#conrisa imagines | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

heliads · 8 months

Text

everything is blue • conrisa space au • Chapter One: Some Run

Risa Ward escaped a shuttle destined for her certain, painful death. Connor Lassiter ran away from home before it was too late. Lev Calder was kidnapped. All of them were supposed to be dissected for parts, used to advance a declining galaxy, but as of right now, all of them are whole. Life will not stay the same way forever.

series spotify playlist

series masterlist / next

Connor Lassiter has only existed in these worlds for sixteen turns around his system’s sun, and yet his time is already over. It’s funny, really. If he was going to be taken apart, he was really hoping that he’d be able to make it to seventeen. It always seemed like a good year. Or maybe that’s just because seventeen is when you can start the training process to get your cosmic license, and although Connor never breathed a word of it to anyone, he’s always been angling to make it past the atmosphere, even just once.

Now, it looks like he’ll get his wish to leave his birth planet behind, but that’s the only good part about all of this. Connor will never be able to explore deep space, he’ll never chase down settlements on rogue moons, and he’ll never so much as see a binary sunrise, because Connor Lassiter is going to die, and worst of all, no one in this system or any other will fight it.

Even Connor can’t believe it’s really happening. Sure, he’s had this sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach that his home has stopped being his for quite some time now, but he always assumed he could do something to pull himself out of it. Yeah, he mouthed off in class, and only ever turned up at home after curfew, long past when he was supposed to, but none of those are grounds for this, right? Right?

Not according to his parents, because they’re the ones who have gone and signed away his grounds license. Horrific. Connor found the proof of it by accident, aimlessly scrolling through his parents’ hololibrary in search of something interesting to read or watch. Instead of a new show, though, Connor had accidentally clicked on the tab for his parents’ private work files.

Connor usually never bothers checking that stuff– who cares about interplanetary taxes and star system loans, anyway– but just as he’d been about to go back to the entertainment folder, he’d spotted his name on a file that read: Destined for Distribution, and then he’d known.

There’s an old saying about how it takes a lunar colony to raise a child, but sometimes even the proverbial interstellar village isn’t enough. Sometimes you can’t force your offspring to be what you want. The governments of the worlds puzzled over such a dilemma for a long time– if you can’t shape the young generation, after all, you risk losing control of all of humanity forever– and after a series of Heartland Wars and internal disputes, they came up with a solution: distribution.

Space travel is a relatively new problem in the history of humanity, but they’ve already managed to mess it up. Those in charge at the start of it all wanted new flights, new discoveries, to take over every planet they saw regardless of who lived there and the downfalls of having to carry on a society in every direction.

After sinking their claws into every star system they could reach, the tension of frenetic interstellar improvement slackened, and what was left was a hastily constructed dystopia, prone to falling apart under the slightest of scuffles. We’re kind of a terrible species, humans, all things considered. We don’t wait until we’ve solved world peace before we take our problems to other planetary systems. Instead, we spread out our grievances until everyone in all the worlds has to suffer as much as we did.

The problem with fast-paced space exploration is that the early adventurers burned through resources just as quickly as they did back on planet Earth, which is now barely more than a clod of ash and dust. To make up for the demands without having to change their tactics, the centralized government sent out a mandate to all its territories: why not solve two problems in one? Get rid of the teenage crisis by using their resources in a better way. Distribute what the ferals would take up to those who could actually use it.

There’s no way the idea of distribution should have taken on as strongly as it did. Maybe it wasn’t as inhumane in the beginning as they did now, maybe it literally was just about giving away food and clothing and shelter. Now, though? Distribution doesn’t just represent physical objects. It means that the actual bits and pieces of you, the bloody matter and bleached bones that are currently in the body of a child marked for distribution, will be spun apart into individual fragments and given away.

There’s the idea that there’s only so much space left in space, so to speak, so if you’re no longer needed, your pieces will get distributed to those who need it more. That’s how our glorious society keeps growing, no longer out but in.

Every bit of you will be gone, destined for some better purpose. Some would say that’s poetic. Connor, who is slated to be killed in just this fashion, would call it gruesome. However, no one really cares about the thoughts of someone marked for distribution, and they’re certainly not going to start now. Hell, they haven’t been listening to him for years. Why change?

As Connor swiped through the distribution forms signed in triplicate according to some tradition from a long dead planet, he was chillingly reminded of how easy it was to get rid of him. Every person born on any planet within the Collective’s reach is given a grounds license when they draw their first breath. When it’s decided that they no longer deserve the air in their lungs, the Collective takes back the air and lungs both. Your grounds license is revoked, and from that moment forward, you cease to exist in any way that matters.

After that, you’re sent for distribution. By turning in the forms to confiscate your grounds license, your parents essentially send the Juvey-cops after you. Most kids don’t find out they’re going to get distributed until the Juveys show up at their house and take them away. They’ll have just enough time for a few cries of outrage before getting packaged into a shuttle and spirited to a nearby lunar colony so the doctors can cut you to ribbons. Delightful.

If, on the off chance, you actually do manage to find out that you’re going to get torn to pieces in the name of an equal and fair government, such as Connor, you have a chance to run. He’ll try, of course, but even as he makes his final preparations to kick-AWOL, some disheartening voice in the back of his head tells him that he probably isn’t going to make it very far. You can’t do anything without a grounds license. Not easily, of course. In all honesty, it’s probably just a matter of time until the Juvey-cops catch up to him.

Of course he’s going to run, though. Connor Lassiter is not the type to sit around and wait for his death to come to him. He’ll run until they strip away his very legs. Until then, he can grab a go bag, walk around his house one last time, and then leave in the dead of night before anyone thinks to catch him.

Connor hovers one last second over the threshold of his open door. After this, his fate is up in the air. He could get caught within moments, or he could somehow find a way to stick it out until his eighteenth birthday and survive to tell the tale. The only way he’ll know the answer to that story is if he leaves now.

Connor pushes the air from his lungs and goes. The door shuts quietly behind him, and Connor Lassiter officially disappears. From now on, it’s all up to him. His best plan is to head towards a nearby interstellar transport depot, hope he can find some absentminded pilot who won’t notice some kid sneaking into the back of his starlight frigate, and take him away from this planet. Once he’s offworld, he’ll be able to breathe a little easier. There’s no way they’ll be able to find one kid in a trillion if he finds a far enough system, right?

Until then, Connor will have to keep his head low. Juvey-cops aren’t the only thugs with guns who can cause him trouble. A crop of creeps called parts pirates have sprung up, and if it wasn’t terrible enough to have your limbs hacked off by trained professionals, imagine all that happening by the hands of black market dealers. At that point, Connor would rather just turn himself in, even though that’s a possibility more remote than anything. They say it’s within their rights to take the groundsless off the streets, so whatever the parts pirates do along the way is just another obstacle he’ll have to avoid.

As if he’s got a ton of great choices, though. Connor’s going to be unwound. That term’s been discouraged by the Collective ever since the idea of distribution picked up steam– it’s discourteous to the victims of distribution, apparently, and casts a pall on the whole process– but, like, they’re taking Connor’s organs, so he feels like he can call it whatever he wants. Fuck. He’s an Unwind. Why should they care what gory words he uses to describe it? They can dry their tears with his skin grafts.

Connor makes it to the transport depot by foot about an hour and a half later. Not a bad time, all things considered, but his veins are still thrumming with an unearthly need to get away by the time the rows of landing zones come into view. It takes some difficulty to hop the fence on the back end, but it’s old and no one really bothers checking here anyway. No one turns up to a depot like this unless you’re low on fuel or maglev boots before your next trip out of the star system.

Or, of course, unless you’re Connor Lassiter and you’re going to die. Connor hits the ground and nearly takes a spill before managing to right himself just in time. It would not do to break an ankle or something before he can even get onto a ship. Injuries would only slow him down, and the Juveys would have plenty of time to wait for his unwinding while the bone mended.

Connor slinks between rows of sleeping cruisers. He’ll have to pick his ticket to freedom carefully. A lot of the old interstellar war vets took to transportation jobs once they were out of the line of duty, apparently they like having a low-stress profession while still getting to see the stars, but they’ll aim at any unwanted visitors with the same reflexes as back in their soldier days.

No, Connor’s better off hitching a ride with a newbie or someone else who’s checked out enough to forget to do a once-over of their cargo bay. He finds the perfect place down a few rows– an old cargo boat, HBY-300s class. Old as anything, and, judging by the pervasive rust stains, not well looked after. Connor can’t see any lights on in the pilot’s seat, so he hurries up the landing ramp and immediately trips the security system.

He doesn’t even see it coming, which is not great for his chances, obviously. He should have assumed there would be something like this, but Connor has been jittery for days now, and at some point his guard, already low, just gave up on him. Lights flash on and the beeping voice of a security AI announces him as ConNor LasSiter, AWOL.

Too late, Connor spots the notice of registration fastened on the side of the ship, how it’s under the ownership of a former Juvey-cop. Probably one still missing the old glory days of hunting down kids who kicked-AWOL, judging by the overeager defense mechanisms. The guy spends his days ferrying shipments from one corner of the galaxy to another, and in his downtime, he picks up escaped Unwinds. How patriotic of him to fulfill such an important civic duty.

Connor swears under his breath, immediately turning tail and sprinting out of the ship. Lights start to click on across the depot’s hangar bay, and the telltale siren of things gone badly begins to echo across the empty space. Connor can hear the sounds of people starting to rush towards the ships, and he cuts an increasingly narrow diagonal across the shipyard, trying to stay out of the path of search beams.

After hauling ass back over the fence, which seems twice as difficult to climb now that he’s in danger, Connor hurtles across plain cement, aiming for the untamed forest across the road. It’s so wild in there that it would be impossible for low flying craft to find him which, judging by the increasing din of engines coming his way, is a necessity right now.

He didn’t think they’d be able to find him so fast, but maybe one of his parents stopped by his room already and figured out he was gone. They could have called the Juvey-cops and had them here by now, especially with Mr. Reliving the Glory Days of Police Work back there already getting a facial scan on him. Connor thought he had been smart by ditching any tech so they couldn’t track him, but he’s forgotten one crucial thing about the life of an AWOL: you don’t just have to be smart, you have to be lucky. Looks like Connor’s days of finding four leaf synth-clovers are behind him.

Out of the depot’s floodlights, the ground under Connor’s feet quickly transitions from concrete to grass. The sudden softness making him stumble. As Connor straightens back up, he has to fling an arm in front of his face to protect himself from a sudden, powerful wind coursing down around him. The grass, illuminated out of nowhere by twin blinding beams, is bent flat to the ground from the force of an engine. The engine of a small shuttle, as it turns out. A Juvey-cop’s shuttle, which has found him.

Connor can see the reflection of his eyes, wide as dinner plates, on the shiny surface of the shuttle. He looks terrified, and a bit insane, which all things considered isn’t the least realistic depiction of him. Connor’s brain is a mess. He thought he’d have a little more time until the law enforcement found him. Looks like his period of staying undercover has come and gone.

The shuttle jerks to a landing in front of him, and a man begins to come down the landing ramp, tranq gun in his hands. Connor freezes for a moment, then drags himself to attention as the man gets closer. Once he’s far enough down that Connor can read the name stitched into the pocket of his uniform– Officer J.T. Nelson– Connor gets himself together and runs, rolling under the nose of the craft to the small space underneath the belly of the ship. This clearly disorients the Juvey-cop, whose footsteps abruptly come to a halt on the metal walkway before continuing again, albeit this time slower.

“Come on out, kid,” the guy shouts, “There’s nowhere you can go.”

Connor’s not about to just turn himself in after everything, though, so he creeps further underneath the ship and around the back. The cop follows him, tucking the tranq gun into his belt so he can use his hands to help himself crouch under the lower parts of the ship in search of Connor.

“You can’t hide under here,” Officer Nelson calls, voice echoing off of the metal curves of the shuttle, “I’ll just crush you when I take off again.”

This is probably true but, as Nelson starts to stalk further around the perimeter of the shuttle, Connor gets an idea as to how he might be able to escape this little encounter. It’s a terrible idea, to be sure, and will probably get him killed if he does it wrong, but it’s not like he has any other options at the moment.

So, Connor stays deathly quiet, heart hammering in his chest as he stays pressed flat to the lower wing of the shuttle, and he waits for Nelson to walk closer. The officer indulges, drawing nearby, and Connor reaches out a trembling hand and pulls the tranq gun from the officer’s belt, just like that. Easy. The guy doesn’t even notice.

Connor eases himself out of his hiding place once Nelson has doubled back the other way, then sprints towards the landing ramp of the ship. He makes it halfway up before Nelson reacts to the sound of his heels thundering up the metal incline and bolts back towards the entrance of the shuttle.

“Get back here!” Nelson makes it to the base of the ramp just as Connor reaches the top.

As the Juvey-cop starts to race up the landing ramp, Connor looks around wildly. His eyes land on a button near the ramp entry and he slams his palm onto it. Thankfully, the button does what Connor had hoped for and the ramp begins to fold up towards the shuttle again, unfortunately with Nelson still scrambling for purchase on the surface. Connor can’t risk the guy getting close enough for Connor to shove him off, so he looks at the tranq gun in his hands and figures out the next best thing.

Nelson reaches the same conclusion as Connor at about the same time. “Don’t you dare, kid,” he begins to shout, but Connor’s finger is already on the trigger.

The Juvey-cop jerks back with the impact of the tranquilizing dart, and he has enough time to snarl out a swear before his limp body falls backwards off of the ramp and into the grassy dirt a few feet below. The landing ramp fastens to the wall of the shuttle with a dull click, and Connor rocks back onto his heels, unable to believe what he’s just done.

He can’t stay in here forever. At some point, that cop is going to wake up, probably with reinforcements, and they’ll smoke him out or something. Then again, as the background roar of the engine reminds Connor of its presence, he realizes that he might not have to leave after all. The Juvey-cop was stupid enough to leave his ship on when he left to pursue Connor, so maybe– maybe he could just stay here after all.

Stars, maybe he could go. Up to space. Juvey-cop shuttles were designed with both ground and space capabilities in mind. He might not be able to set record hyperspace flights in this thing, but he’ll at least be able to crawl to a neighboring planet and ditch the shuttle before hitching a ride on a cruiser like his original plan.

Connor shuffles towards the pilot’s seat in the cockpit and is greeted by the sight of dozens of glowing switches and buttons, all beeping and blinking up at him. He takes a seat, staring, and then tentatively pulls up on the yoke. The shuttle lunges forward and up a little bit, sending Connor sprawling to the side until he manages to fall into the pilot’s chair once more and strap himself in.

After managing to stabilize himself and the shuttle, Connor regards the instrument panel with renewed focus. He’s never been able to get his cosmic license, and that’s damn near out of the question now that he doesn’t even have a grounds license, but he’d had a friend of a friend once who’d known a thing or two about how to fly a spacecraft.

There was this older guy named Carson Shepherd who used to hang around the parking lot after school got out for the day. He’d sit and swap drinks with some of Connor’s friends. The guy had graduated a year or two ago, and it was anyone’s guess how he’d managed to make it to eighteen without getting his grounds license revoked. Carson had flung himself into the life of a military boeuf and wouldn’t let anyone forget it, either. He wouldn’t stop talking about how he was going to run air strafe runs on distant planets, which Connor only listened to because he’d occasionally talk about how to fly a ship.

Stuff like that was mainly brought up as a bragging point, of course, but Connor was starstruck-crazy for anything space related, so he’d tuned in as much as he could bear. Now, Connor wracks his mind for any tidbit of information Carson had given away. He needs to disengage the landing gear, he needs to get himself airborne before people start looking.

He flips a few switches and is rewarded with a grinding sound somewhere below him. A red light flickers off, and is replaced with a green one when Connor shifts the engine into a mode for takeoff. Pulling on the yoke again, this time slower, Connor is able to drag the shuttle up and up until the tops of the trees are waving below him.

He shouts once in triumph, then again, more loudly, when a readout on the dashboard offers to turn on automatic steering. Connor presses ‘accept’ as quickly as he can, then inputs a destination. Odds are, there’s a tracking beacon somewhere on this ship, so he can’t take it anywhere in the worlds, but if he swaps to another planet in the system, he can transfer to another ship that can take him far away from here.

The nav readout offers him a few choices within the same sector, OH-10, as Connor. He’s on Akron-C right now, home planet that will be home no longer, but Connor presses the button for the small moon just one orbit over, OH-10-XXIII. It’s a small lunar body, hardly anything there at all except for a State Home and some religious communities. No one would look for him there, and by the time they did, he’d be long gone.

Connor hovers by the pilot seat for a few moments longer, just in case something goes wrong, but when no warning lights flash and the air remains devoid of sirens, he accepts that he might actually have made a good decision and sinks back into his own skin, tension finally starting to melt away.

Connor watches the ship carry him up and away from the planet that had once been his own. He has no idea if he’ll ever return; if he’ll even want to, for that matter. Instead, he fixes his eyes on the ever broadening expanse of space, and lets the bright pinpricks of stars take over his mind.

Connor Lassiter is finally offworld.

unwind tag list: @schroedingers-kater, @locke-writes

15 notes · View notes

heliads · 7 months

Text

everything is blue • conrisa space au • Chapter Four: Friends in Dangerous Places

series spotify playlist

previous / series masterlist / next

Oh, Risa is never going to let herself forget this. As long as she may live, which could be until she’s one hundred standard years old or just fifteen, depending on if she’s actually able to make this work or not, Risa will remember how it felt to strain her valuable lungs laughing so hard she thinks she might die.

And yeah, she’s been arguing with Connor almost nonstop since the moment they met, but looking over at him now, she can practically feel the line being drawn in the Terran sand. They’re a team now, even if they may not like it all the time. It’s them against the worlds. Team Risa and Connor. Honestly, maybe the Juvey-cops should be right to worry about ferals like them.

