Futuristic thought-altered realities ꩜ heartstringss & buttercup.

[heartstringss]

There was, unfortunately, no ‘juice’ left in Ayah’s ‘zappy thing.’ She might’ve chuckled had the circumstances of their present situation been any different (or less terrifying), but as it were she could do little more than shake her head in the meantime. She tried the power one more time and when that didn’t work, she jabbed the flashlight at the worm’s inner walls a few times instead. (Too bad the teeth of the taser’s mouth were laid flat and not pointing outward or she could have maybe tried puncturing the worm’s intestines.) As it were, if Jezz’s axe swinging and hacking weren’t making too much progress then who knows what good the taser would have been at all?

Ayah gave up the physical onslaught a lot sooner than Jezz did, instead using the time while Jezz was writhing above her and viciously hacking at the walls to try to get a better look around herself. There wasn’t much illumination in the tunnel as Jezz’s flashlight was so weak, but it was enough to tell the passage was too narrow, slick and smooth to even possibly try wiggling their way out of here. Was the Source in there with them, too? She couldn't see enough to tell but it seemed unlikely as it was so quiet beyond the sounds that she and Jezz were making themselves. That didn’t mean the guy couldn’t have just been swallowed by a different worm or ran over, though it seemed unlikely these delusions could continue if he were totally incapacitated or dead. (In fact, previous reports by other field agents had shown that they couldn’t.)

Truth be told, Ayah wasn’t too particularly worried about the wellbeing of the Source by this point… her career might’ve hinged on her success with this assignment but honestly she couldn’t help feeling like she hadn’t signed up for her own well-being feeling this supremely threatened. She would’ve rather been anywhere but here right now. Her skin was literally crawling, muscles twitching from the sheer exertion, panic and fatigue, and as if that wasn’t bad enough it was only getting harder to breathe the more energy (and air) Jezz expended with her onslaught. It wasn’t long before the other woman ran out of steam and gave up herself, at which point Ayah had no idea what else to do than try to fight the sting of tears that her eyes apparently didn’t have enough moisture left to even make regardless.

Ayah hiccuped briefly, her forehead coming to rest against the other woman’s thigh when she grew too tired and weak to hold it up herself any longer. She was just beginning to close her eyes when suddenly the walls began spasming. A rush of adrenaline itched its way up the column of her spine, fingers gripping tighter where they dug into the material of Jezz’s pants leg. She groaned with the surrounding pressure of the muscles reversing them back up the worm’s gastrointestinal tract and squeezed her eyes tight against whatever pain and suffering was in their future next.

She knocked her head against something hard wherever they’d been spat back out, what little she could tell was that they’d landed in some massive putrid, gooey pile in the dark. She didn’t react much beyond flinching whenever Jezz cursed aloud, staring up into the black, her vision dotted with stars.

“You okay? Please tell me you’re okay.”

Alright, so at least they were alive. Ayah drew in a breath and coughed, thinking fortunately they hadn’t landed far from each other so at least it didn’t take much effort to reach out and touch the other woman’s arm. She grabbed the cuff of her cloak gently, a sort of ‘yep, I’m here’ before she had the strength or will to manage any actual words. After a few seconds she chimed out, “I think so,” and finally pulled herself into a sitting position. Her free hand went to the back of her head, rubbing the sore spot where she’d hit her head. “What the hell did I–”

She reached for Jezz’s flashlight to direct the light where they had landed. The bulb flickered weakly in the darkness but was strong enough to just illuminate a humanoid shaped skull half-buried in the muck. Ayah hollered in shock but before she could get too worked up—a humongous rustling came from a nearby tunnel as a second worm emerged and promptly vomited its stomach contents out onto the pile. The Source landed face-first in the muck, stayed still for about a minute and then rose up onto his hands and knees and let out a roar of anger.

 

[Buttercup.]

Okay. Okay. They were both here, and they were alive. For now. At this point that was good enough for Jezz – oh how a little trauma brings people closer together and teaches them to appreciate the little things.

It felt wrong though. She was a hardened survivor who'd always made a point of not giving two fucks about anyone else, especially about some uppity spacer who came from god knows where and probably would be interfering with her plans if they weren't this deep in complete incomprehensible SHIT with no-one else to rely on. But Ayah was... quaint, in a way. Exotic for sure. Clearly out of touch with life on Earth. It awakened some weird primordial instinct in Jezz, if that made sense? A sense of responsibility? If she wasn't gonna help the damsel in distress, nobody else would. And who knew, perhaps getting in Ayah's good graces would be advantageous somewhere down the line.

Yeah. It was completely pragmatic and transactional.

Soon after their landing another worm rushed into the massive cave and did what the previous one did – dumped some undigested food on this horrifying pile Jezz had managed not to think about too hard until just now. And now she was gonna, but—

"YOU FUCKING FOOLS!" Yes, that was definitely the Source. "I told you to stay quiet! Everything would've been fine! I had it all figured out for GOD'S SAKE."
Jezz really, really wasn't in the mood for this guy anymore (as if she'd ever been to begin with).
"Oh yeah?! You had it 'figured out'. Uh-huh, sure. Getting sucked down here was YOUR idea, fuckface. And then what? What'd you think was gonna happen?"

It didn't really look like the man was listening. Instead he picked up one of the countless skulls from the pile of gore they were perched upon and stared into its vacant eye sockets.
"You see this?! This was me. So was that one," he motioned vaguely towards the ground, "and that one. I knew this was gonna happen to me. It HAS to. But you are not supposed to be here."
Incoherent much?
Still, anything that could get them closer to the cause of all this was worth looking into.
"Okay I'll bite. Why does this have to keep happening to you? And how do you keep coming back?"
"That's just nature. You die, you're eaten, you nourish new life. Lesser life, you think. But without lesser life there's no greater life. If you kill it... you kill yourself."

Alright, they were dealing with a fucking hippy.

"So what's wrong with us being here? We're all getting eaten, ain't we? That just means more life." (No, she still wasn't okay with the notion of being eaten, but the apparent flaws in the Source's reasoning pissed her off. Confronting him on his own terms ought to get her somewhere.)
"The difference is you don't belong here. You're fucking up the balance. Just like the planes. Just like the GODDAMN PLANES. Too much or too little and you lose the FUCKING balance."

Jezz was barely listening at this point. Instead she tried to get the measure of this damn cave and look for a way out. But all she could see in the dark was the tunnel they had just come through, and that was awkwardly high up. "Look, asshole, you've obviously been here before and the two of us would love to get the fuck out. So our interests align. Know of any other exits?"

"I never needed one," the Source said matter-of-factly.
He set the skull back on the ground and slowly stood up, grabbing something else from the pile.
"So we're out of options. I'm sorry."

 

[heartstringss]

Throughout all of Jezz and the Source’s bickering, Ayah remained quiet. She kept a firm grip on the cuff of Jezz’s sleeve, not wanting to risk them getting separated again (perhaps a little bit for comfort too… Listen, she was way outside her comfort zone, alright?) The more this guy talked about the details of the life-recycling process, the less he made any goddamn sense. Jezz had plenty of good questions, too: for instance, how did he keep coming back? Looking down at the pile of skeletons—some of which still had skin and muscle in the process of being broken down among the putrid sludge, others which were decades old, bare-boned and brittle—it appeared the man had died at least a thousand times. He must’ve been one of the earliest test subjects for his anomaly to be this far developed.

They didn’t belong here. God, Ayah could certainly agree with that. She belonged back on the station, her mind immersed in research, her body clean and warm and safe above all else. Jezz belonged… well, somewhere else. She wouldn’t fare well on the station, that much Ayah knew for certain. Beyond that she wasn’t really sure about the woman yet.

At this point Ayah was ready to just abandon the Source, call the experiment a dud, head back to the station and turn in her resignation. It would have been an embarrassment to her family, sure, but you know at least she’d be alive. (Could these anomalies kill them if they got too entrenched in a subject’s delusion? That was still uncertain. Dozens of agents had disappeared but their bodies were never recovered. Even their tracker implants went offline, which was… well, unusual, to say the least.) She didn’t want to imagine what it might feel like to be swallowed and digested by a giant hoard of extraterrestrial worms. It was already bad enough they’d been standing coated in layers of putrid slime as long as they were, to think eventually this shit would break their bodies down and dissolve them into mush–

Wait, what was that the Source was doing now?

Like Jezz, Ayah had barely been listening to the Source’s incoherent rambling and instead had taken to measuring up the cave, looking for a way out, examining the skulls beneath their feet–anything but engaging with the reality of what was truly going on around her. She could see decently well in the dark once her eyes adjusted due to growing up her entire life in deep space, but when the man bent down to set the skull back on the ground, she had to squint to see what else he’d grabbed.

It wasn’t until she heard the initial pop and hiss of the gas ignited and those first few licks of flame shot through the air that Ayah finally sprang to action. Adrenaline and panic overtook her. She scrambled back, her feet smashing through a stray ribcage as she stumbled, tripped and fell. Jezz’s cloak sleeve slipped out of her fingers. She landed roughly on her ass, her hands cut among the shards of bone inside the pile. She panicked further when she felt the slime and thought of what might happen to her body if it got inside her cuts. The Source advanced while fresh terror consumed her, the wild look inside his eye ignited by the warm glow of the flamethrower. There was screaming, sounds of struggle, but she didn’t see what happened–her eyes, at this point, had squeezed tight.

And then came a flash of searing pain and warmth spread over her cheek. A hand reached to her face–her skin was burning but not because the flamethrower had got her. She tore her eyes open and looked up at Jezz, the woman’s hand still floating in the air poised to slap her more if needed.

"What--"

The Source, meanwhile, had been knocked aside but was not fully incapacitated. Blood streamed down his face, his fingers clutching at his surely broken nose. "YOU CAN'T ESCAPE, THERE'S NO WAY OUT--"

The flamethrower had been knocked out of his hands. It lay on the ground still hissing gas, merely a stone's throw from where Ayah's body huddled on the ground. Everyone noticed this about the same time. Almost in sync, Ayah and the Source shot forward at once. Ayah got there first but within seconds the Source's hands were grappling at the other end of the flamethrower, trying to wrestle it back out of her hands. Her long fingers wrapped tight around the handle. She took a deep breath, pulled hard and squeezed the trigger.

 

[Buttercup.]

Oh shit.
Oh FUCK.
There was no mistake as to what that delusional bastard was picking up. Not the most elegant or sophisticated weapon but hey, flammable liquids were still reasonably easy to find and all you needed was a way to spray that in the right direction with a heat source between you and whoever you needed extra ultra turbo dead. Its crude simplicity and the sheer intimidation of spewing FIRE had made it a relatively popular weapon in what was left of America. And if you inspected Jezz's left leg closely enough you'd know she'd had very personal experience with it. (Don't ask.)

Before she could do anything, she damn near fell on her arse when Ayah lost her footing and tumbled down the slimy pile of gore.
"Hey. HEY! This really ain't the time!"
"Time? We got plenty! All the time in the FUCKING world!" the Source rambled, letting a couple of menacing gusts of flame out of the nozzle. "But the longer you're here the more you're fucking up the balance. Too dangerous. I can't, won't let that happen. YA HEAR ME?!"
Jezz narrowly dodged the fire. This was really starting to piss her off. But what were her options? The guy was much better armed than she was, and her only ally in this entire plane of existence needed help. Best she could do was throw a random skull in his face, which bought some time at least. (There was probably something poetic about throwing someone's own skull at them, but this wasn't the best time to appreciate poetry.)

