"What..."

He flicked his hand at her good-naturedly. "Shush. Anyway, when I say I 'discovered' Piper I mean it literally. You see, every now and again the 'sleeping quarters', and I use the term as loosely as possible, got too damn crowded for the upper echelons, and they did some pruning."

Fauna blanched. "Is it too much to hope that you mean that in the gardening sense?"

G didn't seem to notice the half-hearted joke. His expression had closed up again and his voice was... far too unconcerned.

"Pruning could happen at any time of the day and night and consisted of a bunch of higher-ups stomping in with guards and dragging off a bunch of prisoners, mostly because they were tired and weak-looking, but sometimes just because someone didn't like their face. Usually, said prisoners were never heard from again. The official line was that they were shipped off to other camps, but even the M's weren't stupid enough to believe that."

"M's?" She almost whispered the question. It didn't seem... right, to interrupt.

But he answered, his tone still determinedly untroubled. "Mentally deficient. The retards and nutjobs, as the guards liked to call them.

"The semi-regular meals I'd been getting meant that I never looked weak, and I was always nice and polite to their faces so I wasn't too worried that they'd grab me on impulse. Enough people knew that I could get things that others couldn't, however, for me to be just a bit apprehensive about someone pointing me out. Of course, since half the guards were making deals with me as well, it was doubtful that they'd let anyone squeal. Still, I spent pruning sessions watching people like a hawk and being..." He hesitated fractionally. "Let's say, excessively paranoid."

"During this particular session I was ultra-excessively-paranoid because of my recent close call, so I began to realise something odd. I was watching the whole room, all except for one corner. It was like my eyes kept sliding away from it, like my brain kept telling me that the corner wasn't important. This piqued my curiosity, of course, and I summoned up my willpower and tried to force my eyes to look and my brain to register. There was Piper, sitting pressed into the corner playing a soft tune on what looked like a small flute. No one was paying him the slightest bit of attention, guards and higher-ups included.

"I was astonished. More than astonished, I was damn impressed. Minor mind-control using music? Seriously, how cool was that? I had to talk to this guy.

"When the guards were gone and things had settled down, I sidled over to where he was curled up on his mattress-sack, and I tapped him on the shoulder and said, 'Okay, you've got to tell me how you did that.' He nearly jumped out of his skin, and turned and glared at me as if I was the devil himself. I knelt on the edge of the bed and I softly told him how I'd seen what he was doing, and he then proceeded to spend half an hour flatly denying everything."

Fauna intercepted tentatively. "I guess you couldn't blame him."

"Oh, I wasn't blaming him in the least. It was every man for himself in the camps, and for all he knew I might be about to rat him out to the guards. It took all my persuasive skills to convince him that I wasn't, that I was seriously interested in what he'd been doing, and that I wanted to work with him. When I finally did convince him, he sat back and gave this challenging look and said, 'Okay fine, just one more thing. You do see the letter I'm wearing, don't you?'

"I said, 'Sure. What, you're going to say they made a mistake?'

"And he said, 'they didn't make a mistake, and I'm not going to pretend to be sorry if you want my help. I don't have any reason to be sorry.'"

Fauna blinked. "That was kinda brave of him under the circumstances, wasn't it?"

"Brave or stupid, I'm sure you could make a case for either."

"So why do it? I mean geez, I would have just taken any help I could get. I know damn well some people are appalled by the fact that I sometimes sleep with women, but I wouldn't have tried to make any conditions in those circumstances."

G blinked at that. "Ah. You're..."

"It's not so much of a problem in my world." She looked vaguely apologetic. "I mean, it's a problem, but not the extent that... No one's looking to lock me up. Well, not for that, anyway."

He looked deeply sceptical. "In your world."

"Yes, in my world. I'm not insane, okay!"

"Uh-huh."

"Look, don't believe me if you want. It's not like I can do anything to prove my word. Just... I just wanted to know why he did it, that's all."

G stared at her for a few more seconds, and then he shrugged and tried to explain. "Okay. Fine. The thing was? In the camps they took away everything. Your possessions, your time, your dignity. But your pride and conviction? They tried to take them, they really did. But sometimes you felt like you had to hold onto them, because they were all you had left."

"Even if it killed you?"

"Better to die on your feet than live on your knees."

"You really believe that?"

