02
The support had, indeed, fallen ahead of them in the corridor. It lay crosswise over the tunnel, spitting sparks from severed wires and with the ragged end resting in a tangle of coils and jutting pipes, a smeared pool of liquid thick and dark in the pulse of red light. The babbling crowd milled about it, scrambled over it, squeezed beneath it; but gave no quarter and left no space. There were no Federation soldiers here to organize them. There were no Federation soldiers anywhere anymore, perhaps, except seeping smoke in the broken entry. Pushed from behind and pulled from the sides, battered in all four directions, there was little that Fayt could do but draw Sophia as near as possible, wrap her up in his arms and let them be dragged onward into the boil at the base of the broken brace. He shoved back with all the strength his legs could muster, seeking a single breathing pocket between crowd and wall. His back struck the metal, dragged along it, and there was none to be found. He found himself wishing that this would turn out to be a dream, or just another simulator game, the simulation turned up too high-in a dream or a game or a movie or a story, he would have stumbled back into the alcove of an overlooked security door. The crowd would have been passable. The emergency would miraculously end as Federation forces pulled together to save the day. Deus ex machina would save them all.
If only it were a game. If only it were so simple. The idle wishes dipped and looped in a canted mantra through reasonable thought and drowned out plans to pass, to push through, to go over or under the dropped bar and get away down the tunnel to the last transport where they needed to be if they would ever get out of here. He closed his eyes and took a deep, long breath. Sophia squirmed in his arms.
"Fayt, you're hurting me."
He loosened his hold, and she gasped softly. "Sorry. You okay?"
"Yeah. You're stronger than you look, that's all." She went quiet for a moment, and he opened his eyes to look down at her when she turned in his arms. She did not want to watch the crowd-she must not have, because now she looked at the wall instead. "...We're just going to wait here until there's some room, right?"
"Right." He nodded, but in perfect honesty Fayt could not have told her he thought there would be space. Not before those ringing steps and that cold muddy voice caught up with them. And then what would they be able to do? Against whatever weapon left no trace but seared the insides smoking, what would they be able to do? If only it had been a game he would have known what to do, but it was not and they had been forced so close to the beam that the jagged end of a broken pipe was digging viciously into his side, clouding his mind with a layer of sharp pain, small but insistent. He shifted his weight to the other side as well as he could to relieve the pressure. If it had been a game-
The thought was derailed as it crashed abruptly into another, setting off sparks and a smoke sign in his brain. He squeezed Sophia lightly. "Hey. Sophia. I'm going to let go of you in a second, and when I do I want you to hold on to my shirt, and get behind me. Okay?"
She looked up at him, blinking, brows furrowing. "Uhm...sure. But why?"
"Just trust me." He removed his arms from around her completely and felt her grip instantly into the slightly loose fabric of his shirt, moving slowly around him, careful not to be pulled away. He turned, swinging out as much as he could from the wall to give her somewhere to go, and when he felt her squeeze into the space he had made, her heartbeat rapid against his spine, Fayt put his hands around the head of the pipe and began to pull. Twisting left and right, shaking and worrying the solid stretch of hollow metal, he grimaced faintly as it yowled in protest from its nest of shredded chrome but set his teeth and continued to pull. It gave way, but slowly and only a little at a time. He hoped he was strong enough, and the pipe was broken enough, for him to pull it completely free.
Sophia, silently watching from around the taut, straining lines of one arm, suddenly jerked her gaze back down the long corridor. She tugged on the back of his shirt. "...Do you hear that? Fayt?"
He grunted, not daring to relax his hold. His fingers were white at the knuckles. He could not hear anything over the noise of the crowd, their shouting and scrambling and murmuring and stomping. He could not hear anything over the squall and rattle of stubborn metal tightening its grip in the wreckage before him, and blood rushing in his ears as he strained to pull it loose. The crowd froze around them, briefly, and then with a lurch began to move again. Fayt was jarred by a sharp passing elbow and his hands slipped from the pipe, palm cutting on the jagged head. He cried out in surprise and sudden pain, clutching his hand and jerking his head up. The flow of people was quick, too quick. They were being mashed against the fallen support and the walls and each other. The movement did not come from the front-they were being pushed by those behind.
"Do you? What is it? It sounds like-"
"Shhh. Hold on." He tilted his head and listened, closing his eyes for a moment. There was something there, a rapid and steady crack-click-snap crack-click-snap of ratcheting metal off solid wall or floor which was not the ringing footsteps but somehow instead made him think of the great horned beetles in the simulator with their gleaming wire rigging. It grew steadily and insistently without pause, and with it the crushing pressure and panic all around seemed to grow as well. Except that it - the sound - was not really growing. It was herding them. It was coming.
And they would be pinned in the corner when it came if he did not do something.
