck momentarily silent. Now that he thinks about it, before he’d been knocked out to deal with the shock collar, he thinks he remembers a flurry of movement and a voice muttering curses. He doesn’t know what else happened, but Dixiong being that concerned… It leaves him just a bit flustered, thinking of it.“Oh,” he says, caught tongue-tied without knowing why.Silence rejoins them for a time, as Gege keeps his eyes down on the road and keeps his hands down by his sides so he doesn’t press them against his warm face.It starts first as a dim background hum, so light that Gege could mistake it for the hum of the wind through the trees around them. The leaves aren’t rustling, though, and the sound is growing slowly, steadily.He identifies the growing rumble as a vehicle just as Dixiong stiffens next to him.“Someone’s coming,” he says in a low voice.Gege nods. As one, they dart to the side of the road, retreating up the slope to a section where the shade of the trees and bare patches of dirt make it easier for them to conceal themselves. Carefully, Gege finds a gap in the trees that allows him a proper view of the road’s path along the mountain slope, and settles in to wait as the sounds gets louder, fading in and out as whatever vehicle it is works its way closer to them.“It’s moving in the same direction we are,” Dixiong notes.“Do you think we would have heard it if a ship came down from the atmosphere?” Gege asks, to which Dixiong only shrugs. He catches sight of a glint of metal first, coming around the mountain. It doesn’t take long for him to place the shape. “A hoversledge,” he says. Sure enough, it is, and a particularly beat-up looking one, more scratches and rust than paint and new metal. It hardly clears a meter above the ground, and every so often it tilts and wobbles as it goes over some bump or another in the dirt path. As it comes around another bend in the road Gege can see that the back is filled with bales and bags, some sort of crop or feed. The man driving it is dressed in worn clothing, and has the look of someone who’s spent a lifetime at hard work. A farmer, Gege guesses.“Shall we ask for directions, Gege?” Dixiong asks. He’s also leaning forward, examining the sledge as it starts coming closer.“You think it’s safe?”Dixiong shrugs. “There are two of us, and one of him.”“I hope it won’t come to that,” Gege says, as he makes his way back down to the road. Dixiong follows behind him with silent steps, and then they’re on the road once more.It still takes a while for the sledge to work its way closer, puttering along the hills and dips of the road in no particular hurry, but the man pulls it to a stop as he comes up by the two of them. He’s looking them over with a bit of a puzzled frown, but he doesn’t seem wary, which Gege takes as a good sign.“Hello, there! On your way to Puji Village?” the man asks.“Is that the village up ahead?” Gege asks.The man nods. “Did you not come through from the next town over?”“No,” Dixiong cuts in. “We’re in the mountains for a journey of… discovery.”A journey of discovery! Gege struggles to keep a straight face. Well, it’s true that they’re discovering plenty of things on this journey, and that there’s a lot more discovering left for them to do. In that sense, Dixiong certainly hasn’t told a lie! The farmer’s face clears. “Ah, the young masters are those types, then,” he says.Gege nods cautiously, darting a glance at Dixiong. He has no idea what kind of people “those types” are supposed to be, though he’s grateful that they’ve not been labeled as suspicious. He only hopes that it won’t come around to cause trouble for them.“How far is it to Puji village?” Gege asks, gesturing down the road.“A few hours’ walk, but if the young masters don’t mind sitting in the back, I can give you a ride,” the man says, waving toward the goods piled in the back of his sledge. “Otherwise, you won’t make it there until it’s dark.”“If you don’t mind the trouble, Uncle,” Gege demurs, but at the farmer’s cheerful insistence, he bows his head in thanks, and the two of them climb up into the back, and with a grinding hum, the sledge is off again.It’s not much faster than walking, and the sledge still bucks and dips along the rougher parts of the road, but the hay bales make for comfortable seats, and it’s nice to take a break from walking. Given a little time to think, Gege realizes that hunger has begun to gnaw on him a little. The farmer accepts one of the nutrient bars when offered, but Dixiong waves it off.“You keep it, Gege,” he says. “I’m not hungry.”