"What me? Oh god no. But I can safely say that Piper does. I think it was what kept him going."

"Oh. Um. So, what did you say to him?"

He shrugged. "Oh, I smiled at him and went, 'I hate it when people try and hide that shit. Let's you and me team up.' So we did.

"He told me his story over the next few nights. I swapped my bed to one next to him and we hissed at each other as quietly as possible until we fell asleep from exhaustion. His name was Hartley Rathaway, he came from a family that was rich, and he hadn't been here long, which is why I hadn't really noticed him up until now. Well, that and the music.

"His parents had influence and they'd kept him out of the camps for as long as they could. He'd always been too much of a rebel though, and he just wasn't putting enough effort into hiding the fact that he loved men. In the end, they couldn't do anything more to keep him from being carted away. He suspected it was a family friend that had dobbed him in. Ain't high society grand?

"Before the camps he'd been fascinated with sound and had been making real breakthroughs in the area of sonics, especially on the effects of certain tones on the human brain. Like me, he was damn smart. Like me, he was a tinkerer. Like me, he had very little to work with in the camps. He had managed to cobble together the flute, however, and had managed to use it to get the guards to leave him alone."

"Not to try and escape?"

"Nah. It wasn't powerful or intricate enough to do that, and it was too unpredictable to use in an escape attempt. I mean, I'd seen him without trying too hard, so it stood to reason that anyone who was especially alert would probably spot that something was up. Not to mention that the gates and fences were all locked and electrified, and no shabby little flute was going to help with that.

"So he kept that guards away whenever he could. He didn't know what else he could do with no parts and no tools. Plus, his background hadn't prepared him for the workload and he was exhausted at night; too exhausted to think about doing anything but surviving.

"'Okay,' I said. We've both been holding on our own. Together we should be able to get the hell out of here, right?

"We started to plan. Firstly, he promised that if I stuck by him when the guards came in for the pruning I'd be fine. In return, I told him that I'd get him something more to eat, something to get his strength up. I told him about the parts and bits and pieces I'd been hoarding as well, and he got excited and outlined an idea he'd had.

"He was thinking about making a bomb. Now, I hadn't entertained the idea because the explosives shed was the one place in the camp that was just too well guarded for me to get into. Piper's idea for a bomb was a little different from the conventional, though. He wanted to make a sonic bomb. He figured that if he had a power supply and the right parts, he could make something that would escalate throughout all the sonic frequencies until it shook itself and everything around it apart. If we could get it to work and set it on the camp's fence, it would take a huge part of said fence out when it went off. He figured that if we could make a series of the bombs, we could set them throughout the camp and set them off as distractions to get the guards away before the big one on the fence went off, then we could make a run for it in the confusion.

"Some people would dismiss an idea like that as insanity, but I've always been an open thinker. I was also smart enough to understand the principles he was describing and they seemed sound. The hitch, of course, was getting the parts. The camp had plenty of workshops, and some of the stuff I was pretty sure I could get fairly easily. Things like batteries, however? Not so easy. A strict inventory was kept on power sources - they were too likely to be useful to the prisoners. We were stumped on that angle.

"Still, the very fact that we had a plan that was slowly being put into action was comforting to the both of us. The work was just as hellish as usual, but I was feeling almost cheerful. I won't lie, either, having someone to talk to that I at least marginally trusted was good."

"Only 'at least marginally'?"

"Sweetheart, this was the camps. I told you, it was every man for himself. At that stage I trusted him to a point, but if he'd given me up to protect himself, I wouldn't have been surprised. I wouldn't even have blamed him. If I hadn't decided that I needed the skills he had, I'd never have even approached him. As far as I was concerned, a breakout attempt was much safer with as few people knowing about it as possible. It was why I always tried to keep relations with the people in my sleeping quarters on a strictly business level. Knowledge was dangerous, and emotions doubly so."

"So when did you change your mind?"

"That was a bit later. For now I was still wary and so was he. It was only sensible.

"We had to sacrifice some precious sleep time to start putting together the prototype bomb. Piper taught me the trick to his flute and we took it in turns playing the 'we're not interesting' tune and putting it together in the light of a candle I'd swiped from an officer's hut. It would have been faster for us both to work on it together, rather than having one playing and one constructing, but as I said, we were paranoid, and not without good reason. We hid the whole thing under a loose floorboard under Piper's bed when we weren't working on it and crossed all of our fingers that it wouldn't be discovered. That'd be a quick trip to an open grave.