Fayt found that, with all other things considered, that was the last thing he wanted. When he watched from over the heads of the crowd a limp form of flesh and cloth fly several feet off the ground and slam into the high junctures of the wall bracings to fall brokenly back into the press, the choice to move on seemed even better. If only it were that easy. His hands wrapped around the pipe again, bleeding and slick. His arms ached and his palm throbbed and his head was screaming with a pounding methodical heat but it was not a game and it was not that easy, after all. There was sweat in his eyes and it felt like gritty liquid fire. He closed them again. "Come loose," he murmured pleadingly, "Just please come loose. I just need-"
Sophia screamed behind him, and yanked on his shirt. Pulled so hard the zipper bit back against his chest. "Fayt!"
The crowd was falling, panicking, parting. The insectile metal cracking was upon them, and it stank of ozone and that charred sweet flesh smell. But he could not open his eyes and see it. They refused, and his hands would not come off from the pipe, seemingly fused to the metal by some strange symbology of blood and sweat and maddening heat, his fingers locked. He could not let go. He let out a harsh, raw sob as he tried to wrench himself free, as the ratcheting sound now a horrible snapping and hissing raced towards them, as the bodies jostled and shoved and the fallen metal support screamed its rage as it was forced by the desperate mob to scratch slowly, slowly across the floor. He could not let go.
Sophia was losing her grip on him. She was being pulled away, screaming. He tried to turn to her and take hold, but he could not let go. He opened his mouth to scream, to cry out, but all that came out was a wheeze and all that came in was a breath of air to strike his lungs like a fistful of ice on that heat, strange heat, the burning sensation of panic. An inner mantra, in spiraling circles, saying not 'if this were a game' but 'god help me god help me'. Sophia's hand was pried from his shirt, and he lost contact.
He had to protect her.
The scream came out at last as he whipped about, determined to tear the flesh and fingers from his hands if he had to, but it would not come to that. The sound from his throat was matched by the inhuman screech of piping tearing free, and when the metal came loose in his hands the momentum struck out and up in a wide swinging arc-it struck the approaching thing, the dully metal semicircle of its unmarked head hanging from a bloated body of the same, and sent the half-sphere spinning off to smash against the wall in a nest of sparks and flickering light. He stared, dumbly and disbelieving, as the massive and spiderlike scratched-chrome body backed up on the spindly metal pistons of its legs, and with two from the set of many lifted the crumpled mess and set it back at the fore. It rotated lopsidedly before a flicker of yellowish light blinked to life on the featureless surface. And then it kept coming.
"Sophia!" Fayt turned and ran against the wall of the crowd with hands still locked rigidly about the metal. "Sophia!" He forced his fingers loose somehow and plunged one hand among the teeming bodies before quickly snatching it back. There was only the briefest moment of hesitation, the faintest cry of civil protest in his mind before he plunged in with hands firm about the pipe again to push and prod and, though he prayed it would not come to that, beat aside those who would not make space if need be. Because he had to protect her. The crowd was beginning to thin with screams of fear or pain as the faceless drone plowed through them, bodies falling stiffly to the ground or tossed aside to twitch with an unnatural rigidity against the metal walls. Some deep part of Fayt's mind registered this; some deep part of his mind heard the groans and stutters of chattering teeth in locked jaws. A part of him realized that they were being left alive, spared with brutal and purposeful efficiency, and in a way that was almost more chilling than the alternative. He thrust out blindly with the pipe again, felt it strike something soft which easily gave way, and grimaced as he barreled unheeding into the open space. The crowd closed again behind him. He could no longer hear the ratcheting gait of the machine above the screaming. He could no longer hear anything. He was shoved forward as someone fell heavily against his back, and his forehead struck the fallen brace blocking the tunnel as he stumbled. Stars burst in his vision, momentarily blinding him. He felt his legs buckle. He hit his knees.
Hands reached out suddenly and took hold of his arms from the front, pulling him forward. "Fayt!"
Sophia.
Fayt blinked rapidly, trying to focus his vision and clear the sweat from his eyes. He could see her in front of him, huddled beneath the slant of the fallen support and the wall—even though she had made it under, it had not been to a passable point and she was trapped on this side of the tunnel. The still forms of fallen people were all around them, either twitching and incapacitated by the invaders' weapons or knocked aside and trampled by their fellow evacuees. People continued to jostle over and all around him. Sophia continued to pull desperately at his arms, trying to drag him to the relative safety she huddled in. It took him a moment before his head cleared enough to realize that he too would have to move if he wanted to survive, let alone protect her. He lurched forward, scrambling over the floor to her side. It was growing slick beneath his sandals. He tried not to think about it.
"Sophia, are you okay?"
She didn't answer, but stared at him with wide eyes. "You...Fayt, you're bleeding."
"Don't worry." He loosened one hand from around the pipe, stiffly and with great effort, and used it to take hold of her hand again. "It's going to be okay."
"I'm scared."
"Don't be," he said, even though he could feel every chord and muscle of his body trembling violently, and she must have seen the fear and tiredness in him. He smiled. "We're going to be fine. Just trust me, okay?"
Sophia nodded slowly. "R-right."
And that was better, he thought, than the way she might have reacted to the things he didn't say about his concerns, or the fact that he could hear that terrible ratcheting sound again. The fact that the weapon was beyond his power to destroy. The fact that he did not know what to do. He watched a man try to crawl through a gap beneath the fallen support only to be struck prone, his body blocking a point of escape. "Just...stay here for a second, okay? Right here behind me."