"Alright," she ran towards Ayah, trying her best not to slip on the uneven ground, "GET THE FUCK UP!"

No response. Just brilliant.
Well, desperate times and all that.

-SLAP-
"Hey. Heyheyhey HEY. We ain't done here, ya hear me?!"
–SLAP–
"COME ON, YOU CAN'T DO THIS TO ME! NOT FUCKING NOW!"
—SLAP—
"What—"
Fucking finally. Before she could deliver one final slap for good measure though, she noticed something – as did everyone else.

Ayah immediately rolled towards the weapon with pretty impressive agility for someone who'd just come back from a coma.
"NO! You CAN'T!!! Too –ngghh– dangerous!" he growled, struggling to seize the weapon again.
This was all happening so fast Jezz couldn't really figure out what to do. This was a great opportunity to jam her axe between the dude's shoulder blades – but trying that also sounded like a great opportunity to get burnt to death. She still had to do SOMETHING though, righ—

"RAAAAGHHHHH FUCK FUCK FUUUCK!!!"
Light may travel faster than sound, but she could've sworn she heard that before the onslaught of fire blinded her. Then came the unmistakable smell of burning flesh. Jesus H Christ.
"Okay don't stop, DON'T STOP! TORCH THAT FUCKER!"
It looked like she didn't have to tell Ayah twice.
There seemed to be an almost mesmerised look in the spacer's eyes, Jezz couldn't tell if it was terror, vengeance, dissociation or some spicy combination of all of those, or if she was imagining it altogether. Regardless, this was an important moment. This woman wasn't a useless pampered bimbo, or at least not anymore. She could get shit done when it mattered.

***

"Fucking hell, what's going on there? HQ, sounds like we've got... people in here. Is that even possible?"
"People as in plural? Uhhh... the planes reported some human targets, right? Must've gotten away. Well it doesn't matter. Get it done."
"sigh... Roger. Moving on."

Serval was starting to feel a bit light-headed... probably a symptom of spending too much time in an anomaly? She had been in here longer than she would've liked, so it'd explain a lot. But she was determined. If they could find a way to get one of these under control she'd get paid... handsomely... and......

***

"Okay, Ayah? I think... I think he's... pretty fucking dead by now. So like... stop..... whenever?"
Shit. The exhaustion was really starting to catch up with her, wasn't it? And where was all this light coming from?
A hole in the ceiling?
That... wasn't there before, was it?
...and it was... growing?
Pulling them up?
What—

 

[heartstringss]

("Okay don't stop, DON'T STOP! TORCH THAT FUCKER!")​

Somewhere in the back of her mind, far away from here, Ayah heard each other person’s screaming. The horrible gut-wrenching, pain-filled shriek of the Source. The shocked, adrenaline-fueled urging of Jezz. Ayah didn’t want to hear the screams, didn’t want to see what'd caused them, hell, she didn’t want to FEEL a single fucking thing–but alas, she couldn't escape her guilt (no matter how hard she tried). Her teeth were bared all the while she clamped down upon the flamethrower’s trigger, her jaw so tight it shot pain all the way into her temple. She could taste blood, most likely from biting her tongue or cheeks, but didn't care. Her chest was pumping with each breath, a scream of her own welling up inside her lungs unable to be released because the muscles themselves were frozen solid. This was a human man that she was burning right now, a living being who had once been a child, as innocent and pure as any child could be. She could smell the charred flesh, could see the liquefied goo of his eyeballs melting inside their dark sockets. And still the man was screaming all the while his body thrashed and writhed, his crumpled fists no longer fighting for purchase with the flamethrower, no longer posing any threat at all…. Soon to be another corpse lay on the ground amongst the refuse of his former selves. If there was a corpse left here at all.

Ayah could have certainly let go by now. She could have–should have–stopped. Instead, her guilt morphed into rage, her head no longer empty as her thoughts turned bitter and hostile. It was HIS fault this was happening, HIS fault that the only option had become his need to die. How else could these anomalies be stopped? How else might they survive?

(“Okay, Ayah? I think... I think he's... pretty fucking dead by now. So like... stop..... whenever?")​

Her grip loosened on the trigger, the burst of flame slowly weakening until at once it stopped. Her arm fell with the flamethrower, its canister rolling from her hand and clattering off piles of bone. Her jaw fell slack. The scene was nearly incomprehensible, the shape of that would-be man now shriveled and disfigured. She looked and looked and looked but her mind struggled to grasp.

God, she needed a good long shower and a fucking drink.

Unlike Jezz, Ayah didn't notice the details of her exhaustion or the light. She stayed still all besides her shoulders trembling, stuck in a stupor that was only interrupted by a movement in her peripheral that she further couldn't comprehend and so chose to investigate. She turned her head and looked up to the ceiling… the ceiling which had now opened to reveal a bright blue swath of sky. As the hole grew, the ground beneath them abruptly swelled and then pitched upward. The mountain of bones shook underneath them, producing a sound like rocks inside a tin can. Ayah stumbled to her feet, reaching for Jezz to take her by the arm (whatever was happening she did NOT want to get separated). Her fingers dug into the woman's sleeve, shoulders knocking as she huddled closer, breath hitching as she watched the cave mouth twist and–

It was like when they'd been swallowed but this time reversed. The sand and dirt that made up the stomach of the worms’ great hive married with the piercing blue sky above and swirled inward. It churned and churned and overflowed, bones flying, gravity twisting and teasing at the women's insides. Ayah grasped her stomach, abruptly doubled over and vomited. Her eyes stung with exhaustion and fresh tears, her throat burning with the coat of acid. She cursed, wiped her mouth on her sleeve and squeezed her eyes against the nauseous tide of colors. Bad choice. Her knees buckled with the instability, body swaying and stumbling farther into Jezz's side. She caught herself with one hand landing roughly on the woman's hip. There wasn't enough time or sense to be embarrassed.

She caught a glimpse of the turret in the distance just before it let off an awful high-pitched mechanical squeal and released a beam of light.

 

[Buttercup.]

Jezz was a bit too busy being confused and freaking out to register whether someone was potentially grabbing her arse. Time and space was falling apart (again) and she only hoped this vortex wasn't taking them somewhere even worse. She was ready to go to bed for like, a week? Yeah that sounded... rather... nice...

The vacuum was pulling them ever higher, along with kilotons of sand, debris, bones and plane parts. She could've sworn she saw another human in the whirlwind... but before she could confirm or deny that for sure, everything just kinda... stopped.

It was over.

***

Jezz blinked a couple times and squinted in the darkness. Yes, this looked like the same room where they'd found the Source earlier, except... not all fucked up. Everything looked good as new, really – no gross creepy stuff all over the floors and walls, no cracks in the walls, basically the building looked like it had never been abandoned, like it was ready for another routine morning shift, decades in the past.

"Okay, what the fuck were you doing in there?!"
That... wasn't Ayah's voice, was it?
Jezz rubbed her eyes and looked in the direction that voice was coming from. It appeared to be a woman, she'd surmised that much from the timbre of her voice, but neither the voice or the face rang any bells. The gear she was wearing suggested she was no common bandit, but it wasn't any uniform Jezz was familiar with. More importantly, the stranger was holding a gun and her expression very effectively conveyed that she wasn't in the mood to be fucked with.

"Uhh... excuse me?" was the best Jezebel could offer right now.
"The two of you were in there, right? Or were you just having a little cosy sleepover in the middle of this dump? And think twice before you seriously try to tell me that."
"Heyheyhey, calm down, yeah?" She'd half a mind to talk shit to the suspicious woman, but even Jezz knew better than to provoke someone with a massive tactical advantage. "Yeah we might've been, uh, 'in there'. So what's it to you? Who are you, anyway?"
"Look, I'm the one with a gun. So I'm the one asking questions. One last chance: What. Did. You. Do."

Jezz carefully rose to her feet, making sure to make her movements smooth and easy to read so as not to get shot. Ayah seemed to be unconscious again, so that would complicate running away. But perhaps if she answered the woman's questions that wouldn't be necessary?
"Okay, lemme see... got sucked in there, nearly got killed like 50 separate times, did what it took to survive, that's pretty much it?"
"Did you kill him?"
"Kill who?"
"I'm warning you," Serval said with intimidating calmness. This woman had some serious style, Jezz had to admit.
"Well... okay, yeah. It was us or him. And we like us better than we liked him, so..."
"Fucking degenerates," Serval hissed under her breath. This clearly wasn't what she wanted to hear. It was the only explanation that really made sense, sure, but she'd hoped there might be... uh, a different explanation, one which also made sense but didn't spell catastrophic failure for her mission. None of us are safe from wishful thinking. And then, when the wish isn't granted, it just makes you wanna SHOOT someone, you know? Like, with a gun? The thing she was holding?

That weird look in those eyes... Jezz recognised that. She had approximately 3 seconds to live, unless she figured something out.
Nothing here was stacked in her favour. She had no good ideas.
But hey, doing nothing meant a 100% chance of dying. A terrible idea that brings it down to 99% was still a win.
She lunged at Serval and hoped for the best.

Incoherent shouting.
Gunshots.
Blood.
Broken glass.
At some point the gun was thrown out the window, which helped Jezz's chances significantly – she was bigger than her opponent and this wasn't her first rodeo.

Serval was fully aware she'd lost her advantage. But why fight something you can outwit?
She curled up on the floor, apparently in a lot of pain. "Nnngh... please stop! This doesn't have to—"
"Doesn't have to WHAT, dipshit?! You seemed awful eager just a minute ago! Give me ONE reason I shouldn't jam a fire extinguisher down your fucking windpi—"

A bright flash.
That telltale BZZZT noise.
Some urgent sounding radio chatter Jezz couldn't make out.

By the time she came to, the stranger was gone. And for some reason she wasn't dead, although as the adrenaline slowly wore off she realised she'd been shot in the foot.
"Fuck my life. Hey, Ayah? AYAH!!!" Oh thank god, it didn't look like any of the stray bullets had hit her. She'd lost some blood, nothing terrible, but she was unresponsive for now.
Okay. Just carry the lifeless body down 5 flights of stairs with a 5.56mm hole in your foot, Jezz. It'll be fun!

They made it out eventually. All the people who'd been standing outside the building were either dead or passed out – probably caused by the anomaly, somehow – which meant stealing a bike with a sidecar couldn't have been easier.

***

Jezz drove to a Terra Vera hideout just outside Boston. The ride was uneventful, so she finally had some time to actually process everything that had just happened. Well, the short story was it was all pretty fucked. She'd accomplished nothing, nearly got herself killed more times than she cared to count, and ended up with a potential liability in the form of this spacer. On the other hand that girl wasn't entirely incompetent, and her arsenal and knowledge might be of some use at some point. Right?

As expected, there was nobody at the hideout at the moment. She carried Ayah inside and plopped her down on an unwashed cot. Now to assess the damage, clean and dress the wounds and hope for the best. It didn't look too bad, really – some scrapes, bruises and surface cuts. Probably no broken bones. Ayah would live, they just both needed some rest.

She brought some rubbing alcohol and gauze from the medkit. "Okay, this'll sting a bit," she said mostly to herself before disinfecting Ayah's wounds. Yeah, some of these were probably gonna leave a mark on those spotless skinny limbs. Welcome to Earth.