Juveys. See, now that’s got Risa thinking. They were only able to temporarily borrow this tithe because his little chariot of death thought this ship belonged to a Juvey-cop, which makes no sense. Well, there’s something up about Connor, obviously, something bad, but she hadn’t counted on, like, killing a Juvey-cop bad. She can only assume he killed the cop. How else would he get the ship, by asking politely?

And yeah, Risa does believe that there’s no point in playing by the Collective’s rule book now that she’s officially groundsless, but there’s a difference between sneaking off a StaHo shuttle destined for a harvest colony and actually killing someone. Or maybe she can just say that because she’s Risa and he’s Connor, and Risa knows exactly why she’s done what she’s done but she has no idea what’s going on in his head.

At times, she’s not even certain that Connor knows that. He gets this look in his eyes sometimes, the fuck-it impulse if she were to give it a name, and whenever he gets like that she has no clue what he’s going to do next. He could steal a ship or kidnap a tithe. He could run away from whatever’s keeping him and even convince her to join him in his next plans.

It’s thoughts like that which make Risa’s laughter finally dry up. It’s time to face the truth, which is that Risa Ward is shooting through hyperspace on a potentially stolen ship with one boy who would definitely turn her in to get back to his divine destiny and another who might just do that anyway, even if it gets himself caught too. All they have tying themselves together right now is the tenuous thread of survival, and Risa has already seen how quickly that can unwind.

She straightens up, and the tithe must sense that doubt is starting to creep in because he takes his chance the second he gets it. “Look,” he interjects, blithe and irritating, “You really ought to just let me go. There has to be a planet close by, we can all go our separate ways there. You don’t even know who this guy is. Do you really want to leave everything up to him?”

Risa casts a wary glance towards Connor, who looks genuinely affronted that she’s not immediately backing him up. “She knows me better than she knows you,” Connor points out, “and besides, why do you care when we let you go? You’re just going to throw yourself into your own distribution the second our backs are turned. You couldn’t be happier if we all die.”

“It’s not death,” the tithe says primly. “It’s all about life, in fact. I’m making sure that the universe carries on. Without me, yes, but carries on. Isn’t it more important to honor our promise to the worlds than tear down everything around us just so we can keep going?”

“I didn’t promise anything to anyone,” Connor grits out. “Just because your parents have deluded you into thinking that this is normal doesn’t mean that you can kill the rest of us. You deserve a life, kid.”

“Don’t call me that,” the tithe scowls. “I have a name.”

“You haven’t told us yet,” Risa remarks dryly.

The tithe pauses in his relentless staring contest with Connor to toss a stray glare her way. “I didn’t get a chance what with you two kidnapping me. If you must know, I’m Lev.”

Risa nods. She hadn’t yet put together a plan of what to say to whom, but when Connor immediately blurts out that he’s Connor and she’s Risa, she knows that, at least, is wrong. They can’t afford to go shouting out their names to anyone in earshot. She’s an AWOL, and most likely he is too, if not worse. Neither of them can afford a slipup like that.

The tithe– Lev– catches the hesitation in her glance again. For such a small kid, he’s surprisingly good at reading people. Maybe growing up in a big family like that, within a community where he’s constantly watching people to see if they’re going to accept his tithing or try and fail to convince him otherwise, made him need to learn when someone’s his friend or not. It’s a useful skill; she can’t blame him for wanting to learn it.

“Neither of you can get far by yourselves,” Lev tells her. “You might as well just leave me to my own devices. We’re close to the harvest colony anyway. It won’t even take you that much time to drop me off.”

Risa scoffs. “Yeah, and let you call the guards on us while we’re there? No thanks.”

Lev arches a brow. “You’d have no reason to fear the guards unless you’re a distribute on the loose.”

Risa scowls. She hadn’t meant to give that away thus far, but it’s pretty obvious at this point. “So what if I am? Still doesn’t mean I want to go to the place of my impending doom.”

“And impending doom isn’t found with the boy who killed a Juvey-cop?” Lev asks. The thought briefly flashes across Risa’s mind that he would have made a fantastic interrogator had he allowed himself to live past thirteen. Perhaps even a decent therapist. He’s uncannily good at knowing things.

Connor doesn’t seem to like the shift in conversation. “Hey,” he argues, “I never killed a Juvey. I just took his ship. He wanted to take my internal organs, I’d say that’s a fair trade.”

Risa has to cough to smother a laugh. “So you didn’t kill anyone to get this?”

“That’s what I said,” Connor frowns, and this time Risa can’t disguise the rush of relief that cascades around her. He’s not a murderer, at least. He’s just like her. She can’t explain why that makes her feel so, so much better. It just does.

Lev, sensing that the argument isn’t going his way, presses on further. “Look, you don’t have to like me being a tithe. But can you at least trust that my way is better than whatever dangerous nonsense Connor’s going to try?”

Risa looks at Connor, who’s growing more nervous by the second as he shuffles back and forth in scuffed shoes, and she marvels at the fact that he’d even been able to fool them this long. He’s falling apart at the seams. Still, Risa reasons, better Connor’s haywire guidance than their distribution at Lev’s choice of harvest camps.

She steps forward. “I’ll stick with Connor, thanks. We’ll go where he chooses.”

Lev stares at her indignantly. “You can’t make that decision. I want to go to the harvest colony.”

Connor, on the other hand, is smiling. Faintly, sure, but smiling. “Too bad, man. You’ve been outvoted.”

Lev has plenty to say about that, but neither of them are listening. Walking back to the cockpit, Connor nudges her shoulder with his. “You sided with me.”

“Don’t take it personally,” she warns him.

He grins. “Too late. I already have.”

Risa rolls her eyes, but if anything it only seems to make Connor’s smile broaden. In the interest of deflecting from his pride, Risa hastily adds, “So where are we going, Magnificent Captain?”

Connor makes a face at the title. “Wherever you set the hyperspace jump, Capable Navigator.”

Risa grimaces. She had forgotten that part. In all the chaos, she’d just blindly picked the first location option that came up. She had no dream vacation destination in mind, after all. Anywhere away from here was good.

Odds are, that’s good enough for Connor as well. She studies the instrument panel carefully, pretending there’s something that needs her attention. “When we get wherever we’re going, I– it’s going to be difficult. Getting anywhere or doing anything, I mean. I don’t have a grounds license.”

The words seem to reverberate in the air. “Neither do I,” Connor admits, then, “Why are you smiling?”

“I’ve never said that aloud before. That I was groundsless. Not while I was free like this,” Risa tells him.

It’s a strange sort of feeling, being on the run from the law. She had tried not to talk about it with anyone at the State Home back on XXIII, but of course a couple of the kids had broached the subject anyway. Now, it’s almost freeing to admit it. She doesn’t exist in the eyes of the law. Risa Ward has no anchors anywhere. In revoking her grounds license, the Collective has accidentally made Risa more powerful than she’s ever been before.

Connor chuckles to himself. “See, now you’re getting it. It’s exciting to be against the law. In a month or two, you could be a smuggler or something.”

Risa scoffs. “I would never. That’s ridiculous.”

Connor raises a dubious brow. “You’re enjoying all this right now, aren’t you? Trust me, sweetheart, give it a couple of weeks and you’ll be a feral through and through.”

Risa laughs disbelievingly. “Yeah? And what sort of terrible things do you think I’d get up to?”

Connor taps his chin, pretending to think. “Oh, all sorts of awful crimes. The kind that would make all the kids back home tell ghost stories about you. You might exceed the speed limit near an agri-colony by five whole units, or take a synth-apple from a store without paying for it. Maybe you’d even disturb the peace by playing bad music too loudly at night.”

Risa clutches a dramatic hand to her heart. “Now you’ve gone too far. I would only blare good music. My neighbors would appreciate it.”

Connor shakes his head sorrowfully. “See, that’s how they get you. I once knew a guy who said the same things you did. Next thing you know, he was blasting glam hyperdisco.”

Risa pretends to shudder. “Say it isn’t so. I would never forgive myself for something like that.”

Connor wiggles his eyebrows. “You don’t have to forgive yourself forever. Your ears will be someone else’s in just a short amount of time if you give yourself up, you could forget all about it.”

She stares at him, somewhat bewildered. “You’re fascinatingly morbid for someone who wants to live so much, Connor.”

He leans back in his pilot’s seat, smiling quite happily upon hearing what Risa wasn’t entirely sure was a compliment. “You’re wonderfully pessimistic for someone who thinks she’s so much better than me, Risa.”

She furrows her brow. “I don’t think I’m so much better than you.”

“Fine,” Connor says with a seemingly unconcerned wave of his hand, “much more honorable, at least. No one would mistake you for murdering a Juvey-cop.”

He says it bitterly, and Risa can’t help but cringe at it. In her defense, she’d never met him before, and AWOLs with the shuttle of a Juvey-cop typically don’t get them legally, but she’d still made that assumption about him without any justification other than him not wanting her to be on his ship after she snuck on board. And who could blame him for that? Every AWOL is skittish. It’s in their nature.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers. It’s barely audible over the hum of the machinery surrounding them, but Connor still reacts, looking over at her in surprise. For all his griping, he wasn’t actually expecting her to apologize.

“Yeah, well, it’s okay,” he says gruffly.

It’s awkward and quiet in the cockpit. She doesn’t think either of them have ever been more grateful to Lev for choosing that moment to try and access the shuttle’s token escape pod, giving them both the necessary out from the conversation so they can leap up from their seats and try to wrangle the tithe back from his misguided attempt to flee to his death. Once Lev has been properly chastised and the escape pod has been appropriately barred from future endeavors, the prior conversation has been all but forgotten. So they’ll pretend, at any rate.

Risa does remember to check their destination, at least. She pokes around the nav computer for a while until she can find the proper setting, then grimaces at what she sees. Connor, who has apparently been watching her like a hawk, shifts forward in his seat the second her expression shifts. “What is it?” He asks warily.

Risa’s eyes flicker to Lev. He appears to be devoting a lot of time and attention to perfecting his scowl in the back corner of the shuttle, but she can’t tell if he’s listening or not. Dropping her voice just to be safe, she continues, “The nav system has automatically rerouted us to a boundary checkpoint. We’ll have to pass through if we want to carry on. Best case scenario, we answer a few questions and they let us go.”

Connor’s face grows long and tired. “And what’s the worst case?”

Risa worries the edge of her shirtsleeve as she thinks about it. “Worst case, they find something suspicious and search the ship. While boarding, they figure out we’ve got a tithe on board who doesn’t want to be there. Lev’s parents have probably put up a notice by now calling for his return, and odds are the sec-ships from the spaceport have stills of our faces from security cameras, so we might have a few virtual wanted posters of our own. If they look for longer than a second, they’ll figure out who we are and then we’ll be right back where we started.”

Connor sucks in a breath through gritted teeth. “Okay, then we try to get the best case scenario to work. Is there any way we can go around the checkpoint?”

Risa shakes her head. “You can’t exit a star system without passing through one, I should have thought of it earlier. My goal was to leave OH-10. We can change that if we want, but–”

Connor waves a hand to dismiss that option. “Out of the question. The longer we stay in this system, the more we run the risk of getting caught. Flying out of here is our only choice. We’ll just have to play it cool while we’re there. With any luck, we’ll get someone hanging on past retirement age who won’t notice who we are.”

Risa presses her lips together in a thin line. “This isn’t going to work.”

“Not with that attitude,” Connor says with a slight touch of humor, although she can tell from the strain around his eyes that he’s thinking the same thing. “And certainly not with Lev’s attitude, either.”

Risa’s lips twitch into a half-smile. “He’s thirteen. They’re all like that. No one will bat an eye.”

Connor grins. “You’re wonderful at plotting. Maybe your life of crime really isn’t that far away.”

Risa rolls her eyes and leans over to swat him on the shoulder. “Give it up, Connor. It’s not going to happen.”

“Whatever you say,” Connor tells her, but he’s still flashing his teeth in that ridiculously proud grin of his, and Risa can’t find it within herself to fight a returning smile.

True to Connor’s hope, the officer at the boundary checkpoint in charge of checking their ship is on the older side, but unfortunately, that only seems to make her more suspicious instead of less. The representative appears on their comms channel once they dock, but only to request that they appear in person to assert their passage out of the OH-10 system.

Risa and Connor exchange tense, wary glances, but in the end the only thing they can do is file resolutely out of the shuttle and do their best not to look suspicious. They can’t linger inside for too long without drawing attention, but they do manage to at least come up with an alibi and beseech Lev not to blow it for all of them before traipsing out.

The checkpoint official for their designated landing slot is waiting for them when they arrive, impatiently tapping her fingers against the handle of her cane. Her gunmetal gray hair is pinned back severely, and the light from the open hololibrary in front of her gives the silver strands a bluish shadow. Risa watches her flick through several tabs of interstellar transport checklists and shipping documentation as they walk down the exit ramp of the shuttle.

Connor attempts to be suave and/or polite and asks for her name. The checkpoint rep answers him tersely, “Sonia,” and ignores him when he attempts to clarify a last name. From that point on, they descend into a flurry of questions. Sonia asks them what they’re doing, where they came from, what their names are and how they know each other. They came up with a decent cover story while they were flying over to the boundary checkpoint, but Risa can still hear her heart hammering in her temples as she answers as calmly as she can.

Stars, they must look so suspicious. They’re trying to pass off the whole affair as a school project, but there’s no reason three teenagers would ever be trusted to take themselves out of their home star system for something as simple as that. Hell, Risa realizes belatedly, none of them are even old enough to qualify for a cosmic license. There is no reason any of them should be alone flying this thing.

Strangely enough, though, Sonia does not ask about that. In fact, the second either Connor or Risa starts losing track of their story, she abruptly changes the subject to ask about some other nonsensical detail like the date of their last captain’s log or where they intend on fuelling up their shuttle when they leave this system. Just useless info, really, but it looks like she’s really grilling them, and it dawns on Risa that this is all Sonia wants to do, put up an appearance of severity. Risa has no doubt that Sonia saw straight through them the second they landed, but for some reason, this old woman is not interested in damning them.

Not yet, at least. Risa waits with rising nerves for the other shoe to drop, and when Sonia reaches up to close her hololibrary and, stranger still, covers up the badge on her breast pocket with her hand, she’s certain they’re in for it.

Instead, Sonia fixes her with a steely look, and asks, “And how, exactly, do you plan on getting yourselves out of the mess you’re in?”

Risa blinks. “Sorry?”

Sonia sighs exasperatedly. “Both of you can’t keep a straight face for a second. The moment you try to enter any other system, you’re doomed. Two distributes can’t get that far without a good plan, and I’m not sure that you have one yet. Where do you intend to go, and how will you do it?”

Connor glances nervously at Risa, then back at Sonia again. “I’m not sure what you’re talking about, but–”

Sonia sighs again. She’s quite prone to it, Risa notes with some small amusement, and every time Connor or Risa gets on her nerves she exhales another gusty breath like she intends to blow them both away if she could manage it. “Don’t try to lie to me, boy. I could see straight through you in an instant. Where do you want to go?”

Risa lifts a shoulder. “Anywhere but here. We planned on one of the nearby systems. Metitov, maybe. Or Veon 7B.”

Sonia shakes her head decisively. “Too close. You’re better off finding another system on the outskirts of it all, one that’s much farther from here. You can try–” Risa leans forward a little, shifting onto the toes of her feet, waiting for a hint that might be able to save them, but instead of a clue towards their safety, all she hears is the sudden, ear-piercing wail of a klaxon.

Sonia swears far more copiously than Risa expected and hurriedly checks her left wrist. Circling her narrow bones like a bracelet is a continuous holographic loop displaying the nature of the latest threat to the checkpoint. Risa can just make out the words –ROGUE GROUNDLESS– in whitish blue capital letters hovering in the air before Sonia throws her arm back down to her side with another venomous sigh, this one at least not directed at them.

“We’re out of time,” she mutters, “The three of you will have to come with me, now, if you want to make it out.” Sonia pauses, then stares, displeased, at the space just past Risa. “Well, the two of you.”

Risa furrows her brow and is about to ask what Sonia means by that when she glances over her shoulder to see empty space. Empty space where Lev had just been standing, but the area is utterly devoid of blond tithes at the moment.

Connor’s eyes flash with anger. “That traitorous starspawn. He sold us out. Couldn’t wait to die, then, could he? Had to do us in, too.”

Risa quite agrees with all of that, but they don’t have the minutes to spare standing around complaining. Every second they waste is one that the sec-forces of this checkpoint station have to find them. “We can insult him later. Right now, we have to go.”

Sonia nods. “She’s right. Follow me.”

Connor freezes. “Can’t we just get back on our ship?”

Sonia scoffs. “What, so they can track you in a heartbeat? They know your ship. They know it’s stolen. You’re better off hitching a ride on one of the oversize shipping haulers they’ve got stationed out back. Those things take off all the time and they’re too big for anyone to notice a couple of stowaways.”

Connor still hesitates, but Risa won’t let his indecision screw them over, not more than they have been already. “We don’t have any other options, Connor. We have to go. Unless you want to give security an easier time distributing us?”

That, at least, gets through to him. Connor snaps to it and immediately starts following Sonia, who had already started moving without checking that they were behind her. Despite the cane, the woman walks pretty quickly, although Risa can’t help but wish they were going faster still. She’d sprint if she could, but that would give her away even more than her frantic heartbeat, the way she can’t stop looking around her to see if the sec-forces have caught up to her yet.

Sonia leads them down a few corridors and around several corners, enough that Risa is certain she couldn’t make it back to the shuttle by herself if she tried. Stopping by a control panel, Sonia types in a series of command codes and a door hisses open to reveal a large hangar bay.

They hurry inside without even waiting for the door to finish moving. Sonia’s eyes sweep the hangar bay until she finds the ship they’re looking for. “This one will take you far away from here,” she announces, “It’ll dock for the night in KAN-5A5. That’s about halfway there.”

Risa frowns. “Halfway where?”

For once, Sonia looks almost sympathetic. “It is going to be a long journey,” she tells them. “It will be difficult. You’ll want to leave. Once you get there, though, you’ll be glad I sent you.”