“Let me know when you are,” Gege shrugs, and pulls away the wrapper on his own nutrient bar. The nutrient bar is exactly as tough and tasteless as he expected, but Gege takes tiny bites off of it and looks out at the view for a distraction from the monotony of chewing.He doesn’t dare talk too openly about their situation with the farmer in front of them, however polite the man has been to help them along their way, but he tries to meet Dixiong’s eye. It’s hard to tell if he’s managed it through that visor, though. Dixiong seems to have affected the air of a sleepy cat, from his casual sprawl against the hay bales.Gege settles himself down with his back against a sack. If Dixiong is going to rest, he might as well, too. He doesn’t intend to sleep, just relax. He keeps his hands curled in his lap under the poncho, and idly watches the branches of the trees as they arch overhead. The truck underneath him is vibrating faintly with the rumble of the engine. It’s just quiet enough that he can let it fade in and out of his attention.The leaves over his head are odd, splotchy things. Some of them are jagged, some of them are round, and all branch off from the thick red-orange. They make a messy picture against the soft backdrop of the misty sky.As vibrant as they are, Gege is sure they’d cast red light onto everything below them if the sun were shining. Nothing so harsh as the emergency lighting on the ship they just escaped from, of course, just a little glow. He wonders what colors he might have seen on that ship if he’d been able to make anything out. More green and black? Plain greys? If there were any symbols, he didn’t see them in his rush to escape.If he lets his eyes unfocus, he can think of the sky as a blank page, or maybe as a bulkhead. It’s a bit light in color for that, but it seems appropriate. The ship walls had lines painted in thick stripes down the side in some dark color. He thinks of those, imagines reaching out to touch them. The metal would be cool under his hand, and echoing with the faint vibrations of the ship’s systems. There were pipes overhead in that corridor, so maybe those would rattle occasionally. The entire hallway was narrow and close, not the smooth and polished surfaces and sophisticated panels of a main thoroughfare. Maybe some kind of maintenance hall?It occurs to him to wonder what he was doing in a place like that on a spaceship. He brushes aside the thought—it’s not as though he will remember just by prodding at it. The more he pokes at the gaps, the more unsettled he feels, the more the enormity of the world and his ignorance of it claws at his heart.No. Smaller things, he should focus on smaller things. Like the corridor. What would he see if he were to turn the other way? That’s something he must know. He closes his eyes, pictures the scene before him when he pushed himself to his feet, pictures looking down to see Dixiong’s still form, then turning to find…Blood.His heart jolts in his chest, and he only just manages to keep back a gasp. The red of the trees is vivid as splatters of paint against the sky above.Gege’s pulse flutters in his throat, and he swallows hard. He’d opened his eyes at the wrong moment, and saw the trees—As red as they are, he’d just mistaken them for—that’s all.“Gege?”He lowers his eyes to find Dixiong leaning toward him.“I must have nodded off,” he says, shaking his head and running his fingers through his hair in an attempt to pull it back from his face. It’s already come out of its braid. He combs it out then pulls the top few layers back into a loose topknot. There’s spare pieces of twine littered on the bed of the hoversledge, so he takes one of those to use as a tie. “I just startled myself awake, is all.”“Is Gege tired?” Dixiong asks.“We’re almost to the village,” the farmer offers. “There’s no inn, but if the young masters need a place to stay…”“Any place Uncle could recommend would be sufficient,” Dixiong says. He’s still got his helmet turned toward Gege, and the weight of his attention is impossible to ignore, even after Gege has fallen silent and turned away.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
The place they end up in is a little side house off the courtyard of the farmer’s family home. Well, house is giving it more credit than it deserves. It’s more of a little shed, barely equipped with solar panels and working doors.Clearly it’s been used for storage space, since they’re sharing the room with three portable heaters, a number of tarps, two hovercarts, and a stack of other odds and ends.It will be cramped with just the two of them, so Gege sets to moving the heating units to the side. It takes some effort to lift and stack them, but that’s fine. It gives him something to do, and a reason to stay quiet.He can still feel Dixiong’s attention on him.Really, he doesn’t know why that moment startled him so much. It was just a momentary trick of his eyes that had him seeing the tree leaves as blood, he knows that much, but for that brief moment it still set his heart racing.
Enough. Either I’ll start remembering, or I won’t. Worrying about it won’t help.