Finally she took off the impromptu bandages she'd wrapped her foot in and started cleaning the gaping hole underneath. This did sting more than a bit. Some of the little bones in her foot were probably busted. And she was gonna need a new pair of shoes. But all in due time. For now she was content with thoroughly locking down the shelter and falling asleep.

 

[heartstringss]

Black. Before too long, all that was left Ayah could see was black. When the color mix began to make her overwhelmingly nauseous, she shut her eyes and hung onto Jezz’s arm like her life depended on it–and perhaps it did. This meant that she was blind to the chaos that unfolded in the following seconds; how the sand, debris and bones all followed them up to the surface, joined most dangerously by some of the discarded airplane parts. One moment she was swaying on her feet, hand clutched over her stomach, the next she was–

CRACK!​

A piece of metal or bone fell through the air, turning end over end before it struck Ayah on the temple. She cried out shrilly, hand loosening its grip on the other woman’s arm as she reached to touch her forehead. Her fingers came away slick with blood, her vision swimming with a constellation of stars. She tried to locate Jezz’s arm in all the chaos but lost her balance and crumbled to her knees instead. By the time they landed back in the hotel (not that Ayah was all too aware of this development herself), she had lost consciousness.

( . . . The sounds of fighting bounced around in her subconscious, the gunshot most jarring of all. She came to briefly when the other woman lifted her body off the ground, her head lolling against her shoulder then abruptly jerking off the second it made contact with the tender part that had been struck. A pained murmur rose off her lips, her breath hot over the other woman’s neck as her fists balled into the material of her cloak. She remained unresponsive beyond this, and as the pain slowly ebbed away, she slipped back into further unconsciousness . . . )

Ayah was out for the next several hours. All the while, her skin glistened beneath a fine sheen of sweat, her brow furrowed over gently fluttering eyelids as she drifted in and out of fitful sleep. She shivered beneath the cover of her jacket, the cold and musty dampness of the room upsetting her already jittery nerves. Eventually she rolled over to her side, the jacket slipping off her shoulders as she did so. Ayah mumbled something incoherent as she blindly reached off of the cot to retrieve it, though in doing so she also misjudged the size of the cot and tumbled off its side. She exclaimed in surprise, barely managing to catch herself on her forearms. Despite her lingering exhaustion, she was fully awake now, and as she pulled herself back atop the cot and squinted to take in her surroundings she started to panic, realizing she had no idea where the hell she even was.

It seemed to be some kind of underground bunker, maybe at one point an old parking garage, but whatever lights had been built into the ceiling were mostly burnt out, smashed, or missing altogether. There were no windows in the room. Instead, there were a number of dimly lit fuel lanterns scattered about, illuminating the scene of a few metal lockers and cabinets lining the cement walls, a small table stacked with dented cans of beans and other assorted vegetables as well as several gallon jugs of water. Overall, it was pretty unremarkable, clearly some kind of hideout. The room itself–even the cot she lay on–was downright filthy, not as bad as her clothes, skin and hair already were, of course, but still enough to make her grimace.

When she stood and turned fully around, Ayah realized then that hers wasn’t the only cot inside the space… and or the only one that was occupied. She reached for her jacket on the cot and retrieved her flashlight. While she pulled the jacket on, she noted how sore her muscles were as well as different bruises, cuts and scrapes she’d gathered which, oddly enough, were already cleaned and bandaged. After several hours of disuse, fortunately her flashlight had managed to regain some of its charge, so it was now she turned the flashlight on and beamed light over to the shape of the person resting on the other cot. It only took a few seconds of staring before her mind pieced together memory.

She didn’t remember much after the Source and her had fought. She remembered there had been fire and the smell of burning flesh (this memory returned to her quite viscerally, and if she’d had anything remaining in her stomach she surely would have vomited), a great burst of light and bright swirling colors. She touched her scalp and winced, realizing that she must have been knocked out. Jezz could have (maybe even should have) left her behind… but she hadn’t. She wasn’t tied down or restrained; they had both fallen asleep without anyone armed or keeping watch. Were they safe, then? Was she?

If Jezz wasn’t already awake by this point, she would be soon. Ayah padded over to the woman’s cot, nudging her leg with the toe of her boot. She was taller than Jezz as long as she was standing and that made her feel like she had some sort of advantage, never mind that as soon as Jezz stood she was clearly much more jacked, and with such little distractions and chaos it was far easier for Ayah to notice that (and appreciate it somewhat) now. A flash of red crept up her neck as she vaguely remembered waking up while being carried. She stood up straighter, embarrassment and pride causing her to shame her own perceptions of weakness. She looked away from Jezz, wondering how much time exactly had been lost.

“...Where are we?”

 

[Buttercup.]

Jezz really needed that sleep. It took her a while to finally doze off though, partly due to paranoia, partly because there was so much to process about all this.

This whole day was a bust. This had been the first anomaly she'd seen in what, weeks? Maybe months? Admittedly most of the other ones she'd witnessed weren't trying to kill everyone in them quite as proactively, but still... there must've been a better way to handle this. Instead she ran into some girl from space called Ayah whose origin or motivations she knew nothing about, nearly died 50 times over and then got FUCKING SHOT by another woman she'd never seen before.

What was that about, anyway? Sure, anomalies tended to draw attention from anyone nearby and it didn't take all that much to get sucked into one, but that person sure as hell didn't look like some random happy-go-lucky scavenger. The uniform, the gear, the concern for the Source... was she somehow connected to whatever was causing these? Was there an Anomaly Police making sure they were allowed to keep doing their thing of warping reality for no evident purpose? Now that sounded ridiculous, but she couldn't discount the hypothesis entirely. If there was some sort of well-armed covert organisation keeping a watchful eye on these it'd probably be a problem again in the future. She needed to prepare so much better next time. She needed a GUN.

"Mmmlem... gun, yeah... hehe. Heads off..." Jezz didn't know she talked in her sleep. None of the people she'd shared a hideout with had ever pointed it out – perhaps they thought it'd be rude and it wasn't like she could stop doing that, or perhaps they were scared she'd beat them up over the accusation. "...show you bastards... hey... what."

"WHAT!" Jezz woke up suddenly when her body realised something had actually bumped into her legs. Well, at least not her feet. "Don't... do that! I could've killed ya."
She sat up and took a few seconds as her brain booted up. Okay, they were still here and everything seemed under control. That was a good start.

"Where are we?"
Oh, right. Ayah had been unconscious pretty much throughout the entire trip.

"Uhhh... just outside Boston. Or Sector A-thirty-...something, I dunno what ya call it. Maybe 10 miles away from where all that shit happened?"
She carefully stood up, checking how much weight she could put on that foot. Yeah this wasn't great. This wasn't great at all.
"Fuck me... why in the foot..." Of all the places Jezz'd been shot in her life, this was one of her least favourite ones. But she was thirsty, the water was all the way over there and asking Ayah to hand it to her surely would've made her appear weak and pathetic. Limping and more or less hopping on one leg at times was so much more dignified!

"So uh..." she thought for a second after she poured herself a glass of water and took some painkillers, "what's your deal anyway? Like, I don't even know where you came from, and from there everything just kinda... happened. Doesn't look like you're trying to kill me though, and for now I don't feel like killing you... so I guess we're good. Just can't hurt to know who I'm dealing with, y'know?"

She shambled back to Ayah as she spoke, carrying another glass of water as a peace offering of sorts. "Nghh... here, gotta stay hydrated. I think we got some coffee in here somewhere, maybe even vodka. Anyway you know what, I'll start. Name's Jezz, born and raised on the east coast. Not a whole lot to say now that I think about it. I uh... travel, scavenge and survive, that's kinda it?" Mentioning Terra Vera probably would've been a bad move, so she decided against that. It wasn't like Ayah was gonna spill every last detail about herself either, right?

Jezz changed out of the rest of the filthy clothes she'd arrived in (okay, why hadn't that occurred to her before going to bed?) and put on a comfy purple nightgown she'd stashed in a cabinet earlier. All the scars on her arms and legs were in plain sight now, but she had no reason to care. There was nothing shameful about them, in fact they added to her aura of 'you don't wanna fuck with me', not that she was leaning particularly hard into that at the moment.

"You look like you ain't been here long though. So why come now? Everything's pretty fucked."

 

[heartstringss]

Being as she’d been unconscious most of the trip, Ayah had absolutely no idea that Jezz had been shot in the foot. She hadn’t looked her over too closely so she hadn’t noticed the bandages, and even if she had, for all she knew that could have been a pre-existing injury of some sort. In any case, she does put two and two together while watching the other woman carefully stand and all but hobble on one foot to make her way across the room and pour herself a glass of water. Her eyes widen slightly as she stares, lips pursed, wondering briefly if she should offer some assistance and then just as quickly deciding against it as she figured Jezz would have likely been too proud to accept help anyway.

How long had she been out? To think they were ten whole miles from the source location of the anomaly… That meant she was also ten whole miles away from her assigned home base. She couldn’t bathe, she couldn’t change, she couldn’t take any notes or do her health check-in or her status report, not unless she was comfortable doing any of those things via recording in front of some random pedestrian (and then having to re-record them later once she had access to her satellite to upload them onto the station’s mainframe), which she honestly wasn’t sure she was. Great, just fucking great. It took all her restraint to not make too visible the sheer depth of her frustration.

“We still call it Boston, and thanks,” Ayah muttered, taking the glass of water from Jezz with gentle grace and a small (slightly strained) smile to show her gratitude. She took a small sip then inadvertently made a face. Of course the water was alkaline and slightly sulfuric, these people didn’t have much left by way of purification and filtration facilities! She set the glass aside and said nothing, knowing that she didn’t have much choice but to tolerate it and not like it was Jezz’s fault the water wasn’t up to her (admittedly high) standards anyway. Leaning against a nearby cabinet while she listened to the other woman ramble, Ayah's eyes all the while wandered and became glassy, her lip caught between her teeth as she considered what had been asked, what had been shared and ultimately how she herself should respond. She was almost certain that Jezz had more highly vested interests in investigating the anomaly beyond just traveling, scavenging and survival–in fact, she likely had quite a few cards up her sleeve–though Ayah couldn’t fault her for not wanting to reveal them.

“I’m from the Station,” Ayah said plainly, seeing no point trying to lie or hide it. They were both smart enough to recognize that, not that it wasn’t obvious already. “I can’t reveal too many details of my purpose, but I’m here to investigate the anomalies. The rest is need-to-know,” and You don’t need to know, she thought but otherwise kept to herself. She fumbled trying to think what else to share with this strange woman, knowing that her frame of reference for life on the station was probably pretty limited regardless. Fortunately she had a few extra minutes to mull it over, as Jezz crossed the room and (without even bothering to cover or conceal herself) stripped off her dirty clothes and changed into a fresh nightshirt. Ayah was too dumbstruck to turn away and grant the woman any sort of privacy; instead she wound up staring, mouth slightly agape in shock, all too aware of the blood rushing to her face and making her cheeks hot.

Beyond the woman’s powerful physique, the thing that caught Ayah’s attention most in that moment was simply the sheer number of scars that covered seemingly every inch of skin over her whole body. Ayah's gut wrenched with a kind of phantom pain while she looked and wondered over what had caused the woman all those injuries, some so deep and gnarly she could barely stand to look at them at all. Of course she knew the kind of dangers that came with survival for those remaining still on Earth, and that unlike those fortunate enough to grow up on the Station they didn’t have access to the same science and technology that granted Atmosians the ability to heal and fade their injuries without any chance of scarring.

