Alfred was pacing a rut into the plastic floors of the corridors as the time ticked by. He roamed the entire small dome, passing and re-passing the rotum, the gym, the dormitory. Where is he? He didn't have Arthur's laser-sharp imagination, but most of the vague pictures that passed through his head made him want to shoot things.
His hip still ached from the tranq dart. He'd lost an hour from that, and it had been another hour since he'd woken up, swore at Antonio and then accepted the glass of water he offered, and started obsessively checking the airlock. He'd nearly punched Ludwig when Ludwig told him to log sim time and stop pacing. Arthur still wasn't back.
And when the door finally opened, and Arthur stumbled through, shoved by the android, it was worse.
The back of his overalls was stained dark. His eyes were blurred with pain and when the android released his arms, he nearly fell. Alfred had gone from turning the corner into a sprint in a time that wouldn't have disgraced a shock troop trainer. He got to Arthur just as Arthur stumbled, and caught him.
"Arthur," Alfred said, his throat nearly closing on the name.
"Waited – for me?" Arthur rasped, the words interrupted in the middle by a sharp breath. It was costing him to speak. "Stupid – git – Jones."
"Don't try and talk," Alfred said, some kind of remembered training spiraling into his mind out of the horror. "Let's get you somewhere – your bed."
He helped Arthur to downshift quarters, where Arthur collapsed on top of the covers. Every now and again a spasm of pain ran through him, and his fingers clutched the sheet like claws.
The overalls zipped up down the side, so Alfred didn't have to find anything to cut the cloth. "I'm going to take a look at your back," he said quietly. "That okay?" He kept his voice calm and reassuring out of habit. It felt weirdly like a voice he'd used with other injured people, somewhere in his lost memories.
Arthur gave a jerky nod into the pillow. Alfred pulled the cloth away sharply so as not to drag the ordeal out. It came away with more resistance than he'd hoped for; the blood on Arthur's shoulders and back was already starting to congeal. Alfred stared at it in dismay.
There was a crisscross of deep cuts over Arthur's back, seeping blood. The ones on his shoulders were turning brown, already clotting; the ones further down were still bright red. They covered from his waist to the base of his neck. The worst thing about them was the way they were all perfectly symmetrical, about an inch apart and crossing at rigidly fixed intervals. There was no human wobble in any of them. They could have been done by a machine.
He felt the anger rise from the soles of his feet. It was crackling like a severed power cable, burning into his whole body. Words rose to his mouth. Tell me who I can hunt down, Arthur, tell me who I can get back at for this.
His white thoughts seemed to be back, thin as a thread. He was training to be a goddamn professional. You had to be reassuring with patients. "It's gonna be okay," he said, running supplies through his head. He could get water and sterilized cloth from the washer. Would the dispenser have any med supplies? So far he'd only seen it produce ration cubes. "What were these done with? Was it sterilized?"
Arthur snorted into the pillow. It was a moment before Alfred realized it was amusement. "When- when did you get so competent?" Arthur's voice was rough and sounded like even talking was painful. "It was- I can't-" He took a quick, sharp breath.
Alfred found himself wrapping his fingers around Arthur's hand and holding it tight. Arthur turned his head towards him, his cheek pressed on the pillow. The shock had turned his skin almost grey. Alfred thought he was going to get snapped at, but instead Arthur silently tightened his thin fingers around his.
"You don't have to talk," Alfred said.
Arthur had pressed his teeth together so hard he was finding it hard to talk. "I'm trying to forget the details." He had to stop and breathe, every inhalation shallow and quick. "Blades were sterile, though."
"Damn it," Alfred said, losing whatever restraint he had on his anger. His hand pressed Arthur's more tightly. "I'm going to see what I can make the dispenser give me for med supplies. Don't move around while I'm gone, you'll strain the muscles."
"Don't bother," Arthur said. "It won't give you anything."