This time, it’s not just Risa who wants more answers. Connor steps forward, arms folded across his chest. “I’d like to know where we’re going, thank you very much.”

Sonia sighs again, but the frustration is missing this time. Risa is starting to think that the woman might genuinely feel bad for them. She’s been hiding it all along, Risa realizes, trying to push it away, but she cannot help it. Sonia sees two kids who want to live. This probably isn’t the first time she’s done something like this, is it? How many of those kids survived? How many of those deaths will Sonia blame herself for? She’s an old woman. There are plenty of years in which things could go wrong.

“I can’t tell you that,” Sonia admits, “I can’t risk the secret getting out. Just know that they’ll keep you safe. Get out of the frigate undetected in KAN-5A5. Find a man named Cleaver. I’ll signal him in advance so he knows you’re coming. After that, you’ll have to make it there with his guidance.”

Risa nods. “How many kids have done this?”

Sonia rocks back on her heels, and for a moment she is not with them at all but lost deep in memories. Decades of them, perhaps. “Hundreds. Not all at once, but over the years.”

Connor whistles under his breath. “So you’re, like, the guardian angel of the groundsless?”

Sonia’s eyes cut over to him in an instant, faster than a scalpel, and Risa can’t tell if she’s furious at Connor or Sonia herself. “Not in the slightest,” she says, and gestures towards the ship until their questions stop and they get moving again.

There’s a small hatch near the back. Connor climbs in first, then reappears to confirm that there’s enough space for them to hide. He helps Risa in, and they both crouch near the entrance, watching Sonia with wide eyes.

She looks up at them, fingers curled around her cane until her knuckles whiten like bone. “Be strong,” Sonia says at last, then turns and walks back out of the hangar bay. Risa watches until she’s long gone, until even the thud of the cane against the floor disappears like a dying heartbeat, until Connor flinches at a sudden sound somewhere across the hangar bay and hurriedly pulls the hatch closed behind them.

Once her eyes adjust, Risa looks around them. This is most likely a small storage compartment, where tools and cleaning supplies can be tossed and promptly forgotten about until something happens. It’ll do just fine for two AWOLs without a single thing to their names except each other.

Risa takes a careful seat on the ground in between rows of stacked virt-spanners and antimatter vises. After a moment, Connor follows suit. He stretches out his legs in front of them, leaning back against the wall of the ship.

“Think this place’ll be any good?” He asks.

Risa stares at the floor in front of her. “No idea,” she whispers softly. “It’s not like we have anywhere else to go, though, do we?”

She expects him to make a joke about her relentless optimism, but instead he just lets out a slow breath and agrees. “We’ll make it. We have to. And hey, if it ends up being a total nightmare, at least I know I’ve got one person on my side.”

She cocks her head to the side, regarding him cautiously. “We’re allies, then?”

“We’re friends,” Connor says. “I think we get a do-over after all of this. Let me go first. I’m Connor Lassiter, and I’m an AWOL.”

He holds out a hand, and after a moment of conspicuous staring, she reaches out and shakes it with her own. “Hi, Connor Lassiter,” she says, “I’m Risa Ward.”

Connor squeezes her hand once before letting go. “I have no idea how long we have until this thing takes off. We should probably try to get some sleep or something. I can take the first watch.”

Risa opens her mouth to protest this, but on second thought, the idea of getting some rest does sound rather good. She had to get up early when she left the State Home, although that feels years away, a distant memory rather than something that only happened earlier today. They spent hours in space, and seeing as Risa has no idea when they’ll get a break like this again, she might as well get a little shut-eye while she can.

So she lets her eyes close, and she curls up against the wall of the shuttle as best she can. Sleep comes faster than she thought, and her last conscious thought is that regardless of how this ends, regardless of when she gets caught, Risa can at least say that her life was interesting before it ended. She never thought she’d get an adventure like this. Even if it took her almost getting killed for her life to finally start, well, at least she gets it now. Some things are worth the risk.

unwind tag list: @schroedingers-kater, @locke-writes, @sirofreak

all tags list: @wordsarelife

11 notes · View notes

heliads · 8 months

Text

everything is blue • conrisa space au • Chapter Two: Some Flee

series spotify playlist

previous / series masterlist / next

Risa Ward knows it’s coming. She had hoped against it, of course, no one prays for their own distribution unless they’re a tithe or just plain stupid, but it came nonetheless. Risa was evaluated by a panel of judges and found not worthy of carrying on life as yet another state ward in yet another state home in one star system out of thousands, and now her body will pay the price.

The inevitability of it all frustrates her like nothing else. Risa did not ask to be an orphan. She did not ask for the State Home to take her in. She especially did not ask for budgets to be slashed so severely that more and more wards have to be put under the knife just so the StaHo system can break even. Everyone’s suffering, the administrators have told her, there just aren’t enough resources to go around, that’s all. We need more.

A fine sentiment, surely, but not acceptable when Risa is the very more that everyone needs to live. She wants to live, too. Call that selfish if you please, but Risa Ward is alive and she intends on staying that way. Unlike the other state wards who’ve recently had their grounds license revoked, she won’t give in to meek, hopeless thoughts about how at least her eyes will see a supernova in some astroexplorer’s head, or take pitiful pride in the fact that her legs could strengthen an athlete on their way to interplanetary competitive glory.

And why should she? Risa wants to be the one to do it all, not just her parts. Risa wants to see the stars from another corner of the galaxy. Risa wants to win the race, to push the boundaries. Having someone else do it with a fraction of you is not the same, regardless of what the rest of the StaHo kids doomed for death might say.

Risa is a survivor, she thinks with grim certainty. It may not seem like there are any ways out right now, not with security cracking down on those who won’t be living here anymore, but rest assured, Risa will keep her eyes open for as long as they remain in her head. If there’s any chance of escape, she’ll take it in a heartbeat.

Those chances of escape are hard to come by. Everyone knows that she’s going to get distributed, she can feel the judgmental weight of their glares wherever she goes. It feels impossible that they could know anything else. Risa feels as if her guilt is painted on her in bloody, blinding scarlet. She had one chance to save herself from her fate, and she couldn’t pull it off.

She had known about the budget slashes. Who hadn’t? She had also easily put it together that when the StaHo organizers said that they wanted a little taste of what its wards were capable of, they were all going to get evaluated to see if they should stay with the program or get funneled into someone else more worth their time and parts.

So, yes, Risa knew exactly what was happening when a few of the State Home administrators just happened to pop by her practice room this morning. They gave her warning, at least, a few days to scramble and prepare, but she knew what was coming. Risa Ward was being judged to decide if she was good enough to live. It’s a shame that they decided against it.

It especially aches because Risa’s spent a while trying to get her stuff together enough to be worth it. Each of the state wards was encouraged to pick something to make them stand out from the crowd when they were first dropped off at the State Home. It was easier for the older kids who’d already grown up knowing their special skill– you can still play antigravity contact sports or keep up your artistic talents even if the atmosphere’s a little different on OH-10-XXIII than their birth planet, no major changes there.

For kids like Risa, though, who’ve been here as long as they can remember plus earlier, they had a more difficult time deciding what to center their lives around. Risa did her research, poring over the State Home’s depressingly barren hololibrary in search of magazines or newspaper articles talking about what was hot in youth achievement.

Although it did mean she had to suffer through way more articles about how she, too, could have the arms of a pro athlete or the balance of a seasoned dancer if she just got the right procedure, Risa was eventually able to discover that music might be a turning point, and so she got to work right away.

Even if by now it’s obvious that her attempt at salvation didn’t pay off, Risa thinks she’d still pick music for her talent even if she were to do it all over again. It makes her think of what it must have been like hundreds of years ago, back on the ancient planets or stars, even on Earth itself, when there were enough undiscovered songs left to write your own and you studied music to make something new instead of just regurgitating years of already created nonsense.

Admittedly, OH-10 State Home XXIII doesn’t have enough of a budget to actually get a historical artifact like as a genuine piano, but Risa’s been able to pick through enough old sound bytes and artistic programming to make her virtual instrument sound like the real deal if you aren’t quite paying attention. Some of the other kids here went for the flashiest settings, but Risa has found that the sentimental value of such an archaic artifact as a real piano tends to make the StaHo faculty look on her performances a little more fondly.

Seeing as Risa’s future at the State Home depended on their approval, she needed every atom of nostalgia to help her, but it still wasn’t enough. Risa had let them into her practice room, and instead of delivering the flawless virtual performance she had counted on ever since she heard that more kids were getting kicked out, she made mistakes. Several. Glaringly obvious ones, in fact, at least to her. They applauded at the end, of course, and said the song was lovely, but Risa knew for certain that they weren’t as pleased as they could be.

And sure enough, by the end of that night, Risa received a notice that she would be shipped off for distribution early the next morning. She didn’t even get a full twenty-four standard hours to appreciate that her life was coming to an end.

Of course, if you talk to some of the more fanatical supporters of distribution, they’ll tell you that getting taken apart doesn’t actually mean death. You’ll stay awake during the whole process, which Risa fervently believes makes the whole thing worse instead of better, but your parts will be alive when they’re in someone else’s body so technically you will be alive, too. Alive in a thousand different places, but still alive.

It’s not much of a comforting bedside saying. What, is it meant to make her feel better to think that when Risa is dismembered, she might remember it? Disturbing and disgusting. One of the kids bunking in the same room as her tried to tell her that much when her grounds license was officially revoked last night, and she slapped him. That stunned everyone there, including herself. Risa has always been careful to be on her absolute best behavior, but it doesn’t really matter anymore, does it? She’s going to be distributed no matter what. She might as well call a kid out on their nonsense if it’s aimed at her. She won’t have that many more chances for some good old fashioned revenge.

Risa lies awake at night, hands folded prettily over her stomach like a corpse. She wonders how many more sleeps she’s going to get as her– the distribution could happen immediately, the very day the StaHo shuttle touches down on the closest harvest colony on some woebegotten moon, and that’ll be that. However, odds are the harvest colony will be just as bureaucratically backed up as everything else in the galaxy, and she’ll have to wait a while on the empty, bloody moon that houses the doctors and their knives before she, too, is sliced to ribbons.

Either way, this is the last time Risa gets to stretch out her legs, stare up at the dark ceiling, and rest without the stench of death pressing in around her. She can hear the soft breathing of the other kids in the room and wonders how long they’ve got, too, until they join her in disunion. Stars above, maybe one of them will get a bit of her. Maybe one of the kids who refuses to meet her eyes now will shatter a hip and get a chunk of her bone.

The thought is unsettling, not just because Risa doesn’t like anyone here enough to be satisfied with them getting a piece of her. She doesn’t want anyone to have any part of her, stranger or acquaintance. Risa wants to stay Risa. It’s a shame that no one else seems to agree with that.

Risa shudders. She wonders if whoever gets her body will feel how much she never wanted to leave it. She wonders if the person who wears her hands will feel the fingers twitching at her sides when she thinks of a chord progression, just like her; if they’ll tap to the beat of any song, even a conversation, when she recognizes a cadence.

She wonders if they’ll realize it’s her still alive in there somewhere, or worse still, if they’ll just assume it’s themselves speaking back through the void of infinitely many neurons and erase her again in a billion ways. You can forget someone all at once, but it will be even more terrible when her eyes are no longer hers but someone else’s, when every habit and characteristic that was once Risa Megan Ward is ripped away from her and gradually, inevitably, folded into someone else. Only then will she truly die, when Risa stops being Risa. When she truly is just a part of some other body. When Risa is no one at all.

Risa doesn’t recall the exact moment of falling asleep, but she must have at some point, because one second the room is dark and then she’s blinking awake, pulling on her clothes and heading out of the shared room. One of the administrators idles in the hallway, sent to get her and the other kids slated for the distribution shuttle leaving that morning.

She rubs her eyes, traipsing down to the mess hall, and stares blankly at the cooks starting to set out breakfast for that morning. “Do I get something fun? You know, since it’s like my last meal and all that?”

The cook blinks at her. “Nutrition supplements like always?”

Risa sighs, holds out a tray. “Fine. That works too.”

The cook sighs, dumps a few perfectly plain supplements on her tray, and watches Risa sit back down at one of the long benches lining great tables in the room. The mess hall was designed to hold every ward in this particular State House during their breakfast hour, but it’s too early for the rest to get up and so the only kids eating are the ones meant to be killed later today. They sit a little too far apart to allow conversation and occasionally make nervous, shifty eye contact with each other before immediately glancing away.

Risa swallows her breakfast without tasting it, as if there’s ever much to taste from chemically derived nourishment purchased on a State Home’s budget, then walks mechanically back to the dorm area to brush her teeth. She stops by her bunk to grab the few possessions she’s managed to rack up during her time in the State Home, but she’s hurried along by a faculty member before she can grab a single thing.

When Risa tries to protest, the guard just fixes her with a steely look and Risa remembers. Right. There’s no need for her to bring anything with her. Risa won’t be coming back from under the knife. Whoever’s getting her organs won’t want her holobooks and extra solar glasses.

The distributes are hustled into a line in front of a small shuttle, their names taken for record. Inside the shuttle, Risa takes a seat, and a guard comes around to place her wrists in mag-lock cuffs at the sides of her chair’s armrests. The cuffs shut with a hiss and click. Risa stares balefully up at the guard, but he’s already moving on to secure other kids, sparing no time for her indignation. Obviously, they don’t want anyone trying last minute escape attempts, but this shuttle is cramped as is, and Risa would like to spend her final hours with her arms without them immediately cramping.

Once everyone’s locked in, the guard joins the pilot in the nose of the craft, and soon enough the landing gear disengages and takeoff procedure begins. Although Risa’s mood is obviously not the lightest in the face of her impending separation, she can’t help but look eagerly out the window with the rest. This is the very first time that she has ever been offplanet barring whenever she was brought to the State Home, if she wasn’t born on this very planet. Even if it’ll be the last that she can remember, Risa can’t help but want to see it.

Although it does sort of impede on her rebellious impulse to resist every second of the way, Risa is glad she looked. And yes, she is going to endure a hideous end sooner rather than later, and yes, she is going to fight every chance she gets, but for now, Risa is one girl in the middle of a vast universe, one living figure on one small shuttle, one speck of light surrounded by thousands of stars. She can’t see much from the small windows of the shuttle, but what she can see– well, maybe this is why the early explorers couldn’t stop themselves from going out time and time again. Once you witness a sight like this, why would you ever be content back on land?

One of the boys seated to her right sighs appreciatively. “I heard there was supposed to be a meteor shower in the space nearby. It must be going on now.”

Risa cranes her neck to look around, and sure enough, the kid is right. Ribbons of white and charcoal, shooting stars, crisscross closer and closer to the shuttle. Bizarrely, a snippet of an old-Earth song plays in Risa’s head, something about wishing on stars, no difference who you are. Before she can laugh at herself, Risa snaps her eyes shut and silently pleads to whoever’s in charge out there in the universe that maybe, just maybe, she would be allowed to live.

A brief moment of peace, then Risa is jolted back to reality by the loud sound of something slamming into the side of the shuttle. Their craft is shoved starboard, rolling for a few moments before the pilot is able to right them again. Risa glances around, but everyone seems just as confused as she is.

“What was that?” She asks the kid next to her, the one who’d known about the meteor shower.

He tries to point, but the mag-lock cuffs on his wrists prevents the motion. Instead, he jerks his chin towards the nearest window. “Like I said, the meteors. The pilot went too close. I think a fragment hit the ship.”

Risa’s eyes widen. “Isn’t that dangerous?”

“Very,” the kid agrees. “I think we’ll still get there in one piece, though.”

Risa frowns. “Try not to sound so excited about it.”

He just shrugs, or as best he can while locked into his seat. “It’s happening regardless. We might as well make peace with it.”

“No, we might not,” Risa begins, but she’s cut off by the bang of another meteor fragment crashing into the ship.

This time, it doesn’t seem like they’ll be able to just shake off the impact. The distinct smell of smoke starts to waft through the hold, and Risa can just make out a shower of sparks from the cockpit, accompanied by voracious swearing from the pilot and guard.

Another hit, and even the doomsday meteor kid seems less certain that they can make it to the harvest colony. Risa can hear a slight whistling sound coming from somewhere, which definitely isn’t a good sign. Suffocating on a doomed spacecraft is still a better fate than distribution, but not by much.

Two meteors collide with the back of the ship at once. The lights blink once, twice, then shut off for about thirty seconds. The sound of terrified shouts echoes around her. Risa can almost glimpse the silhouettes of the other kids with the starlight leaching in through the windows, the other dozen ghosts in their dark little coffin. They must be losing power; the maglock cuffs at her sides unclick and Risa immediately has to grab hold of the armrests so she isn’t launched out of her seat. When the lights click on what feels like an eternity later, she sees that the rest of the shuttle hold is in similar disarray.

The guard stumbles out of the cockpit, thrown against the wall when the shuttle makes an abrupt about-face. “We’re temporarily headed back to XXIII,” he announces, “Just enough time to get some fixes on the shuttle while the meteor shower clears up. We’ve sustained too much damage to carry on.”

Some of the kids start shouting questions about does this mean they can leave and wait, just how much damage is there, but the guard just says that they’ll be on the harvest colony by central sundown anyway and disappears into the nose of the craft once more.

Risa stares out the window, searching for a clue of where they’re going and if they can make it on time. To her surprise, she realizes that they aren’t headed back towards the State Home. Instead, they’re angling towards a closer settlement, a wide commercial spaceport. As they re enter the atmosphere, Risa starts making out details of other ships in the landing zones, the hustle and bustle of daily life.

The shuttle makes a very ungainly, tumultuous landing, but it is, at least, a landing and not an implosion in space. From her seat in the back row of the kids, Risa hears rather than sees the pilot and the guard get off. The sound of heated discussion with ground control, most likely an engineer or two rushing to help them, wafts up the landing ramp. For now, all eyes are on the smoking controls, the pitted walls, everything but the groundsless still mute and terrified in their seats.