Wondering vaguely if there might be any more clothes stashed around the hideout but feeling far too uncomfortable to seek them out herself, Ayah reached and brushed her hair annoyingly out of her eyes. Her fingers caught in a tangle of sweaty grime knotted amongst her curls and she whined with the tug to her tender scalp, gently pulling herself free. She frowned, reaching into her jacket to pat at her pockets, taking stock of what possessions she still had and what others had been lost. With a cursory glance at Jezz (practically daring the woman to laugh or judge her), Ayah pulled out a sleek metal brush with nylon bristles and began to gently rake it through her hair. As she did so, little bits of grime flaked free from her hair and landed on her collar, shaking further off onto the ground. After a moment of diligent brushing, she tucked the brush back into her jacket and then pulled that off, folded it and set it aside onto her cot. The cream blouse she wore beneath was sheer, loose and flowy–not quite as warm as her jacket but at least it was clean(er).

“My name is Ayah Bayan. I’m a medical anthropologist, third generation Atmosian, what we call those who reside on Atmos Station. And I…” she trailed off, realizing at once she didn't know what else to add. Truth be told, Ayah didn’t have too many hobbies. She was a workaholic–even the material she read in her free time was largely research-based and related to her work. She didn't have any children or pets, and somehow even fewer friends. She liked chess and had been to Mars–was that appropriate to share or not? It seemed trivial compared to all that Jezz had likely been through and suffered on Earth. Her eyes skirted aside, watching a roach cross the cracked cement flooring with mild disgust. When Jezz remarked on how new she seemed to the planet’s surface, Ayah looked back and squared her shoulders almost defensively. Did that mean she seemed inexperienced?

Everything was pretty fucked, but even after hundreds of years escapism and creating a sanctuary like Atmos, of course humanity could never stop lusting after the tiny, beautiful blue marble of the planet Earth they had destroyed. “I go where I’m told, that’s all. What about you? Why were YOU there? And I'm sorry, but when did you get shot?”

 

[Buttercup.]

Ok, Jezz was learning about as much as she'd expected – an admission of the blatantly obvious fact this person wasn't from Earth, and refusing to elaborate on what had brought her here. It wasn't like Jezz actually cared all that much about every last detail of Ayah's background and personal history though. All she needed to know was whether their motivations were likely to clash violently anytime soon, but the limited information the other woman was willing to divulge wasn't really enough for that either. 'She's not actively trying to kill me' would have to do for now. (Honestly by local standards that was good enough.)

"My name is Ayah Bayan."
Jezz nearly spit out her water at the onomatopoeia of that exotic combination of names, but she managed to keep it in. It would've been incredibly impolite and petty.

"I'm a medical anthropologist, third generation Atmosian, what we call those who reside on Atmos Station."
Those words didn't mean much to Jezz, honestly. 'Medical' was clear enough at least. If this woman knew how to treat wounds then that alone was worth keeping her around. 'Arachno-apologist' or whatever the other word was, however... eh, she might've had heard it at some point but she was drawing a blank. Sounded fancy in any case, so Ayah can't have been just some dumb muscle. There had to be more to this and Jezz was curious, but it was clear there was no point prying after only knowing each other for less than 24 hours.

"I go where I'm told, that's all." Relatable. "What about you? Why were YOU there? And I'm sorry, but when did you get shot?"
Jezz thought for a second, pondering how to avoid too much suspicion right off the bat. She had no idea if this 'Atmos Station' was allied with the government Tera Vera was trying to topple, but if they were rich spacers it was probably a safe bet.

"Well, uh... you know. When these things pop up it's kind of a big deal. Me and my friends wanna know what the fuck is causing this. 'Cause it has to be something mighty powerful, and well, out here you can always use a bit of 'something mighty powerful' to give ya an edge, y'know?" That wasn't even a lie!

As for getting shot, well... she looked down at the blood-soaked bandages and winced a little, as if she needed to see it in order to remember.
"Yeah when we came back you was out cold and there was this weird woman, like some sort of stormtrooper, I dunno where she came from or who she's workin' for. All I know is she didn't like us killing that little fucker, so she tried to kill me." She couldn't help a little cocky smirk. "That ain't so easy though! We fought for a bit, I got us outta that shit but she gave me a lil' somethin' to remember her by."
She sat down and started removing the bandage, about to pour some more alcohol on it and hiss some more four letter words.
"Hey uh, if you need some clean...ish clothes, take a look around in that locker. And we should probably get cleaned up soon as I can walk a little bit. Even I feel like shit with all these juices on me, can't imagine how bad it's gonna be for someone like you." 'Someone like you' sounded almost pejorative, but it really wasn't meant like that. "There's a well outside, like a stone's throw away. I can handle it, just not... ugh... not right this second."

There wasn't much to actually do in the hideout and Jezz hated waiting around, but with this type of wound it couldn't be helped. With some painkillers she'd be able to get something done soon enough, and well, they had a vehicle now, although she wasn't sure how much it had left in the tank.

Hey, wait a minute.
"You said you're a doctor, right? Got anything up your sleeve to close a bullet-sized hole and make this fucking pain stop?"

 

[heartstringss]

Listening to Jezz’s explanation, Ayah narrowed her eyes suspiciously. “You were alone, though. Isn’t that kind of–I mean, no offense but isn’t it a little reckless to investigate these things solo?” She’d almost said ‘stupid’ instead of ‘reckless,’ but then that would have implied she was also stupid for investigating without backup. “After all, look what happened to us. We both nearly died several times over and inevitably wound up getting pushed together and having to kill the source. Now look where we are.” She swept her arm across the room, implying dissatisfaction with her own predicament. Lastly, she gestured to the woman’s own injured foot. Watching Jezz begin to remove the bandages, she wrinkled her nose and let her brow furrow, unable to contain her own sympathetic nervous response.

Fortunately it was that same moment Jezz brought up the possibility of more clothing stashed about the room. Ayah perked up at that, at once spinning on her heel to confront the locker and begin rifling through their contents for any clothing that she might be able to change into. After a few minutes sorting through the various compartments, she produced a long gray t-shirt and a pair of women’s army fatigue pants. She wrinkled her nose at the musty aroma, frayed edges and assorted stains, but then considering the putrid slime now dried and crusted into her own clothing, in the end she chose to forego pickiness.

She turned slowly, eyes darting about the room while she considered the inconvenience of this room’s simplicity. There weren’t many options for privacy in a single-room garage, which she supposed made sense why Jezz hadn’t really bothered trying to change in private either. While the other woman was distracted with unwrapping her bandages and pouring alcohol (and swearing vehemently) over her foot, Ayah turned back to the lockers and undressed herself. Her skin crawled with nerves and raised goosebumps while her bare back and torso were exposed. Unlike Jezz, her body was more clear and smooth, besides the faint glisten of sweat and natural skin oils that could be expected the longer that one went without a shower. She was lean, overtly feminine in shape, with thin but broad shoulders and spindly long legs. Her own muscle was more subtle, a hint of tautness here and there, but even at 5’8” she probably weighed less than a buck-fifty overall.

Ayah pulled the army fatigue pants on first, stooping down to collect the belt from her discarded slacks and pinching that tightly around her waist to help the new pants stay up better. After that she donned the shirt, which she found with some displease was also fairly oversized, yet there was admittedly little she could do to shield her collarbone from view (the marking of three small raised dots, the tell-tale implant of her digital ID, was now plainly visible beneath the shadow of her clavicle). She turned back to Jezz just as the woman was remarking on the fact she was a doctor and asking if there might be anything she could do to help her with her foot.

She quirked her eyebrow, then frowned looking down at the gore of the other woman’s injured foot. “I’m… not really that kind of doctor, but I do have extensive first aid training and health knowledge, so I can take a look.” (Could she speak any less like a robot? Apparently not)

Yet when she instructed Jezz to take a seat and then stooped down to look over her foot, it was clear then, despite her confidence, how much she actually was out of her element… and perhaps more obvious that she was uncomfortable as hell. They didn’t encounter many gunshot wounds on the station, so her training in gunshots wounds specifically was limited, but knowing that a gunshot was essentially a puncture wound she knew she could at least make some headway from that angle. She was hesitant to touch the injury itself, her fingers exceedingly gentle as she braced the woman’s calf and lifted her leg to examine the foot from both the top and bottom angle. “You likely have a lot of shattered bone fragments floating around in here,” she commented quietly, carefully setting Jezz’s leg back down. “You really shouldn’t be moving it or standing on it at all. Lay down,” she set a hand on the woman’s shoulder and pressed her back into the cot. “We’re going to elevate it, then I’m going to pack and dress the wound. You might want to find something to bite down on.”

Judging by the bottle of alcohol she’d watched Jezz pour over her foot, Ayah rightfully assumed there was no proper med kit. She sighed as she walked over to the table and examined the bottle of pills she’d seen Jezz digging into. A breathy laugh flew from her lips as she read the label. “You know these are like several years expired?” She exclaimed, then just as quickly pursed her lips in recognizing that expired pills were likely all these people could still access. She made quick work of gathering any (relatively clean) bits of cloth that she could find about the lockers, tearing them into strips and tiny squares before she approached Jezz again. She folded the woman’s cloak over a small box of rations to serve as a makeshift cushion and then lifted and set her leg carefully atop it. Leaning over the cot, she made a pointed gesture with her hand for the woman to bite down on… something… and then made quick but careful movements to press as much fabric as could fit to fill the gaping hole left in her foot. Her fingers became slick with the other woman’s blood (she longed for gloves but it seemed she had no access) but she ignored this, pressing firmly but gently on the packed material with one hand while the other reached to grab the longer bandage-like strips of fabric she had torn and set aside. Many rounds of this were wrapped around the woman’s foot and then carefully tied off, the hard knot placed well above the injured area so it wouldn’t cause any undue pressure on the wound itself. Once she was done, she grabbed the bottle of pills and doled out a few more doses, then passed the woman a new glass of water.

“Keep that elevated. And rest. You do know how to rest, don’t you?” This time Ayah smiled, a joke that seemed quite fitting for the fact that Jezz had been so busy-bodied and full of hot air most of the last 24 hours they had known each other. Dousing her blood-soaked fingers in a bit of cloth soaked with alcohol, Ayah sat back on her own cot and considered how the hell she was going to get back to work with her fate now thoroughly tangled in this other woman’s life. "I have some more advanced technology for wound care in my lodgings, though admittedly I'm not sure that is meant to be shared. It'll have to wait until you're able to travel again anyhow." She didn't bother mentioning the fact she couldn't drive. "You saved my life. I suppose it's the least I could do to repay you to try and save your foot."

 

[Buttercup.]

Yes, Jezz was aware venturing into the unknown all on her own was dangerous and reckless, if not downright stupid. But she usually preferred working alone because few people she'd met could be trusted to do a good job, and a group tends to draw more attention than one person. She could be sneaky when she wanted to, believe it or not.
"Now look where we are." Yes, how thoughtful of Ayah to rub it in. Well, there was no point dwelling on that or holding it against her. What really mattered right now was getting back on the road as soon as possible, even though Jezz didn't have a very clear objective in mind right now. But being on the road always ended up getting her somewhere, whereas sitting on her arse in a damp basement did not.