He turns around again to find that, sure enough, Dixiong is still keeping a careful shadow of him. “Ah, sorry to worry you! I startled myself waking up, there. It’s fine now, really,” he says, and pulls up a smile.There’s another moment of silence, before that helmet dips in a nod. “As long as Gege is feeling better, Dixiong says.“I am, I am!” Gege is quick to reassure. “We should finish cleaning up in here and sleep, shouldn’t we? We can ask around in the village tomorrow, and maybe try to sell some of that junk…”“Of course, Gege,” Dixiong says. Rather than move toward the piles of materials heaped around the edge of the room, though, he moves towards the door. Gege watches, baffled, until he sees him testing the frame, then the latch.“Do you not trust them?” he asks, frowning.Dixiong merely shrugs, and steps away again, apparently satisfied. “Better to know the kind of place we’re in. I don’t expect them to do anything,” he adds, apparently seeing Gege’s concern. “They seem harmless.”“They’ve been kind to us,” Gege sighs. “But I understand.”They lapse into silence for a little while longer, as they finish neatening up the place. By the time they’re finished they have a small table and a space cleared where they can unfold the cot that the room holds. As the afternoon dims to evening, they have to take another few minutes searching out a lamp, one that flickers fitfully every so often. Gege finds himself holding back a yawn, and Dixiong waves him toward the cot.“Aren’t you tired?” he asks, even as he drifts over toward it. His eyelids feel heavier and heavier, and the wound along his side aches, even though he’s sure the bandaging over it is doing well. He hadn’t thought himself that tired, but sitting down now, he feels like all of the energy has leached out of his limbs and into the ground. There’s a pressure building in his head, too, that threatens to become a headache.Dixiong must see him wince as he moves, because he’s looking at him again. “Gege, we should change your bandages,” he says.“I don’t know if they need changing…” he says, but he shrugs. “But we can check.”Shrugging out of the cloak is easy enough, and Gege uses the excuse of turning around to carefully slide the handgun out of his jumpsuit and wrap it up in the bundle.The patch over his side doesn’t look pink, at least—Dixiong applied it through the torn material, rather than stripping him. It was probably the best choice at the time, but now the bandaging sits a little awkwardly and the rip is larger, and Gege has to peel himself out of the left side of the jumpsuit anyway to expose the edges of the bandage’s adhesive strips so that Dixiong can get a proper look.In the dim light it’s hard to see much, but he can make out the faint lines of scars on his arms, his shoulders, down his chest. When he curls his arm up to his chest to keep it out of Dixiong’s way, he can feel the raised ridges of them. He shivers.“Cold?” Dixiong asks. Gege nods, unsure how to bring up the scars if Dixiong doesn’t. The autumn air is chilly, anyway. “I’ll keep this quick.”He braces himself as Dixiong peels away the bandage, which stings as it lifts away from his skin, but when he looks down, the injury seems to have scabbed over.“It looks better,” Dixiong confirms, then reaches through their first aid kit to pull out new ones. “It doesn’t hurt you, Gege?”“Not too much.” He holds still as the new bandages go on, then wriggles his arm back into the sleeve, eager to be covered again. There’s something awkward about being half-dressed when Dixiong hasn’t even removed his helmet. “If it’s scabbed over already, it should heal. It felt shallow in the first place, and the one on my face was just a scratch. Dixiong’s sure he’s not hurt?”“Very sure,” he says, nodding his helmeted head. “Gege should rest.”“What about you?” he asks, though he doesn’t protest. Despite the poking and prodding, he can still feel exhaustion creeping up on him, and has to hide another yawn.“I’ll give it a little while longer, Gege,” Dixiong says. “Don’t worry about me.”He’s hiding something, that much is obvious. But he’s not being suspicious in a way that makes Gege worry, so he passes it off. Maybe it has something to do with fear, considering the way he remains constantly vigilant, the way he refuses to remove that helmet of his.What does he know, Gege wonders, that has him afraid?But he doesn’t ask, not yet. He just arranges himself on the cot as Dixiong settles back at the table, and sneaks the gun back into the fold in his bodysuit. Then, using the poncho as a blanket, he lets himself drift off into sleep.