"Not even painkillers?" Alfred said. "Come on, every dispenser has basic meds! What does Feliciano take for his stomach?" He was pretty sure from talking to Feliciano that the stomach pains he kept complaining about were from stress, but that didn't mean the pain was imaginary. At home Alfred would be telling him to get checked for a stomach ulcer—
At home. At home. This time, Alfred kept his mouth shut on the words.
"Nothing," Arthur said. His face was still pale. "You need a full medbay check from the robots if you want meds dispensed. If they decide you're faking, you get – this. We're supposed to be tough. Feliciano won't get checked."
"We're supposed to be pilots," Alfred said, feeling sick. "You can't run patrols like this. They can't deny you medical care. It's a human right!"
"Two hours," Arthur said flatly. "Two hours on the dot from when they let me back in, and the dispenser will give you regen-gel. It accelerates healing by a factor of twelve to fourteen. I'll be healed by this evening."
"Why the delay?" Alfred demanded.
"Because it's a punishment, you idiot!" Arthur said. "I won't watch them rip apart living creatures, so they do this every time- ugh." He shut his eyes and his forehead furrowed as some stab of pain went through him.
Alfred suspected it was saying "living creatures" out loud that had done it. What's in our heads? he thought, in the safety of his white memories. What are they hiding?
"I'll get you pain meds," Alfred promised. Without thinking, he brushed his thumb over Alfred's forehead to push a strand of hair out of the way. "I'll make it dispense something. I'll take it apart if I have to."
"Don't get in trouble," Arthur said, and the sharp tone was laced with fear. "Not for me."
"I'll get in as much trouble for you as I want."
"You don't understand how things work around here, Jones!" Arthur said. "You can't fight anything when there's no one there! Save it for the Cree," he added, and there was a note of bitterness in his tone that made Alfred's stomach clench.
"You're important," he said. He hadn't intended to stop there, but his brain was fighting against forming the words. Damn it, he was in charge of his own speech! "You're more important that the Cree. You're more important than anything in this stupid complex, even – even my Aurea. Even me. Even my lunch," he added, from some long-ago reflex that he could have sworn was a joke they'd once shared.
Arthur was staring at him, his eyes wide. The room was silent.
"You don't mean that," Arthur said after a moment. He sounded sure – Arthur always sounded sure – but Alfred knew how to read him. He could hear the shades under Arthur's tone: hesitancy, bitterness, hunger. "Everyone's out for themselves. You have other things to do right now, don't you? I don't need sympathy. You can go."
"The only place I'm going is to get your meds," Alfred said.
Arthur's mouth curved. "Good excuse. They won't come for two hours."
"Hey," Alfred said, and Arthur looked up at the crack in his voice. Alfred couldn't help his voice. That had hurt.
He sat on the bed, took Arthur's hand and held it in his lap. He wanted to go and smash up some robots. He wanted to go and hammer the dispenser into giving up a hospital's worth of medical supplies. But some nagging voice was telling him that was what he had done last time: ignored Arthur to do what was best for him. He had a horrible feeling that – hadn't gone so well.
He took a deep breath. "What do you want me to do?" he said.
"Stay," Arthur said swiftly, as if the word had been hovering beneath the surface this whole time. He didn't meet Alfred's eyes. "Please."
Alfred squeezed his hand. "I'll stay," he said. "You should talk, if you can. It might keep your mind off the pain." He wanted to ask why the hell didn't you watch the vid, but Arthur was in enough pain as it was. He didn't need hard questions. Factual, easy-recall information. "Tell me about that tracker plan Roderich has."
Arthur looked up at him, eyes blurred with pain, but at the question they seemed to clear a little. He frowned and started talking in a low, exhausted voice about vectors, acceleration speeds, Cree formations. Every now and then he emphasized a point by biting off a word, as if he could keep the pain away with the thin barrier of his voice. Alfred encouraged him, asked questions, pushed the sweat-soaked hair away from Arthur's forehead when it threatened to fall into his eyes.
Eventually Arthur broke off, pressed his head into the pillow, and said, "No, I t-take it back. Go and see if you can hurry up the gel pack."