Jezz wanted to give Ayah some privacy as she changed her clothes, she really did, but curiosity got the better of her. She'd never seen a spacer up close like this before. The nearly flawless skin complexion was still alien, even if the shape of the body as such was decidedly human (and that wasn't a bad shaped body to have, she thought). Any minute details like subdermal implants were beyond the scope of her scrutiny at present, and she abruptly turned her head with a little cough as soon as Ayah was about to turn around and come back.

"I do have extensive first aid training" was music to Jezz's ears. She had her own methods of treating wounds and they mostly worked, but she was sure they didn't hold a candle to something a trained professional could do... even if the selection of tools and medicine was a bit limited. Did she trust this woman enough? Well, thinking she probably had nothing to gain by hurting or killing Jezz at this moment was good enough. Trust was a very pragmatic commodity in this world.

So, she simply followed instructions and watched what Ayah was doing, hoping to learn something in the process. Biting down on something sounded like weakling superstition, she'd be fine. She'd been through —
"AAAGGHHHH FUCK"
On second thought, maybe it wasn't such a terrible idea. She stuffed the corner of a dirty blanket in her mouth and closed her eyes, her leg feeling like it was being impaled with a BATTERING RAM. After what felt like an eternity, the pressure stopped.

"Keep that elevated. And rest. You do know how to rest, don’t you?" That was a valid question. Amidst all the madness of living in this hellhole, Jezz had rarely been afforded rest beyond the bare minimum of sleep one needed to survive. Come to think of it, the only times she ever took it easy were when she was injured. And in some way, it was almost a welcome break when that happened, despite the pain. "You saved my life. I suppose it's the least I could do to repay you to try and save your foot." Aww, that was actually kinda swee— wait, what? 'Save' her foot? Was a doctor implying there was a risk of losing it? Okay, Jezz, don't freak out. They were probably just carelessly chosen words.

"Hey, uh... I appreciate it. I mean you could've just shanked me in my sleep and took my head as a trophy to whoever you're working for, but I guess they don't care about someone like me... So that's nice. Yeah." It was meant to sound wholesome, but really, it was just awkward by now. She'd never been particularly good at interpersonal stuff, honestly.

So yeah. Rest. Probably for several days. With another person in the room while both of them were keeping their cards pretty close to their chest. This wouldn't be tedious at all. But hey, they could probably find some conversation topics to while away the time until Jezz relearned bipedal locomotion. She was pretty curious about what life was like in space, even if she hated it on principle, and that was probably something Ayah could talk about without revealing too much about herself. And if they got really bored there was uh... a deck of cards here somewhere.

"Alright then, guess I'd better just... stay right here. For what, a week? Any idea how long this is gonna take?" She hated being a burden, especially to herself. And there was no telling what spending that much time in a frankly very boring hideout would do to a pampered spacer. They really needed to move on the first chance they got, at least that was what Jezz's 'no-rest-for-the-wicked' brain was telling her. But at least the company was proving surprisingly agreeable for now, and not unpleasant to look at either...

 

[heartstringss]

Ayah could see the panic on Jezz’s face, though she didn’t bother rushing to correct herself. When she’d said she’d try to save Jezz’s foot she hadn’t meant because there was a risk of losing it. Moreso she had meant she’d try to save her foot from becoming a permanent cumbersome or lifelong disability–but hey, maybe a little fear would do this woman good to teach her she should be more careful in the future. (If Ayah had had any more context for the type of world this woman had grown up in, she would have likely regretted that thought. How was she to know the type of circumstances that bred recklessness when all her own life she had only ever known the luxury of peace?)

When Jezz went so far as to thank her for not simply murdering her and taking her head as a trophy, Ayah might have laughed in any other universe… but in this one, it was indeed quite awkward. She couldn’t help but wonder if the woman really thought her people so uncivilized, ruthless and savage. Was she simply joking or was taking heads as trophies something that the Earthers were doing now–er, again? Surely if they were she would have heard about it in her briefings… after all, that seemed like something she should know, perhaps even something that could have been an explanation for the long list of mysteriously disappeared field agents.

…Jezz was watching her expectantly. Oops, had she gone a bit glassy behind the eyes for a tad too long there and somehow wound up missing an important question? Ayah blinked hard at the other woman, trying to ignore the heat of embarrassment she could feel slowly creeping up her neck. “I’m sorry, what did you ask me?” Once she had repeated herself, Ayah nodded. She busied herself stacking cans by name and food group while she considered how to answer. “Probably at least a week, yes, that is as long as you stay off it. If you don’t give yourself proper time and opportunity to heal, it will take longer.” If she had to be trapped here any longer than a week (even that was far too long, not that the issue was Jezz specifically but rather the fact that stagnancy did not sit well with her), she might actually kill this goddamn woman. “Once you’re strong enough to travel, you will take me back to my base, I will take care of your foot and then we’re even. After that we can go about our merry ways. Got it?”

Little did Ayah know, things would never be that simple.

[ * * * ]

If either woman had suspected that the next few days of forced inactivity were going to be miserable, there was a pretty good chance they both had sorely underestimated just how bad it’d get. Ayah was used to existing in a vacuum, but not one where she couldn’t entertain her mind with anything her heart desired. She might’ve found an old stump of kohl and a torn-up, heavily water-damaged stack of partially-used drawing paper in one of the lockers to entertain her for a little while, but what she really wanted–needed–was a damn computer. It didn’t feel smart to make her notes where someone else, least of all an Earther, might be able to access them and read them (nevermind the fact she wasn’t sure that Jezz could even read), so instead the way she occupied herself was just by flipping through and critiquing whatever random person’s drawings she had found. That was interesting for a little while at least. Predictably, it didn’t sustain her very long.
In all truth, it felt like she was brimming to the edge about to overflow with all her thoughts. She’d never been so jittery or bored in her entire life, and that was even considering the roughly two weeks her body had needed to adjust to the novelty of earth’s humidity and gravity at the very beginning of her mission–at least then she’d been so sick that she could fucking sleep.

After the first two days, she took to pacing and for several hours didn’t stop.

“Hey, cut it out, will ya? You’re making me fucking dizzy.”

–what? …oh.

Ayah forced herself to sit down at one of the stools at the table. Her hands folded neatly in her lap but her shoulders were visibly tense. The shadows under her eyes spoke volumes. She’d started having trouble sleeping, for one because she wasn’t actually tired and two because her dreams had become so burdened with the guilt of murdering the Source. She’d started catching whiffs of charred flesh even when there was no fire burning in the lanterns, and against all logic of modern medicine, Jezz’s foot was… well, it hadn’t fallen off yet so at least there was that.

“I might need to debride some of this dead tissue,” Ayah said, gently unwrapping the bandages and dabbing alcohol over the wound. She chewed her lip while she worked, her thoughts still mildly distracted with the trauma of the Source. After a long silence on Ayah’s part (not so much on Jezz’s part, surely), she set her pen-knife down and regarded the other woman with visible caution. Should she talk about what’s been haunting her? No doubt her heavy mind was obvious. Maybe Jezz could impart some wisdom, at the very least she could distract her.

Standing up, Ayah gathered her supplies and set them back onto the table. She grabbed the deck of cards they’d found in one of the lockers and sat them down beside Jezz, watching while she shuffled.

After much staring blankly over her cards: “I have a question, do you mind?”

She waited for Jezz to answer then continued, “You kill and maim so easily, I mean, I’ve seen you–” It made sense down here, where life was clearly survival of the fittest and you had to kill or be killed if you wanted to survive. “Does it get easier somehow? Killing, I mean?”

 

[Buttercup.]

The following days were slow and excruciating. If Jezz had been alone it probably would've been better in the awkwardness department, but with another person around she always got this feeling of 'okay, I need to keep saying and doing things', regardless of whether the other party actually demanded or expected it. So being stuck in here with another person, a stranger still for the most part, was somewhat stressful. But it didn't look like either of them had better options at the moment, and on the off chance the hideout was attacked they'd have a better chance of survival this way. Silver lining!

Jezz refused to let the downtime soften her up any, so at any given point it was a safe bet you'd find her repeatedly lifting whatever heavy object she could get her hands on, or at the very least stretching her muscles. The other woman got her exercise in the form of pacing around all the fucking time.
"Hey, cut it out, will ya? You're making me fucking dizzy." Was that a bit too harsh? Yeah. Did Jezz care? Not enough.

"I might need to debride some of this dead tissue." She had no idea what that meant, but Ayah's body language made it clear it was about the wound, so she lay down and bit down on the blanket, just in case. But this time it didn't hurt too bad. Was it getting better? Or had the damage been so bad the nerves in that area had given out? Let's not think too hard about that, Jezz.

Once that procedure was done, Ayah walked up to Jezz with an old deck of cards. Huh. Did they still play those in space? Or was she gonna have to explain the rules as if she was talking to a four year old? For now she silently got to shuffling the deck, and before she could ask any of the hard-hitting questions about poker or blackjack, Ayah asked one of her own:
"You kill and maim so easily, I mean, I’ve seen you– ...does it get easier somehow? Killing, I mean?"

Oh. She was still thinking about that, huh. Jezz realised violently murdering people like that was probably not an everyday part of life on some hi-tech utopian space station, so it made sense, really. But what should she say?

"Look, it was either us or him, yeah? If you didn't kill that shitstain we'd both be rotting in a pile of corpses in some fucked up magic dimension by now. So don't beat yourself up about it. Had to be done." As for whether it got easier? "Over here you can't think too hard about it, really. If you're squeamish about fucking someone up who really deserves it you won't last two weeks... well unless you live in some government enclave I guess."

She looked at the jug of alcohol they'd been using for wounds for a second. After some deliberation her expression said a silent 'fuck it' and she went for a hearty sip directly out of the nozzle.

"Alright, story time. Wanna know what my first time was like? I was like 15. Some little shitfuck was hittin' on me. I told him I wasn't into guys, figured he'd take that better than just 'no, you're ugly and I hate ya'. Guess he wasn't very good at English though, so he kept pestering me, and at one point he tried to..." She frowned. "How d'you say that fancy phrase? 'Force the is-you'?" she asked with a flamboyant, maybe even slightly manic flair before taking another sip. "So, he caught a shank between his ribs."
She smirked a little, as if the traumatic memory suddenly became a wholesome tale of good old times when she got to that part. "Thought it'd just teach him to keep his fucking paws to himself... well turns out I hit something important in that little ribcage of his. And nobody at the shelter was a medical arthro-po-dologist, so he just died. And I didn't give two fucks. Most no-one did... dude was a little shit, everyone knew that. And hey, one less mouth to feed. Win-win."

Jezz set the jug down in her lap and stared at the ceiling for a bit, as if reliving that moment in her head. There was no sign of remorse on her features.
"So yeah, not sure it gets easier, you just gotta think: hey, it's either me or that asshole! Then the choice is pretty clear. Better safe than sorry, and nothing's safer than knowing the motherfucker who's tryin' to mess with ya won't be doing that – or anything – ever again. Does that make sense?" She... batted her eyelashes? as she silently offered the jug of rubbing alcohol to her companion.

 

[heartstringss]

As a matter of fact, they did still have card games on Atmos Station. They had chess, Scrabble, Sudoku, crossword puzzles and some other puzzle-type games too, which Ayah was much better at than poker or blackjack, but she did at least have a pretty good poker face. Less common were the family-friendly board games such as Candy Land or Shoots & Ladders, unless some great-great grandparent had brought them over for nostalgia’s sake and managed to pass them off as a sort of family heirloom. Ayah had grown up playing loads of chess, Sudoku, Scrabble and solitaire, but never even touched one of those old-school Monopoly boards that some families had.