"We were dead on our feet in the daylight, but hope gave us surprising amounts of strength. After a couple of months, I'd managed to steal or bargain for most of the parts for the prototype and some spares beside. The only real problem was the battery packs we needed, so when the opportunity came for me to get at least one, I jumped for it. In retrospect that may not have been such a great idea, but unfortunately, hope was also making me a little less wary.

"The guards had apparently decided that my good behaviour meant that I could be trusted to clear a bunch of broken parts from the mechanical workshops. I couldn't believe my luck when I saw the battery pack just sitting on one of the benches and I couldn't possibly let the opportunity slide. I hid it in the junk I was hauling out in a wheelbarrow and got out as quickly as possible, then I stuffed it under the steps of one of the temporary houses that were being used by some of the guards. I figured I could come and get it later."

"So what happened, someone found it?"

"Oh no, no one found it. We even managed to retrieve it a while later. What happened was, someone realised it was missing. I told you that stuff was inventoried. They figured out the approximate time it disappeared and figured out who'd been in the workshop. Luckily it wasn't just me; there were a good few people who'd been in and out. They gathered up all the suspects and demanded someone confess, and when no one did they took people aside and started persuading with metal batons."

"Shit."

"Pretty much. The guards were... Look, I did meet some guards that genuinely seemed okay individually. I don't know what the hell it is about human nature that makes people sink down to the worst level and turn into raging psychos when they get into mobs, but..."

"They were bad?"

He gazed at her. "The thing was, I knew these guys. I hated some of them, true, but I'd made deals with them. I knew them, and everything had been going so damn well up to now and...

"They ground me into the floor and kicked me in the face. They hit my legs with the baton so hard I couldn't stand." He twisted his eyes from hers and scowled at the wall. "They spat on me. And they laughed while they were doing it. In the end I just curled up and prayed for it to stop. I don't pray, ever, but I prayed then."

G stared the wall for a few more seconds, absent-mindedly rubbing a scar that was just visible under his arm sleeve. He continued, "They finally dumped me back in the sleeping area when they'd determined that they weren't going to get anything out of me. I was lucky to get off with what I did. I might have been killed, after all.

"None of the other prisoners wanted to go near me when I got back. They knew I'd been in trouble and they didn't want to be seen as an accomplice, didn't want to get the same. I didn't blame them; I must have looked appalling. I could feel my eye puffing up, the blood trickling down my face. My ears were still ringing and the world looked like someone had bled all the colours out of it. I wanted to throw up; I wanted to faint, and I've no idea how I managed to not do either. And the worst thing? Was that everyone was staring at me out of the corner of their eyes and pretending that I wasn't there. I was curled up against the wall, covered with dirt and blood and spit and no one would even look at me.

"And then Piper stepped forward.

"He ignored the scared looks from everyone else and helped me to my bed. He tipped a little of his water ration onto his shirt and made a passable attempt to clean me up. And then, while others just stared, he leaned over and gently, ever so gently, hugged me. Nothing sexual about it, and nothing childish. Just a hug. Just a token gesture of human contact, of human comfort, in a place where there was little of both...

"I really started to trust him after that. I couldn't make myself not.

"Days turned into weeks before we got back to the plan. I was in a shitty condition and it took that long for me to heal, plus there was the fact that we'd called attention to ourselves and our paranoia had gone into overdrive.

"I stayed in the same dorm, but got transferred to a work team in the camp instead of in the quarry, so the guards could keep a closer eye on me. Which was good in one way because the work wasn't as hard and I was hurting, but bad in the fact that now the only time we had to talk to each other was at night. We were reluctant to do even that at first. I wouldn't ever have taken it back, but the other prisoners had seen Piper's hug and they were now realising how much time we spent together. I'm sure they thought we were sleeping together, though how they thought we could possibly get the privacy to do that in the cramped dormitories I don't know. Not to mention the fact that even with the extra food I managed to scavenge we were both borderline starving. That doesn't do a lot for your sex drive, trust me.

"In any case, we were both worried that someone would make a fuss about it to the guards, so we moved away from each other for a while."

"What would the guards do if they thought you were together?"

"Maybe nothing. Maybe..."