"Right!" Alfred said, jumping to his feet.
He pried the side panel off the dispenser in the meals room and used a spanner and every programming trick he could possibly think of to make it materialize what he wanted. All he managed were off-schedule ration cubes and a can of gear oil. In the depths of his frustration he dealt it a whack with the spanner, and it beeped and dispensed a pack of medical gel.
"Finally," Alfred said, grabbing it. He looked up at the clock and swore. Two hours on the dot from when Arthur had stumbled back in.
The gel worked. Alfred was nervous, smoothing it across Arthur's back, but he kept his hands steady and Arthur held himself braced and bit down on his noises of pain. The change was immediate. The wounds that had started to scab over were already puckering around the edges by the time Alfred had finished.
Arthur gave a shaky sigh and relaxed for the first time since Alfred had seen him that morning. "Water," he said, with a hint of his old imperiousness.
It was like a wash of relief down Alfred's back. "On my way."
He had to go back to the meals room to get a cup. When he returned, Arthur had pulled a reader off the bedside table – he was sitting up now, what was in that regen-gel? – and was tapping at it.
As Alfred came back in, Arthur looked up and set it aside. "Do you remember anything?" he said suddenly.
For once in his life, Alfred hesitated. Wasn't this the sort of thing that triggered the mind wipe? "About what?" He handed over the water.
"About –" Arthur broke off and looked like he was phrasing this very carefully. "About – any place you might have dreamed you lived once."
"304," Alfred blurted out.
Arthur stared at him. Alfred touched his own mouth in absolute bafflement. He'd had no intention of saying that at all.
"Maybe that's my- someone's apartment number?" Alfred said. He searched his memories, but he could pull up nothing else.
Arthur shook his head. "I shouldn't have asked," he said shortly. "I've been thinking too much about before and after, recently. I shouldn't. My programming doesn't like it."
"After?" Alfred said. He glanced up, to the grey, curved ceiling, and imagined the Cree ships high above. "Doesn't seem too likely we'll make it through to retirement."
Arthur snorted. "Retirement?" he said. Beside him, the reader beeped. "Try 'seventeen'."
"What?"
"Pilots disappear after they turn sixteen," Arthur said. "What do you think happened to the last pilot of Eagle? In morning briefing they said he was transferred, but I've checked every scrap of the net we have access to – and that's all the military net, so it should be there – and he doesn't exist anymore. One place I hacked through to listed him as deceased."
Alfred could barely find the words from shock. "Have you told the others?"
"I can't," Arthur said. "Ludwig and Antonio and Romano are too deep in the programming. They wouldn't believe me. Feliciano would just panic. I have no idea what Gilbert and Roderich would do." He turned back to his screen. "You turned fifteen seven months ago," he said flatly.
"How do you know that?" Alfred said, still bewildered and trying to process all of this.
"I know you," Arthur said, fierce and unexpectedly desperate. "Don't I? It's all I can think of when I look at you – this nagging familiarity. Don't tell me!" he said, putting out a hand as Alfred opened his mouth. "We'll both trigger our mind wipes."
Alfred sagged. "I don't know much more," he said. "I wish I did. How's your back?"
"Healing," Arthur said. At Alfred's appealing look, he grudgingly twisted to the side and let him pull down the overalls and have a look.
"Your cuts – it looks like half a day's passed," Alfred said slowly. He wasn't sure if he was reassured by this or nauseated. The fact that you could just reset someone's body like that made the hairs on the back of his neck twitch.
"Pleasant, isn't it," Arthur said, pulling back up his overall and twisting back. "Pleasant like cyanide ice cream."
"You know ice cream is a food?" Alfred said. Food was supposed to be ration blocks.
"I get – flashes," Arthur said warily. Alfred knew the feeling. They were treading on the edge of the mind wipe. "Nothing concrete." On the bedside table, the reader beeped, more urgently this time.
