Disclaimer: If you recognize the characters, they aren't mine. Just playing in the sandbox provided by Dreamworks and the "Voltron" production team.
Reminder: I'm on Twitter under "avidbeader" if you're reading this as a guest and prefer seeing notifications there. My Tumblr, also "avidbeader", is currently full of Voltron stuff.
Keith drove south, keeping away from roads as much as possible. He had a destination in mind, if he could find it again after so many years.
About four hours later, he spotted what looked like a light in the distance. As he got closer, he realized that the light was the moon reflecting off of something. He approached more slowly, not wanting to run into anyone.
But as he topped a rise to find a large, flat valley, he saw a small house come into view. The remains of a fence circled it and a lone tree rose behind it. There were no vehicles around, no sign of any road or path leading away. He drove closer and noticed that one of the dark windows was missing a pane of glass. That was the clearest sign that this place was abandoned—given the amount of sand and grit blown about in the desert, that would have been fixed immediately.
Keith moved closer and saw what the moonlight had picked up. A metal addition, almost like a bunker, nestled up against the side of the house. The door was shut tight, whatever was inside still protected. He pulled the hoverbike up next to the bunker and dismounted.
The door had a simple keypad lock with four numbers more worn than the rest. He began going through the twenty-four possible permutations and got the combination right on the fifth try. He opened the door, fishing out a palm-sized flashlight from his belt and shining it around.
The enclosed room had a bed, a table, and a corner piled high with pallets of water bottles and stacks of canned goods. Keith pulled out his pocket tablet and checked his location through the GPS. He was about fifty miles west of his intended destination, an abandoned town that he and his father had come across while exploring the region on camping trips. The nearest inhabited town on the map was another sixty miles south and east.
This could work.
He brought in his own food supply and his bag. He investigated for any wildlife, but the metal walls had done their job and there were no potentially poisonous visitors. Checking inside the house proper, he found a main room with a kitchen setup in one corner and a door that led to a small bathroom. The main room was indeed covered in a thick layer of dust and sand, but the bathroom was mostly clean behind its closed door and functional once Keith opened the water supply from a well.
He dug through the duffle bag for fresh clothes and paused when he found some of Shiro's clothes there as well due to his hasty packing. He folded these carefully and stowed them back in the bag, then washed up, getting the accumulated road grime off. He returned to the bunker and stretched out on the bed.
As he waited for sleep, he followed the soul bond to Shiro, sending one more reinforcing message of love and support. Shiro responded, assuring him that he was safe for the moment, and then there was a faint wave of contentment that felt different…
Was that a purr? Since when did Shiro purr at him?
Katie was sitting on her hands, hiding the fact that she had fingers crossed on both of them. She had been in a holding area of the campus security office for twenty minutes now, waiting as they summoned her mother. If they would only send her mom in first, she could whisper to her that she had proof that Dad and Matt and Shiro were alive. Then hopefully the force of nature that was Colleen Holt when she was furious would erupt.
She heard the outer door open and her mother's voice rose over the rumble of Iverson. After a few minutes of heated arguing, footsteps sounded and the door in front of her opened.
"Kathryn—"
Katie launched herself before the full name could be drawn out and buried her face next to her mother's neck as she embraced her. She whispered urgently, "They're alive! I found proof! We have to get out of here!"
She felt her mother stiffen for a heartbeat then straighten and turn around. Iverson tried to loom over them, but Colleen Holt drew in breath and jabbed her finger into his chest.
"I hold you and the Garrison responsible for the deaths of my husband and son. You pushed for this mission. You chose Captain Shirogane as your best pilot. You are refusing to even consider assembling a team to send probes and investigate. You won't show us your evidence that it was Captain Shirogane's mistake that killed them. Is it any wonder that Katie looked for answers when you refuse to give them to us?"
"Be that as it may, your daughter is now permanently banned from this installation for her security breach!"
Her mom grabbed her arm. "That will not be a problem as we are never coming near you again!" She dragged Katie out, her head held high.
One of Iverson's aides ushered them to a hovercar and drove them back across the base to their quarters. "We have reservations for you at the main hotel in town, ma'am. I'll wait here while you finish packing."
Colleen nodded. "We won't take more than a few minutes. We were pretty much packed for our flight anyway."
Katie kept silent until they were in the hotel room, at which point her mother rounded on her. "What on God's green earth were you thinking, Katie? Breaking into a government building? Hacking a computer with classified information?"
She reached down and dug the flash drive out from where it had wedged between her foot and her sneaker. She would have a hell of a blister for a few days…
"The night of the press conference, I was out in one of the courtyards and saw Iverson stop a cadet from barging in. The cadet swore that Shiro was alive, was certain of it. So I decided to investigate. I pulled video files off Iverson's computer that show Shiro landed the ship safely. They were starting work on collecting Dad's ice samples and just…disappeared."
"How did a cadet know what happened?"
"Remember how Matt said Shiro had a soulmate?"
Colleen sank to sit on the bed, her mind floundering to make sense of it all. "Sam made arrangements with a doctor…"
"Do you remember the soulmate's name?"