This means, Risa realizes with a lurch, that no one at all is thinking about her. The harvest colonies have got the process of collecting their distribution victims down to a science. They’re used to escape attempts, which is why they brought the guard. They are accustomed to people trying to flee State Homes or other holding zones, which is why transport is usually arranged to come at early morning or within a few days of a grounds license getting revoked.

However, anomalies like meteor showers striking shuttles tend to throw a wrench in the whole affair. Risa stares down at her hands, which have practically fused with the armrests of her seat with how hard she was holding on through the chaos of reentry, but they’re still free to move once she peels her fingers away. The cuffs unlocked when they briefly lost power. She’s not constrained by them anymore.

In fact, she’s constrained by very little. It occurs to Risa with a blossoming adrenaline rush that this is it, the chance she was hoping for since the moment her grounds license was signed away. She is never going to get an opportunity like this again, and she’ll be damned if she isn’t going to make the most of it.

All of the other kids are staring at the pilot down below or otherwise in a state of shock. They don’t react as Risa carefully stands up in her seat. They don’t notice when she locates the small exit at the back of the craft, the one that’s there in case the landing ramp fails in times of emergency. They do not respond when she presses a button and the escape hatch hisses open, when Risa crawls out and stands on the tarmac of the landing zone, blinking in the bright, free sunlight.

Startled by the sound of close conversation, Risa glances over her shoulder and spots the pilot and guard, still deep in discussions with the spaceport ground control. Before they can spy her, Risa turns and runs, keeping her steps as light and quick as the staccato notes she used to play.

It’s still midmorning, surprisingly; Risa feels as if it should be afternoon if not evening at least, judging by the weight of all that she has experienced so far today. This means that most of the massive transport shuttles have taken off to start the day’s work. They’ll be back later, but that doesn’t help Risa at the moment.

Picking up the pace, Risa spots a lone craft parked near a far wall of the spaceport. It’s tucked into a corner of the designated landing zone as if it were trying to hide. Well, so is Risa. She adjusts her direction accordingly. As she draws closer, Risa’s heart leaps in her chest when she realizes the landing ramp is down. The owner must be out haggling with the spaceport control or something, maybe trying to figure out the meteor shower situation.

Whatever the pilot’s occupation, Risa doesn’t much care. This is her chance, and she is not letting go of it for a second. Risa softens her footsteps as she crosses up the ramp and into the ship. She’s hit by a blast of circulating air, and feels her shoulders slump forward in relief. Even if this ship burns up in the atmosphere, even if she’s found out when the pilot touches down at their destination, she’s made it this far, at least. That has to count for something.

A flicker of movement in her periphery; Risa whips around and sees someone heading up the ramp as well. This must be the pilot, back already. They must have stepped out of the ship for a moment or two, nothing more. Risa throws herself further into the ship, searching desperately for somewhere to hide, but this is a tiny craft, even smaller than the State Home shuttle. There is simply nowhere to go.

Risa shrinks back against a wall as the pilot heads up the entry ramp. This cannot be it. She can’t be discovered already. Stars, the State Home shuttle is still here. She could be forced back on board, all her good work for nothing.

The pilot doesn’t notice her immediately. Instead, he crouches at the top of the landing ramp, seemingly searching to see if anyone spotted him. Twitchy, isn’t he? Wonder why? Satisfied, the pilot stands up, and scans the wall beside the landing ramp for– the button to close the ramp, that’s what he was looking for. Strange that he wouldn’t know that already. The ship has signs of wear, it can’t be a new purchase.

Doesn’t matter anyway. The pilot turns around, and Risa realizes with no small amount of surprise that this is no grizzled interstellar war vet nor tenured space junkie. The guy– well, he’s young. Probably only a year older than her. He spots her in a second, and immediately gets this look in his eyes like he’s the one who’s been caught sneaking aboard, not her.

They regard each other for a moment, two mice caught in a trap, and then the boy raises a shaking arm to point at her, and asks in a maddeningly unreadable voice, “Who are you, and why are you on this ship?”

unwind tag list: @schroedingers-kater, @locke-writes, @sirofreak

all tags list: @wordsarelife

11 notes · View notes

heliads · 7 months

Text

everything is blue • conrisa space au • Chapter Five: A Treacherous Road to Safety

series spotify playlist

previous / series masterlist / next

The ground is shaking, and it takes Connor far longer than it should to realize that he isn’t going to die. He’s jumpier than he was a few days ago, already, and he can only assume it will get worse as time goes on. Connor will shed whatever innocence he had left before his parents signed him up to die a thousand painful ways all at once, and he will become a twitchy skeleton, the nervous bones of what was once lively flesh and blood.

The source of the disturbance isn’t the disaster he’d envisioned. A loud rumbling had split the air, and Connor had flinched like he’d been slapped, picturing the land beneath him crumbling to dust, or the ship cracking at the seams. Instead, they’d started to move, and Connor realized belatedly that they were only just now taking off. It’s okay. They’re starting on their journey, the destination unknown but at last somewhere they can be safe.

He glances down at Risa, who’s somehow still asleep by his side. Growing up in a State Home, she must be used to sleeping through all sorts of sound and commotion. He envies her for it now. What a blessing it must be, to close your eyes and let the world slip away. Every time Connor so much as thinks about taking a break, his brain goes into high alert and refuses to let him rest. After so many close calls, he’s certain that one more will ruin them both, and Connor cannot have that after how far they’ve come.

Still, Risa seems to think it’s okay to rest, so maybe he can too. Not enough to sleep, just enough to take the edge off his already frazzled nerves. Connor does his best to relax along with her, let his breathing ease in unison with hers. They’ll do everything together until they get wherever Sonia wanted them to go, and even past that too, no doubt about that. They’ll survive together, run from the Juveys together, and yes, even breathe together in the underbelly of a massive shipping cruiser, curled away like rats in a cellar. Well, Connor’s already a pest in the eyes of the Collective. He might as well sink his jaws into the brightest parts of life around him while he’s at it.

So he sits perfectly still, careful not to so much as topple a stack of tools lest they somehow be heard over the distant clanging of the superspeed engine and the roaring of the ship around him, and he waits for their destiny to ship them off to somewhere farther beyond the stars. There are no windows in this glorified storage closet, so Connor can’t see where they’re going nor how far they’ve already come.

He swears he should be able to feel it in his bones when he officially crosses the boundary dividing the OH-10 star system from empty, nameless connective space, but instead they just keep going, paying no mind to the total terror that is leaving one’s home for the first time. The next time Connor looks up at the sun, it won’t be his. There might even be more than one. The stars will no longer be the ones that shone down on him, not in the same order, not the same way. Connor is away without leave in every sense of the word. Homeless, groundsless, purposeless. All he has is the infinity of stars somewhere around him.

Risa wakes at some point; Connor has no way of telling when. She comes to gradually, wrinkling first her brow and then her fingers, moving the digits together in her lap. Risa straightens up from where she’d started to slouch against Connor’s shoulder, both of them pointedly not bringing up the fact that her face had been so close to his, and to cover up for the mistake she asks, voice still groggy, “How long was I out?”

“No idea,” Connor answers truthfully. There’s no way of sensing anything here. Hours could have passed or mere minutes. They just keep going.

She frowns. “Still too long, though.”

Connor lifts a shoulder. “What else would we do?” He’s careful to keep his voice quiet, just in case.

Risa follows suit, her eyes flicking around the empty space before she continues in a whisper. “Do you really think there will be someone waiting for us?”

“Other than Juvey-cops, you mean?” Connor asks, then sighs. “Who knows? I’d like to think so. Sonia seemed like she had her stuff together. If she wanted to turn us in, she would have let Lev do it while we were at the boundary checkpoint. Would’ve been much more efficient for both of them.”

He’s unable to hide a slight snarl in his voice when he mentions Lev. Sure, he’d kind of kidnapped the kid, but he’d only stolen him from an early death. It’s not like his family was taking him on a fun vacation or something, unless you count the wild sendoff to a surgeon’s knife as an exciting thrill ride. Lev should be grateful for his second chance at life; Connor had to fight for his, and he gave it to Lev free of charge, yet the little bugbait ran off and sold him out, too.

Next to him, Risa arches a brow, evidently able to tell where his mind is headed. “Still mad at our favorite runaway tithe?”

“How could I not be?” Connor protests. “He stabbed us in the back.”

“After we kidnapped him,” Risa muses, and at Connor’s wordless but energetic protests she rolls her eyes and admits, “Yeah, I’m mad too, obviously, but you’ve got to think about it from his end. He’s probably been trained to accept this all his life. Just when he’s about to fulfill his divine destiny or whatever, we swoop in on a stolen cruiser and don’t even give him a chance to say his goodbyes. He’s just doing what he thinks is right.”

This saps some of Connor’s anger from him. At least when he ran away, it had been on his own terms. He’d decided what night to leave, and he’d treated his parents accordingly. He might not have been stupid enough to say goodbye outright, but he could still let that shape what conversations he had with them. Lev may have been ready to die, but he might not have been ready to let go quite yet.

“D’you think he’s already in a harvest colony somewhere?” Connor asks after a pause. “Last time I saw him, he was raring to go under the knife, but I can’t help but wonder…”

He lets his voice trail off, not sure what he’s wondering at all anymore. It’s easier not to ask questions about what happens to fiery tithes after they sentence themselves to death. Same way no one at home will ever talk about him again unless they physically have to. Thinking about someone who has seen you before, someone who remembers your name and spoke to you, having those same eyes and vocal chords ripped away on a remote lunar outpost is too disturbing to consider.

Risa gets what he’s trying to say, though. “If he changed his mind or something? If he did, Sonia could have found him. Maybe we’ll see him wherever we’re going.”

“Yeah,” Connor says, not entirely convinced, “Maybe we will.”

He’s not entirely sure that he believes it, but it’s a better thought than most, so Connor lets himself accept it for now. The two of them drift into a silence that’s slightly more paranoid than companionable, letting the roaring of the ship around them do the talking for them.

Some time later, the ship touches down. His hands are clenched into fists the entire time, terrified of a bad landing doing them in. However, they’re still alive when the dust clears, so Connor counts that as a win. After so long stuck inside the noisy, clanging behemoth, it’s strange to carefully climb out of it in complete silence. The absence of sound makes him uneasy, and causes him to be extra aware of the quiet shuffle of their footsteps as they head away from the shipping hauler.

Once they’re a safe distance away, Connor gestures for Risa to follow him into a darker, quieter hallway. “What do we do now?” He asks.

Risa shrugs. “Try to find that man Sonia told us about, I guess. What did she say his name was? Cleaver?”

Connor can’t help a wry smile. “That totally sounds like the kind of guy I want to see right now.”

Risa nods solemnly. “All the most trustworthy people go by Cleaver, I’m sure. Any idea of how we’ll find him?”

Connor shakes his head. “No clue. Do you think we should have stayed on the ship? Maybe he was supposed to come to us first.”

Risa tosses a nervous glance over her shoulder towards the ship, which is now swarmed with workers anxious to unpack the cargo. “If we stayed, we would have gotten caught. I think our best bet is to lay low and see if we see anyone else hanging around.”

It’s not like they have any other options, so Connor nods his agreement and they do their best to blend into the shadows of the corridor. The area is busy with disembarking passengers and ground control all bustling around. A few times, they have to duck into a closet to avoid overeager sec-officers patrolling the area, but everyone stays moving long enough for them to come back out soon enough.

The flow of workers starts to slow, but no one’s found them yet. Connor can’t be sure if that’s a good thing or not. Even if Cleaver doesn’t show, they’re still out of OH-10. It’ll be tricky to make their way out of here and find a regular source of food and shelter without a single grounds license between them, but they’d surely figure something out.

He’s about to suggest to Risa that they start to make their way out of the spaceport when she gently nudges him with her elbow, her eyes on something behind him. “This guy’s been staring at us for a while.”

Connor casually fakes a cough, using the motion of twisting and covering his mouth to glance behind him. Sure enough, there’s some guy in dark clothes loitering down the hall. A datapad is open in front of him, but the guy’s not doing much more than that to keep up the pretense of work. Instead, he’s eyeing Connor and Risa with an expression almost akin to hunger.

“Let’s get moving,” Connor suggests.

“What if it’s our guy?” Risa asks.

Connor gives her a sarcastic look. “Do you really want to go up to that guy and ask if he’s looking for two groundsless who look like us?”

Risa winces. “Good point.”

They turn and head down the corridor. The guy watches them go, and starts to follow a few paces behind them. Connor starts to pick up his pace, but the man just speeds up accordingly. They take a few random lefts and rights to shake their stalker only to find themselves at a dead end. Connor meets Risa’s wide eyes, and slowly turns back around to face the man who’s been following them. He shifts forward a little to step in front of Risa, but the guy doesn’t strike. Not yet.

Instead, he glances one last time at the open datapad before eyeing Connor. “You two are Sonia’s latest kids?”

Connor swallows hard. “How about you tell me who you are first?”

The guy stares at him as if Connor has just asked the most useless question in the world, then sighs. “I’m Cleaver. Sonia sent me, obviously.”

“It’s not obvious,” Risa remarks from behind Connor’s left elbow, “You’re a stranger. We have no idea of knowing who you are at all.”

Cleaver shrugs one muscular shoulder. “Can’t argue with that. Now come on, we need to get moving before someone else notices you. The two of you stand out like a sore thumb.”

Connor and Risa frown at each other. Connor had thought they’d done a pretty good job of hiding, but apparently not. Cleaver gives them one more look of vague disgust before turning and walking back down the corridor with long, purposeful strides. He’s moving fast enough to make it clear that he doesn’t want to talk to either of them, but Connor has more questions and he’ll be damned if they don’t get answered.

Hurrying to catch up, Connor presses on as they round a corner and head down a long hallway lined with doors to other sectors of the spaceport. “Is that how you knew it was us? We were too obvious?”

Cleaver grunts in reply. It takes Connor intentionally matching his strides for half the length of the hallway before the man finally caves and answers him. “That was hard to ignore. Other stuff too, though.”

Paranoid, Connor glances back behind them, but anyone passing through is too intent on their own destination to pay much attention to the three of them. “What else?”

A snide side glance from Cleaver; Connor returns his stare as intensely as he can while still speed walking down the hall at a breakneck pace. They make a few quick turns and Connor is forced to break his gaze so he doesn’t head directly into a wall.

When he looks back, Cleaver is facing ahead again, but this time he condescends to explain himself. “You two did look mighty suspicious, but I was helped by this.”

Cleaver tilts his datapad so Connor can see the image on the holoscreen. Immediately, he tenses up. Emblazoned in big, bold letters beneath a picture of him are the words WANTED: CONNOR LASSITER, ESCAPED GROUNDSLESS. TREAT WITH CAUTION. There’s another image right below it, a photo of Risa with a similar caption.

Connor wants to throw up. “When were these released?”

“About twenty-four standard hours ago,” is Cleaver’s guttural reply.

Connor blows out a low breath. So his parents had noticed his absence about the next morning, which makes sense, and the state home would have seen that Risa was gone when they checked the kids in the shuttle.

She’s told him by now of her escape attempt, and he’s got to admire her guts for pulling a stunt like that. Sneaking off the shuttle that was supposed to take her to a harvest colony after everyone on board nearly all died from the meteor shower? Crazy stuff. Connor’s down with crazy, though, so long as it keeps both of them alive. They’re a package deal by now. Can’t split them up, no one without the other. Like the twin braces of Connor’s ribs inside his chest, that’s them; no breaking them up until the end. Till death do us part.

Connor shoves his hands into his pockets to stop them from shaking. “So that’s how you knew it was us? You searched up our wanted posters?”

Cleaver blows out a breath, and Connor swears he almost looks impressed. “Not for you, actually. I’d already heard of you even before Sonia said she’d managed to send you on my way.”

Connor frowns. “How’d you manage that? Do you monitor every AWOL out of Sonia’s star system?”

Cleaver guides them down a narrow hall out of the main thoroughfare. It seems as if they’re headed towards a smaller hangar bay, probably where Cleaver keeps his ship. It would explain why Cleaver feels confident enough to stop lowering his voice when he tells Connor, “I didn’t have to look you up. The two of you are already famous.”

Risa has joined them by now; Cleaver’s relentless pace slowed when they left the central sector of the spaceport. She eyes the man cautiously. “What do you mean, we’re famous?”

Cleaver opens his mouth to answer, but another, younger, brasher voice beats him to it. “He means that you two made quite a name for yourselves when you shot a Juvey-cop and stole his ship.”

Connor looks past Cleaver to see a tall, muscular boy looming out of the darkness of the poorly lit corridor. His grin is sharp, and his teeth flash like fangs when he says, “Or, just Connor, I should say. He’s the one who did it.”

Cleaver huffs out a frustrated breath. “Roland, I told you to stay on the ship.”

The boy– Roland– doesn’t seem to care what Cleaver thinks he should or shouldn’t do. “I got bored. No one’s here, anyway. If they did, I’d shut ‘em up, no worries.”

Ah, Connor thinks. So he’s setting himself up as a threat. Classic move. Whenever new kids impede on your territory, you’ve got to decide whether they’ll be friends or foes. How lucky that Roland has already made that decision for him. Now he knows for certain that the only ones he can trust are Risa and maybe Cleaver. Roland will ‘shut him up’ just like anyone else to cross his path.

Connor’s met boys like Roland before, enough of them to already have a plan of how to handle him. Step one is not to give up or show a sign of hesitation. Step two is to get into a fight, but judging by Roland’s cocky stature and impressive physique, that might not be one he’d win.

Step one’s good for now, though. Connor squares his shoulders and looks Roland dead in the eyes. “I’m glad you’ve heard of me. It’s always nice to meet a fan.”

Roland scoffs. “Don’t take it personally. The story’s better than the real deal anyway. They failed to mention that you’d be this short face to face.”

Connor rolls his eyes, making Roland flash him another saber-toothed grin. Clearly eager to get back to his ship, Cleaver urges them both onwards. Roland stalks back into the dim lighting, giving Connor a good look as what he had thought was just a shadow on the boy’s right arm manifests itself as a tattoo of a shark. Suns, everything about this guy just gets better and better.

