Chapter 2: Confusion
David didn't know how much time had passed, since he found himself in this confusing circumstance. His mind in a daze, his heart in turmoil at his recent experiences. A glance at the cuckoo that he knew his mom had NEVER possessed showed the time was 19 o'clock ticking on without pause.
The hushed whispers of his mom and that, stranger, claiming to be his sperm donor only muffled noise to his beeping ears.
'Smasher's arm cannon must've hit me harder than I thought.'
With unsteady feet David rose only to find shoulders gripped by iron like hands and he simply reacted. Muscles tensing, his feet squared as he turned his hip, before a arm shot forward and caught the flying fist before it could hit his mother.
David gasped, his eyes beholding her stunned and hurt expression, sending a vicious, horrible feeling through his gut all the way to his heart. He stumbled backwards, his balance lost and nearly fell only to be caught by the strong arms of the strange man.
Brown hair, ordinary face, David couldn't for the life him ever remember seeing. A stranger, an complete unknown. And he was here, where ever here was, with his mother, arm in arm. He was close to her, claiming her heart when he had no right to what so ever. Treating them like he had always been there with them and never once abandoned them. Like he was not responsible for her ragged and tired eyes. Her bitter tears that day in the car before everything turned wrong.
"Who the fuck do you think you are!?" The familiar feeling of rage exploded out of him and he embraced it with open arms.
"Where the fuck did you come from choom and what the fuck do you want with mom?!" He leapt over the couch placing himself between the stranger and mom faster than one could blink.
But those twinkling blue eyes never once lost their focus on him. The stranger's captivating gaze locked to his with implacable firmness. Just looking at them sent chills down David's spine but he gritted his teeth, eyed the door behind the stranger leading onto a darkened road away from where ever this place was.
'I just need to get mom past this guy and we'll be away. Who ever he is, what ever he fucking did. Playing with me, playing with her!?'
It was a whisper that jolted him out of his thoughts, soft fingers grasping his.
'Warm and alive!' Sudden, accompanied with a rush of emotions, David couldn't prevent his body from flinching as he looked back caught in his mom own brown graze.
"Its okay D. How about we go away from here for a bit? A bit of fresh air will do us both some good, how about it my mijo?"
His instincts screamed at him, howling the well known melody that had saved his his life multiple times in the past months that they were still in danger.
Something was not right and he should do something right now.
But when he felt her thumb run those soothing circles along his hand, the tone of her voice the same one when she sang him a lullaby when he was little and afraid from the gunfights erupting in the street next to them.
The tempting feeling of just letting go closing his eyes and sink into her embrace rose but David crushed it underneath his boot heel.
'Not now, not yet!'
His focus lay solely infront of him, behind that person on the open door, letting in the cool evening wind.
'First I need to get us both out of here and figure out what is going on!'
"Yeah, the faster we delta out of here the better." A tense expression flickered through his mom's face but he paid it no mind, his glare aimed at the strange man with squared shoulders and eyes that held the sea in them. Troubled and roiling waves as far as the eye could see.
David shook his head clasping his mom's hands in his own and strode forward. With undeserved and unfair elegance the man almost glided out of his path. Brows furrowed, lips pressed into a thin line.
"Okay, be careful you two, I'll await you here."
Whatever reply his mom said to that stranger went over David's head, dragging her through the door, feeling the weight of the sea resting on the backs of them both now.
His eyes quickly catching sight of the blue Galena G240, he felt his throat close up once again. Soothing hands rubbed his back and cheek as he turned his watery gaze to his mother and her gentle eyes.
"How about I take you for a drive, a bit late but a good drive through North Oak will get it cleared up okay dear?"
'North Oak!?' He let himself be guided into the car, eyes as wide as dinner plates, driving out of the drive way. Past a series of wooden and brick built single-family houses on either side downhill towards the distant lights of the city proper.
"And just in an alert for Wolfgrade roundabout and Fukuoka street, there is an active cyberpsycho in the area. First respond-"
With a jerk of her finger the radio turned off as his mom rubbed his arm, her eyes flicked from the road to him, lingering on him every so often as she let out a heavy sigh.
"You know when its just the quiet and the city. The lands surrounding it. It's quite beautiful you know, its just has that certain, tranquillity to it don't you?"
He breathed through his nose with gritted teeth, wet feet tapping the floor of the car without pause. When he had gotten this drenched a mystery for another time.