Ayah kept her eyes trained down, not looking at Jezz even as she felt the other woman’s eyes land on her and seemingly contemplate how to answer the question she had asked. She pulled a card from her hand and laid it on the top of the box where they’d set up their game, shifting uncomfortably atop her stool while she listened to the other woman speak and casually (so casually!) begin to justify the matter of her kill.

"Look, it was either us or him, yeah? If you didn't kill that shitstain we'd both be rotting in a pile of corpses in some fucked up magic dimension by now. So don't beat yourself up about it. Had to be done."

How could she not beat herself up about it? She’d torched a man alive, watched his flesh blister right in front of her, his eyeballs melt and ooze out of their sockets, his mouth ripped open in a never-ending howl of pain and horror, even long after his voice had given out.

"Over here you can't think too hard about it, really. If you're squeamish about fucking someone up who really deserves it you won't last two weeks... well unless you live in some government enclave I guess."

Her stomach flipped with guilt. Her superiors had warned her of the risk of bodily harm and danger, that she’d have to be ready to defend herself no matter what the costs, but she’d never thought she’d have to fight so hard to preserve her own life that she’d be driven to the point of such brutal, outright murder. Had she been naive? Certainly. Was she ready to confront that? Ah… not quite.

When Jezz’s hand flashed to the jug of alcohol, the spacer’s eyes darted up, watching with an expression of clear horror as the woman lifted the jug and put the nozzle straight up to her lips to take a hearty swig. “Wait, that’s not–” Fuck, why even bother? The painkillers were expired, every bit of cloth they’d used for cleaning and packing the wound was dirty to some degree, the water itself was gritty and sulfurous… What was the point of even fretting over the sterility of alcohol? (Especially being that Jezz was likely not the first, nor would she probably be the last, who’d put their mouth up to that bottle.) Ayah slumped back onto the stool, eyes closed while she inhaled a deep breath through her nose, held it for a few seconds and then released it slowly. Relinquishing control was not an easy task, to say the least.

She opened her eyes and looked back to the woman just in time for Jezz to launch into story time.

"Alright, story time. Wanna know what my first time was like? I was like 15. Some little shitfuck was hittin' on me. I told him I wasn't into guys, figured he'd take that better than just 'no, you're ugly and I hate ya'. Guess he wasn't very good at English though, so he kept pestering me, and at one point he tried to… How d'you say that fancy phrase? 'Force the is-you'?"

Though Jezz spoke pretty quickly and with rather odd, near-inappropriate levels of enthusiasm, Ayah actually processed what she was saying fairly slowly for once. Thus was the condition of being completely flabbergasted, one might suppose. Her mind stuck on one particular detail of the story, a reveal of gender preference that Ayah probably would have been wholly less surprised about if she had by chance known the woman any longer (or was any less a prude), but nonetheless caused her to freeze and contemplate the matter hard. Well, that lasted all of ten seconds maybe. Then–

"So, he caught a shank between his ribs."

Okay, this really should not have been so shocking. After all, she’d started this line of dialogue herself and done so specifically because she’d already made Jezz out to be a rather violent, cutthroat person regardless of the fact she hadn’t personally witnessed her commit a homicide in front of her just yet. Watching Jezz with her mouth slightly agape, the more the other woman told her story, the more Ayah realized that perhaps it wasn’t the details of the act itself which caught her off-guard but rather the manner in which she told them. Staring at the woman’s mouth, she couldn’t help but notice Jezz was smirking.

"Thought it'd just teach him to keep his fucking paws to himself... well turns out I hit something important in that little ribcage of his. And nobody at the shelter was a medical arthro-po-dologist, so he just died. And I didn't give two fucks. Most no-one did... dude was a little shit, everyone knew that. And hey, one less mouth to feed. Win-win."

If the circumstances had been any different, Ayah might have chuckled at the other woman’s jumbled way of saying “anthropologist” (or the clear misunderstanding of what exactly an anthropologist was/did), but the situation being what it was, for now, she just kept quiet and resumed staring. Her hands were gripped tightly on her cards, knuckles nearly white, her mouth now a thin line. Okay, Jezz was definitely a sociopath. There was no sign of human remorse on her features–no tears, no embarrassment, no nervousness, no nothing. This had to be normal for her environment, after all Jezz had claimed “you couldn’t think too hard about it” which implied surely she wasn’t the only person on this dying, godforsaken planet who felt that way or else perhaps it wouldn’t be so godforsaken in the first place.

(The dregs of humanity had been left to rot and fend for themselves while the rich and powerful had fled to space. What other options did they have? Not that Ayah was particularly ready to confront the immorality and many double-standards of her own peoples’ choices just yet, let alone her role in implementing them, but nonetheless she couldn’t help but wonder… where had things gone so wrong that now humanity had been reduced to this? Could they recover somehow, or was the earth now simply a lost cause? –No, no, nothing was a lost cause. Things could always be improved, she just had to figure out how.)

"So yeah, not sure it gets easier, you just gotta think: hey, it's either me or that asshole! Then the choice is pretty clear. Better safe than sorry, and nothing's safer than knowing the motherfucker who's tryin' to mess with ya won't be doing that – or anything – ever again. Does that make sense?"

…did Jezz just bat her eyelashes? Staring at the woman’s face for another few long seconds, then looking down at the proffered bottle of rubbing alcohol, Ayah… well. Ayah just froze. She didn’t know what to say, how to react, what to think or feel or anything. She did at least know that she wasn’t interested in drinking rubbing alcohol, though. “Um, no thanks, I don’t… drink,” she said quietly, hands fidgeting with her cards inside her lap. It did make sense, she supposed, in some sick demented way that she herself would likely never think to apply for her own circumstances or preferred method of coping. “I guess he had already died a thousand times or more, so it can’t have been too bad, but–” well, it was one thing to die by circumstances you had already chosen to make peace with and wholly another thing to die by new circumstances in a likely much more brutal, painful manner that you hadn’t had time to prepare for. So which was worse–slowly starving to death with no means of escape or being burned alive?

Ayah shivered with the thought. Looking back at Jezz, she honestly couldn’t help but feel vaguely uncomfortable. Was it because the woman was so brash or because she suspected her to be a sociopath? Perhaps both. The world may never know.

Picking up a new card, Ayah cleared her throat and decided it was time to change the subject.

“So you grew up in a shelter of some sort? What was that like?”

 

[Buttercup.]

Jezz could tell Ayah was a bit weirded out by the story, or potentially the way she told it, but she'd never let that stop her before and she wasn't going to now. There was zero doubt in her mind that what she'd done all those years ago was the right thing, and the opinion of some sheltered space princess had no bearing on the very objective morality of the situation. Well, it was either that or she was just taking her own advice and not thinking too hard about it in case she arrived at conclusions she wouldn't like.

The room was silent for a minute. Well, probably not even a full literal minute, but awkwardness has a way of making time pass slower. Jezz watched as Ayah played with the cards, trying to figure out what game she had in mind. But it was clear that her fiddling with the deck was more a matter of nervousness than actual preparation for a game.

"So you grew up in a shelter of some sort? What was that like?"

"Yeah, same as most kids around here. Unless you're lucky enough that your parents are some corporate bigshots or their lackeys that's how you end up. Rotting in some old basement, or even above ground if you're lucky, waiting for the grownups to get something to eat."

She paused for a second.

"Well when I put it like that, I guess that's how it's always been, right? Can't do much as a kid, you'd just get yourself killed out there. So you stay inside, play games, learn how to build a shank out of old scrap, then learn how to dodge another kid's shank." Okay, maybe that part wasn't how it had always been, but it still felt kinda natural, really. You needed to learn how to survive, and what better way to do that than in a low-stakes environment where someone can try and help you if things go south? Well, provided you didn't hit a creep's vital organ by semi-accident, anyway.

Jezz thought for a little bit, thinking Ayah's question was probably an attempt to steer this in a less bleak direction, and that didn't sound like a terrible idea.

"Anyway, I grew up in a pretty big community I guess, we had a whole deacon-missioned office building to ourselves, in like... Pittsburgh or somewhere in that area. Defensible, tons of scrap and other supplies, not a whole lot of reasons to move. Living outside an enclave that's about as good as it gets, we even had time to learn how to read, play poker and everything."

She paused once again and took another swig. Hmm... Yep, she'd pretty much exhausted the non-bleak parts of her life by now.

"Aaaaand it didn't last. I was like... shit, 16? when the government dudes came. Seemed to be after something in that building, I dunno what, but our little commune was in the way and they had a lot more guns. So mum screams 'get the fuck out' or something like that, I run, I never see her again. Or anyone else from there, really."

For what was probably the first time since meeting Ayah, a hint of sadness and grief could be seen on her face, unmistakable for her usual expression of nonchalant determination. Shit. They barely knew each other. She was gonna leave the wrong impression.
"That's just life though. I had it pretty good until then, but that shit never lasts, ever. And well, you can see where life took me from there," she said, casually pointing at one of the uglier scars on her arm. This wasn't the late 20s Jezz 16 year old Jezz thought she would become one day. But it had never once felt like she had a real choice in the matter.

She shook her head trying to dispel those unconstructive thoughts.

"So what about you? Born and raised on a space station I take it. So what's that like? Can't be as boring as I think it is, right?"
She thought it only fair to repay the personal question in kind. As long as nothing political was involved there was probably a decent chance Ayah might answer, and honestly, even if she pulled a fake answer out of her arse Jezz probably couldn't tell and would find it fascinating regardless.

 

[heartstringss]

Ayah listened to Jezz speak this time without fiddling with the cards inside her hands or coming up with any other random distraction. She was perceptive enough to recognize that her question had been incredibly personal, as well as surprised that Jezz hadn’t simply told her to ‘fuck off.’ Truth be told, Ayah couldn’t much contain her interest in learning about Jezz’s life on earth. Of course there were anthologies, field agents, spies and cooperators who kept the Station plenty well-informed, but this was different–this was personal. Like a sponge, Ayah soaked up every word. There were even numerous incidents where she caught herself staring, at which point she would give a little cough to clear her throat and sheepishly look away. She had always had this strange intenseness, a sense of childlike wonder and rapturous delight that only came out with her love for studying and learning. Perhaps this would have benefitted her as a resident on earth, though perhaps it was just as likely that it might have only got her killed.

Jezz’s story wasn’t in any way distinctly happy or distinctly sad. There were good moments and bad moments, as was typical for any situation where you had to simply make the best of what you had. On earth it probably wasn’t all that uncommon for children to grow up parentless or die young. Jezz was probably about the same age as her (maybe a little younger, it was hard to tell) but already she had faced so much senseless violence. No wonder she was so brutal and volatile–she’d simply had to be. Ayah could barely even place herself inside her shoes. And, well, in all truth that was mostly because she didn’t want to.

Ayah was still staring at the big ugly scar on Jezz’s arm long after she had stopped speaking, a whirlwind of curiosity tumbling around inside her mind. She knew how scars formed and what made them undesirable (decreased skin elasticity, uneven complexion, texture can be different but not always) but had never had one of her own, at least not any that she could remember. Jezz had so many, each one a memory, a story. Did they hurt, she wondered? Ayah let her fingers drift to her chest and touched her data dots gently, the closest thing to a scar she had herself. Some of her newer injuries would become scars, she realized with a mix of two parts wonder and one part repulsion. She could clear them when she returned to her base if she wanted (she had a basic light wand and some cream after all) or she could leave them and wear them as a badge of honor, like Jezz did. Of course they’d have to be gone by the time she returned to the Station, but that could be weeks, or months.