"Behind you?" She stared at him for a moment, not comprehending. It was only when he began to rise to his feet that Sophia reached out again. "Fayt!"
He rose, and turned to face the spiderlike machine with the pipe held out before him, held like so many simulated swords. He had to protect Sophia. And if he was not in fact the great swordsman Adonis Klein but only a frightened college student, if he did not in fact wield a great weapon but only a crudely broken length of pipe, then that would have to be enough. He would make it enough. Another of the thick metallic bodies clanked with bizarre speed into view, flickering in and out of his sight between the thinning crowd. The sound of its feet on the ground was muted every few steps as it came down into a shuddering body. Fayt thought it should have made him feel cold, but the only thing he felt was the pounding heat in the center of his skull. His vision was muzzy with the sweat in his eyes and still strung with vague white sparks from the blow to his head. And the terrible sound came closer: crack-click-snap, crack-click-thump.
The first of the machines, its head dented where he had struck it before, rushed towards him. He brought the pipe down as the distance closed. He saw a brief flare of light, something unknown; the machine's weapon system activating.
"Fayt!"
Crunch.
Even as the pipe connected with the battered head again the body behind suddenly collapsed, caving down into itself in a rain of sparks and guttering smoke-flares. The jointed legs stiffened for a moment before buckling and collapsing under the broken weight, splaying out over the ground. It was not he who had done this to it: jutting from the once-uniform mass was not a small length of broken pipe but a massive stanchion twisted forcibly down from the wall. Fayt blinked at the two broken masses of metal, one crushing and impaling the other, not entirely comprehending what had happened. The stanchion did not look to have fallen on its own.
As this realization dawned his eyes moved up slowly, following the smoke and sparks. Through them loomed a massive form, towering over both Fayt and the wreckage. He jerked back at the indistinct sight of it, one side humping strangely upward over the rest. It moved forward, and he brought the pipe up again instinctively. "What the hell?!"
The huge form, whatever it was, continued to trundle ponderously forward through the smoke. The hump on its side shifted. "Hey Fayt, Sophia. You okay? You hurt?" Fayt started at the sound of the small voice, chirping but slightly strained, calling out for them. It was not a strange or alien voice. It was-
"P...Peppita?!"
As the giant moved forward out of the smoke completely Fayt saw that it was, and felt a rush of simultaneous relief and disbelief. The giant was the same bald man who had dimly but pleasantly smiled to him in the Rosetti's dressing room...when? It had not been long at all. It might have been as little as half an hour ago. The thought was chilling in a way that the day's more dire and immediate terrors had not touched on. The small girl sitting on the giant's shoulder, one of her larger ponytails now fallen loose and leaving hair to fan chaotically over her head and one side of her face, did not seem to have noticed any such terrors at all. She waved to them from her lofty perch and swung her legs as if she were on nothing more serious than a weekend jaunt; as if there were no screaming and no constant burring of alarms.
"Ya don't have to look so surprised!" Peppita slid forward in her seat, then jumped down to the floor. Detachedly, a part of Fayt's mind applauded her acrobatics for landing from so high without hurting her ankle or slipping on the slick paneling. She moved forward, gesturing with expansive drama to the chaos of fallen forms and crushed tunneling all around. "Me an' Ursus heard all this screaming and racket coming from over here and then we showed up and found you in trouble..."
Fayt continued to stare at her for a moment. It was not a moment he had to spare, but he found that he could not help it. The sheer normalcy of her dialogue in the situation was less laughable than jarring. It felt like something he might find in the opening of a not particularly clever or well-written game: at the moment of highest possible tension, obligatory cute child subcharacter appears to save the day and offer smalltalk. But, she said, he didn't have to be so surprised. He wondered again if she was entirely all right in the head.
When he finally managed to articulate something in his mind to say—just a simple 'thank you' for the helping hand—he found that he was not given the chance to offer it. The previously silent giant spoke at last, slow and uneasy. "Lil' lady?"
There was an edge of urgency to his voice, but it seemed lost on Peppita—she rounded on him impatiently, putting her hands on her hips. "Whaddaya want, Urs—Whoa!"The man cut her indignation off into a startled yelp as he abruptly scooped her up again with one hand, tucking her tiny frame under his arm. Fayt also found himself pushed aside as the big man moved forward, but he saw, briefly, what the giant Ursus had seen.
The second machine was coming closer.
"Oh man, this is not what we need right now!" Peppita announced from beneath Ursus' arm, needlessly. She flailed, wriggling in his grasp. "Ursus, can you take care of that one? I'll help, lemme-" Fayt reached out to grab hold of the writhing child, and Ursus released her easily to him. She looked up to Fayt expectantly once her feet were on the ground again. "C'mon, you two, we've got numbers on our side!"