"Maybe?"

"Let's just say that some of the guards gave the 'faggots' special treatment. After all, they liked it, didn't they?"

"...Oh."

"It wasn't all of the guards, just the really sick ones, when they decided they needed some 'entertainment'. They took them late at night; dragged them from their sleep. Sometimes you didn't even hear it; all the P's learned pretty quickly that screaming just made it worse."

She stared at him. "I..."

G looked at her calmly. "Question?"

She bit her lip. "Piper was a..."

"Fauna?"

"Uh...yes?"

His gaze was utterly emotionless. "Don't finish that sentence."

She closed her eyes briefly and shuddered "I... yes."

And once more, he continued.

"Piper used his flute and retrieved the battery pack as soon as we dared to step outside. A few weeks later we finally got the nerve to start back on the prototype. A few days later? We thought we had it down.

"Now obviously we couldn't test the device, but Piper did cycle it through a few frequencies and everything seemed okay. We figured that now that we had the prototype bomb, we could use some of the parts I'd hoarded to make a few more for distractions; we weren't going to get a foot out of the camp with all the guards' attention on us. There didn't seem like much chance of getting another battery pack, so we sketched out ideas for how we could wire the devices together. After all, we were planning the breakout at night, so it was doubtful that anyone would notice some thin wires running down the corridors between the dormitories, or even through the guttering system. At least not until it was too late; we only had to disguise them until the bombs went off, after all. Yeah, we thought we it down.

"Then it all went to hell, when Piper didn't come back from the quarry one night."

"Oh."

"Yeah. Oh. At first I thought he might have done something wrong that earned him a beating, but then I talked to a couple of others from his work group, and they told me it was worse. He'd been carted off to Dr Amar's late that afternoon.

"The good Doctor... he was the guy that people at the camps had nightmares about. He was a fairly new arrival; had settled in just a few months before, but already he was hated by even the guards. Dr. Amar was there to do medical experiments using people from the camps as test subjects. Technically all of his experiments were supposed to be strictly regulated, but in practice? He was allowed to do whatever the hell he wanted. And what he wanted was...

"I only peeked into his building once during my late night trips, and after what I saw there, I never went back.

"Usually when the doctor wanted test subjects, he took them from people who'd just been pruned, and he took at least a couple at a time. I was baffled as to why he'd drag Piper away on his own from work, but I had a terrible feeling that it couldn't have been for anything good. As soon as night fell I was straight out over the rooftops, and over to his building. Piper was locked in the back, part of what had originally been a bathroom block until the doctor had decided that his building needed some cells. The guards had fulfilled his request by yanking out the showerheads and plumbing, and by the judicious application of a lot of metal bars over every opening. There was a window up near the roof, so I hooked onto the gutter and hissed to him urgently. Luckily--and surprisingly--he was still alive and had all his vital organs."

"He must have been terrified, though."

"He was. Because he knew what the Doctor was planning to do to him tomorrow.

"See, he had a secret that he hadn't told me, hadn't told anyone in the camps. He'd been born deaf."

"What?"

"It was news to me too, though it did help explain the whole sound obsession. Piper had been deaf for the first three years of his life, until his parents managed to fling enough money at the problem to fix it. His ears were filled with micro-robotics, millions of dollars worth. Despite a cursory medical check when he first landed at the camp, no one realised the reason for his excellent hearing until Dr. Amar did a review of the camp medical records. The Doctor would never normally be able to get his hands on technology that innovative, and he was quite willing to personally extract it for the sake of science. It didn't seem likely that he'd care if his patient lived or died and, hey, none of the higher-ups would ask any questions about it. Piper would just disappear like hundreds of others had. He was out of time.

"We were out of time. All of our planning and it'd come to this. Eight hours till dawn, and then there was no way to stop the inevitable. Then Piper was dead."

"And you couldn't let that happen."

"We had talked about this, you know. We were living in the camps. We knew what the deal was. We knew there was a chance that one of us wouldn't make it. We'd talked about it and we'd agreed that if one was caught and the other wasn't, the free one should leave the other behind. We weren't some stupid romantic kiddies. There was simply no point in both of us getting killed if there was a chance for one to survive. And I...

"He told me to leave him and I did, because we'd talked about it, and I was a sensible person, and I needed to look out for number one and...

