Julian was a nice guy. He refused to accept the bed that she offered him, outright, even laying down on the ground in protest when she insisted, and proceeded to just fall asleep in the dirt, even though she nudged and tried to roll him closer to the bed. Tried, but failed. Though thin, he was still about as heavy as any average grown man. He did laugh at her attempts, which kind-of lifted her spirits. But finally, she was too tired to try anymore, and went to bed, on the bed.
Now the sun was pouring through the open door and both her and Julian were on their hands and knees, looking around the room, then crawling over to some thing or other and moving it to a higher place or securing it in the cabinets.
"When did they say this war was going to start?"
Kaylin sighed, sliding a bowl into a cabinet and shutting the door, "they didn't. In fact they said that they would avoid it if possible."
Kaylin stood up from her knees and stretched out her back, scrunching her nose as several pops resounded from her spine. She sighed in relief and straightened back up. She frowned and scratched at a cut on her arm as she did another sweep with her eyes.
"I think we're good," she said and Julian got up off the ground, dusting his knees off then adjusting his glasses.
"But you think there's going to be a war."
Kaylin sighed heavily, looking at the ground sadly, "I don't want to, but I know it's unavoidable. I wish I could trust them to not kill each other but… it's almost in their nature…."
"So all the children will be coming here."
Kaylin nodded, "I'm the only one that everyone trusts I just," Kaylin felt her eyes sting and brought her hand to her mouth to hold back a sob, "I think it will be as much a war here as it is out there. These children have been raised and taught to hate each other. I'm afraid of what will happen with all of them here."
Kaylin sniffled then caught herself, forcing herself to breath deep and get herself calm. She did not expect the sudden presence of arms around her. She was startled for only a moment, before accepting the first comforting hug she had had in years. She calmed down soon after that. Laughing it off and wiping her eyes.
"Alright," she said, clapping her hands together then rubbing them, steeling herself for a while longer, "let's figure out which wall we want to expand."
Julian had a surprised look on his face, and Kaylin looked behind her to see if someone had shown up. Her hand was snatched and Julian carefully inspected the wound.
"These are acid burns," he said definitively and Kaylin nodded, taking her hand back.
"Chemical accident," she lied, "I wasn't paying attention," she smiled at him, rubbing the scarred flesh before moving to the northern wall, "I think we can tear this one down, and build from it. Nothing complicated, just a basic longhouse-type dwelling we could make out of the branches and bark around the house."
"You think we have that much time?" Julian asked.
Kaylin forced a smile, "I hope so."
Julian looked skeptical, but he began helping tear a hole in the wall. It only took them about an hour to get half of the mud-and-stick building made, and they were letting it dry to see how well it stood up. After all, Kaylin had only witnessed the construction of her hut; she didn't actually know the process herself.
As Kaylin poured a glass of water for her and Julian, she thought back to the drop, "do you know the name of the man you were fighting with when you got here?"
Julian accepted his glass and thought for a second, "I think his name is Dee, or starts with a 'D.' The other men in his gang always called him 'Bid D.'"
Kaylin paused in pouring her own glass as she held back a laugh behind thin lips.
"What?"
"'Big D,' is slang for 'big dick," she said, blushing slightly. Julian was quiet for a moment, then began to chuckle. Kaylin also laughed quietly to herself, shaking her head.
"So how old are you?" Julian asked, taking a drink from the glass of outside-temperature water that Kaylin now poured for herself.
The doctor washed her hands off and thought about the question, "thirty… one I think? Years are longer on this planet, so it's difficult to tell Earth time. I've been here about nine Neo-Australia years."
Julian took the glass from his lips and stared at her a while.
"What did you do?"
Kaylin dried her hands on one of her lab coats and the corner of her mouth twitched down, "I had killed several people in a drug-induced hallucinogenic state," she said quietly, "including the patient I was working on, and the nurses and doctors who were with me around the operating table."
Julian was quiet for a moment, looking down into the water in his glass, "was that man right?" he asked, and Kaylin turned to him with a questioning look, "were you framed?"
Kaylin smiled sadly, "what about you?"
Julian's face contorted in a deep frown, and he set the glass down on the table, "I uh…," he began clearing his throat and walking away from Kaylin, uncomfortable, "I caught my wife with another man in our bed," he said, rubbing his hand over his mouth and chin, "and I uh… I killed them both," he looked down at the ground with deep regret.
Kaylin's brow bent in sympathy and confusion, "usually just a double homicide isn't enough to land you here," she said cautiously.
"Yeah well," Julian sighed, "my wife was Karl Bishop Weyland's niece, and the guy happened to be the operations manager for the company."