Roland leads the way back to Cleaver’s ship with obvious familiarity, making Connor wonder how long he’s been stuck here, waiting to move on. Cleaver checks for unwanted guests around his ship, and unlocks it once he’s sure the coast is clear. This starship is more haphazard even than the Juvey-cop’s shuttle; it looks completely patched together and it’s even missing an entry ramp, so they have to awkwardly climb up into the thing.

Roland acts the proper gentleman by offering Risa his hand so she has an easier time getting up, but judging by the way he doesn’t let go of her immediately afterwards, he’s not just doing it out of the pure kindness of his heart. Connor approaches the ship next, leading Roland to sneer in his face that he won’t be helping him up. Connor says something snappy and stupid in return, then climbs up, Roland right after him. Cleaver goes last, and walls them up inside after checking around one last time.

After that, they’re all left standing uncomfortably in the belly of the ship. Cleaver claps his hands together suddenly, making Connor and Risa jump. “Alright, then,” he says, “We’ll take off tonight, and probably make it over bright and early next morning. Give me a few hours to get everything in order and we can leave this junkyard behind.”

Roland’s face twists. “We’re not waiting for anyone else? I’ve been here for a fuckin’ week and the second these two show up, we drop everything and go?”

Cleaver, to his credit, doesn’t bat an eye at Roland’s protests. “As you so helpfully pointed out earlier, Connor and Risa are far more recognizable than you are. I can’t take the risk of someone stumbling across the ship and finding the Akron AWOL.”

Connor has no idea what that nickname means, but he can only assume it refers to him. Roland looks like he wants to argue, but Connor interjects so Cleaver can head to the cockpit and get travel preparations started. “It’s the fame, Roland. You have to understand. It’s exhausting having this sort of legacy, but–”

Roland cuts him off with a sound bordering on a snarl. “Watch it, starspawn. I don’t take kindly to upstarts running their mouths. That’s not how it goes around here.”

Connor wants to argue with this, but Risa lays a hand on his shoulder and says, “I think we’d all like to minimize fights, if possible.”

Roland folds his arms across his chest, daring Connor to contradict this. Risa looks at Connor accusingly, and– sunfire– they are on the same side, so he’s not going to undermine her by starting something, even if he really, really wants to. “I agree,” he says simply, and walks past Roland to the dingy common area in the center of the ship. There are maybe four chairs, one of them broken, but it’s good enough for now.

Risa follows him. “Excellent temper control,” she says, one eyebrow quirked up.

Connor sighs. “Don’t you start, too.”

“I’m not,” she replies, hands raised in mock surrender. “I just want you to remember that Roland is not the biggest of our worries right now.”

Connor looks past her to where Roland still lingers near the starship’s entrance. They’re far enough away that Roland can’t hear them, but the older boy still glances towards Connor as if he can sense the topic of conversation. Roland grins predatorily, and Connor’s eyes are again dragged towards the shark tattoo on his right arm.

Getting tattoos is rebellious, especially in the age of distribution. Either you’re confident enough that you won’t get distributed that you don’t mind damaging the goods, i.e. your own skin, or you know for a fact that you will be so you want to make sure that whoever gets your bits and pieces will be unable to ignore the source. No matter where they go, they’ll see your ink and they’ll be reminded of what they did to you. It’s like taking a stand, you refuse to protect your body such that someone else could use it. The way Roland acts, though, makes Connor think that it’s not just a promise that he’ll destroy himself, but anyone around him as well. He would drag them all down with him if he got the chance.

“No,” Connor muses, “but he’s certainly not something to forget about.”

They end up sitting around for what must be a couple of standard hours before Cleaver remembers that he was supposed to be leaving and they finally take off. In that time, Connor sits down for a while, stands up, sits again, walks around the ship a few times, peers at the cockpit instrument panel before Cleaver chases him out, and pokes around in a few crates. Risa stares at the wall. Roland stands with his hands on his hips, looking out the window as if daring anyone to come near. Every now and then, he cracks his knuckles menacingly, but only when he’s certain that Connor is nearby.

At last, when Cleaver comes out of the cockpit and announces that they’re on the move, Connor thinks they’ll finally have something to do. Maybe he can ask him for some flying lessons, or better yet, learn something about their mysterious destination.

Cleaver immediately shuts down the flying tutorial idea, not that Connor was really expecting that to go anywhere, but he is a little more forthcoming about where they’re headed. Apparently, one of the Collective’s higher-level officers recently developed a conscience and couldn’t live with his guilt about all of the kids getting distributed. He borrowed a massive cruiser and has been using it to house any groundsless he or his associates come across.

It sounds like a fairytale to Connor. Can’t be real. Of course there’s just, like, a massive star cruiser full of Unwinds orbiting some moon somewhere, because that’s the most realistic option here. When Connor looks at Cleaver to wait for him to start laughing at how gullible they are, though, the release never comes. Cleaver stays cold and stalwart, and at last Connor realizes that stars above, it’s real. It’s real, and they’re going directly to it.

Connor leans back on his heels, shaking his head slowly. “That’s crazy.”

“It is,” Cleaver says impassively, “And crazier still is how protective we have to be. No one can know about it. No one can leave unless they turn eighteen. It’s our best kept secret. That’s why you three are going to be traveling a little less comfortably than you’d like.”

Connor freezes. Even Roland looks uneasy. “What does that mean?” Risa asks slowly.

Cleaver meets all of their eyes in turn. “We can’t afford for any of you to get picked up on scanners while we travel between star systems, nor are any of you allowed to see where we’re going. This ship was jerry-rigged as an illegal transport vessel a long time ago. There are storage compartments in the walls that don’t let scanner beams through. You’ll be hiding in those until we dock.”

Connor stares at the walls around them. They don’t seem all that thick, even by junker starship standards. There must be hardly any space for them at all.

“It won’t be pleasant,” Cleaver says in agreement with Connor’s unspoken thoughts, “But I think you’ll find distribution far less appetizing. Unless you’d like me to let you off at the nearest harvest colony, of course. That would save us time and trouble.”

It’s an unnecessary threat, but it gets the point across. Cleaver walks over to the wall and begins to methodically unlock and pull away sections of the metal surface. Sure enough, he reveals storage compartments curving down the hall. They’re extremely shallow and not too tall, either. It’ll be like a coffin in there. In escaping death, Connor has seemingly sentenced himself to an early grave.

Cleaver extends a hand towards the hollows. “Well, take your pick. Time’s a wastin’.”

They all stand there for a moment, unable to move, and then Roland goes first, making an exaggerated show of scoffing like he couldn’t care less about how he makes the trip. Connor sees his eyes just before Cleaver closes the wall back over him, though. He knows Roland is just as terrified as they all are.

Two empty areas await, looming like eye sockets in the smooth metal wall. Risa climbs into one cavity, but when Connor moves to get into the next one over, she reaches out and grabs his hand. He looks over at her, and sees Roland’s horror reflected in her gaze. Which is worse, to have even less space than before or to go through this trial alone?

He climbs in after her. There’s just enough room for them to stand side by side, backs pressed up against the metal wall. Cleaver looms up before them, silhouetted by the light of the corridor outside. Strangely, Connor feels as if he’s on the other side of an airlock, about to be shut out into space, and then the metal casing slams down and they’re locked inside.

Immediately, Connor feels as if he cannot breathe. He’s never counted himself as claustrophobic before, but he’s never been locked inside a narrow storage compartment before, either. The darkness is overwhelming; Connor swears it presses against his skin like water. He thinks he might drown in it, and takes deep breaths to compensate. He never gets enough air, though. His lungs are never full.

He tries again, gasping for more, but it’s not enough. The blackness around him seems to get closer, and Connor is a few seconds from fully freaking out until he feels a tapping on his right arm. It comes again, a moment later– tap tap, two motions against his forearm. It’s Risa, reminding him that he’s not alone in this endless darkness. She’s here with him. They’re going to be alright, because they have each other, that’s all they’ve ever had, and if they managed to survive everything else, surely they can live through this, too.

Connor feels his heart rate start to slow down. He reaches his right hand to tap twice against her left arm, returning the message. A couple of minutes later, when Connor can feel her starting to shuffle around too much, she taps twice, and he does the same, like a prolonged heartbeat stretching between the both of them. Eventually, they both calm down enough that the beats have more and more time between repetitions, and then they stop entirely.

Connor focuses on his breathing, on not thinking about anything. He closes his eyes, even though it doesn’t entirely matter, just because having his eyes open to the stuffy blackness makes him feel even more uncomfortable than before. His knees start to cramp, but he can’t straighten them, so he just tries to think about something, anything else.

He moves the fingers of his left hand one by one. He curls his toes inside his shoes. He listens to the soft rise and fall of Risa’s breathing somewhere to his right. Connor leans a little closer to her, just to be sure that she’s still there and hasn’t somehow been ripped apart from him. He’d never known unless she shouted; it’s too dark in here, and his eyes refuse to adjust. He would have no idea at all that she was gone if he ever let go, and so he won’t.

There’s a scratching sound on the metal somewhere above and to the side. Connor wonders if it’s Roland, trying to carve his way through the barriers of his storage compartment into theirs. He shivers, and Risa, evidently having heard the same thing, presses closer to him. The sound carries on for some time before falling off in disappointment. They won’t be reached by anyone, shark or boy or Juvey-cop. Nothing can touch them.

Neither of them pull away, though, and Connor doesn’t want to. He’s only aware of one sensation anymore, and that is the crescents of his skin pressed against her. They are here in this unmarked grave, somewhere in the vast expanses of space, and when they come out of this, they will be safe. They will be whole. Someone out there is looking for them, waiting for them to arrive, and then none of this will ever happen again.

And if they die here, let the worlds find their brittle bones together, hand in hand, spine against spine. Let them never be separated again, even in death. When their blood congeals, when their muscles atrophy, let all that dust of what was once flesh and bone intermix until no one can tell the difference between the two. Let Connor and Risa, Risa and Connor, never, ever end.

Connor learns to sense the passage of time by the alternating rumbles of the starship’s engines. Twice, Connor thinks Cleaver docks the ship, and twice he gets his hopes up only for the ship to start up again without ever letting them go. Cleaver had passed out food and drink rations before forcing them into the storage compartments along the walls, so he’s not immediately hungry or thirsty, but he has no idea how long they can keep this up. When he starts thinking too much about it, he taps his right hand twice, and waits until Risa taps twice back. Only then can he force himself to relax and move on to other, braver topics.

He compels his mind to stay busy. Mentally, Connor runs through every flight tip he’s ever heard. He thinks through the routes he would walk or bike to school, how he’d return from his destination. He used to sneak over to his friend’s houses all the time, and in his mind Connor imagines that he’s back there again, hopping fences or running low down the road so cars couldn’t spot him. He goes to his friends’ houses and he completes the trip back, but he always stops his mental picture just before he turns down his driveway. Home is not a place Connor can return to, even in the illusion of his own head.

More, a desperate need for more; Connor thinks of homework assignments he procrastinated, TV shows he’d binged. Every girl he’d ever met. Every boy he’d ever fought. There was this one field trip when he was a kid where everyone in his class got to go to a science museum across town; they’d shown up in one big, writhing mass and immediately been shepherded from exhibit to exhibit by exasperated teachers. He had been small then, barely able to tie his shoes, and when they passed dioramas of monstrous animals with huge jaws, Connor had hidden his face in his hands. One had been a tiger shark.

There’s a clamor outside the metal wall of their storage compartment. Lost in memories, Connor thinks it’s his dad working on the junker of a car they’d found abandoned on the side of the road one day. The engine had needed some work, it hardly even ran on substellar batteries, let alone a normal fuel like power cells.

Still, they’d worked on that thing day and night. He can still remember his dad looking at him proudly the first time they took it on a trip across the neighborhood; Connor can’t imagine why his dad would let him die when he was so happy that day, they both were, but maybe he just hadn’t done a good enough job on it, maybe that was why his dad had been okay letting him go.

The clanging persists. Connor opens his mouth to tell his dad to stop it, he’ll be out in a minute, but then the door of the storage compartment rips open, letting in blinding waves of light, and Connor remembers. He remembers where he is– not at home, not heading out to the garage, but on a run down starship somewhere in the vast expanse of the galaxy.

Cleaver is peering down at him. “You two haven’t died in there yet, have you?”

“No, unfortunately,” Connor grumbles out through chapped lips and a dry tongue.

Cleaver grunts in sympathy. “You look it, though.”

He helps both of them out, then hands them each a water ration. Roland is already idling somewhere in the back, and although his back is tall and straight, he’s got this look in his eyes that even the best of his bravado can’t hide. None of them will forget what it took to get here. In a way, Connor thinks that was done on purpose. You can’t run a secret safe haven if the kids inside believe they can just leave without a care. This sort of terrible journey teaches them the price of their safety.

Cleaver nods, as if sensing that Connor finally gets it. “Well, you survived,” he says matter-of-factly. “Welcome to the Graveyard.”

unwind tag list: @schroedingers-kater, @locke-writes, @sirofreak

all tags list: @wordsarelife

7 notes · View notes

heliads · 7 months

Text

everything is blue • conrisa space au • chapter three: some are taken away

series spotify playlist

previous / series masterlist / next

Stars above, Connor Lassiter is so screwed. Just when things were starting to go his way, too. He’d actually managed to sort out the autopilot long enough to limp over to XXIII, not to mention conducted a fairly textbook landing. Sure, the only thing he’d really done to help with that was fight the urge to press random buttons, but, like, he’s in the pilot seat, isn’t he? That means he has to deserve at least a little of the credit.

Besides, he was the one who spotted that weird lights show going on in the space some distance away from his shuttle and managed to steer himself away before a collision. When he peered out the cockpit windows, Connor thought it might have been a meteor shower, but unreported– his nav system failed to pick up on it, which he definitely doesn’t like. Connor likes being aware of large chunks of rock whenever they’re directly in his flight path.

All in all, it had taken more energy than Connor had hoped just to straggle over to a small planet in the same star system. This makes it crystal clear to him, if it wasn’t obvious already, that he won’t be able to make a jump between systems by himself. Not without having a better idea what he’s doing. Once Connor had managed to get his stolen shuttle landed in a commercial spaceport, he’d collapsed in an untidy heap in his pilot’s chair. No wonder it’s so hard for AWOLs to get away. Surviving alone is damn near impossible even after you manage to shake the Juvey-cops, and Connor has no idea how long that will last.

Once he’d recovered sufficiently, Connor had taken it upon himself to do a slow loop of the spaceport and see if there were any larger ships that might overlook a stowaway. Unfortunately, he’d had no luck in finding anything. Everyone was already gone for the morning, and Connor didn’t want to stay in one place long enough to wait for anything new to land.

So he’d headed back to his shuttle, trying to figure out his next course of action, and that’s when he ran into trouble. Connor had left the shuttle ramp down, which is a terrible thing to do, but he couldn’t risk locking himself out accidentally. He knows next to nothing about Officer Nelson’s spacecraft anyway, there’s no point in taking stupid chances.

Still, maybe he should have looked harder and tried to find an instruction manual or something before he left. Maybe then he wouldn’t have come back to his shuttle to find someone else on board.

Now Connor stands in front of the escape ramp he barely remembered to close after him, staring at a strange girl staring back at him, and the only thought on his mind is that this can’t be how it ends. The girl has a wild, frightened look to her, like she might do anything at any moment. He can’t read her enough to tell if she’s aiming to turn him in or just kill him outright so she can steal the ship. He’s heard of worse things happening to lonesome travelers in the outer, darker stretches of the galaxy, anyway.

She looks at him. He looks at her. Her spine straightens almost unconsciously, a silent message to back off: she won’t be talking first, so he might as well set the scene for how this is going to go. Fine, then. Connor would prefer it if he was the one in control. This is his ship, after all. His stolen ship, yes, but his. At least until the Juveys track him down again to reclaim stolen property.

“Who are you,” he asks, as slowly and deliberately as his nerves will let him, “and what are you doing on this ship?”

Belatedly, he realizes that he should have said something like my ship. It’s all in the details now, how he protects himself. One little slip and everyone will know he’s an AWOL. Even a runaway like her could figure that out.

However, the girl seems less preoccupied in figuring him out and more in how to keep him from focusing on her story. She folds her arms across her chest and narrows her eyes at him. “How about you tell me about yourself first?”

He blinks at her in surprise. “You’re on my ship. You go first.”

She arches a dark brow. “Is it your ship?”

She’s onto him already. His poker face must be worse than he thought. “It’s certainly not yours.”

The girl can’t argue with that, although she looks as if she’d like to. “Fine. I’m Risa.”

Connor waits a beat for something else, maybe an explanation as to why Risa seems compelled to enter strange ships and demand answers from him, but she stays silent. He heaves a breath that, although more dramatic than strictly necessary, makes him feel substantially better.

“Fine, Risa,” he mimics, “I’m Connor. Lovely to meet you. Why are you on my ship?”

This, finally, makes her react. Sure, it would be fascinating to see how long they could continue this sort of stalemate, but Connor would like to take off before anyone can find him. After all, he’s still not one hundred percent certain that Officer Nelson wouldn’t have a tracker on this shuttle. That escape plan involves getting this strange girl out of here first.

“I need to go offworld,” she announces. “I needed a ship. Yours was here.”

It’s such a dumbfoundingly simple answer that he almost wants to laugh. “I assumed you wanted to leave this planet,” Connor remarks dryly, “That’s usually why people choose spacecraft as opposed to, say, running with their legs. That would be significantly slower, but far better for me. ”

“Depends on whose legs you use,” Risa shoots back, just as snide. He searches her face for some kind of sympathy for the distribution process but just finds bitterness. Good, that’s something they can finally agree on.