Oh wait, Jezz had asked her a question hadn’t she? Ayah looked up to the other woman’s face, eyes dancing over her features as she silently re-wound her memory. Ah yes, life on the space station. That’s what she had asked her. Of course.

“Well actually I was born on a planet, just not your planet,” Ayah started, “Most of the births happen on Mars because the station isn’t built well for a comfortable pregnancy. Once a woman is pregnant she transitions to life on Mars for the gestation of her pregnancy so that the fetus can develop under the best possible circumstances, then we slowly transition back to life on the station. It’s a very complicated process.” Not that she didn’t think Jezz would understand all of the details, but frankly she wasn’t sure she’d care to listen to her talk about it that long.

“Life on the station is… different. There are risks and dangers there too, but not like you experience here on Earth. We have to undergo a lot of medical supervision throughout childhood as well as far into adulthood, and our life spans aren’t at all what they used to be. It’s a life of duty, simply put. We juggle the fate of the entire human race up there, you know, so it’s, um… it’s a lot.”

She turned her attention back down to her lap, no longer fidgeting with the cards but now examining her hands instead. Like most spacers, she was thin–knobby-boned, leanly muscled, low in fat. Like she’d said, there were a lot of risks and challenges to growing up in space. She was already being monitored for a potential heart murmur. That she’d been allowed to come down to earth at all was likely also part preventative care.

“Both my parents are still alive, but they work a lot. I don’t have any brothers or sisters, which is normal, too.” She was skirting around speaking the truth–that life in space was very lonely–but her eyes which were slightly misted and her brow which was delicately furrowed and her mouth which was down-turned gave her away. “But I had a bird, a little goldfinch, that came from a long line that had been adapted to a life in space as well, and a lot of books and time to devote to reading. I miss that now. I miss my quiet evenings spent by the window looking out across the stars, the smell and feel of an old book in my lap, drinking my favorite tea.” Almost as soon as the words left her mouth, she felt the weight of shame that followed. How could she complain about missing a luxurious (albeit lonely) life all while every moment of this earther’s life had been spent fighting tooth and nail just to survive? She couldn’t fathom any way she might be able to improve the other’s circumstances all on her own, but that recognition that she wasn’t doing enough felt very heavy nonetheless.

“Do you… want to actually play a game? You mentioned playing poker as a kid. I might have learned a slightly different version than your game but I also know poker.”

/ / /

And so it went -- somehow they managed to co-exist in the same place for about a week and a half without becoming too terribly hostile or killing one another just for sport. By the time Jezz’s foot was healed enough to practice standing they had even foregone some of the usual awkwardness, Ayah was no longer surprised by all of Jezz’s vehement and frequent swearing, and Jezz had learned to mostly tune Ayah out when she took once again to pacing. Even with the change of clothes, Ayah was distraught without an opportunity to properly scrub and wash her skin. She couldn’t handle this much greasiness, this much odor, and her skin itched so bad in some places she was practically going insane trying to stop herself so often from nearly scratching herself raw. She was trying to remain patient all while enforcing Jezz take proper time to heal and rebuild her strength, but admittedly it wasn’t easy. Just as soon as Jezz was up and moving around more confidently, not so much in obvious debilitating pain, she was practically frothing at the mouth for any opportunity to finally leave their shelter and go outside.

“Do you think there’s a water source nearby?” She tried to ask discreetly, looking at the pile of clothes she’d neatly folded in the corner that were practically shooting off stink-rays and, if bugs had still been a thriving species, likely would have been teeming with flies. “I’d really like to, you know… wash.”

 

[Buttercup.]

Jezz listened to Ayah's response with genuine curiosity. The few spacers she'd met before hadn't exactly been in the mood (or physically able once she was done with them) to talk about what any of that's like, so this was like discovering some fantasy world, like one of those shabby books they had at the shelter growing up. Except this was actually real! Well, assuming Ayah was telling the truth, but unless she was a pathological liar there probably was no reason she should be making these things up.

Birthing kids on Mars? That sounded wild, but it made sense. The government said the insta-fracture and general quality of life there was generations ahead of anything Earth had ever known, so if that was true it sounded like the safest place to go through the horrors of childbirth and survive. She wondered why anyone would leave for some claustrophobic space station if it was so amazing on Mars. But then she would never have accomplished anything herself if she'd always stuck with the familiar and comfortable.

The description of life on a space station sounded like an absolute drag, truth be told. The way Ayah put it Jezz interpreted it as simply sitting on one's arse while doctors fuss around them for no reason and feeling really, really important the entire time. Well okay, there was probably a bit more to it, but–
"We juggle the fate of the entire human race up there, you know, so it’s, um… it’s a lot."

Jezz damn near burst out laughing. WHO SAYS THAT? What did that even mean?! Well yeah, she could picture them juggling a bunch of eggs around, then dropping a green/blue one and going "OH WELL, SCRAMBLED EGG IT IS" when it splatters on the ground never to be properly reassembled again. That probably wasn't what the metaphor had been intended to convey but she quite liked her own interpretation.

Then Ayah moved on to more personal topics. Her hobbies sounded pretty in character, although keeping pets in space was a bit of a surprise to Jezz. She'd had a dog at one point and fed some raccoons in the wild. She couldn't fathom how animals could stomach living in enclosed spaces with no sunlight, trees and shit, but if life in a post-apocalyptic hellhole afflicted by chemical warfare and climate change had taught her anything, it was that nature had a way of adapting to anything humans could throw its way. And that was BAD ASS.

***

They spent the next couple of days doing nothing of import, mostly just chatting and playing the occasional game of poker once they finally found a rule system they could agree on. The cultural gap hadn't gotten any narrower but it was clear they were adapting to each other. The little mannerisms that were insufferable at first were just a fact of life by now, not worth getting worked up about.

Regardless, Jezz was itching to get a move on.

She hadn't forgotten the next step on her agenda: getting a gun. Well, even more importantly, getting a supply of ammunition. If you had a bullet you could fire it with a goddamn pipe and claw hammer if you really needed to, and it'd still kill some asshole dead. There was a good chance she could get both at the biggest Terra Vera camp in the region... but it wouldn't be cheap.

"Do you think there’s a water source nearby? I’d really like to, you know… wash."
"OH MY GOD YES. I mean... yeah, good idea. Wouldn't mind drinking some fresh water instead of this stale bottled piss for a change while we're at it." She thought for a second, remembering which exact hideout they were at and where a reliable water source could be found. "There's like... an old nuke shelter or something that was flooded years ago. Underground water, about as clean as it gets around here. It's like, maybe a mile away? Should be fine if we take the bike."

And so they did. Jezz's foot was still aching but she would probably be shipshape soon enough, and then they could start figuring out what to do from there. Ayah probably had no reason to stick around, and while Jezz didn't mind some company she wasn't exactly married to the idea of staying together either. But all in due time.

She parked the bike outside the entrance and secured it with a primitive lock the previous owner had thoughtfully left in the storage unit. "Alright, down this way. HELLO?!!!" she yelled at the staircase.
No response.
Good.

The stairs led to a large cavernous area which had clearly housed several storeys of rooms at one point, but most of it was indeed flooded just as advertised. (This was an illegal build and as the owners extended it they failed to account for the nearby lake. Honest mistake.)

Well, time to get to work. She dipped two large jugs in the water until they were full. Then she took a well-worn piece of soap and started scrubbing her clothes. First the pile she'd brought, then the stuff she'd been wearing, and finally she jumped in the water herself.
"Ahhh... fucking finally, right? Come on, water's fine."

She thought for a second. Would a spacer even know what a pond is? Obviously they had to have water, but storing it in massive containers with uneven depth didn't seem practical. There was a decent chance this would be the first time Ayah was gonna swim in a natural(-ish) body of water.
"You uhhh... know how to swim, right? 'Cause it's pretty deep in some spots. Should be safe near the edge in any case."

 

[heartstringss]

“Wouldn't mind drinking some fresh water instead of this stale bottled piss for a change while we're at it.”

(Stale bottled piss…​

…stale… bottled… piss…​

...PISS?!)​

While Jezz said these words, Ayah stared at the numerous water jugs on the table. Some were empty, some were full, some were half-full or half-empty (depending on how you measured). All the while she didn’t blink, her mind simply reeling with the possibilities: were they drinking (recycled) stale bottled piss? Was that why it tasted so awful? Was that why it smelled? Was that why it was… that… color?

No, they couldn’t possibly be drinking piss. Certainly not. Haha. Ha. (Right?!)

Her left eye twitched. She nearly gagged but by the time Jezz gathered her thoughts and continued speaking, fortunately she’d managed to recover (somewhat) and now turned her eyes back to the other woman. She nodded while Jezz talked about knowing the location of a flooded old nuclear bomb shelter. It wasn’t perfect, but she supposed that’d have to do. At least it was better than the alternative.

She hadn’t thought much of it whenever Jezz had mentioned taking the bike, but once they walked outside and Jezz unlocked the thing and then climbed onboard, motioning for her to take the seat in the attached sidecar, she certainly started thinking then. Climbing into the little bucket seat was sort of similar to riding in a space pod in the sense that it was equally cramped, stifling and awkward, but then realizing she didn’t have any option to put on–say–a helmet had her panicking outright. She started fussing with the straps of the old worn seat belt but before she could get the thing figured out or even latched, Jezz took off. Her hands flew to the rim of the bucket, gripping the hard rusted edges with enough strength to turn her knuckles pale and bite into her skin. Her hair whipped about her face, getting tangled with the wind and obscuring her sight–probably a good thing since it made it easier to just go ahead and fully shut her eyes, otherwise she likely would have vomited for real.

Fortunately a mile was a pretty short distance, especially when one was flying at as high a speed as Jezz was. Once they reached their destination, she clambered out of the little wagon just as gracelessly as she had entered, and while Jezz worked to lock the bike up Ayah worked to steady her own nerves. She took several deep breaths through her nose with her eyes closed, hands gently rested on her stomach. By the time Jezz was entering the shelter she was feeling much better, but then had to scramble to also grab her own pile of clothes and catch up to the other woman in the staircase. Graceful, yes. Real graceful.

The sight of the flooded basement was foreboding. There was little light beyond what seeped through the gaping holes or cracks left by the structure slowly degrading and then flooding, but perhaps that was for the best (less light generally meant more privacy). In any case, it wasn’t the lack of light that bothered Ayah because of course she was used to that–rather, it was the general murkiness of the water and sheer inability to map down to the structure’s bottom that had her senses fluttering with unease. She washed her clothes quietly all the while just staring at the water, so transfixed that by the time Jezz jumped in and then invited her in, she honestly hadn’t even realized that the other woman had undressed. Her face flared red, fortunately not too visible in the (--once again, thank GOD) low lighting.

Shit, she still had to wash the clothes that she was wearing.

Did she know how to swim?

Haha. Ha… Well, she knew how to move in the station’s variable occurrences of low/no gravity. How different could it really be? (Famous last words.)