"I grabbed the bomb, and his pipe, and a coil of wire from where we'd hidden them, and I went back. I couldn't leave him. I physically couldn't do it." He looked at her ruefully and shook his head. "I didn't even know why, but I couldn't.

"Desperation had given me an idea. It was crazy, and not at all safe, and it was likely that we'd both end up dying from it instead of just him, but hey, you have to go sometime, right? I placed the bomb first, though I didn't set the timer on it yet. I set it at the base of one of the guard towers, and then I scaled the rooftops again, went back to Piper, and threw him his pipe through the window."

She bit her lip and smiled slightly. "What was his reaction?"

"Well, there was the shock at first, and he was understandably a little put out that his noble sacrifice was going to be ignored in favour of a plan that was iffy at best, but he didn't argue too much. I mean, come on, would you? Me, I wasn't letting myself think about it. I'd made a decision, it was quite possibly a pretty shitty decision, but I was afraid that if I let myself think about it I'd lose the adrenaline that was keeping me going. There was no going back, for either of us.

"I told him to start playing his pipe the moment I finished securing the wire to the window. See, the bars that had been put in were fairly sturdy, but the concrete they were set in wasn't. Turning the block into cells was a patch job, after all. If I pulled from the ground, I was hoping that I could get enough leverage to yank one or two of the bars out; then I could use the wire to pull Piper through the window. It'd be a tight squeeze for him, and I'd have to keep out of sight of the guards on the ground, but it was just about possible and more likely to succeed than sneaking through Dr Amar's heavily guarded buildings. Of course it was going to make a hell of a racket, but that was where the Piper came in. Hopefully the 'don't look at me' music would work to deflect any attention for just long enough."

"So, did it work?"

"Surprisingly well, for all that. A few guards wandered near, but they wandered away again when they heard the music. I slid to the ground and pulled with all my body weight, and with a few minutes of effort I shifted the bars. Nearly killed myself when the second one went flying towards me, but by then I was so hyped up, I had the reactions of a hummingbird. Piper wasn't much of an athlete, but he was desperate, and I managed to manhandle him out without breaking his neck. He wasn't a good enough acrobat to use the rooftop method to navigate the place though, so we used a bit of music to avoid the guards."

"I still don't get how you were planning to get out though. You still had only one bomb, right? If you blew up the fence without any distractions beforehand, the guards would just come running straight there."

"Dead right. So we did something else. Remember back when I said that the only way I could see of getting out was to tightrope over twenty feet of phone line in full sight of one of the guard towers?"

"Uh-oh."

"I didn't put the bomb near the fence, I put it on the fuse box near that guard tower. They did have back-up lights they could hook up, but hopefully it would give us just enough time to get across in the dark before someone saw us. Hopefully, anyway.

"Piper was appalled when he heard what I'd planned, and I can't say I blamed him. Hell, walking a slack cable on a relatively windy night in pitch-blackness over an electric fence and then getting down safely was going to be difficult enough for me, and I was an expert. He could barely be called an amateur. He was scared witless. I wasn't much better." G sighed. "But there were seven hours until dawn, and certain death. Neither of us had any choice; we had to do this. So we set the bomb, and we climbed up the phone tower, and we waited."

"Even when we knew it was coming, the almighty screech the bomb gave almost sent us off the edge. It worked, thank god. The lights on the tower went dead, and guards started shouting, and we whispered hollow encouragements to each other and started to walk. Piper held onto my shoulders in abject terror, and I did most of the balancing. Even today I can't believe we actually made it across. We were literally inching over, not daring to go any faster. Piper was shaking the cable with each step and I nearly pulled us both off at least twice. The wind wasn't actually that bad, but when you're up that high on something that thin, even a gentle breeze is a complete nightmare. Still, we blanked out the shouts and sounds of panic behind us, and we walked, and after an eternity, we reached the phone pole and got the hell down as quickly as possible.

"Then the lights started up again, and the shouts intensified, and we ran like hell.

"I swear we were so damn close to cover when one of the searchlights spotted us. They tried to shoot and couldn't get a bead on us at that range, but that just meant that they were going to send out search parties to try and pick up the escapees. I remember being so fucking angry at that. So damn close, and now they were going to hunt us like rabbits. That's great if you're in any shape to run like a rabbit." He kicked at a sewer pipe. "Crap if you're tired, starved and cold.