Alfred picked it up to hand it to Arthur, glancing at it as he handed it over. He blinked and stared harder. The reader was crowded from edge to edge with code windows. "What are you running?" he said. That wasn't a battle sim or any of their training programs.
Arthur snatched the reader away from him. "I was trying to pick up traces of the guard that took me out," he said. "Life signs, call waves, transmissions from their ID bracelet – anything."
Guard. Alfred opened his mouth and then shut it again. Last time he'd tried to tell the others about an android, his whole mind had blanked. "Why?" he said, buying time to think of a way around it.
Arthur gave him a long, calculating look. Alfred realized he wasn't the only one trying to fool the mind wipe. "We don't get much contact with the rest of the military," Arthur said at last, and Alfred could hear a mountain of things he wasn't saying behind it.
The rest of the military. Where were their commanding officers? Alfred felt a surge of desperation to tell Arthur about the androids, but he couldn't trigger his mind wipe and pass out now. Arthur needed him.
There must be a way. He tried to come at it sideways in his mind, concentrating on not thinking about the words he was saying. "I don't think you'll get life signs."
Arthur's eyes came up sharply from the reader. "How do you—" He broke off, making a sharp movement with his hand as though cutting his own train of thought. He's not surprised, Alfred thought. He's only surprised I've seen it too.
The moment Alfred opened his mouth to say something about it, though, he could feel something pushing at his white memories, the dull grey lines of the rest of his brain trying to overwhelm them. He quickly changed what he was going to say. "They might have some sort of cloaking device, I mean," he said. "Might be standard for normal troops. We wouldn't need them 'cause we have the Aurea." Don't believe me.
"Yes," Arthur said flatly. "A cloaking device." He tapped new instructions into the reader. "It would be utterly stupid to suggest that the only real human is the one we see on the vid screens in briefing."
Alfred almost wanted to laugh, but it felt like laughing at a fatal depressurization. "Yeah," he said. "That would be a dumb thing to think."
Arthur seemed to come to a decision. He laid the reader on his bed by his leg, and it wasn't unless you looked at the tense line of the tendons in his arm that you realized he was nearly shaking. "Our communications are filtered," he said, carefully picking each word as if it was a delicate component and he was handling the bot slotting it into place. "The sites I reach on the net are geographically distant, if I'm reading it right. The nearby ones are – old."
Don't think about it. Don't trigger the mind wipe. Alfred tried to fill his mind with the feel of his Aurea. He could feel every strut and panel of Eagle, the wind thrumming past the metal as he climbed to the clouds. He let his words come out as if he didn't care about them in the slightest. "So, what do we do?"
"I don't know," Arthur said. His hand had bunched in the sheets, twisting them into disorder. "There are the Cree. We'd have to beat the Cree before – anything else."
Alfred frowned in thought. "Even if we did, we still can't get out," he said. "I checked the airlock while you were gone, it won't—"
His words choked off as sudden nausea swept through him. He bent over, letting his head rest on his knees, frantically blanking his mind. Think of the Aurea. Think of Eagle. He forced himself to pull up the feel of clouds slipping past him and Cree ahead.
It seemed to work. He forced his breathing into a slow and regular rhythm, and with each breath the nausea ebbed. There was a hand around his wrist.
"Alfred," Arthur was saying sharply, tightening his grip. "Concentrate, you bloody fool. Breathe. Don't black out on me."
"Not," Alfred managed. "Not blacking out." He pushed his head up, staring at the blurred square pattern on the floor. "I was just trying to say – I mean – the airlock –" The nausea rose again.
"Stop," Arthur said. Alfred broke off at the undercurrent of fear in his voice.
"Hey," Alfred said, trying to get his head straight enough to sound convincingly reassuring. "Hey, Arthur, it's okay, don't sound like that. Nothing's wrong. I just—"
"It will be wrong in a minute if you don't bloody shut up!" Arthur said. "Don't pass out and leave me here, you twat. I don't want to- I don't want to be on my own right now." The last words came out in a choked rush, Arthur scowling furiously down at his reader.
