0.
Minors don't get the death penalty. It's inhumane. They tell you that, the smiling lawyers, like you're supposed to thank them. Like they're giving you good news. So you ask them what without parole means, and watch their faces go flat and grey. They don't look at you again after that.
You're fourteen, and the law decides you've lived enough, but it's a little late to drown you in a fucking sack of rocks in the river. Without parole sounds cleaner. Prison will kill you, or it won't.
Prison, like everyone else, learns that you're pretty fucking interested in living.
1.
A little water: too little, you think, as you count the bottles again. Damned ironic, to survive a fucking desert full of flying teeth and die of thirst in the lifeboat.
Although. You look at the power gauge again, at the uneasy yellow-green line flickering amid an array of blue. Water might be the least of your worries. Power cells don't like getting wet, apparently, or they object to crash landings. Or any number of other fucking indignities they've suffered: you think of what those cells have survived, and you're amazed they work at all.
The kid squirms in the seat next to you, trying for your attention. Old man, young kid, and you. You're all like the power cells: beaten, bounced, shorting out. Got a big long crack in your casing, filling your boot with blood. Yeah, it's fucking amazing any of you are working, either.
The kid gives up on squirming, goes for the direct approach. "You're bleeding." She sounds tentative for the first time since she asked you how to get eyes like yours.
You turn those eyes on her now. "No shit." You can smell the blood, sweet and coppery. Hers, yours, the holy man's. Theirs, but it's an alien tang and you're not sure you approve.
She's tough, the kid: she sets her jaw and glares at you. "We need to treat it."
"We? You a nurse, now? Or you think the holy man's a doctor?"
"Don't be an asshole, Riddick," she mutters, and you grin this time. She doesn't see: she's jumped out of her chair, and you can hear her banging around in the back of the skiff. Through it all the holy man prays, a constant stream of words in a language you don't know.
"Found it!" She's back, grimy hands locked on a yellowed, battered case. You can feel her smile on the side of your face like sunlight.
"Great." The line looks more yellow than green now, and you tap a cracked fingernail against the gauge. The light wavers, steadies. Yellow. Shit.
Jack leans past your seat, peers at the cockpit. "Not good, is it?" she murmurs. You can see her knuckles turning whiter than the first aid kit.
No point in lying. "Nope."
Too calmly: "We gonna die?"
Cells are draining, you're bleeding, and there's enough water for... shit, maybe a week, if everyone takes little sips. Dehydration, asphyxiation, hypothermia. "Yeah," you tell her, and when you hear her breath catch: "but not anytime soon."
"Asshole," she mutters again: two parts relief, one part exasperation. You don't argue when she reaches for your leg, when she peels the fabric off the wound with inexpert fingers. Don't hiss, when she dabs at the fresh blood. Don't curse, when she pours liquid fire into your flesh.
You just sit in your chair and stair at the yellow line and think about bottles of water and how cold it is out there with all those stars. Think about how far that water would stretch for one person, not three, and think about the shiv in your pocket. Snick, and no more clacking prayer beads. Snick, and no more adolescent fingers pulling at you.
You brace your hands on the sink and your feet on the toilet, and you stretch until your face appears in the corner of the glass. You expect to see a monster (why does she hate me must be a monster monsters are evil am I evil too), but you see only bruises and blood.
The real monster sleeps in the living room, wherever she falls. She finds you wherever you hide in the dark (under the bed, in the closet, and sometimes you just run), catches you and pulls you out into the light. And you scream and scream, when she leaves you breath for that, because you'd rather hear your own pain than listen to her.
Should've pulled the cord tighter. Should've buried you deeper. Should have dug you out with a coat hangar before you were ever born.
And then later, she comes and apologizes, hugs you and cries over your bruises and promises she'll stop. Other times she just looks at you, and you can't tell which of you she hates more.
You aren't sure who you hate more, either.
Should have left them planetside. You still don't know why you didn't, except that Carolyn came back for you. Shit. She died and left you her conscience, that's what's happened.
You snort, and Jack stops scrubbing at your leg with dry gauze. "Am I hurting you?"
"Nah," you tell her. "Just thought of something funny, that's all." She grins, another flash of sunlight that doesn't hurt your eyes.
You wonder how your new conscience will feel when the water runs out. And you wonder how bad things will get this time, when the dying starts.
2.
Jack's afraid.
It's funny: you'd know that smell anywhere, no matter how much blood or shit or sweat stink competes with it. Fear has a special sour tang. You learned the smell of your own first and hated it. You suppose it's an acquired taste, because it's like Paris' fucking Shiraz to you now. Carolyn, Johns, Jack, Imam. You've tasted them all, and savored them.
You stare at the line that's mostly orange now, and wonder if you did the right thing, leaving the heat on as long as you did. Too late now. Not enough power to go back, either, to the quick death on the planet. Maybe Carolyn got off best after all. You'd laugh, but you don't have the spit for it. And just when you thought God might have cut you a fucking break, too.
The holy man looks at the orange line, looks at the water, looks at you. Looks at Jack longest, and you suddenly can't taste his fear anymore. He retreats to his corner in a tangle of filthy robes, runs his beads through his fingers and his prayers past lips too dry to speak. Won't accept any more water, though Jack tries to make him take slivers of ice. Just prays, and drives you fucking nuts with those clacking beads.
Yeah, you smell Jack's fear, all right. Blends nicely with your own.
3.
The holy man goes first.
Not much noise on the skiff, and you notice the absence of one set of lungs doing its job. It's the quietest death you've ever attended, and it makes your ears ring.
So you shift in the pilot's chair, turn and look: lump of robes against the wall, dark fingers curled around beads that look like tiny skulls in the dark. He's smiling.
You wonder if he's found his God after all.
4.
Jack stares at you, hollow-eyed, and offers you the last chunk of ice with blue fingers. "You," she whispers in a voice like sand.
You know what you're supposed to say. She does too, but she offers anyway.
She doesn't look surprised when you take it. You expected something: shock, maybe, or hurt, or indignation. You stare at her, as the ice melts in your mouth, as water pools under your tongue. Green eyes, dull and scuffed, travel around your face. You imagine you can see Carolyn staring back, same look she had when they tore her away. And now the damned kid is doing it.
Not for you. Not again.
One day you brace your feet on the floor, and your hands on the sink, and you look straight ahead. Your eyes are flat and dark, and there is blood - yours, hers - mingling on your face. And then you see it, and you start laughing.
The monster laughs back.
And you know exactly who you hate.
You swallow, just a little, and lean forward. Take her jaw in your fingers, and pull her mouth against yours. She stiffens, pushes her hands flat against your chest, but you press and grind your lips against hers until hers slide apart. She stops struggling when she feels liquid trickle into her mouth.
First kiss, last kiss, only kiss. You look away from the light in her eyes.
5.
You almost don't hear it at first. Beep. Beep. Too quiet to be the ship's alarms, too steady to be your heart. You blink paper eyes at the panel, at an array of lights sliding to red like dying stars. One of them blinks back green.
Beep. Beep.
The beacon. Someone's heard you.
"Jack," you breathe. Your lips crack on her name, and you taste copper. Your tongue licks jealously at the moisture.
"Kid." You tighten your arms. Her body wrinkles - all rags and bones in the holy man's filthy robes, unresisting. Unconscious, then, not sleeping. Dying. You know that smell, too, from long association. Gonna be awfully quiet in here when it's just your breath for company. Was a time you'd have killed to be alone. You're way past laughter, but you feel a dry rattle in your lungs anyway. When God plays a joke this good, least you can do is show your appreciation.
Beep. Beep.
You watch the light flicker, and you wait for the punch line.