All of a sudden, an alarm starts blaring across the shipyard. It’s not super loud, probably just one of the few grounded cruisers in the area forgetting to turn off an entrance alarm overnight only to have their pilot trigger it by accident when they left for the morning, but it makes both of them jump. Risa looks even more stunned than Connor feels, and despite her attempt to seem casual, Connor can’t shake the feeling that she might be just as terrified of getting caught as him.

“Okay,” she says abruptly, voice high. “Fine. You got me. I’m on your ship and I shouldn’t be. What are you going to do about it? Turn me in?”

She juts her chin out as she says this, practically daring him to screw them both over by calling over a cop. It’s kind of cute, honestly, except Connor has no time to think about cute girls because he is a dead man walking so long as he sticks around on this planet. So he doesn’t. Or he tries not to, at least.

“Why shouldn’t I?” Connor asks, cool as a synth-cucumber, “You’re an intruder. That’s the reasonable thing to do.”

She scoffs. “You’re not reasonable. Or you wouldn’t be walking around like you don’t even know your own shuttle. How long have you had this thing, anyway? An hour?”

That makes his insides shut down. Connor can’t afford to be caught, and he senses that this girl is just as desperate as he is. Perhaps desperate enough to call the spaceport marshals on him if it lets her slip away unnoticed. The only way he can keep this situation under control is if he reminds her who’s in control, who has to be in control– him and him alone.

He stalks towards her. There isn’t a whole lot of room in the Juvey-cop’s narrow shuttle, so within a few footsteps Risa has her back to the wall and her eyes fixed on him. Her chin is up even more than before in an attempt to both seem taller and less afraid, but neither works on him.

“Listen,” he says slowly, “It doesn’t matter what you think about this ship. It doesn’t matter what you think about me. The only thing that’s important is when you get off of this shuttle and leave me the hell alone.”

“I’m not leaving,” she spits back, “so you better learn how to deal with that. You can’t get rid of me without outing yourself for whatever you’ve done wrong. We’re stuck together, Connor, so you might as well get used to it.”

Connor did not sign up for a traveling companion, and he’s about to tell her that in no uncertain terms when someone outside bangs on the wall of the shuttle, making the whole ship rattle with metallic drum beats.

A man’s voice shouts from outside: “This is Spaceport Security. In the name of the Collective, disembark from the shuttle. We’d like to talk to you about your authority to land here. Mind stepping out with your identification and cosmic license?”

Connor stares unthinkingly at Risa, and they may have been fighting since the second she turned up on the shuttle, but at this moment, they are exactly in unison. In a heartbeat, they turn and sprint to the cockpit. Connor throws himself into the pilot’s seat, Risa by his side strapping into the copilot’s chair. The shouting outside grows louder, but neither of them have any intention of meeting it.

He blanks for a moment, hands hovering over the controls, trying to remember what in the suns he did to make this thing airborne last time. A second later, the neurons in his brain finally piece themselves together and Connor toggles a few switches, presses a few buttons that may or may not be necessary until the autopilot kicks in and starts bringing them up more smoothly.

As they lift off, Connor can make out the silhouettes of the security officials like tiny insects on the ground. Within moments, they’re racing away again, hopefully towards a different target.

Connor breathes out a deep sigh of relief. “And we’re safe.”

“Not quite,” Risa replies, craning her neck to see out of the cockpit viewscreens even as they enter the atmosphere, “I think they’re following us.”

Connor nearly snaps his spine in half trying to jump up and see what she’s looking at. “What do you mean, they’re following us?”

Risa extends a slightly trembling finger to point at the two or three ships starting to take off beneath them. Connor shifts a few of the steering controls, but even after their path takes a drastic turn, the ships remain bent after them. Worse, too, the engines on those things are way better than Connor’s puttering piece of Juvey-crap, so the distance between them starts to shrink rapidly.

Connor swears terrifically under his breath. “What do we do?”

Risa vaguely moves her hands towards the equipment panel. “You’re the pilot. Can’t you get us into hyperspace or something? If we do it soon, they might not be able to mimic our jump.”

That’s a great idea. It would be even greater if Connor had any idea how to do that. He’s been relying on memories of an old friend to get him through the basic flight controls, but there was no way in all the worlds anyone in their right mind would let that hungover moon jockey do a hyperspace jump by himself, so Connor hadn’t been able to hear an anecdote involving that particular skill. Instead, he desperately scans the instrument panel, searching for something hopefully labeled.

Risa peers down at the avenging spacecraft behind them, then back at him. “Any day now would be nice. You’ll have to be careful, I think there’s a passenger ship in space near us, too. Make sure you don’t hit it when you get us out of here.”

“I’m trying.” Connor forces out through gritted teeth. There– a section of the instrument panel curves past his left and Connor can make out several switches with a label underneath. The printing is smudged, likely from repeat use. That’s promising, at least: that Juvey-cop would have had to jump to hyperspace several times in his illustrious career hunting desperate kids, right? That’s the only way to get beyond the reaches of one’s own star system without spending years floating inside a tin can like this.

Blast it. Connor has no better options. He reaches forward and flicks a couple of the switches. Maybe that’ll do something to trigger the autopilot?

“You’ve locked onto the passenger ship,” Risa announces doubtfully.

Connor’s heart drops into his feet. “With missiles?”

“No,” she says, frowning at the nav readout, “With a tractor beam, I think. You’re drawing them towards us.”

Connor leans forward, staring out the main viewing window of the shuttle cockpit. Sure enough, the only other entity in the space around them other than the swiftly gaining ground security is smoothly pivoting its course to move towards Connor and Risa. A beeping light on the nav readout indicates that the locking mechanism was successful, whatever that means.

“Well,” Connor says feebly, “we can disengage it, can’t we?”

Risa fixes him with a judgmental, if not outright victorious, look. “This is your ship, isn’t it? Shouldn’t you know?”

He has to white-knuckle the armrests to keep from descending into fury, and it’s only partially successful. “Now is not the time.”

The passenger ship they’re currently towing seems to agree, because a warning light beeps to life on the communications viewport. Accept communication channel from: SS-Disciple?

Connor wrinkles his nose at it. “The Disciple?”

Risa shrugs, but she looks just as confused as he feels. “Maybe they’re religious. Who knows?”

Connor glances back towards the looming spaceship. It’s bigger than theirs, although that’s not a difficult feat to achieve. The strangest thing about it is the ship’s appearance. The edges are smooth, and gleam with the extra sort of shine anything gets when enough money and time are poured into it. It’s practically pearlescent, and definitely more expensive than anything should be out here. Connor can’t help but wonder why someone would go to the trouble of keeping such a thing so well maintained in OH-10 of all places. This isn’t exactly Centerworld, most of the elite don’t come out here that often. Obviously, someone wanted to be comfortable, but why here?

The comms channel beeps again, and Connor accepts before he thinks it through. A voice crackles to life over the intercom, the speaker shaky and uncertain. “Is this– is this a Juvey-cop shuttle?”

Connor’s eyes widen. Suns, he forgot about that. This thing must still be transmitting Juvey-cop identification. Risa stares at him, making Connor wince. He’ll have to cook up a good explanation for that later.

Not right now, though. The other line crackles and hisses expectantly. Connor takes a second to locate the comms button and speaks as deliberately as he can, intentionally pitching his voice lower so he sounds older. “Yes. This is, uh–” What was the guy’s name again? “Officer Nelson.”

A large gush of static; on the other end, someone must be sighing. In relief or despair, Connor can’t quite tell. Juveys elicit startlingly different reactions from a lot of people. “Excellent. You’re here for Lev, then?”

“Yes,” Connor says instinctively, then mouths what?? To Risa, who just raises her hands, having no more clue what’s going on than him.

“Alright,” the speaker says. “We thought you’d show up closer to the colony, but oh, well. We’ll open up once we dock.”

With that, the comms channel is unceremoniously severed. Connor almost misses the background din of static. At least he didn’t have to think about what he’s going to do when that ridiculously overpriced shuttle ducks onto theirs while it was humming in the background.

Risa leans back in her seat, fingers steepled together. “Why–”

“I don’t know,” Connor says, when it’s clear that her questions are far too numerous and all-encompassing to even begin to voice.

“And you–” Another interjection, another weighty pause.

“Yeah,” Connor replies, hoping he’s not agreeing to anything too terrible. It’s not like it matters, anyway. The worst she can guess is the truth.

Silently, they watch the pearl of the Disciple drift towards them. The ground security ships are just moments away, but for some reason Connor can’t think about them, not now, not when this gaudy ship is locking onto them with a gentle hiss and click of machinery.

Slowly, almost in unison, Connor and Risa turn to stare at the awaiting hatch on the side of their cruiser. He’ll have to unlock it, Connor realizes, and then it will dawn on whoever is on the Disciple in need of Juvey-cops that they have only two feral teenagers for help. Stars, he hopes it isn’t a rogue groundless kid who’s getting turned in. This shuttle doesn’t have room for three runaways butting heads, but how could Connor leave someone like that behind?

His decision is made by another comms channel sounding off in a tumult of static. “This is the security force of OH-10 XXIII Spaceport C. Cease your flight attempt and turn yourselves in at once.”

Connor can’t see whatever is happening on the other side of the hatch, but he assumes that whoever had prevailed upon the nonexistent Juvey-cops is probably freaking out just as much as he is. Connor can’t turn himself in. Not yet. They’ll have to force him out.

He glances over his shoulder at Risa, who sets her jaw determinedly. She’s not going down easily either. At least he has that.

A sudden idea occurs to him as he glances back at the awaiting hatch. Stars above, it’s stupid, and probably going to get himself killed even more than he is already. Connor’s already rock bottom though, right? There’s nothing worse than distribution.

So, as if in slow motion, Connor presses the button for the hatch and watches as it whooshes open to reveal what he assumes is a family standing there, frozen in shock. There are many younger siblings and two parents all standing in a semicircle around the youngest kid of all, who’s probably not more than thirteen.

Another man stands somewhat uncomfortably to the side, dressed in a pastor’s usual formal attire. Unlike the rest of the family, who are just now starting to look alarmed, the furrows in this man’s brow tell Connor that the pastor has been unhappy for quite some time. The pastor catches him looking, glances towards the young blond boy at the center then back towards Connor, and, steeling himself, nods. Just a small incline of the head. Just enough to know that somehow he’s guessed at Connor’s terrible plan, and against all odds, agrees with it.

Connor looks at the blond kid in earnest. He’s wearing these strangely formal clothes, like he’s going to a recital or legislative function. They look weird on a kid that young, especially since they’re all white, kind of like– oh. Connor gets it.

Sometimes, your parents decide that they’re going to have you distributed even before you’re born. It’s a practice called tithing, mainly used by the more religious families. Apparently there’s some belief dating back to old-Earth times that the universe was made not by rogue explosions of stardust but a god, and a God who expects that his people will give back to him after he gave so much to them.

The beliefs change from system to system. Some think that the idea of distribution is divine work but don’t attach the name of any particular religion to it. They like that there are grander forces at work than just them, forces who compel the constant circulation of life around the galaxy. Others prefer something a little more concrete. And then there are the tithing families, who would take their dedication to their religion so seriously that they would give up a child just to say that they’d held up their idea of the bargain.

The kid, strangely enough, looks totally chill with the idea. If it had been Connor in his polished white shoes, he would have sprinted for their shuttle the second an escape route opened itself up. Instead, this kid curls back towards his parents, the ones giving him away, as if to hide from Connor and Risa.

It won’t do him much good, though. Connor is already moving, throwing himself out of his pilot’s seat and towards the hatch, then grabbing hold of the blond tithe before anyone knows what he’s doing. Even Risa looks stunned. Connor yanks the kid over the threshold into their shuttle, then slams his hand onto the button to seal off the hatch.

The tithe looks furious, but Connor quickly disengages the other ship before he can try to open the hatch again. Leaning over the pilot’s seat and reaching for the comms channel, Connor addresses the spaceport security ship. “Attention, ground control. We have a hostage on board. Return to your port at once or–” Or what? Is he going to kill this kid here and now? “Or the kid gets it,” he finishes somewhat lamely. They already think he’s an unwind, don’t they? They wouldn’t put anything past him.

The voice that answers him seems furious. “Put the hostage back. Land without any more trouble and we’ll take that into consideration.”

“Consider this,” Connor says, and pokes the tithe sharply in the side. Not expecting it, the kid cries out in surprise. He isn’t hurt, but the ground-sec has no idea of knowing that.

This little action is greeted by a quick rush of words and static. “We’re going to retreat. Put the kid back.”

“You move first,” Connor tells them, and waits until the sec-ships start to back off.

He locks eyes with Risa, and whispers to her while keeping the comms channel off. “Plot a hyperspace jump. The autopilot will help you.”

She nods, eyeing the tithe for a lengthy moment before shaking her head and turning towards the instrument panel. So she gets it, then. She’s like him. They would both do anything to survive.

The comms channel crackles to life again, this time more demanding than before. “Return the hostage immediately.”

Connor scoffs. “What, so you can shoot us out of the sky? No thanks.”

Risa winces as she peers over the instrumentation, and yeah, Connor probably shouldn’t have revealed himself so fast, but he’s running on adrenaline right now. In all the times he lay awake at night wondering what he’d do if something so crazy happened as his parents revoking his grounds license, Connor never made a plan for when he inevitably took a tithe captive miles above the atmosphere of the closest planet.

He peeks at the buttons under her fingers. “Any luck?” He hisses.

She’s about to shake her head, and then her eyes light up and she dives forward to snap on a few switches. The nav readout whirs to life, asking Risa where she wants to jump. She picks one at random. For a moment, nothing happens at all, and Connor watches, panic mounting, as the ground-sec ships start slicing through space towards them once again.

He feels it before he sees it. It’s like the air in Connor’s chest has been punched out of him, and when he sucks in a fresh lungful, the stars are melting together, swimming and elongating until they are no longer in the space outside OH-10 XXIII, they’re hurtling through a place Connor can only recognize from grainy snapshots in school textbooks.

Hyperspace.

He lets out a loud whoop. Risa’s face cracks into a wide grin, the flashing lights from the quickly speeding stars outside reflecting on her teeth. “We did it,” she blurts out, astounded.

Beside them, the tithe crosses his white-clothed arms dolefully. “We did? You kidnapped me. You’ll get in trouble for that.”

Oh, stars above. Connor is so past the threat of vague trouble. He ran away from home. He’s come to terms with his own looming distribution and chased it off. He shot a Juvey-cop and stole a ship and yes, kidnapped a tithe, and the fact that this kid thinks a little bit of trouble will straighten him out is so ludicrous that Connor genuinely bursts out laughing.

Once he starts, he can’t stop. A heartbeat later, Risa joins in, and then the two of them are practically doubled over, gasping for air in between bouts of laughter. The silver threads of stars shoot by outside, and Connor’s stomach aches for laughing, and although he is most certainly a dead man flying, he can’t help but think that just now, just this once, he has never been more alive.

a/n: smh lev. he just doesn't get it!! (he will)

unwind tag list: @schroedingers-kater, @locke-writes, @sirofreak

all tags list: @wordsarelife

11 notes · View notes

heliads · 7 months

Text

everything is blue • conrisa space au • Chapter Six: First Day of Many

series spotify playlist

previous / series masterlist / next

Risa Ward cannot be sure that she isn’t dreaming. The uncanny feeling refuses to leave her even hours after she emerges from the darkness of her own self-imposed tomb. Yes, Risa has left the shadowy, confining storage compartment that carried her to safety, she’s even left Cleaver’s ship, but that does not mean she trusts her own mind any more than she did when she wanted to scream forever after being walled up inside.

It nearly killed her and Connor. Of that Risa is certain. Had they stayed inside that tiny darkness for even a few standard hours more, the two distributes who came out would have been utterly removed from the ones who went inside. Even now, she’s not entirely sure that she is the same girl who answered by the name of Risa Megan Ward before the darkness claimed her. The only one who knows her at all anymore, the only one who would recognize her eyes if they were in someone else’s head, is Connor, and he’s no better off than she is.

He’s quieter than he was before. She can tell already. Usually, Connor would have provoked Roland by now, or said some sort of quippy goodbye to Cleaver when they left his ship for whatever new hell this place will be. It’s funny, Risa had so many hopes for what she’d find here, but after their horrific journey here, her dreams have somewhat faded. She just wants to live. If survival is what she finds in the Graveyard, then by all means, she’ll take it.

The Graveyard. It’s a fitting title for a place like this. Kind of. Not really. They’re all dead, legally, and where do the dead live but a graveyard? Cute name. Not a cute place. There are guards posted by the hatch when they dock, but they just look like kids. Older kids, tall ones, probably close to aging out of ever having to fear distribution again, but kids.

As Risa, Connor, and Roland edge further inside the ship, Risa realizes that’s all she sees. A group of tweens is sprawled against a wall, idly gossiping about their upcoming task of the day. Three or four older kids push purposely by them, chattering about new shipments. The ship’s intercom system briefly buzzes on, and the playful voice that warns them about low pressure in an eastern corridor is not that of an experienced engineer but a teenager just like them. Stars, are they all ferals here? Every last one of them?

Risa can’t decide if that’s good or bad. In the end, the only thing she can come up with is another question: how in all the worlds has whoever’s running this place managed to get hundreds of scared kids to work together long enough to keep each other alive? This doesn’t feel like a utopia, it’s much too grimy. This is no perfect paradise. There’s a reason the galaxy wants its youth dead, and it’s because they cause too many problems to be kept in line. This place is no exception, it’s just that everyone here is a little better behaved because they know the consequences of messing up involve their limbs scattered to the corners of the universe.

Connor whistles under his breath as they walk into what appears to be a central bay of the ship. “Suns, this place is huge.”

He’s right. Risa can’t help but stare, openmouthed, at the sheer vastness of everything around her. The older kids who’ve been leading them through the ship chuckle at their naivete, but Risa doesn’t pay attention. She didn’t get a good glimpse of the Graveyard from the outside, obviously, so she had no idea how big it would really be. From what she can tell of these first few minutes ago, though, this place must be massive.