The noise multiplied suddenly, and Fayt took a moment to lean around the big man before answering. Two more of the strange machines had skidded around a corner into the hallway. They did not clank methodically along like their predecessors but instead lurched forward in a horrible charge, trampling mindlessly and inexorably forward towards them and the fallen support barricading the tunnel. Strange light flickered and flared in their single eyes. The weapons systems, he was sure of it. He leaned back, looking to the young girl again. She must have seen something terrible in his face, because she quieted. "...No. I really don't think we do."
"Lil' lady," Ursus rumbled again, "you go."
"But Ursus-!"
As quietly as the noise of the hall permitted, from the ground behind them all, Sophia spoke up. "Peppita, thank you for your help. But we have to meet someone at the evacuation facility. Isn't your family waiting for you there, too?" The girl froze for a moment, staring down as Sophia held out a hand—not just an offering of companionship, Fayt thought, but an unspoken need to be helped along herself. "We can go together."
Peppita continued to stare for a moment, then shook her head hard; so hard the rattling of her beaded hair was made audible. "Well...but this way is blocked, and it's already a complete disaster back that way! Sure we gotta get out of here, but we don't have any place to go!"
And then, suddenly, there it was—the cold feeling Fayt had been expecting all along. It seized him suddenly, digging firmly into his gut and spreading out to take hold of his spine and limbs, somehow without ever relieving the feverish heat. His mouth felt terrible and dry, and he realized for the first time that along with stale fear and his own sweat he could taste the sharpness of blood. Back that way, she had said, but she had come from the same direction they had. The same direction in which they had left his parents. "W...what do you mean, a disaster?"
He did not entirely realize he had turned back to the hall until he felt something scrabble by his legs, and Sophia suddenly stood in front of him with arms spread wide, as if Ursus himself were not enough of a wall to dissuade him. "What are you doing, Fayt?!" Her eyes were too large in the flickering red alarm lights; her hands damp and dirty and dark where their palms were turned towards him. "Didn't you hear her? It's too dangerous back there!"
"But-"
Even as Fayt protested Ursus let out a roar of effort as the machines closed the final gap and he reached his great hands outward for weapons in the form of the groaning and buckling wall supports, their timing almost seeming to spite him in its support of Sophia's argument. "Forget it!" She shouted at him over the rising noise. Metal crunched. There was a sudden wave of heat and the air crackled menacingly with ozone.
"Go!" Ursus shouted to them. He reached back with one arm, pushing Sophia roughly and suddenly out of the way as he fell back against the fallen column. Fayt caught a brief glimpse of a strange burn on his face, seeming to bubble up from beneath the skin. He remembered for an instant the guard lying dead in the doorway with sunken eyes and smoke seeping from his mouth.
Instead of moving back with the girls, Fayt bolted forward. He had partially released the pipe in his hands before; now he gripped it two-handed, treating it once again as a weapon. It felt grafted into his hands again; the metal still hot between his suddenly icy palms. "Mom and dad are back there! I'm not leaving them!"
"Fayt! Someone stop him-"
Something caught the back of his shirt, dragging him back and slowing him down. For one blind moment, and for just that one moment—this must, he thought, be what was called the Heat Of The Moment—Fayt almost lashed back at it with the pipe to knock it loose. Almost. He began to round on it only to hear Peppita's grunt of effort as she attempted to pull him back. "Didn't you hear me?! There are all kinds of explosions and stuff—it's an inferno back there!" He realized what he had almost done, but somehow felt nothing but a massive wave of fear and frustration.
"Let go of me!"
A second pressure joined, and he felt his sandaled feet beginning to slip back on the floor. Sophia had also taken hold. "It's too dangerous, Fayt!"
"Both of you," his throat was hoarse around the words and he realized that he too was screaming. Everyone in the hall was screaming. Distantly he heard the sound coming again, coming in a massive wave, crack-click-snap, crack-click-thump , and he realized that there were more coming, an endless sea of cyclopean metal spiders ratcheting through the shuddering forms on the floor. " Both of you let me go!"
Suddenly, the floor swept out from beneath him. The world spun and tilted crazily, wild with red light and noise all blurring together. A massive pressure wrapped around him; beneath his back, the world was rigid. Above his head, far above, the pipes and wires spat wildly in their shattered nests. He heard a wild, raging howl and could not manage to be horrified when he realized that it was himself. His limbs kicked and thrashed uselessly at the air, the pipe falling from his fingers at last as he scrambled for a handhold, something, anything solid to orient himself and take control again.
The tangle above him was the ceiling; the iron band around his body and the hard ridge driving into his spine were the circus strongman. Ursus had lifted him, one-armed, and now held him thrown over one shoulder like a sack. The position quickly drove the air from his lungs and left him gasping for breath, unable to protest.
Footsteps clattered on the ground around him; the ceiling spun over his head as Ursus turned. He turned his head to look away, and found himself looking down at a grossly canted angle at Peppita. Even in such a dire situation, the grim expression seemed foreign on her small face-or, perhaps that was only the angle and flashing red lights. "Listen to me," she said. "We'll all die if we don't get out of here right now." She stared at him, small fists clenched, as if willing him to understand.