The cold icy feeling ghosting up and down his spine did not ease with the ever growing distant between themselves and that place, back there. Only his ceaseless thoughts and worries came to a gentle slow, his confusion though still remained unflappable.
'Come on choom think! You were at Arasaka, you fought, -' He remembered all too well the pain, the haze of violence Smasher inflicted upon him. Digging his fingers into his thigh he focused on the pain, on anything else, to distract him from the overwhelming emotional tidal wave the memories brought with them.
"David, mijo!" The lifebuoy of a shout jolted him out of his troubles, the car accelerating as his mom decided to forgo whatever subtlety she had planned to use and drove through the dark streets as quickly as she could, past the roundabout and underneath the Interchange.
"We'll get you to the hospital and-" she didn't get any further as characteristic staccato of gunfire ripped through the air and bullets zipped past them with whittling ferocity.
David didn't hesitate, he threw himself across the the passenger seat over the driver's seat. There was no coherent thought running through his mind, as he used his body as a shield, hearing the windows shatter, feeling the bullets tear through his body.
And then he was in the back of the car, his body strewn across the backseats in an awkward angle. Uninjured, his hands slid across the unmarked and undamaged car in a daze.
'B-But I was in the front?'
Memories, fresh and old. Of fire, bent metal and broken glass. Of blood dripping from his wounds and his nose coiling from the smell spent bullet casings in the air, crashed into each other without rhyme.
He felt his mind thrashing about caught within a torrent, the sheer mass of water dragging him below.
'I feel like I'm losing my mind!'
Teeth clattering and rattling he looked up and felt his breath grow still.
Caught and swept up in the glittering surface of the strange man's blue gaze, sitting beside the drivers seat, face set in an grim expression.
"David, son. Stay calm. I know you're confused, its okay. Everything will be fine. I promise you."
Far away in his mind, had it been any other person, David would've likened the voice to that of a man capable to soothe a blood crazed Maine in the midst of his cyberpsycho rampage. Here and now however, it did nothing but send spikes of fear through his body.
'The guts of that thing to say that to me!'
"Dear," David nearly vomited when that thing, turned to his mom, looking and talking to her like, that.
"We should avoid Fukuoka Street and Wolfgrade roundabout, its too dangerous I know a short cut-"
"There is no time!" Her fingers clenched the steering wheel, David didn't have to look at her to know that his mom had set their path into stone.
"We'll get to the hospital and get him checked out. Through Fukuoka Street its only a corner further until we reach the emergency drive way of the hospital. Sandra is pulling a shift now, I've called her and she'll give us a pass."
Before anyone could say anything however the staccato of gunfire tore through the air once again. His mom threw the wheel about, the person that strange and awful man threw himself over her as if he was a shield. Like last time David saw the bullets tear through the car like it was of paper-maché.
This time David couldn't help himself. He screamed, panic seizing him as he curled into himself fingers digging into his scalp, tearing away at the skin.
It was all becoming to much, when gentle hands held his arms and pulled him into a comforting, safe and homely heat.
With what little energy he could muster, David blearily looked about, only just aware that his head rested in his amá's lap, fingers stroking his messy and soggy hair.
"It'll be okay mijo. Your dad knows a short cut and he wanted to show off." The worried lines creased her eyes betrayed the words decorated in plain humour.
In an instant his eyes flicked to the front and what colour he had left vanished, his face turning as white as a sheet.
For there in the drivers seat sat that, strange and horrible, thing. It couldn't be anything other than that. A thing. Same brown hair, lightly coloured skin ad those damn blue eyes pulling him in through the rear mirror.
The stranger chuckled, his shoulders bopping up and down like the waves of an restless sea.
"This path is one least travelled but safer for it. Don't worry my love we'll be there before you know it. You gave Sandra a call yeah?"
An uneven breath escaped his amá's chest almost drowning out the sound of sirens rushing past them.
Speeding down the same path they had been on before, that David swore on his life they had just travelled. That cursed path of crashing metal and furious fire growing ever further away as the stranger took them down a new way, through dusty pathways, rarely travelled.
Through his daze and confusion, there was only one certainty in David's overwhelmed mind.
Raw, paralysing fear that claimed his heart, limbs tucked into himself as he curled himself into the smallest possible ball he could manage. Never taking his eyes off of that thing staring back at him even as he felt himself pulled beneath the wavy blue surface. Down into the watery, murky depths below.
What ever energy he had left faded away, caught in a soft breeze and in the safety of his amá's embrace, David fainted then and there.