Kaylin flinched, "I'm sorry."
"Don't be," Julian retorted quickly and leaned against the wall, adjusting his glasses.
Kaylin was silent for a moment, taking in the information then looking over at Julian, "so who were you to the company?"
Julian lifted his eyes to the ceiling, as if contemplation an answer, "officially I was nobody," he finally said, looking back down at Kaylin, "unofficially I was a lead of the science department for LV 360."
Kaylin had never heard of this man, but then again, as he said, she wouldn't have.
"LV 360?"
"An ice planet," Julian began to explain, the hint of a smile on his lips, "absolutely nothing living on it, at least on the surface, even though the air is entirely breathable, at least by human standards. But were had discovered organisms beneath the ice, miles, beneath the ice. We were looking into the possibility that these organisms could show us the very building blocks of life from which all life on Earth may have come to be. It was my life's work," he sighed happily, reminiscing, no doubt, about happier times.
Kaylin herself smiled, rubbing the melted flesh of her right hand.
Then there was loud popping. Kaylin's gaze shot to the open door. Julian's face expressed his horror at the conclusion Kaylin also got to.
"No no no no!" she yelled, running out the door. More and more popping noises resounded, and the closer she got, the more the pops sounded like thunder. She could taste iron in the back of her throat by the time she arrived to where the boxes had been dropped. She could see clearly the opposing men: the Skulls and the Mels. The shooting had stopped for some reason, and as she stepped closer, Kaylin saw why.
Cee was on the ground, holding a wound in his shoulder, Karson lay dead next to him, and between where the Skulls were huddled and the Mels were standing, Jone lay dying. Kaylin felt her heart flutter up into her throat as she ran over to the man, falling down beside him and passing her hands over his chest, she pulled them away covered in his blood. He had been shot multiple times in his abdomen.
"Kay, did you tell these bo-bo's that the guns were here!?" screamed Cee, fingers soaked in his own blood.
"I didn't tell anybody!" Kaylin exclaimed looking from Jone to Cee and then back, "Cee, can you walk? I need to take you and Jone to my house."
"There ain't no way in hell I'm going under the same roof as that chud!"
Kaylin shot a desperate look towards Cee, then looked back to Jone, then up at the Mels present, "help me carry him to my house," she said quickly, trying to lift his shoulders. No one moved immediately and Kaylin' gaze shot up at them again. She saw that the one of them, the new man from the drop, Big D, had his arm stretched out in a silent order to not move.
Kaylin looked desperately at him, "he's dying! Please!"
He didn't drop his arm, and the others, also mostly the new inmates, didn't move. Kaylin felt her eyes burn as she stood looking from the Mels to the Skulls, but no one moved. Finally, Julian stepped up and began to grab Jone. Kaylin instantly bent to help Jone onto Julian's back.
"You cauc-," began the Big D and lifted his gun to Julian. Gunfire erupted around the three of them as the Skulls retaliated against his movement. Kaylin quickly led Julian into the trees, fleeing quickly and looking back often to make sure that Julian was right behind her.
She felt hot tears running down her face as she sobbed and gasped. Julian stopped once to catch his breath, but did not even allow himself to fully rest before taking off again.
"Hurry!" Kaylin cried, though the command was unneeded.
The popping had already stopped by the time they arrived back at her hut. Kaylin all but tossed the glass of water onto the counter and swept her arm across the surface, "put him here."
She turned her back and began to unload her surgical tools, having difficulty seeing what she was doing past her tears. How had the Mels found out about the guns? Who else knew? This was bad, no, this was worse than what she thought might happen.
She sniffled and sobbed, sanitizing her tools with trembling hands until Julian's voice said softly, "Kaylin… this man is dead."
Kaylin whipped around, looking at Jone's still body on her table.
"No," she gasped and stepped towards him. Shaking hands moved over his chest, then to his throat, pressing two fingers to his chin. She sniffed, bending her head down to press her ear to his chest, then his mouth.
"No," she whimpered and moved her hands from his shoulders to his shirt, grasping the cloth tightly as her face twisted in agony.
"No!" she screamed and cried over and over again, frantically searching over his body to see if there was something she could do, as if there was anything she could do to save him. She wept loudly, staring with horror at the blood on her hands, screaming up at the ceiling and to the sky beyond as a pair of arms wrapped around her and tried in vain to comfort her.
