Chapter 2

Tha-thunk-tha-thunk-tha-thunk…

It was the first thing he heard as he slogged reluctantly back to consciousness. The first thing he felt. Gentle. Rhythmic. Comforting. It sank through his numb body and rattled his bones pleasantly.

Tha-thunk-tha-thunk-tha-thunk…

There were other things now, things beginning to prick vaguely at the corners of his mind. Things that he probably should start thinking about…maybe even worrying about. Things to remember. Things to find out.

Unpleasant things.

Tha-thunk-tha-thunk-tha-thunk…

The rumbling beneath him was not unpleasant though, and it went on and on, providing a soothing distraction for as long as he needed.

He let himself fall contentedly back into it.

"LET ME OUTTA HERE!" The scream pierced his pleasant daze like a lightning bolt. His eyes flew open and he raised his head instinctively, only to crack it painfully against some sort of metal bar.

"Ouch!" he whimpered groggily, reaching up to rub the back of his now aching head. His hand bumped against someone and he immediately received an elbow to the side.

"Don't touch me, Stick-Shift," the elbow's owner grumped.

He thought about correcting the man…something about the name didn't seem quite right, but he couldn't put his finger on it. He was dizzy and his head hurt and maybe he was wrong and that was his name. It didn't seem terribly important right then.

"Whaaagh….?" he moaned softly, all he could manage for a question right now. Maybe someone would understand it enough to answer it.

"If you're gonna barf, do it through the bars," the same voice said testily. "I already woke up in a puddle of someone's piss and that was bad enough. I don't need your half-used supper all over me too."

"Nrrghll…" Stick-Shift managed to reply. He didn't really feel like barfing. He didn't know what he felt like, but it wasn't that.

"Eh, shut up," the man next to him said, but there wasn't much venom behind his tone. He both looked and sounded defeated.

"I said let me outta here or I'm gonna thrash your hairy bandit butts!" came that same voice, the one that woke him. It was loud, but distant, and Stick-Shift raised his head curiously, looking for the voice's owner.

"Doesn't sound like your girlfriend is very happy about things, 'Stick," came another voice. This one belonged to a squat fellow with a scraggly beard. He looked at Stick-Shift with the same expression that had been on the man next to him. Mild contempt being swallowed by a sea of grim resignation.

"I have a girlfriend?" Stick-Shift wondered aloud. "Does she have big boobs?"

"Man, you're still really loopy from the gas," the bearded man said. Stick-Shift decided to call him Gimli. "You'd think that stupid mask would protect you some, but you've been sleeping longer than any of us."

Stick-Shift started struggling to get up on his hands and knees, a growl rising in his throat. Those sounded like fighting words to him.

"Hey cool it, Flesh-Stick," Gimli told him. "We've got bigger things to worry about."

Flesh-Stick. Flesh-Stick! That was it! That was the right name! His anger was forgotten immediately in favor of an almost overwhelming feeling of elation.

"I'm Flesh-Stick!" he said triumphantly to the man beside him, the one who had gotten his name wrong.

"You're annoying," the man replied, shifting a bit so he was facing away from Flesh-Stick.

"Yeah, well…you…you…you have HERPES!" Flesh-Stick shot back.

"Hey, not so loud!" the man said

Flesh-Stick ignored him and turned toward the bars behind him. Made of thick steel, they crisscrossed so tightly he doubted he'd be able to get much more than a hand through them. The tiny openings between each crisscross revealed an uninteresting desert landscape racing by outside. Rocks and cesium cacti and a smudge of mountains in the far distance. The sun hovered several handspans above them, which meant it was still Morning.

"Where're we going?" he muttered softly, not really expecting an answer. Even he knew that the question was pointless.

Gimli answered anyway. "Who gives a shit where we're going?" he said miserably. "They can take us to the goddamn moon for all the difference it makes. We're fucked no matter no matter where we end up because we know what's waiting for us at the end."

"What?" Flesh-Stick asked, the brief image of a flying Space Train giving way to more pressing concerns. "Is it a monster?"

"No, you dumb fucker!" said Herpes. "Hyperion nabbed us! We're guinea pigs! Lab rats! We're as good as dead right now!"

Slowly, several fragmented ideas began to make tenuous connections within Flesh-Stick's brain. Hyperion had them. Hyperion was where he and the rest of his crew used to send their captured prisoners. Herpes said they were all going to die by being turned into guinea pigs. Or rats.

"Hyperion's gonna…experiment on us…and turn us into rodents…and that'll kill us?" he said hesitantly.

"Eh, close enough," Herpes grumbled.

"I'm surprised you couldn't figure all this out on your own," said Gimli. "Didn't you used to send people to Hyperion for experiments?"

"Yeah, but not us," Flesh-Stick replied. He was so confused. "We're not supposed to be the experiments!"

"Yeah right," said a new voice. Flesh-Stick turned his head toward the new voice and saw a man he vaguely recognized glaring at him. A man with bright green eyes and scraggly gray hair. Flesh-Stick vaguely remembered that the man had held a position of authority back at the camp. Not the leader, but one of his cronies, perhaps.

"You're full of shit, 'Stick!" Gray Hair spat. "I heard you yelling 'Go Hyperion!' during the battle!"

"Wha-?" Flesh-Stick squeaked. Had he done that? He could barely remember the battle. "No! No, I didn't!"

"Bullshit!" Gray Hair snarled. "You sold us out, didn't you?"

"No!" Flesh-Stick protested again. That couldn't be right. If he'd sold the others out, why would he be here with them?