Risa doesn’t know how long they spent walled up in the darkness of the ship compartments, but it must have been overnight or something, because more and more teenagers are starting to appear. Slowly but surely, they materialize, yawning, out of the metalwork, like so many rustbugs from a desiccating speeder bike. They all seem to follow the same schedule, forming an unruly parade down to what Risa can only assume is the mess hall, before setting off for the day.

The lights brighten as the false morning begins. Doors open, giving Risa a better look at the inside of this mammoth starship. They’ve banked all their chances at surviving to eighteen on an absolute junker of a ship, hardly more vehicle than amalgamation of shoddy joins and bad machinery. It’s a wonder this thing is still intact long enough to stay spaceborne, which must be exactly how it’s stayed under the Juvey-cops’ radar all this time.

Risa walks around in a daze. She never thought she’d find herself anywhere but an unwinding outpost, and now she’s strolling down the barely lit corridors of a behemoth like this. It’s beyond a simple frigate-class, even larger than a cruiser. Sunfire, it’s probably only a few rooms away from being an outpost itself, albeit one that would only fly if its engines were cleaned up a little.

Risa looks towards the mess hall as they approach it, but one of the older kids shakes his head. “You need to meet with the Admiral first. Eat later.”

Risa’s stomach grumbles rebelliously, but she keeps moving with the others. Now is not the time to complain. The thought of being forced out of here in that same dark coffin is not a fate she ever wants to endure again.

As if thinking the same thing, Connor, by her side, asks, “Whoever’s in charge will let us stay, right?”

The kid who’d spoken earlier answers again. “Yeah. He’ll give you the speech, probably try to shake you up a little, but you’ll be fine. Just don’t try anything. The Admiral likes feeling in control.”

Not the best thing to hear about what might be the only adult on a massive ship full of ferals, but Risa’s dealt with her share of power-grabbing administrators before. What’s one more now? They’re led down a few more corridors before stopping abruptly at a door at the end of a hallway. The lights flicker ominously overhead, revealing a placard inscribed only with the same name the kid had mentioned earlier, The Admiral.

Well, Cleaver had said the guy who decided to save them all was military-type. Maybe he’ll make them salute or something. Glancing over at Roland, who’s still eyeing Connor like he wants him dead, Risa thinks that there might be some among their number who might chafe at the rules. She’ll lecture Connor about it if she has to. They’re not going to split up again.

One of their guards reaches out and knocks sharply on the door. A voice inside calls for them to enter, and after being gestured to go in alone, they file inside. Waiting for them is a man older than most of the faculty at the State Home back in OH-10. His face is covered with deep, lasting scars. Unlike most of the war heroes from the newsreels Risa has seen, the Admiral has not elected to get the scars smoothed out with fresh skin. Then again, if this guy is supposed to be championing the cause of saving the groundsless, the thought of accepting distributed skin probably turns his stomach just as much as hers.

The Admiral leans forward, creasing his faded military uniform. “You three are our newest arrivals, then.”

A silence; Risa isn’t sure if they’re supposed to answer or not, but after a heartbeat the Admiral continues in the same tone, so she decides to stay quiet. He’s probably a member of the don’t-speak-unless-spoken-to camp that was so common back at the StaHo.

“Usually, we get arrivals in bigger groups, but we’ve been slowing our rescues down a bit over the past year. People are starting to pay more attention than they always have. Obviously, we’d like to take every distribute we can, but we have to be realistic. This is not a blind galaxy, nor a safe one. Our first priority is maintenance of the Graveyard, and it always will be.”

Another pause. The Admiral eyes each of them in turn, waiting for one of them to complain. When they don’t, he nods in approval and carries on. “This is your new home, and will be until you turn eighteen. After that, you’re on your own. Follow orders, keep your head down, and when you’re old enough, we’ll ship you out anywhere you want to go. You will be assigned a job and you will complete it with dedication and eagerness. We don’t have space for all the groundsless in the world. If we feel that you aren’t living up to your full potential…”

He lets his voice trail off. Odds are, the actual consequences will be something along the lines of extra work hours or a slap on the wrist, but the ambiguousness of the threat is much more convincing, though Risa can’t help a hot tendril of anger from curling inside her gut anyway. All across the galaxy, it’s the same damn story. There’s never enough to go around. They’ll always have to prove their worth or get cast away. As it was in the State Home, as it is in Centerworld, as it is even in the farthest reaches of the galaxy in a rusting cruiser host only to the groundsless. No one will ever have enough. None of them will ever be enough to make their presence worth it without a fight.

Risa bites her tongue so hard it bleeds, but she manages to stay silent, and the Admiral sends them back out into the hall again, having no idea that he’s already lost part of the heroic image he seems to adore. It’s somewhat ridiculous; the title, the uniform. All illusions of some militaristic ideal that the Admiral must have clung to before distribution kicked up steam and finally forced him to listen to his conscience.

Connor taps her forearm twice, dragging her out of her anger. “Everything alright? You look a little irritated. Should I be nervous?”

He’s trying to make a joke. That’s sweet of him, at least. Risa forces her brow to unfurrow, her face to relax. “It’s not at you.”

Connor pretends to wipe sweat from his brow. “My day is made.”

Asshole. She laughs anyway. One of the older kids who’s apparently only here to glare at them and lead them from room to room folds his arms across his chest. They’ve been outfitted in khaki uniforms not entirely unlike the Admiral’s, evidently to signify their rank.

“The three of you will need jobs. We’ll put you wherever we need more hands and you’ll be cool with it, right?” The guy says. He may have the uniform of his boss, but he’s lacking the power behind the words.

Risa nods anyway. Military boeufs are a dime a dozen on any backwater star system, or so it seems. If she annoys one of them, a whole squad will show up out of nowhere to back him up. The older kid stares at each of them in turn, seemingly sizing them up. “Any of you have any work experience? Hidden talents?”

“What, do you want to know if we juggle or something?” Roland asks, smirking from just behind Risa’s right shoulder. She fights the urge to shudder.

The older kid just glares. “We want to know if you should go with waste management or stacking cans. That decision is up to us, remember?”

Roland steps forward, eyes frosty, but before anything can happen, Connor pipes up on Risa’s other side. “Actually, Risa here has medical experience.”

She shoots him a surprised look. She mentioned it offhand once while they were passing time on the Juvey-cop’s ship, but she didn’t think he’d remember it. He winks at her reassuringly, which shouldn’t work but does.

The khaki boeuf looks intrigued. “Medical experience? Like fixing broken arms and stuff?”

Risa shrugs. “Yeah. I used to help out in the doctor’s office at the State Home.” She was damn near an employee, that’s what it means. It’s a familiar story by now; there were never enough nurses around to help every kid with a scraped knee, and no one picked on her if she could fix them up. One of the nicer doctors had agreed to tutor her in basic first aid since it would get him a little more elbow room to work on the more difficult cases.

It was a good arrangement for both of them, and it’s still paying off now. The boeufs exchange impressed glances, then the lead one announces that Risa will be starting in the med wing starting today. Certainly better than stacking crates.

Now that Risa’s been sorted, the older kids’ attention turns to Connor. “You don’t happen to have medical experience too, do you?”

He shakes his head. “Nothing.”

This seems to be a disappointment, but before they can say anything, Risa decides to pay off the favor Connor’s pulled for her and interjects, “You don’t want him stuck in a job any starspawn can do, though. You know who he is, right? That’s the Akron AWOL.”

The lead kid’s eyes widen. “No way. You’re really the Akron AWOL? The one who killed a Juvey-cop with his own gun and stole his ship?”

“Yes,” Connor says with the fakest calm Risa’s ever seen, “That’s me. I didn’t kill him, though, I just shot him, and–”

The bouefs ignore the clarification, and eagerly turn their backs on him to begin frantic discussions. Connor looks at her with an incredulous expression the second all attention is off of him. “What the hell did you do?”

Risa just grins. “I saved your ass, obviously. Like you did for me. After the stuff you did, they’re not going to stick you in waste management. It would look terrible for their image.”

Connor shakes his head, looking concerned. “With the rate this rumor is spreading, I don’t even know the stuff they say I did. Suns, I didn’t even kill the cop. No one can get that right.”

Risa chokes back a laugh, schooling her expression back into a decided neutral the second the boeufs turn around again. “You’ve got a lot more experience out there than some of the rest of us,” the lead kid decides, “You’ll be on exterior engineering. Basically, you’ll fix stuff up. Some will be in space, but that’ll be no trouble for the Akron AWOL, will it?”

He even goes so far as to clap Connor on the shoulder like they’re best buds. Connor looks vaguely irritated by this, but no more so than Roland, who looks ready to throttle all of them. This is only offset when Roland is assigned to work with some of the cruisers shipping the groundsless in and out of here. He could potentially even get a false cosmic license, which is definitely something that freaks Risa out. The thought of Roland piloting a star cruiser is not a thought she cherishes.

When all that’s said and done, it becomes clear that they’ll immediately be starting work. The sooner the better, because, as Risa quickly learns, the Graveyard may be large and full of distributes, but that only drives it closer to the edge. This whole place is on the brink of falling apart. So the rusting outsides reflect the chaotic inner mess. They are all one weak screw, one vengeful AWOL, away from drawing attention to themselves. The Admiral urges them to keep their heads down and do their part, but they all know the truth just the same as him; even years of good behavior won’t be enough to save them if even one Juvey-cop sweeper shuttle decides to take a peek at their massive cruiser.

It is easier to ignore the proverbial grav-sword dangling over their heads, though, so ignore it they do. Risa is separated from Connor, which at first feels something like losing a limb, and introduced to the other exhausted kids in the med wing. They’re all grateful for someone with experience, and after getting a quick tour of what painkillers they have (not enough) and their common cures for common injuries (stop bleeding, set bone, nothing really more than that), she’s given her first patient.

Most of the kids who come here have twisted ankles or scraped shins, easy fixes. There are a few worse things, like arms shut in hatches or prolonged starsickness, but these again can be prescribed a few antibiotics and longer rest breaks, which the kids are only too eager to accept. Risa starts noticing the same look in all of their eyes, the same kind of haunting wariness that she’s probably gained as well. They are all on the brink of life and death. No one can tell for sure if they’ll make it to eighteen, and although it is easier to forget that in the Graveyard than back on their home planets, it doesn’t make the truth any sweeter to swallow.

Risa makes it through her first work shift. She’s on her feet most of the day, barring a quick lunch break halfway through. Already, new calluses are forming on her hands; she prods them inquisitively, trying to decide if they’ll fade by the next morning or cause her more trouble. She joins the other kids in their shuffle towards the mess hall. The gentle burble of conversation, muted by the weariness of the end of the working day, is a welcome surprise after so long in quiet space.

Risa folds into the line to get food, and looks up to find Connor next to her. He keeps his eyes studiously ahead, and before she can ask what’s gotten into him, he says under his breath, “This is your chance for a fresh start. If that’s what you want, I won’t hold it against you.”

Ah. She knows what this is about. Much like any other school cafeteria, the friends she picks now will signify the social strata she’ll enjoy for her time here. Risa can sit with her peers from the med wing, or find some other group of girls that looks vaguely nice and hope for the best. If she doesn’t want to be shadowed by the Akron AWOL, she’ll pick someone else now.

Glancing around at the scores of kids already eating or waiting for food, though, Risa doesn’t feel particularly called to any of them. Instead, she steps forward so she’s side by side with Connor, and looks him coolly in the eyes. “You’re fine by me. I don’t trust the rest of them, anyway.” Not like you, she means. No one like you.

Connor’s lips tug into a lopsided grin. “You keep picking my side, Risa. I have to say, it’s only boosting my ego.”

She glances away, unable to hide a returning grin of her own. “Don’t let it.”

“I have to,” he says dramatically, “It’s my only choice.”

“Sure it is,” Risa tells him, picking up her food ration for the evening meal.

It’s not bad fare, all things considered, probably rehydrated from a nutrition pack or otherwise grown on the cruiser. She has to wonder how the Admiral is able to collect enough food and drink for all of them, not to mention other necessities, but that far up in the military chain of command, he’s probably either good enough to get what they need without attracting suspicion or sufficiently well known that no one would dare ask questions.

She picks a seat at random, and begins to eat. Connor slides into the place in front of her. He eats as well, but his eyes flicker over the surrounding distributes over and over again. He’s just as skittish as her, but Risa’s not the one everyone else is staring at. Risa wonders just how badly the myth of the Akron AWOL has gotten twisted.

To distract him, she asks Connor about his day. “Fix anything interesting yet?”

This, at least, makes him turn back to her in earnest. “Yeah, actually,” he says, “Most of it was just them trying to figure out if I had any useful skills, but apparently I’ll be responsible for the maintenance of the ship. It picks up a hell of a lot of flack with this size, even just sitting here.”

“I noticed,” Risa comments wryly.

Connor grins. “Oh, the rust and dust is the least of our worries. There’s a pretty big chance one of our engines is going to explode the second we have to fly more than a few klicks.”

Risa’s eyes widen, and she does her best not to choke on her water. “It’s going to explode? Suns, Connor, I thought you were going to tell us that we were going to live past eighteen, not the opposite.”

He’s entertained by her panic. “We’ll fix it by then, don’t worry. Besides, this thing hasn’t been used to fly in years. All of its primary power reserves have been diverted to life support and whatnot. Even if we did want to fly, we’d have way more problems to solve before we think about the exploding engine.”

Risa leans back in her chair. “And here I was hoping you were going to say something nice to relieve my stress. I should have known better.”

“What, you don’t think I’m enough of an optimist? I thought you liked my joyful personality. Isn’t that why we keep sticking together?”

Risa rolls her eyes, ignoring an odd rush of heat to her cheeks. “My options were you, Roland, or the tithe. You have to understand that I didn’t have the greatest choices.”

Connor laughs despite the slander. He’s started doing that more and more around her. She’s not entirely sure that the comments she makes are that funny, but he seems to enjoy them anyway. “Devastating. I’ll take it, though. We’re a team.”

“We’re a team,” Risa murmurs under her breath. It sounds good to say, and to have said back to her. Everyone thinks that they can make it on their own, but in the vastness of a great, uncharitable galaxy that wants them dead, survival usually means that you need someone else to watch your back. Despite her earlier jokes, Connor is still at the top of her list.

The Graveyard groundsless are directed back to their sleeping quarters. Risa is given some clean clothes and toiletries. The bathroom is slightly less decomposed than the rest of their ship, which is a relief, and the sight of a real bunk just for her almost makes Risa tear up. She hasn’t gotten a good night’s sleep since– since she found out she was going to die, actually, and obviously that wasn’t the most conducive environment for rest and relaxation.

Risa shares a dorm room with at least a few dozen other girls. They’re in the hollowed out shell of what might have been a smaller cargo hold. This one was probably used to hold smaller one-man shuttles before being modified to house ferals instead; Risa can make out faded paint outlines of where to park, as well as many large power outlets lining the walls that have long since been bolted down for safety. Bunks line the floor in a perfect grid, and more still have been latched onto the walls all the way up to the ceiling.

At first, the thought of having to climb all the way up to her bunk is more than a little daunting, but she realizes soon enough that the beds are actually quite secure. What’s more, all the way up here, Risa is far out of the reach of any vengeful girls who might have something against her. Risa doesn’t think she’s made any enemies yet, but she’s been seen close with Connor now, and that’s already attracted a few stares. The girls on the ground seem unprotected, but Risa would hear anyone climbing up the metal ladders on the side long before they reach her.

Secure in the knowledge that she’s safe for now, at least, Risa clambers into her bunk and draws the faded blankets tight around her. It’s cold in space, like all the holo-texts say, and she’s grateful for the slightly threadbare comforter now. After the day’s work, Risa is more than happy to shut her eyes and let sleep take her.

She’s exhausted enough that the night passes without difficulty, but there’s a moment when Risa wakes up in which it all goes south. There are no windows in here, no lights, and when Risa opens her eyes to find herself in complete blackness, she thinks she’s back there again, back in the hollow graves of Cleaver’s ship.

Fighting the panic rising in her throat, Risa reaches out her left hand to tap twice, but she meets only the smooth metal wall instead of Connor’s forearm. Her head splits with the terrifying thought that he left her, after all that talk of teams, Connor left her behind. Risa forces herself through several dizzying breaths. It’s okay. She’s not back there. She left with Connor, not without him. He wouldn’t leave her. He’s just down the hall. She will be fine, and he will be, too. Connor won’t leave her. He never would.

Slowly, laboriously, her heart rate returns to normal, enough that Risa can sit up and look around her. Her eyes have adjusted to the darkness by now without that all-consuming fear to blind them. She knows where she is. She can move without being trapped again. It’s okay.

More sounds make themselves known to her, the rustle of the girls around her waking as well. Soft lights blossom to life around the walls and floor of the room, growing to intensity as a gentle wake-up call. Risa stretches, and begins to make her way down again once the girl in the bunk below her moves. As she heads to the bathroom and pulls on fresh clothes, the same boisterous voice she remembers hearing over the ship’s intercom system buzzes to life again, heralding the start of a new day.

Risa barely listens to the words. It’s sinking in now that this will be her life until she turns eighteen. Three more years of this, of being in the same tin can in the same sky. She’ll speak with the same people until they slowly age out and she’s left alone again. Either that, or they’ll all get caught first. She will heal people when they bleed, patch them up just for them to come back a few days later with fresh wounds. They’ll all wear out like the creaking metal joins of this very ship, and then she’ll be released back into the world. What a life to lead, but at least it’s a life, and it’s her own.

Risa grits her teeth and heads out the door. It’s time for another day.

unwind tag list: @schroedingers-kater, @sirofreak, @locke-writes

all tags list: @wordsarelife

6 notes · View notes

heliads · 4 months

Note

Can I request an unwind fic where Connor is the one who gets taken from the Graveyard by Roberta (for propaganda reasons not because Cam likes him) and Rise goes and saves him? I feel like we need more powerful Risa fics! She is badass!

'made it back to you' - connor lassiter x risa ward

masterlist

They had thought it would be smart to take Connor.