"Let me go," he gasped again. He could not understand. He would not understand; she was the one who refused to understand. " Let me go! My parents-"
Peppita's jaw set. "Come on, Ursus." The little girl turned away from him, and with her bangles clattering darted out of his line of site. Fayt felt the giant holding him tense and shift, his stance bracing and the angle of his shoulders sliding as he lowered the one not occupied by Fayt's struggling form towards the blockage in the hall. Amid the screaming and the roar of the alarm and the deafening rattle of the approaching machines-so close now he swore he could hear the individual legs rotating in their settings-he did not realize what the man was about to do until he felt the air rush by his face and felt the shock of impact slam through the contact of their bodies.
Ursus drove himself into the fallen support again, and again. It howled against the wall, and finally gave way. Those evacuees who still could rushed around them. Upside-down, Fayt could see the machines-a wall of them rushing forward, almost close enough to touch. The red of their eyes (weapons) flaring in a wave of light, brighter even than the flashing of the alarms. He opened his mouth and only a breathless wheeze came out. The massive form beneath him continued to drive forward, a seemingly unstoppable force. It was not fast enough. Nothing could have been fast enough-
The hall was swallowed in a wave of heat in the same instant that a core of ice seemed to explode in the deeps of his skull. The light became white even as everything around them seemed to burst at once into flames.
And then, silence.
As if none of the horrific minutes before had ever passed, they stood once again on the plane of a large, flat transport unit surrounded by its soundproof scrubbed metal walls. Except for the ragged heaving of their breaths and the soft hum of the equipment it was deafeningly silent, and the soft, steady pale light burned in Fayt's eyes after such a seeming eternity in a world of flashing red. He did not struggle as Ursus gently and carefully set him back on the ground. There was no reason and, in truth, he did not think he had a struggle in him any more. When his feet touched the floor, he felt his knees go weak and his legs tremble. He had never done anything in his life, he thought, and would never do anything again, as difficult as standing in that mundane moment.
"Welcome to Iruba Shelter number five," he heard, and when he slowly lifted his head-so heavy it could not have been his head, surely-he saw a Federation soldier standing at the transport controls. He seemed so calm, Fayt thought, that he must have had no idea of what was really going on. "This is an evacuation shelter located underneath Hyda IV. You will be given room assignments, and though you are allowed to move freely about the facility to locate family if necessary we ask that you wait in your assigned rooms until the rescue ship arrives. If you have any further questions, please refer to the consoles or ask the nearest official for detailed instructions."
Still feeling numb-his head full of cold and the rest of his body rubbery with heat-Fayt nodded slightly. He felt people shifting around him on the platform and realized that they were not alone. Slowly, people shuffled off from the platform and out the hydraulic doors into the tense murmur of the evacuation shelter beyond. Fayt watched them go, and became aware that he was wiping his raw, sweating hands against his sides only when Sophia gently reached out and took his wrists to stop him.
Beside him, he heard a small but deep breath move in and then shakily out. "All right then." Peppita's bells did not jingle so much as rattle discordantly as she moved forward a few steps, pausing on the edge of the platform. "Well...we're going now." But she did not. She stood, and Fayt saw her turn her head to peer over her shoulder in a manner which she probably thought was stealthy but was, in fact, painfully obvious. He didn't want to look at her. He didn't want her to look at him with those great green eyes. Not until he could sort out this hot and this cold; whether he was grateful to her and Ursus for saving him or hated them both for their intrusion.
He looked away and closed his eyes, clenching his fists. Feeling the way they had been torn, the way the sweat burned like fire in the gashes. He could feel his teeth grit together in his setting jaw until he thought they must all shatter. The silence seemed to go on forever as he stood there, burning from the jaw down, wanting...not to hurt her , not really, she was just a kid trying to do what was right, but wanting so badly to lash out at something that he almost felt like someone else entirely, like there was nothing else he could do; as if he existed only to lash out.
"Hey..." Finally, she spoke again, small and tentative. There was another pause, but this one was brief-suddenly, in another loud clatter, he heard her bound away from the platform. "Cheer up, okay!" A great mass which could only be Ursus moved forward as well, pausing briefly and then following after. Fayt opened his eyes only at their retreating backs, watching the two performers step through the hydraulic doors and vanish. He and Sophia were alone in the room, except for the Federation soldier at the controls. He closed his eyes again and let his head fall.
Briefly, Sophia released his wrist, but only to touch his hand again. "Fayt..."
She wanted to talk. He could tell by the sound of her voice, the trembling of her hand on his. She was afraid, and he understood that completely because he was afraid too. Except that wasn't right. Slowly, the heat was unwinding and leaving him with that weak, empty feeling he had experienced when his feet first touched the ground again. It had all happened so fast, and now... He didn't want to talk. He didn't know what he would say. He thought he might start to cry if he tried.
He swallowed that feeling, hard and quickly, and when he opened his eyes and looked back to her he hoped to God that it was more controlled than he felt. "...Shall we go?" Certainly, to his own ears at least, he sounded maddeningly calm. The words didn't even seem real, or like the kind of thing a real person would say in such a situation. But they were the words that he said, and he could see in her paled face that his calm did something for her, at least. There was a smudge of blood on her cheek, beside her mouth, and he looked away again. "There's nothing left to do here anyway. We should..."