"Guess they must've double-crossed you," Herpes said, as if reading Flesh-Stick's mind. He couldn't do that, could he? Flesh-Stick had a wild urge to start thinking Herpes's mother is a whore! over and over again to see if the man reacted, but the venomous look in the Bandit's eyes told him that he might have more important things to worry about. It frightened him.

"Yeah, why pay you when they could just grab you and add another lab rat to the pile?" Gray Hair said, with a great deal of satisfaction in his voice. "Can't say I'm sorry."

Maybe Gray Hair wasn't, but the look of murderous rage on his former comrade's face told Flesh-Stick that he was about to be very sorry. He backed up instinctively and cracked his head on the metal bars he'd forgotten were behind him.

His yelp of pain choked off as Gray Hair seized him by the throat. Flesh-Stick struggled for both air and his freedom, but the other Bandit held fast, pinning him against the bars. "What do you say, boys?" Gray Hair said loudly to the others, although his eyes never leaving Flesh-Stick's. "Should we rip out his liver and make him eat it?"

"Not his liver," said Herpes, sounding eager. "How about his dick instead?"

"I like it!" said Gray Hair with a laugh. "Of course, if we do that, we'll have to change his name from Flesh-Stick to No-Stick." He grinned at Flesh-Stick. "How does that sound, 'Stick? You want a new name?"

"No no no no no no…" Flesh-Stick managed to croak with what little air he was able to get into his lungs. He squirmed helplessly, terror drowning out almost everything else, but somewhere, a lone fragment of his mind had made a connection between the dick-talk and an idea, and miraculously, it was able to push through the rest of the chaos and issue his body a single command.

"Look, he's learning his new name al-ACK!" Gray Hair's taunting ended in a scream as Flesh-Stick planted his booted foot between Gray Hair's legs with a single, solid kick.

Flesh-Stick fell to the floor of the car, breathing in great gasps, as Gray Hair dropped him to clutch at his crotch. Flesh-Stick twisted to his knees, just managing to dodge Herpes and another Bandit as they lunged at him. He dove between Gray hair's legs and heard a grunt as his two pursuers collided with his would-be mutilator.

He tried to push his way further into the car, but it was packed with his former comrades, barely allowing enough room for everyone to sit down. Flesh-Stick jumped over an unconscious Bandit, then pushed between two men who must have overheard his conversation with Gray Hair, because they tried to stop him. Flesh Stick pulled sharply away as one of them grabbed at his arm. He avoided being snatched, but his forward momentum overbalanced him and he went down with a cry, smacking his chin against someone's knee. He felt more hands reach for him and tried to crawl desperately away. He made it a few more feet before colliding with another set of bars. He'd reached the back of the car.

Hands seized him and tried to pull him back. He grabbed the bars in a death grip and fought with all his strength, but he knew it was only a matter of time before they overpowered him. It was him versus everyone else in the car, after all.

That wasn't what made him let go of the bars, however. No, it was the shock of seeing a familiar face suddenly appear at the bars of the car in front of his. Blond hair, rosy cheeks, blue eyes that looked like they hadn't known sleep in several periods. Eyes that flew wide in recognition, the same way his own did.

That little shit. That fucking bitch. That stupid fucking piece of fucking shitfuck!

She stared back at him from a car that was otherwise empty. She had bruises on her cheek and blood on her fingers. There was both anger and fear in her eyes, but they rapidly replaced by surprise.

"YOU!" both of them said at the exact same time.

Then she was gone as he was whisked away by several sets of hands, dragged back into the middle of the car where his attackers waited.

And yet, for a moment, he felt no fear. Because the sight of her face had torn through the veil of confusion he'd woken up to, and memories of the battle came flooding back.

No, all he could feel was absolute triumph.

They had caught her. They had caught the little bitch!

Go Hyperion…

Then Gray Hair seized him once again. Gray Hair, who Flesh-Stick now recognized as a high-ranking Bandit named Bloody Gary. He slammed Flesh-Stick against the bars once more, while two other Bandits seized his arms and two more knelt down and held Flesh-Stick's legs in place. There would be no trying the same trick twice. As the three of him held him in place, Flesh-Stick suddenly found he could feel fear again.

"Where did you think you were going?" Bloody Gary asked with a snarl.

"It's not my fault…." was all Flesh-Stick could whimper. Now that he remembered the battle, he knew that his yelling "Go Hyperion" had nothing to do with betraying anyone.

"Shut the fuck up," Bloody Gary said quietly, his voice full of venom. One of his hands left Flesh-Stick's throat and traveled down the length of his belly, his nails raking red trails across his tattooed skin. Flesh stick drew in his breath sharply and waited for the hand to start digging for his liver. Or worse.

"Wait!" shouted "Gimli," who Flesh-Stick now recognized as a dour Bandit named Rusty Razor. "Don't kill him!"

"Oh, fuck you, Rusty!" roared Bloody Gary. "This shithead isn't getting away with selling us out!"

"He won't," said Rusty coldly, as Flesh-Stick tried to protest his innocence again and got a knee to the stomach. "Hyperion'll come up with much worse tortures for him than anything we could think of."

Bloody Gary hesitated, clearly torn. "It would be nice to see him get a taste of his own medicine," he finally admitted. "But…I still really want to thrash the shit out of him."

"Who says we can't?" said Rusty, with an uncharacteristic grin. "We'll just have to make sure we don't kill him. There are plenty of other things we can do to him."

A multitude of eager voices expressed their agreement, and what seemed like just as many hands began to reach for him.

Flesh-Stick began to scream.

And through the din, he thought he heard her voice scream back.