"There was a river... well, a creek really, winding a mile away from the camp. Coincidentally, a mile was all we could run, even on pure adrenaline. The night was cold, and the water was worse, but there were reeds near the riverbank that we could hide in, and Piper pointed out that being in the water would also help disguise us if they were using heat detectors. Even so, it was only when I heard them coming that I forced myself in.

"I have never been as cold as I became that night, not before or since. When the first search party came we forced ourselves almost completely under, with only our noses and mouths out of the water and hidden amongst the reeds. Their flashlight skimmed right over us and it was frankly a miracle that we weren't seen. When the first party passed we pulled our heads above water and headed downstream, and it was agonising going. We were shaking with cold, pulling ourselves against the current and then dragging ourselves over to hide in the reeds when another search party came close. After a while we had to stop every few minutes and cling to each other for warmth, just sitting there, curled together in the water, trying desperately to keep from going completely numb from the cold. Soon even that wasn't holding back the chill and we were beginning to panic when we finally saw the farmhouse. We knew that making a break for there was a hell of a risk; we also knew that we were going to freeze to death if we didn't.

"We checked to make sure the lights of the search teams were a reasonable way away and then we stumbled out of the water and half-walked, half-staggered towards the farm. We knew damn well not to hope for help from anyone in the building. Anyone who lived this close to the camps would have to be blind not to know what was happening there. How could we possibly trust them? All we were going there to find was a hiding spot, preferably one that was warm. We were lucky, god we were lucky. The farmhouse was old and the basement could be accessed through an unlocked coalscuttle on the outside. We crawled in on our hands and knees, still shuddering with cold, and then we dragged ourselves over to where the water heater was and pulled ourselves into the shadows under there. We fell into a heap, our arms twisted tightly around each other."

"Trying to get warm?"

"Yes. But it was also... a confirmation that we were still alive. Even as we got warmer I couldn't, wouldn't, let go. We were alive. I..."

He paused, and looked slightly embarrassed. "I remember putting my ear on his chest, just listening to his heartbeat. I was so exhausted. The adrenaline rush was wearing off, and I knew that neither of us had the strength to move. Piper was half unconsciousness, and I just wanted to let go as well. But I couldn't. Not yet. I had to keep a lookout. If any of the search parties came there... well, there wouldn't have been much I could do. I guess I just felt like I wanted to be conscious if I was going to be killed."

"You didn't want to wake up dead."

"Heh. Good one. So, we stayed in the shadows for hours, just clinging to each other. Despite my determination, I was half asleep when I heard the search party arrive upstairs.

"It wasn't like it was a huge surprise. I knew there wasn't much chance that they wouldn't have people searching the local buildings. It'd been a few hours though, and we'd been safe, and I'd almost been believing that it was all over, and now...

"There wasn't much point in trying to get out of the house. After all, there were guards outside. I managed to shake Piper awake and we pulled ourselves back into the shadows more, tried to cover ourselves with some of the debris that was lying around."

"And it worked?"

He looked at her thoughtfully. "No. No, it didn't."

"Huh? But..."

"They split up their party to search the house. The guard that came into the basement... he was just a kid, you know. Couldn't have been more than eighteen. He wore camp uniform, but I hadn't seen him around. Hell, probably hadn't been at Hayton for long at all. He paced down the stairs, and he searched, his gun at the ready to kill the hideous escapees. And we crushed ourselves into the shadows, but it did no good. He pulled aside a box, looked under the heater, and there we were.

"It felt like we stared at each other for eternity. Me and Piper huddled against the wall, against each other, staring blindly at the guy who'd been sent to kill us, shivering and gaping like startled rabbits. I wanted to do something, anything, but I was just at my limit. I couldn't even move, and he didn't seem inclined to, and it was only when one of his fellow guards yelled down asking if he'd found anything that the spell was broken.

"This guy, this kid. He stared at us for a few seconds more. Then, without turning his head, his eyes not even leaving my face, he yells up. 'Nothing here, sir!' And he steps away, and he puts the box back, and he walks back up the stairs."

"He let you go..."

"He let us go. Just this kid, and he saved both of our lives with one sentence. I don't know if they found out, if he was punished. I never saw him again. I don't even know what his name was. I don't know why he did it."

To be Concluded...