And suddenly, just like that, things seemed very simple. Alfred straightened his back, forcing himself to not feel sick. He had to think about the problem of getting out, but he didn't have to say anything yet. Not when Arthur was still recovering. "I'm fine," he said, his voice firming up, "and I'm not going anywhere." Arthur was still scowling, and Alfred put his hand on Arthur's forearm to distract him. "Hey. It's gonna be okay somehow, I promise."
He saw Arthur's chest move fractionally as he let out a breath. "No, it's not, you idiot," Arthur muttered, but it seemed more automatic than anything else.
They both seemed to realize at the same time that Alfred's hand had been on Arthur's arm for several moments longer than it had any right to. Arthur looked down at Alfred's hand. Consciously, slowly, his arm relaxed under the touch.
"It is soft," Alfred said, staring at the sandy hair by his hand.
Arthur's eyes flew up to meet his, deep green and startled. Stupid, stupid, stupid. He'd gone too far. What was he doing, anyway, trying to flirt with Arthur when Arthur didn't remember him? When he hardly remembered anything himself? Arthur didn't want anything to do with him that way, Alfred had messed everything up already, this was just—
"Hold this," Arthur said, and Alfred found the cool edges of the reader pressed into his hands, and Arthur's hand around the back of his neck, and Arthur's lips pressed to his.
Alfred felt his mouth part in sheer surprise. Little flickers seemed to be running down his whole body, as if a wire had been hooked up to his spine, but rather than burns it was shooting pleasant heat down his skin. He felt a slight hesitation from Arthur, as Arthur felt his shock. Don't stop, Alfred nearly said, but that would have required using his mouth to talk instead of the myriad things now tumbling through his mind that seemed like much better ideas. He put his arms around Arthur, the reader tumbling on the bed between them. He found he didn't have to think any more – he kissed hungrily, desperately and Arthur responded as if they'd only have this one chance in the world.
They broke away. Alfred's heart was thumping as if it was trying to break through his ribs. Arthur's hands were linked around his neck, pressing into his skin hard, and Arthur had his head down and was nearly shaking.
"Hey," Alfred said softly, putting his hands on Arthur's shoulders. "Hey, I'm not going anywhere."
Arthur gave a strangled laugh. "Everyone leaves."
"I'm not leaving," Alfred said urgently, although that made his stomach curdle, recollection hovering over his shoulder like a tracker missile. I left before. "I promise. Not again."
Arthur froze at not again, his breath coming fast and shallow.
"I promise," Alfred said.
Arthur gave a yank at his neck. It pulled them both back until they both tumbled against the thin headboard, Alfred sprawled gracelessly over Arthur.
"Sleep here," Arthur said fiercely. "The others won't care. Don't leave tonight."
"I'm here," Alfred said easily, shifting so they were both more comfortable. Something clattered to the floor. "Think that was your reader."
Arthur gave a quiet snort of real laughter. "You clumsy git. Move your leg."
Arthur's body was pressed against Alfred, and Alfred felt warmth where he touched. Alfred pressed himself closer, feeling cold creep down his back, as if Arthur was the only heat in the whole of a dark planet.
Arthur's head was nestled by his shoulder, but his eyes were distant. "You're sixteen soon," Arthur said quietly. "We have five months."
"No, we don't," Alfred said, without thinking. "We have five days."
Arthur stiffened, and his sandy head tilted back so he could meet Alfred's eyes. Alfred stared back, lost. His tongue seemed to have moved on its own.
"What?" Arthur said. "How do you know?"
"I don't know," Alfred said hopelessly. "I can't remember." He put his arms around Arthur suddenly, fiercely, and pulled him against his body as if he could protect them both from everything. But there were just the two of them, with aliens in the sky and androids who cut them up and memories like corrupted disks.
Let the Cree come, Alfred thought, as Arthur made a surprised sound and curled into the line of his body. Let the androids come. I'm not letting him go again.