He didn't know, but he saw her nod out of the corner of his eye anyway. "Yeah."
Silence. They were probably keeping the Federation soldier from his post. Certainly there would be no more people coming through; the transporter had obviously been shut down. They had been the last ones through.
Sophia's hand suddenly moved again, resting on his arm. "I'm sure your parents are okay."
And he wanted to tell her so badly that this was not a movie, it was not a game, that this was the real world and things did not always work that way. If it were, and if it did, he would have been the hero he always played as. He would have been able to do something, anything, in the hall back there. He would have been able to fight off the machines or go back and bring his parents through safely. He would not be stuck with this terrible, empty feeling that drained his strength.
But there were other routes in the evacuation center, that lead to other transporters, and sometimes the real world did work out that way. So he didn't tell her that it was not a movie or a game, and instead he nodded, and smiled. "...Yeah, I know." It was hard to do, but he was glad he had. The words took a weight off of his shoulders and made it truly possible. Saying it somehow made it real. When he went to step forward, he found his legs were not as weak as they had felt, and he could move after all. "Let's go."
He did not wait for her, not wanting to give himself a chance to go weak in the knees again, and instead moved forward trusting that she would follow. He heard her doing so behind him, the sound of her sandals uneven on the floor where one of the straps had broken and left the insole flopping against her foot. All reassurances aside, she probably didn't want to be alone. He didn't blame her. He wanted to keep her close, too.
As he reached for the door, Fayt heard the soldier clear his throat behind them, and paused. He turned only when the young man addressed him. "You'll both be assigned to room 506. There should be first aid kits there, but we also have an infirmary set up, if you'd like to have your injuries looked at. The rescue transports should have more advanced medical facilities if you would rather wait."
For a moment, Fayt wondered how bad they must really look. If there was something he was not quite absorbing in his shock. He found himself almost asking, but instead Sophia smiled, and thanked the soldier, and that was the end of it-he turned away from them to absorb himself in the transporter control's screens and readouts. Sophia took his hand again, and they emerged into the hall outside.
In truth, it was not much different than the hallways they had only just escaped from. The walls were the same bland metal, girded with the same supports. Many of the same people, people Fayt had only minutes ago shoved aside with his broken pipe, loitered in them. A small child bounced excitedly on his feet and brightly chattered about the incident like some sort of adventure, calling it 'just like a movie' while another Federation soldier attempted to comfort and console the child's mother.
"Yes, ma'am, of course we're safe as long as we stay here. No matter what kind of scanners they have, locating this facility is for all intents and purposes completely impossible."
The woman shook her head in a frantic sort of daze, clutching the soldier's uniform sleeve. Her arm and shoulder were heavily bandaged. There was blood on her clothing. Fayt did not know much about first aid, but he thought that she probably should not have been on her feet. "My husband, what about...I-I have to get in contact with him. We have to get back to him, he'll be so worried-"
"I'm sorry, ma'am, but we can't allow any use of transportation or communication devices at this time."
"But I-"
"I understand how how you feel, but transmissions at this time would put our secrecy at risk. I can't allow you, or anyone, to jeopardize the lives of the people in this facility." The soldier paused, gently detaching the woman's hands from his arms. "Now...if you'll come with me, ma'am, you and your son can get some rest until the transport arrives. You'll certainly find your husband there."
It was all very comforting to know, in a way, but as Fayt watched the woman allow herself to be led away with a bracing arm about her back he also found it incredibly frustrating when what he wanted more than anything was to make contact with his own family. To assure himself that they had in fact made it through all right, and that the idea was more than just some wishful fantasy.
Sophia squeezed his hand, quietly, and they moved forward again. The walls passed by them in a monotonous curtain of flat blacks and greys, broken only intermittently on one side by stairwells leading up or down guarded by more Federation soldiers, or the muted green glow of environmental status screens. Fayt did not so much as glance at them, knowing that he would not understand them and also that if the environmental controls were to fail, everyone would know. He continued to walk them along the halls of the shelter, undirected except for the fact that there was only one open path to take, a single concise square around the core of rooms. He turned his eyes inward, watching them pass by. Here, the walls were broken by the pale indentations of hydraulic doors, each identical except for the small numbers stamped onto their faces. Probably, he thought, they should find the infirmary, but the soldier had not told him in which room it had been set up. A pair of men who would have looked more at home in starched suits than their rumpled vacation wear pretended not to be frightened by telling each other it had been a mistake, complaining about the inconvenience and politics of it all. When the piping of the shelter settled, though, or the nearby doors hissed open, both of them still jumped and jerked their heads about like everyone else.
The hallways, in the end, were far too much like those they had escaped, and Fayt did not want to stay in them any longer. Giving Sophia's hand a slight squeeze in warning, he ducked into one of the nearby rooms without bothering to check the number stamped onto it.