-He’s not sure if he’s awake or not, for a while. He just… drifts. Sometimes he’ll open his eyes and see the dim interior of the shed. Sometimes it’s all just a fog. At one point, he thinks he can feel Dixiong nearby. At another point he’s sure that featureless black helmet is leaning over him. His eyes close before he can stop himself, and the next time he opens them again, Dixiong is gone.After a while, the background seems to lighten up again, as the mist of the surrounding mountains starts to creep in. It brings with it the drifts of autumn trees, in pink and cream and vivid, vivid red. The red fills more and more of his vision, and his perspective shifts. He’s no longer looking up, he realizes. He’s standing, he thinks, staring down at a floor that’s maybe red, maybe gray, maybe green. The emergency lighting is too intense to tell.It’s the hallway that he woke up in, he’s pretty sure, only he doesn’t think that Dixiong’s body is there. He’s not tripping as he walks down it, for one.But he’s not sure where he’s headed, either. He knows he’s moving, but he doesn’t seem to be going anywhere. All he knows is that he’s supposed to be following something. He’s being summoned. He needs to go…He doesn’t know. He’ll know when he gets there, he supposes. Someone is calling him, though, and it’s important that he get there before anything bad happens. Already, the collar around his throat feels like it’s pricking at his skin.If only the corridor weren’t so long, he thinks in anguish. He could make it if it didn’t keep stretching away from him like this. The caller is getting impatient, and he knows that it’s going to flip into anger soon.Sure enough, there’s a voice now, dark and angry, hissing at him from somewhere up ahead.
“Where are you, you useless fucking shitstain, you bootlicker pretty boy? Xie Lian, you bastard, come here! How the shitloving fuck did you get away, you worm? I’ll grind your face into mincemeat when I find you! My soldiers will haul you in by your toes! Do you hear me, Xie Lian?”
“Gege!”He—Gege—Xie Lian?—gasps himself awake. He’s shivering and panting, but his attempts to sit up are met with resistance that nearly has him panicking, before a familiar voice cuts through the haze of the dream.“Gege, you’re safe.”Dixiong’s voice close and soft, his hands are braced on Dixiong’s shoulders, who has him by the shoulders in turn. He’s still on the cot, though barely. His writhing must have nearly thrown him clear of it.He takes shuddering gulps of air, trying to calm down, and clings to Dixiong. His head is throbbing.“You were thrashing about.” One of Dixiong’s hands comes down to wrap around his shoulders, helping him to sit up now that he’s stopped flailing.“I dreamt… something,” he manages to say. His panting is slowing, with the arm wrapped around him to help center him. The dream is already fading away, mostly, but he remembers flashes of that corridor, of that snarling voice. “Dixiong, someone is coming after us.”He looks up, finally, and is startled to be met not with the smooth black of a helmet, but a face. Dixiong’s face is that of a pale and beautiful young man, though his hair is in disarray, tousled by Xie Lian’s struggles enough that it covers half of his face.He can’t look away.“Do you know where?” Dixiong asks. He’s frowning, now. There’s a tension in his one visible eye. “Or how?”“I don’t know,” he admits, finally tearing his eyes away. “He said something about soldiers.” He pats his chest to make sure the gun hasn’t slipped away during his thrashing, and sits upright. “He called me Xie Lian.”Dixiong’s entire body goes stiff. His mouth thins, and his eye narrows. In the dim light of their room, it glitters like a knife.“I don’t know how he knows it, but I know it’s my name,” Xie Lian says. “But I don’t think we can trust him. He was… I think he was the one who put the collar on me, Dixiong.”He might be babbling. He’s probably babbling. He forces his mouth shut, takes a deep breath through his nose.“I won’t let him find you.” Dixiong grabs his hand, squeezes it. His gaze locks onto Xie Lian. He thinks he could drown in the surety in Dixiong’s dark eye. “Right,” Xie Lian says, breathless. “We need to—we need to leave. We can’t let them find us here.”Stumbling and clumsy with sleep and the fading remnants of panic, Xie Lian gets to his feet. Dixiong pulls out their packs, and hands one off to Xie Lian. Xie Lian pulls out his gun.Dixiong does not look upset. “Good thinking,” is all he says.