Ayah looked at Jezz and simply nodded, waiting for the woman to become distracted with her own activities before she finally started to undress herself. She stayed in her underwear and didn’t jump into the water all at once like Jezz, carefully dipping first a toe (--so cold) then a leg (--oh god, this is horrible) and then finally sinking down to her entire body (--FUCK). She ducked her head beneath the water so that her hair would become wet and when she came back up, her hair stayed matted in her eyes, a vicious tangle of wet, greasy curls. She mumbled incoherently as she began to work her fingers through the various knots and cursed each time a shiver racked her body causing her fingers to pull harder at her scalp. “Are you not cold?” She asked Jezz, teeth chattering slightly as she shot a glance off to the other woman whose shape she could still vaguely see wading through the water (not too far off) in the dark. She wasn’t aware of herself slowly drifting closer. She wasn’t aware until her foot slipped off a sudden edge and she thrashed before she quickly sank.

 

[Buttercup.]

Jezz was enjoying the bath. She didn't often get a chance to actually submerge herself in a body of water (the ocean was disgusting and most surface fresh water had either dried up or been contaminated), and the nice thing about swimming is you're not putting weight on your healing but still aching foot. Ayah seemed hesitant at first, but finally got in the pond as well – good, she could probably handle this, right?

"Are you not cold?"
"Well yeah, kinda! Woo..." Jezz replied, her jaw so tight from the sudden cold it came out almost maniacal. "But I'll take this over rotting in that damn room all the time!"
It didn't really look like Ayah was sharing quite the same excitement. Easy fix.
"Come on, it ain't so bad, is it?!" she shouted, splashing some water at the other woman.

...no response. And... no Ayah either?
"Hey, where'd you go?"
Ooooh, of course, she must've been doing that thing where you hold your breath and swim underwater to pull someone else under as a mature prank! The spacers weren't entirely clueless about the little joys in life after all! Well played, but two could play this game, motherfucker.

Then came the audible gurgling and a stream of big bubbles. Shit.
"Oh great..." Jezz rolled her eyes, took a deep breath and dove in the direction of her companion.

She groped around in the dark.
There had to be something to grab here that resembled a human limb in texture.
How fast could one lanky spacer sink, anyway?

Dead fish skeleton.
Some empty bottle or something.
A bit of algae...
Hey, she found something!
Felt like... uh, a human chest? Wasn't quite cold enough to be dead, and upon further inspection it still had limbs attached. Yes, it was absolutely obvious this was what she was looking for, but have you ever tried thinking while swimming in cold water in the dark with little sense of direction? She was doing her best.

Jezz hugged the body under the arms and made towards the surface as fast as she could.
"Ughh... could you like, not do that?!" She took Ayah to the edge of the lake and helped her sit down on the edge. (Figuring out what to do with her eyes in the process was the least of her concerns right now.) "I asked you if you knew how to swim, dumbass! It's okay to just say 'nope', would've been less embarrassing for sure."

As she caught her breath the indignation disappeared from her voice pretty quickly. "So uh... you okay? Should I take you upstairs so you'll dry faster?"

 

[heartstringss]

If Ayah hadn’t been actively drowning at the time (okay, flailing and sputtering–same thing, right?) she might’ve been a tad bit more upset where Jezz’s hands had landed when she first groped through the water trying to find her. Her skin crawled with the unwelcome intrusion, but her mind was, uh… well, it was a little busy. You know, with other things. Like trying to expel the water from her lungs and keep from dying on her mission.

A loud gurgling cough ripped up Ayah’s throat as soon as her head breached the surface. She was hardly aware of the arms wrapped around her torso or the fact that she was being carried, her eyes squeezed tight all the while she went limp (dead weight) and continued coughing. Before she was lifted up onto the lake’s edge and helped to sit down, she turned her head to the side (oh, how very thoughtful) and abruptly threw up a rather large and disgusting torrent of grey water. Her teeth chattered as she drew in several breaths of fresh cold air and inadvertently leaned into Jezz as if trying to soak up some of her own body’s warmth.

[…hey, wait a second…]

“Ah! Jezz, you-- you're naked!” She reached up and pushed the woman by the shoulders, not really thinking how this would likely send her careening off the edge or falling back into the lake’s murky depths herself. “Fuck!” A rare curse left her lips before her hand flew out and snatched Jezz by the wrist, though whether that was truly necessary or not–being as Jezz was pretty sturdy–didn't seem to cross her mind either. Ayah’s skin was damningly hot and bright red the next time that the two locked gazes. She cleared her throat and coughed a few more times, though it was of course pretty clear by this point that her coughing no longer had anything to do with the fact she couldn’t breathe or because she was outright choking on water. Unlike Jezz, Ayah did in fact care quite a bit where she was meant to put her eyes. (...and where exactly was that?! Um, hello?!)

“I still need to wash,” the spacer muttered, looking off into the cold dark (certainly not at Jezz) when she remembered that the other woman had asked if she would like to go upstairs to dry off faster. (She vaguely remembered being called a dumbass too, but that one she supposed–for now–she’d just let slide.) “And so do you, I… think?” She gave one final hard shiver, took a deep breath to steel herself and then slipped carefully off the edge and back into the water. This time, she was smart enough to stick to the shallow end, and fortunately, she didn’t drown.

Several minutes later, Ayah clambered back onto the lake’s edge and immediately began wringing out her hair. She looked briefly for Jezz, located her, then quickly went right back to avoiding eye contact like the world’s most dramatic dumbass that she was. A few seconds later, now staring down at the two piles of wet clothes and once again shivering: “Hey, uh… did you remember to bring any dry clothes?”

 

[Buttercup.]

"Ah! Jezz, you— you're naked!"
Jezz looked at herself, then at Ayah, a slightly confused look on her face. The reaction she was gonna go with was a silent gesture one might translate to human words as 'umm, yeah... DUH', but nearly getting knocked into the lake interrupted that. Once she'd regained her balance she at least gave a little shrug, as if to say 'hey, it's fine, calm the fuck down', not that it was likely to help someone who was clearly not comfortable with this whole situation.

"I still need to wash, and so do you, I... think?"
Jezz nodded. The strands of wet hair sticking to her face were still greasy as hell and she couldn't wait to feel like an actual human being again, even if it wasn't likely to last until the next time she got a chance to wash. But she loved it while it lasted. She grabbed the rest of her soap and scrubbed herself up and down before jumping back in, hoping Ayah knew better than to start FUCKING DROWNING again.

Fortunately there weren't any more nasty surprises in store for now, other than...
"Hey, uh... did you remember to bring any dry clothes?"
"That's... a pretty good question." She scratched her cheek gracelessly and thought for a minute. "I'm... pretty sure I brought some towels at least, but they're still in the trunk of the bike." Not the most flattering example of her planning skills, granted, but at least they had something, right?

—

Before Ayah could say anything, Jezz took off and scurried up the stairs, apparently completely unbothered by the fact she still wasn't wearing anything. All she needed up there was to open the trunk, grab the towels and go back, after all. Straightforward as can be.

Unless someone just happened to be at the bike looking for a way to steal it, of course.
Just fucking great.

"HEY! Get the fuck out!"
"Says wh– wait, what?!" The scavenger looked at Jezz in disbelief. Sure, it was to be expected that the owner of the vehicle might not be too far away, but having a butt naked muscular woman who looked like she'd just been fished out of the ocean tell him to 'get the fuck out' clearly wasn't on his bingo.
"I think ya heard me. You got 5 seconds to get your ass outta here. Not in the mood to kick ya teeth in just yet but I'm gettin' there, motherfucker."
"Why... why are you..."
"Why am I WHAT?!" Jezz was getting tired of this guy's questionable communication skills.
"Well, uh... you know... like this," he motioned at her shamelessly exposed body. Oh.
"We're having an orgy down there, you're not invited. Anyway, pretty sure that was 5 seconds and you're still here, so..."

Jezz flexed her arms and walked towards the stranger, very slowly, with a look in her eyes that could scare a bullet back into the muzzle of the gun it's been fired from.
That man had probably never run faster in his life.

—

"So yeah," she hollered as she walked back downstairs, "no clothes, but there's some towels, probably good enough till we get back to the hideout. Best we got, anyway. Unless you fancy a ride in wet clothes." Jezz personally didn't, so she wrapped one of the towels around her torso to cover at least the most scandalous areas lest her companion pop a blood vessel.

"So what's next? I guess you gotta report to... uh, whoever you're working for, and I really need a gun. I don't suppose your friends could just give me one, right?" You'll never know if you never ask.

 

[heartstringss]

Okay, so they had towels... but they were still in the trunk of the bike. Shit. Ayah sighed, taking the bundle of wet clothes and beginning to lay them out flat so they would dry faster and hopefully also dry a little less wrinkled. She chewed her lip while she thought, only looking up when she heard the slap of feet on the concrete floor, turning her head just in time to see Jezz scurry out of the room. She'd been thinking about how they might get to the towels without any clothes to put on in the meantime, but apparently Jezz had her own solution... Fortunately that meant no one was around to laugh at or judge the look of total mortification that crossed Ayah's face while she watched the other woman's bare ass streak by and disappear up the stairs.

'This woman is going to be the death of me, I swear,' Ayah thought, shaking her head as she went back to laying the clothes out flat to dry. Once finished, she sat down at the edge of the lake and simply waited for Jezz to return, picking dirt out from beneath her nails and all the while shivering. She had no idea about the guy outside trying to steal their bike or that Jezz dealt with this confrontation confidently all the while completely stark naked. Several minutes later when her companion re-emerged, she moved to stand and felt her knees creak with the effort. "Yeah, no thanks," she muttered at the prospect of riding back to the hideout in wet clothes. She didn't want to think about how cold that'd make her, least of all the rash it might've caused. She was still shivering when she crossed the room to take the second towel from Jezz, only meeting the other woman's eye again once she was sure that she had donned a towel herself.

While Jezz spoke, Ayah busied herself drying her hair and gave a little hum in consideration of her questions. She turned away without answering, now peeling loose the final two pieces of clothing she was wearing that still needed washed. Once stripped, she wrapped her body up in the towel and tucked the corner of the fabric tightly at her cleavage, then grabbed the bar of soap and knelt back by the lake to wash her underwear. "Yes, I need to return to my lodgings and start a report about the anomaly and what happened to the subject, as well as account for my, uh... absence." The comment about the gun was a far less simple matter. She cleared her throat awkwardly, "While I must admit you've been a very good and useful ally, I believe it's actually against protocol to lend out weapons to non-agents. Anyway, I don't think you'd really want a gun from Atmos--see, everything we come down here with--even the agents themselves--" at this, she tapped the faint studs at her collarbone, "has internal tracking." Though it wasn't obvious at first glance, these studs were actually surgically implanted in her clavicle. While this method of instillation fortunately kept the technology from drifting or rejecting, it also meant they couldn't be removed without another surgery. Which made it eerie that some agents had disappeared on missions, not even relocatable via their data dots. While Jezz didn't strike her as an enemy (not that they really know each other all that well yet anyway), Ayah highly doubted she would want the government--or anyone--to be able to track her every move, either.

"I can heal your foot before we part ways, though, as I promised." Ayah knelt down and began gathering the clothes from the ground, laying each one carefully over her outstretched arm. She was avoiding eye contact once again the next time that she spoke. "But just you. I can't do that for everybody. If this were a humanitarian mission I would, but then I'd also have an entire team working with me, and well, unfortunately it's... not." Her voice was quiet, cheeks tinged with pink and shame. "I'm ready to go when you are."