"-just glad that everyone is okay," an old man was saying, his voice scratchy and slightly halting. The room was a sterile as a hospital or barracks, with six rigid beds arranged on its plain metal floors against the plain metal walls, and the motley assemblage within looked out of place in their bright gaudy costumes and makeup. It took Fayt a moment to realize that they were, for the most part, at least recently and passingly familiar to him. In that time, the old man-so small and wrinkled he resembled nothing so much as a humanoid walnut in a tophat and flaming red dress coat, his hair a pale and wispy halo about the back of his head-had already noticed him, and turned his small, bright eyes upward. "...Well. We were going to move on to business, but who are you?"
Immediately, Fayt took a step back towards the door. "Er...Sorry. We were just-"
"What?!" The sudden yip came from a similarly small figure in front of the walnut-man, but she did not have to turn around for Fayt to know who it was. Peppita's great green eyes turned up to him anyway as the child swung around to face him and Sophia, her mouth a small 'o' of surprise. "Fayt! You-"
"We're looking for someone," Sophia cut in. She held his hand tightly, tugging him back to her side. The circus troupe blinked at the two of them almost collectively, seeming to gauge them. "We were separated in the evacuation, and..."
The small man clambered up onto one of the beds, sitting beside a taller, younger woman in a ruffly red dress. His feet did not even pass the bottom of the bed, swinging like a small child's. In other circumstances, their comedy of contrasts might have actually been funny. "Well, who are-" He stopped as the woman leaned down and spoke quietly in his ear. Fayt thought he heard his name mentioned, and Peppita's, before the man looked back at him with a nod. His eyes were soft with understanding. "Ahhh...your parents..."
Peppita must have told them what had happened. Before Fayt could say anything another of the troupe spoke up. "Well, what can you do, hey?" The man's eye seemed lodged shut in a perpetual wink, but despite the disfigurement his loudly green-and-yellow clothing and the swathes of red and white makeup on his face suggested a clown. He waved a hand dismissively, brushing the entire thing off. "Hey, at least you're still alive, eh?"
"Gonnella!" Peppita took a swipe at him, striking the billowing fabric of his pants ineffectually. "You should watch your tongue you big-!"
"It's okay."
There was a brief pause, during which Fayt realized that the one who had spoken was himself. He sounded small and tired. It was fitting, but not how he wanted to sound. "It's...like he said. Even if I'd gone back to help them, I wouldn't have been able to do anything." He lowered his head, closing his eyes again. The heat pounding in the center of his skull was still there, he realized. When he closed his eyes, his fists clenched in frustration, he could almost see it. He heard Sophia say his name, felt her touch his arm, but nothing could make it go away. "If only I was a little stronger..."
"Strength, 's not enough." The sage words were a bit slurred, but Fayt recognized the dim and ponderous voice of Ursus. Looking up again, he realized at last that the strongman's face was badly burned. Medical gauze had been clumsily and hastily affixed to cover what must have been the worst of it. He looked slightly drugged. His arms were laced with clumsily tended bruises and lacerations. "You can't beat them."
"He's right." The woman in the red dress leaned forward emphatically. She sounded surprisingly motherly. "I bet they were professional soldiers-there's nothing we can do about people like that. There's no reason to blame yourself."
"And you know, just because they didn't make it to this evacuation facility doesn't mean your parents are dead, or even injured." The small old man seemed to consider his own suggestion for a moment and then, finding it to his liking, nodded. "You know, they might be hiding out somewhere else. Don't give up so soon."
The troupe immediately jumped on this possibility-or rather, jumped to expand it. The clown seemed particularly eager. "Or hey! They might have been captured or something!"
"Gonnella!"
"'S all right." Ursus nodded slowly. "If they been captured, y'can go rescue them."
Fayt was a bit taken aback. Captured? They might have been. He remembered, suddenly, coming to the realization in the back of his mind that the people in the halls had not been killed by the spiderlike monstrosities but incapacitated, left alive for some unknown purpose. He remembered that deep, cold voice uttering the order 'catch them'. It had never instructed them to kill. That capture had not even occurred to him in the face of those facts seemed almost absurd. Of course. Of course they had only been captured if they had not escaped altogether. Of course they were alive. That there was no reason for his parents to have been captured was completely secondary. It was not that there was no reason, only that he had not thought of or realized it yet.
But...
"But...still, if they were captured, what can I do? I-"
"Defeating the evil ones and saving those who are captured-there are the prerogatives of the hero!" Fayt jumped suddenly, and felt Sophia do so as well at the sudden outburst. Among the members of the troupe, Fayt was startled to see another familiar face-that of the Alphalian from the hallway of the Grantier. His patrician features were all but lighted in rapture beneath a thin coat of soot. "If you are truly a hero, then victory will fall into your hands of its own accord! On the other hand, if you are not, then that is proof that your parents have not been captured at all, because where would be the dramatic import of that?" He blinked a bit, seeming to ground himself again at a faint cough from the old man. Looking around, the man shrugged expansively. "...What? Either way he has nothing to worry about."
"...Anyway, you'll just have to wait a little longer. The better question after all is what could anyone possibly do right now, isn't it?" The old man nodded again, agreeing with himself before anyone else had the chance. "No one even knows what's going on yet. Just keep your chin up."