“I found it in the shuttle,” guilt compels Xie Lian to admit. “I’ll take point.”He’s only taken a single step out into the courtyard when he hears the scream.It’s coming from the main household, but there are more, and the sound of voices shouting angrily. Then—the sound of a blaster makes Xie Lian’s blood run cold. He doesn’t have to think, doesn’t even spare a moment. He just takes off toward the farmer’s main house.“Uncle!” he shouts, as he crashes through the door. It’s just about as sturdy as the door on the shed, which is to say that it isn’t at all. It only takes one kick to knock it down. It’s a small building, like all of the houses in this village, so he’s hardly past the entryway when he sees it. A solider, dressed in the same green-and-black uniform and shapeless black helmet that he and Dixiong wear, standing over the farmer and his wife, who are trying to cower away as best they can. There’s a blackened hole on the floor, two inches from the farmer’s foot.Xie Lian aims for the neck.It’s only a stunner, so Xie Lian darts over to hit a few pressure points after the soldier drops, just to make sure. Then he turns toward the two people still huddled on the floor.“Uncle, Auntie, are you all right?”They gape at him, before the man manages a nod. “We—they came in, and—““I understand. Go hide in the shed, we’ll take care of the rest of the village.”He steps away, already intent on leaving the room, and making his way to the other houses of the village, but stops at the sight of Dixiong there in the doorway, staring at him.“Do you need me to deal with him, Gege?” he asks.Xie Lian has to take a moment to readjust. “We… need to tie this one up,” he says, finally. Dixiong only nods and hunts out a length of cord.Between the two of them it doesn’t take long to hogtie the soldier. Xie Lian hesitates over the dropped blaster. It doesn’t look like much, just the sort of standard issue blaster that frontline troops are given, but he scoops it up anyway. He doesn’t trust the charge on his handgun to hold up for long, though stunning is much preferable to killing.Though, on second thought…“Dixiong,” he calls out, as they head out into the street again, holding out the gun. “Here, you ought to be able to defend yourself.”The other man turns toward him, and Xie Lian catches a glimpse of an eyepatch beneath that wild tangle of hair. Then Dixiong tilts his head and his hair falls over it again.“If Gege insists,” he says, tucking the gun into the crook of his arm. “Stay close.”There are more soldiers on the street. That’s the first thing Xie Lian sees—one soldier pulling a screaming child out of a house, with a second aiming a gun at a huddled mass of people.Xie Lian doesn’t give himself time to think. He raises the handgun and fires at the soldier looming over the townspeople, two quick shots in succession. The first he aims at the soldier’s hand, to numb the limb and cause any surprised jerk of reaction to send its shots wide of the cowering villagers. The second he aims at the exposed throat.The moment the shots are off he’s darting forward, ready for any sign of retaliation from the third soldier, but there’s a blur to his left, and when he turns he sees Dixiong pressing the soldier down with one knee against their back and his gun to their featureless helmet.“What shall I do with them, Gege?” Dixiong asks, pressing the gun harder against the soldier’s helmet, and pressing his other knee and free hand down on their hands to keep them still as they struggle. Behind Xie Lian, the villagers are screaming and milling away from them in a panicked swarm.“We need to question one of them,” Xie Lian says. “Of course, Gege.” He can see as Dixiong grinds the pinned limbs down, and taps the barrel of the blaster against the helm. “You. Listen up.”Xie Lian crouches down. The soldier really is pinned, but they go still when Xie Lian draws near, all the fight abruptly draining out of them.“Why are you here?”The soldier doesn’t twitch.“Why are you attacking these people?”Still, nothing. Xie Lian grabs their shoulder in a tight grip, digs his fingers in just shy of causing pain, and shakes.“Were you hunting us? Why? Shouldn’t we be on the same side?”Nothing, nothing, nothing. Xie Lian shakes them further, to no response. If they won’t answer, he and Dixiong will have to find another method to make them, but…“Gege!” Dixiong’s voice is a rasp. “They’re not breathing.” He releases the soldier’s limbs, which stay in place, and grabs at the helmet. A moment of fumbling releases it, then he tugs it away to reveal wide, blank eyes, already glazing over in death.