She wasn't sure how long it took her to stop crying, but soon after she went outside to where a sled was kept to transport patients who couldn't walk to and from her house. She wrapped Jone in a blanket, and telling Julian that it would be safer for him to stay at the hut, she began to drag Jone to the Mel territory. The walk was long enough, with her struggling and having to stop often, that she was entirely calm, but still in pain, by the time she arrived.
Several Mels ran out of their homes and into the open center of the village to watch her approach. Many were angry, yelling at her and kicking the dirt, others were yelling at her, running at her with guns. Seemed the party from the forest had already returned and armed their people.
Kaylin stopped a good distance away, raising the yoke of the sled off her shoulders then laid it gently on the ground. She stepped away from the sled, approaching to where she could see Ressa, Jone's wife, and Tyke. Kaylin bent down to one knee, and motioned at Tyke, opening her arms and inviting him to her. He hurried over, slowing down as he neared, and looking at Kaylin solemnly as she grasped his shoulders.
She rubbed his arms and squeezed them affectionately, as she sighed repeatedly, trying to find the words to break the news to the young boy with.
"Is that my dad?" he asked somberly and Kaylin looked into his eyes. She bit her lip and bent her head before the child.
"Yes," she finally exhaled, looking back up at him. He blinked his beautiful dark eyes only once, looking from her to the sled. She found no more words to say.
"You have balls coming here chink," Kaylin looked up at the Big D, waving an automatic pistol in her general direction, and Kaylin moved Tyke behind her, "it's your fault that man is dead! Give me one good reason I shouldn't put you down right now."
"She's the only doctor we have!" yelled Ressa in Kaylin's defense, and this reason was echoed by many others.
Kaylin felt a rush of heat, one she would have preferred to remain buried but it rose to the surface like hot magma, "my fault!?"
Kaylin stood up, fist tightly clenched and her teeth grinding between thin lips, "you have the gall," Kaylin could feel the heat in her face and in her chest. She could see faces looking at her like they didn't recognize her at all.
"When I was told about the guns I didn't tell anyone else. I went immediately home to make room for the children for the inevitable slaughter that was going to occur, and I was right. And when I asked for help to carry Jone to my home to save his life, when I begged, it was you who stood idly by, and commanded the others to do the same. So don't you dare say it was my fault. I knew that any of you, the Mels, the Skulls, the Red Dragons, any of you couldn't pass up the chance to kill each other, and now a little boy has no father because of you."
Kaylin didn't get much time to relish in her speech, the dark-skinned man with the gun leveled it on her. She only registered Ressa's cry as the gun went off, striking Kaylin just below the ribs as Jone's wife jumped onto the man's outstretched arm. Kaylin collapsed to the ground, pressing a hand against the searing pain, feeling small hands on her shoulders, supporting her in an upright position. Kaylin's tightly closed eyes opened, and her gnashed teeth parted in a horrified expression, and the gun in the new Mel leader's hand discharged three times.
And just like that, Tyke became an orphan.
Kaylin's pain was ignored as she whipped around, wrapping her arms around the young boy who's eyes were wide with shock. She lifted him off the ground, and began running back down the street. She saw enough in her escape to know that the people who had been loyal to Jone had attacked Big D, and the people who were loyal to him attempted to fight back. But they were outnumbered, and everyone had guns.
Kaylin tried to ignore the sounds of carnage a she continued to run, but could not ignore the screaming and crying of the boy right next to her ear. The adrenaline quickly ran out and the doctor began to slow, huffing for air and having to readjust her grip on the child until she collapsed to her knees. Tyke looked down at Kaylin quietly as she pressed a hand to the bullet wound in her stomach and writhed.
"Kay, you're bleeding," he whimpered, but try as she might, she couldn't put a strong face on for the child, "Kay," he whimpered again, "who do I take you to when you're hurt?" he sniffled and sobbed quietly. Kaylin didn't have the strength or breath for an answer, not that there was an answer to give him.
"Go," she finally breathed, "to… my… home…," every word felt like a dagger in her stomach and her head fell back to the ground.
Tyke nodded and moved to grab Kaylin's shoulders, trying to drag her with him, causing her immense pain and she cried out. He dropped her immediately and sobbed, holding his hands close to him, afraid to touch and hurt her again.
"Go…," she exhaled painfully, "without me…."
Tyke hiccupped, his shoulders heaving as he gasped and sobbed. He looked down at Kaylin and she began to go still, then looked around at the buzzing jungle around him. No one was around but the animals and insects, and he sobbed again, feeling a painful bubble in his chest before he cried out.
"Help!" he screamed, "help!" such pain and desperation that should never fill the voice of a child rang out and echoed softly, but only the trees bore sad witness to the child's plight as Kaylin's world faded to black.