Fayt nodded again-slowly at first, then a sudden jerk. "Yeah. Yeah, you're right."
"You should go to your room and get some rest," the surprisingly motherly woman in red suggested. "You look tired. Certainly too tired to do anything right now."
"Or ya could stay here with us!" Peppita all but leapt forward, hands clasped behind her back and wide eyes turned up to him. She had looked at him much the same not so very long ago in the entertainment room. Then, he had realized that she was endearing, and now he realized that he was not angry at her at all. "W...wouldn't you feel safer here, with everyone?"
As he had before, Fayt reached out to put a hand on her head-but, remembering the cuts on his palms, he stopped and drew it back again. "...Thank you, but I'm fine. I want some time alone to think things over anyway."
"Oh...okay." There was a brief, awkward moment of quiet in which Peppita wilted. When no one else spoke up, Fayt squeezed Sophia's hand lightly. This time, when he made to leave she allowed him, and followed.
For a moment, Fayt did not go any further than the far side of the door, simply standing in the hallway. It had emptied even more during the minutes they had spent in the company of the Rossettis, and now the evacuation center was almost ghostly in its quiet. The remaining sounds of footsteps on the metal floor all seemed to come from some interminable distance despite the small size of the facility. Maybe it was simply that the woman in red was right. He was tired. He was tired and his head hurt and his hands hurt and his legs felt ready to give out at any time, and all he really wanted was to have his parents there to tell him everything was all right, but in lieu of that he thought that maybe he might be able to settle, just for a while, for a little sleep. He hadn't thought it was possible until the suggestion had been put forward to him, and now he realized that he wanted it, needed it, more than anything. He could feel Sophia leaning on heavily his shoulder and knew that she must have felt the same.
"Hey," he said quietly, looking down to her and releasing her hand. He did so only to put a supporting arm around her. "Sophia, are you okay? We can find the infirmary if you want."
She shook her head, pressing it against his shoulder. "Nn. I'm fine."
"You're exhausted," he corrected her. "The guy said room 506, right? We'll go there. You should rest."
She didn't argue again, simply nodding against him. He used the arm he had put around her to gently guide her off of the wall and lead her down the hallway and around the corner. Watching the numbers on the door, it only took Fayt a brief amount of time to find the room in question, but he was still all but carrying Sophia when he opened the door.
"Sorry," she murmured. "I guess it's just all catching up with me..."
"It's okay." He squeezed her, briefly, in what he hoped was a reassuring hug. She was probably in shock, both of them were, but he did not say that. Instead, he helped her into the first empty bed in the room-identical to the one they had only just exited except for the people inside-and gently drew the single blanket up over her. "Don't worry about it. Just rest."
For a moment she said nothing, gingerly fingering the edge of the blanket. "...Uhm...Hey, Fayt?"
He wished she would just take his advice and rest. The sight of an empty bed, one set aside for him to use, had made his entire body's protests seem all the louder and more insistent. Every fiber of his being ached and he just wanted to lie down. He did not say that. He smiled a little instead. "What is it?"
She opened her mouth again and then, much to Fayt's surprise and confusion, suddenly gripped the edge of the sheet and lifted, yanking it up all but over her head. Fayt blinked, stepping forward a little. "Sophia?"
She turned her eyes-almost all that was still visible over the blanket pulled up over her face-downward, not looking at him. "Will you...will you stay here by me until I fall asleep? I don't want to be alone."
Fayt stepped back again. Actually that was not quite right-his legs quivered, and it was all he could do not to fall back away from her. He managed to keep himself steady long enough to sit on the edge of the bed closest to her, mercifully unoccupied. "...Sure." He hoped it sounded steady. Steadier than he felt, at least. "I'll stay up and be right here, watching over you. You just relax and get some sleep."
"Thanks."
He smiled a little, nodding to her as she released her hold on the blanket and closed her eyes. She looked so young and helpless just lying there, the lump her body made in the bed so tiny and insignificant, that for a moment it was hard to remember that they were adults, or nearly adults, at all. He certainly did not feel like one just then, and the idea that they were still so young she needed someone standing guard for her to go to sleep was more reasonable in light of it. They were children, just small children, and all of this was some kind of dream. Obviously he'd spent too much time in the simulators, the way his imagination was starting to run away with him. He swore to himself that he would cut back-no, quit. He would quit. If he dedicated more time to his basketball and his studies and less to fantasy games that sent him spinning off into wild nightmare realms, maybe he would manage to be something other than average in one of them.
His eyelids were drooping; his head descending towards his chest. He jerked himself upright when he realized it only to see that Sophia was already asleep. Had he dozed off, or was she so exhausted that she had fallen asleep as soon as she closed her eyes?
It didn't really matter, he decided. Groaning slightly as the shift of positions strained his abused muscles, Fayt lay back on his own bed. He did not bother with the sheets. He was too tired, it would have involved too much movement. He lay his head on the pillow and promised himself that when he awoke, he would see to his hands. Except that was silly, wasn't it? His hands were fine. This was all a bad dream. He closed his eyes.
The world went black.