"No. I have to call the Shiroganes…I have to let them know. They might have his name. But how can we fight this?"
Katie drew a deep breath. "I have an idea about that."
Twenty-six days. It had been twenty-six days, going by the daily food drops, since Shiro had been returned to the cell in the original arena. There had been no fights, no glimpse of Matt or Ch'varr or the others. Shiro began exercising as best he could just to alleviate the boredom: stretches, pushups, sit-ups, what he remembered of a brief excursion into tai-chi, anything that kept him moving. After the second day of this, they started bringing in a fresh uniform every day. With fresh clothes and the water from the tiny faucet in the corner, he could keep himself relatively clean. At the moment the situation was almost tolerable; if he only knew that Matt and Sam were all right.
When Keith was awake, Shiro followed the bond, trying to sort out what the hell had happened. All he could get was that there had been an attempt to break their bond and Keith had run from the Garrison because of it. He was currently somewhere isolated, but somewhere that felt reasonably safe for now.
Keith excavated the house in stages. He started by putting a temporary patch over the broken window and working to get the layers of sand and dirt out. As he cleaned, he made a full inventory of what was in the house and the bunker, weeding out the unusable, repairing and rearranging what was salvageable to his preferences. He carefully evicted the small zoo of local wildlife that had taken up residence in the house. He figured out how to reset the code for locking the bunker. He made a list of necessities, took a couple of currency cards and the last of his cash, and set off early one morning.
He skipped the nearest small town, going another seventy miles to the next one. He started at the public library, filling out a visitors' card with fake information so he could access their computers and set up a new account on a popular messaging program.
He had drafted the message so many times in his head on the drive but still needed almost the full hour to get it sent.
Dear Mr. and Mrs. Shirogane,
This is Keith. I am so sorry for not getting in touch before now, but as you will read, things went downhill very quickly after Takashi and the team made it to Kerberos.
I don't know what Iverson told you, but the official story in the media is wrong. Takashi did not crash the ship. I could feel it when they made it there and landed successfully. I was with Dr. Hooper at the time and she recorded all the things that showed that he and I are still connected.
He is alive. I think he and the Holts were taken prisoner by an alien force. What I get from the link now suggests that they're forcing him to fight for them—he often feels sick at the idea of having to kill.
I don't have a way to contact Mrs. Holt. I'm pretty sure they survived as well, or at least Shiro thinks so. He worries about them a lot. Could you let her know for me? I don't know when I might be able to write you again.
I'm not at the Garrison anymore. Iverson lied to me about what they were going to do about the situation, then put me off. And then he was part of an attempt to break the bond between Shiro and me. So I ran. I'm somewhere at the moment where I can take care of myself and stay hidden—I can't risk the Garrison finding me in case they try to take the bond away again.
I will try to contact you if anything changes.
Keith
Haggar spent every spare moment for quintants watching Prisoner 117-9875 through a scrying spell. She had ordered total seclusion for now—she didn't want to risk him dying in an arena fight but she didn't want to bring him to anyone else's attention yet by having him brought to her lab. She wanted to examine what she was dealing with first.
This alien was intriguing, to say the least. She had Ulaz's report from the initial examination of a fairly typical bipedal race: average brains, hearts on the small side for their size, rather sturdy in muscle and bone structure. There was variation among them in size and coloring, comparing the records of this alien with the other two of his type.
She almost admired how this alien, when completely isolated, invented a discipline for himself. He would exercise his body several times a day. He took full advantage of the water supply in the cell both to drink and to try and keep himself clean. Haggar arranged for clean clothing to be delivered, curious to see how encouraging the discipline would affect this connection of his.
It was always there, this strange quintessence. After a few days of close study, Haggar was able to identify the structure: it was actually two different life forces, but they harmonized together in a way she had never seen before, allowing both to reside in this alien's body without harm. This was unheard of in her long experience—it took magic to transfer quintessence from one body to another, to refine it into a form that could be transferred. And yet there was no sign of magic around this alien that she could find.
He would take several opportunities each quintant to simply lie on the cot, close his eyes, and slip into a meditative state. At these points, the beacon of quintessence between him and the other source usually strengthened a little in power and intensity, though not at the level where she had first seen him. He would rise from these sessions with a jarring blend of contentment and stress. Whatever happened renewed him but also caused him worry.
Finally, on the twenty-seventh quintant, the overseer dared to come to her directly. "Mistress, we need the prisoner you requisitioned. He drew notice from the betting public at his last victory and the bookmakers are clamoring to know when he will appear again."
Haggar's eyes narrowed as she considered. The prisoner's current situation was not giving her any new information. Perhaps it was time to replicate the environment where his quintessence had first shone so brightly.
"Very well. You may return him to his group."
The overseer made a face. "That group is getting boring. They've managed to create a strong team since losing the Velkyn. They're bringing down beasts with minimal injuries now."
"Then perhaps we should bring them a new challenge. Have them fight one by one."
"That would help, mistress, but that arena's main draw is the beasts."
"Perhaps we can change things a little, surprise the spectators with a well-known name. Have them take turns with Myzax."
Thank you for reading!