That’s what he’s been able to gather, at least. The Proactive Citizenry was willing to incur the risk of abducting one (1) unwind for Propaganda Purposes, and they figured they might as well shoot for the moon and chose Connor Lassiter, Akron AWOL, resident voicebox of a surprisingly large percentage of the unwind community. On paper, it was a brilliant idea.

Connor, however, is not quite the boy people think he is. He doesn’t really like cooperating, especially not with people who’ve kidnapped him from the only home that was willing to accept him as an enemy of the unwinding state. Really, the PC should have figured that out from day one.

Instead, they’re continually learning that lesson with each hour that passes. They gave him a nice room with lovely locked doors and impeccably sealed windows. He’s kept in relative comfort, albeit far beyond the reach of anyone and everyone who could possibly help him. And, to make matters worse, they’re insisting that Connor will film propaganda videos insisting that unwinding is done for the right reasons.

Bullshit. Obviously, he’s not going to do this. The first time Roberta Griswold appeared in Connor’s lux jail cell and asked him to recite a few lines for media purposes, he laughed in her face and told her there wasn’t a chance in hell that he’d actually do it. Roberta had the nerve to act surprised, like she genuinely couldn’t fathom why Connor wouldn’t be in favor of stripping teenagers for parts.

She’d tried to reason with him a little, but sorry, no amount of carefully prepared logical fallacies will make up for the fact that unwinding is a terrible thing to do. Connor’s not falling for it. He’s already had plenty of time to debate everything under the sun about unwinding with Hayden and Lev at various times in his life, so Connor is actually quite well prepared for Roberta’s line of reasoning. Who knew that kidnapping a tithe would come in handy?

Roberta was persistent, though. Day after day, she kept coming in, waving that stupid little form he’s supposed to sign to agree to the PC’s demands. Connor had tried to be civil, knowing that any slip up would of course be televised to show how crazy and violent unwinds can be, but after a week he got sick of it and launched a pillow at her head.

He’d been on lockdown after that. No visits, not even doctors, not even Roberta. Clearly, they’re trying to shame him for the loss of control, but honestly, it had felt really good to watch the mass of fabric and feathers collide dully with Roberta’s bleached-blonde skull. When Connor dreams of paradise, it involves soft projectiles thrown at hard-headed sadists.

Connor hadn’t anticipated the Punishment, though. He’d expected consequences ranging anywhere from nameless threats to medieval-type shit like iron maidens (not the band) or thumb screws. Connor doesn’t even know what the hell a thumb screw is. It sounds painful, though, and involves body parts, so honestly it seems pretty well up the Proactive Citizenry’s alley.

Instead of getting beaten around, however, they did him one worse: they sent in the freak. Camus Comprix. Christ. Connor’s seen the guy around, he lurks in hallways like he’s not ever sure of where to go or what to go. His posture vaguely reminds Connor of kids getting their portraits taken during school picture days. Like Cam has been forced into a starched-stiff shirt and told to straighten up a little, put his shoulders back– no, a little more, a little more, now tilt your head to the side slightly– and he’s spending all of his waking hours waiting around for the camera to click.

It’s weird as hell, is what it is, and now Connor has to deal with it. Honestly, he’s not sure if Cam’s sudden presence in Connor’s quarters is meant to be difficult for Connor or Cam, or maybe both. Killing two birds in one stone, you get to shame both your lab-grown boy and the unpleasant one you kidnapped in one go. If Connor ever gets out of here and takes up a position with the FBI, he’d suggest this as a certified interrogation method. Simply take your uncooperative prisoner and lock them in a room with a rewind who thinks he’s witty. You’ll have your answers in no time.

They both hate each other’s guts, that much is certain. Apparently, Cam had been angling to get Risa in here instead, suggesting that she’d be far easier to work with than Connor. He’s got to assume that the PC is wishing they’d followed Cam’s guidance instead. As it turns out, Connor also wants Risa. That’s one thing they’ve got in common, at least.

It’ll be the only thing. Cam visits Connor in scheduled one-hour visits, such as right now. The lock on Connor’s door clicks open, revealing the sullen myriad of expressions on Camus Comprix’s many segments of face.

“Why, Cam,” Connor says flatly. “It’s such an honor to be in your presence. I didn’t expect the pleasure of your company today.”

Cam fixes him with a stormy glare. “Ridiculous. Hogwash. Balderdash.”

Connor can’t help a pleased smirk. “What, you don’t think that your company is a pleasure? You should really work on positive self talk, Comprix. Surely one of the voices in your head has an ego.”

Cam looks like he wants to spit on Connor’s shoes. “I am the only one in my head, and I think that you’re insufferable. Also, that you knew I was coming. I arrive here every day. It’s a routine. Typical. Humdrum.”

“Sarcasm, my friend,” Connor smiles. “They can’t plug that into you in a lab, I guess.”

Cam’s face sours even more than usual. “You can try to convince yourself that you’re nothing like me, but it won’t work. We are the same.”

Connor should know better, but he falls for the taunt anyway. “We’re nothing alike. You’re a lab rat, I’m a real boy.”

Cam arches a brow. “Completely? I can't help but notice that one of your arms doesn’t match the other.”

Instinctively, Connor thrusts his right arm behind his back and out of view. He doesn’t have to look to remember the shark tattoo swimming ominously across the forearm that doesn’t belong to him. Connor didn’t ask for an unwind’s arm after his own was lost in the explosion of the Happy Jack Chop Shop, and he especially didn’t ask for the replacement to come from Roland, one of his all-time rivals. However, he fears that Cam might have plenty of good responses to Connor declaring that he didn’t ask for unwind parts.

Instead, he just glares at the rewind. “That’s only one part of me that I hate. You’re full of pieces that aren’t yours.”

Cam just shrugs, taking a seat on one of Connor’s chairs. Connor feels as if the tide of the argument has switched over from Connor’s side to Cam’s, but he doesn’t know how to get it back. “Say what you want to make yourself feel better,” Cam tells him, “We all know the truth. Who knows, maybe the doctors put a bit more realism in me than you.”

“Shut up,” Connor hisses. “Or I’ll hit you like I did Roberta.”

Cam perks up even despite the threat. “You hit Roberta?”

“With a pillow,” Connor amends. “Maybe I’ll hit you with a brick.”

So much for fighting the ‘violent AWOL’ accusations. Connor’s already reverting back to old-school threats and intimidation tactics. However, seeing as he’s essentially a prisoner, even in a far nicer cell than a juvenile detention facility, Connor feels that it’s his hard-earned right to mouth off a little.

Cam just rolls his eyes. “Then they might actually kill you off. Goodness knows they want to.”

Connor grins, proud of himself. “Excellent to know that I haven’t lost my natural sense of charm yet. It’s not a hostage situation unless my captors get sick of me within a few weeks.”

Cam frowns. “I’m not sure that’s something you should enjoy.”

“And what,” Connor drawls, “This is? Collaborating with the enemy? No thanks.”

Cam looks as if he’d quite like to debate the intricacies of just what ‘the enemy’ could be, but they’re interrupted by the door of Connor’s cell being flung open. In walks Roberta, looking slightly more frazzled than Connor is used to seeing her. Strands of her blonde hair are starting to escape from their usual tight knot, and she’s not even bothering to hide her derisive stare with a pleasant grin, which indicates to Connor that he’s probably outstayed his welcome. Not, of course, that he was ever really welcome at all, but this isn’t a good sign.

Connor refuses to handle this appropriately, opting instead to goad Roberta even further. “But, Doc, I’m supposed to have at least half an hour more with my best buddy over here. You can’t split us up, I can hardly bear the separation.”

This earns him matching glares from both Cam and Roberta. Connor can’t help but wonder if the doctors in charge of rewinding programmed that particular expression into Cam, too, having so much experience receiving it from Roberta.

“Enough,” Roberta says, her voice clipped. “This is a waste. We had hoped you would cooperate on your own, but if you won’t, we’ll turn to other measures. Just remember that we didn’t want to do this. You forced our hand.”

Connor leans back a little. “Wait, what are you talking about?” Maybe he wasn’t wrong to include medieval torture among the housewarming gifts offered up by the PC.

Roberta says nothing, just steps away from the door. Three guards come in, all in military fatigues, and drag Connor to his feet. He’s forced out of the room and down the surrounding corridors. Just before he clears the threshold of his room, he can hear Cam’s voice raised slightly, asking Roberta what’s going on. Roberta, in turn, seems much kinder when speaking to Cam, her voice lilting and gentle like she’s lecturing a pet rabbit or dog. Must be nice to be someone’s pet project. The forced responsibility of someone having to take care of you is more than Connor’s had in a while.

Connor is rudely accompanied to a room down a few halls. He recognizes this place, more so the dozen or so cameras and lights that have been set up facing a chair in the center of the room. Connor is shoved down into this seat, with one guard on each side and behind him, keeping him in place.

Roberta shows up moments later, closing the door with an audible shove. “No more games,” she says directly. “We know where the Graveyard is. We have planes with advanced military capabilities. We will bomb that place to a ruin unless you film the interviews we want.”

Connor rears back. “What the hell?”

Roberta, seemingly anticipating this response, holds up a laptop screen in front of him. On it, Connor watches, horrified, as surveillance footage plays of the Graveyard. It’s shot from a shaky, hazy camera, maybe a drone or something. Connor’s first, desperate hope is that it’s old footage, or staged, but then he sees Risa’s wheelchair roll underneath the shade of a parked plane to talk to someone. Hayden, maybe. Or any number of their friends. Her hair is slightly longer than the last time he’s seen her. Yes, this is recent. Recent enough for this threat to have value.

“You can’t do this,” Connor says stupidly. Of course she can. They’re the fucking PC, and they can do anything from tearing teenagers to ribbons to bombing supposedly abandoned airplane hangars. This is all within her control.

“We didn’t want to,” Roberta says snippily. “It will be a waste of resources and a PR nightmare. However, we need your testimony more. Cooperate and they live. It’s as simple as that.”

This, of course, is a lie. Nothing about this is simple. If Connor does what she asks, he’ll be selling out all his friends. They have no idea that they’re being watched, nor that their lives are on the line. All they’ll know is that the supposedly great Akron AWOL turned them all in for a good night’s sleep and some new clothes. They’ll hate him forever, and they’ll never know that he was just doing it to save them.

“You’ll bomb them anyway, no matter what I do,” Connor forces out. “Even if I film the videos. You’d never let a loose end like that sit. They’ll die anyway, and so will I.”

“They won’t,” Roberta pledges. “We’re the sane ones, Connor. We keep our word. If you sign the contract, we won’t touch them. You can even go back to the Graveyard if you want, although I have a feeling that you won’t get as warm a welcome as you might like. All you have to do is talk.”

“I’ll be lying. Everyone will know it.” Connor says. It’s the last defense he has. All of his arguments are slipping away in the face of this vast and indescribable horror. They’d probably show him the bombing, too, make him watch live as all of his friends are consumed by the explosions. Risa. He’d watch Risa die. Connor hates himself more than anything for even thinking about agreeing to do this, but losing everyone just like that would cut a deeper wound than he’s ever experienced.

Roberta just smiles, kind and sincere. This is probably the look she gives Cam when he argues with her about having to spend time with Connor. “No, they won’t. You’ll make sure they believe it.”

Wordlessly, she offers Connor a pen and the contract. The guards let go of Connor’s arms. They don’t even have to be in the room anymore. Nothing matters, because Connor can’t do a single damn thing so long as they’ve got the Graveyard. Hell, they don’t even have to lock the doors. Connor will jail himself until the day he dies, just to keep them alive.

He signs. Roberta smiles. “See, that wasn’t too tricky, was it? All you have to do is find a way to see eye to eye.”

He meets her gaze hatefully. Connor had thought that he couldn’t hate anyone more than Roland, more than the Juvey-cops who tried to bring him in, but this raw madness in the back of his throat is far, far worse. He wants to rip her to pieces. He wants to– he wants to unwind her.

Connor appears on the news that night. He is smiling and dressed in a new suit. It fits him perfectly. The news reporter asks him about being the Akron AWOL, and if he has any advice for teenagers grappling with the possibility of being unwound. Connor looks directly into the camera and tells these unknown kids to just go along with it. Everything happens for a reason, he says. Unwinding is better than you think. I wish I could be unwound right now.

Only the last part is true.

Roberta chides him about that afterwards. No need to go overboard, she says. Still, she’s pleased, and why shouldn’t she be? The nation’s hottest topic, the most dangerous unwind, is in her pocket. At last, she’s found the way to pull Connor’s strings to perfection. As it turns out, the only thing she had to do was threaten to bomb a couple hundred children. Easy for someone without a heart.

Connor makes more videos. He despises himself more thoroughly than he ever has before. He wonders if Risa is out there somewhere, watching them all, wondering what became of him. He wonders if she hates him too now, if every single kid sees his broadcasts and curses his name. Connor understands at last why the PC wanted him. If you lose faith in your hero, you lose faith in the cause. Connor is nobody’s hero, not anymore. He is a traitor and a coward, and worst of all, he still thinks that the Graveyard will be bombed when the PC tires of him and puts him to rest.

The agony builds in his stomach as the weeks go by. Roberta has been briefing him ceaselessly in preparation for an upcoming news report. It’s quite likely the biggest deal of all of the videos so far, on one of the most popular news sources. It will be live, so Connor cannot afford a single slipup. She’s already reminded him several times of the consequences should Connor disobey. He knows.

He knows.

Connor arrives at the news show headquarters an hour in advance. He shakes the hands of several important journalists and celebrities, and they all nod their heads and say wow, he’s so well behaved for someone who once was a criminal. Connor wants to ask what his crime was, other than living, but Roberta is staring daggers into his back so Connor knows not to screw up before his big performance. He’s pretty used to ignoring hateful glares by now, anyway. Now that Connor’s the new big thing, Cam has somewhat faded out of the limelight. They still see each other, but the mandatory visits aren’t really enforced anymore. Instead, Connor gets to sit with his thoughts, which is both better and far, far worse.

The interview begins. When Connor walks onto the stage, he gets a round of applause that lasts two full minutes. He wants to scream at the audience to shut up– nothing he’s doing here is worth that sort of appreciation. News flash: selling your soul isn’t supposed to be a good thing.

He doesn’t say this. He follows the script. The interview takes twenty minutes, and at the end, the host flashes him a smile of perfectly straight, white teeth and asks if he’s got anything else to add. Connor stares at the jaws, wonders if they belonged to someone else first, and says, “Yes, I do.”

Connor looks directly at the camera. “When I first found out I was going to be unwound, I was terrified. I thought it was the end for me. I even ran away.”

He pauses a bit, to let the audience react appropriately. Ripples of shaking heads and disappointed glance rock through the crowds. Once they settle down, Connor continues. “I met up with bigger crowds of AWOLs who all thought the same thing. We were trying to escape our natural fates, and if I could say one thing to them right now, I would tell them–”

His voice cuts off. Connor feels like he’s choking up, only no tears are coming out. Instead, he feels more composed than he has in months. “I would tell them that they were right,” he declares. “They were right to want to live. We’re just kids, and we don’t deserve to die because our parents don’t like us. All unwinds deserve to live. I hope they keep running and they never get caught, even if I was.”

Roberta is standing up, marching towards him through the shocked and upset crowd. Her eyes spell danger, but Connor keeps on going recklessly. “They’re going to bomb the Graveyard, Risa. They’re going to kill you all. You have to get everyone to safety. I’ve been trying to buy you time, but it’s no use. They know where you are. Get everyone out. Fight unwinding until you die. All of us are free.”

Hands clamp down on Connor’s shoulders. He fights his way out of the grip at once, but more guards are appearing from the wings, muscling him away. Still, Connor shouts at the camera, telling everyone he can to run and never look back. It takes several minutes to get him away, and he hopes to everything holy that it was enough time to evacuate the Graveyard.

He’s locked into a dressing room backstage. Roberta bursts in moments later. She looks completely furious. “You stupid boy. You stupid, stupid boy. Do you know what you’ve done?”

“Exactly what I wanted to,” Connor grins. “I took a stand.”

“No, you’ve killed your friends,” Roberta hisses. She whips out her phone and calls somebody, looking Connor directly in the eyes while she tells them to carry out the strike.

Roberta hangs up victoriously, but Connor refuses to be cowed. “I hope you’re happy,” Roberta tells him. “They’re all dead because of you.”

“It’s not just about the Graveyard,” he says. “That’s been under threat for years. We were always going to die. But unwinds across the country will know that they still have hope, and that’s worth it to me. Try explaining that to your investors.”

Roberta’s face turns a mottled purple. “Clearly, we have no more use for you. You may not be able to be unwound, but that doesn’t mean you get to leave. I’ll have you in a cell until you rot.”

Connor’s past the point of caring about himself, though. “I’ll look forward to getting a break from your sermons, then.”

She might kill him here and now, honestly. It takes all of Roberta’s self-control to direct the guards to take Connor away and back to the PC facility. He’s shoved into his room, the door locked behind him. This might be the end of it for him, but Connor’s conscience feels lighter than it has in a very long time. If he dies here, at least it’ll be knowing that his friends believe in him again. Hopefully.

It occurs to Connor, a few hours into his new exile in the old room, that maybe he hadn’t given Risa and the others enough to get clear of the Graveyard after all. He’d known that he would have to tell them eventually, and a broadcast as popular as this was his best shot, but the Graveyard is big and unwinds are obstinate. Maybe there were still some kids inside when the bombing was ordered. Maybe he hadn’t done enough. Maybe Risa had died anyway.

The thought tears up Connor. He feels as if he’s swallowed acid or something, like his organs are physically ripping to pieces underneath his skin, worn away like time and rain against the Grand Canyon. Connor is a thousand empty hollows, and they can only be filled by the simple knowledge that the people he cares about are okay.

Time passes. It could be hours or days, Connor can’t really tell. The grief and guilt takes him out of reality. Connor swears he can hear sounds down the hall, but it could be anything from an overly loud air conditioning unit to the guards getting bored of only watching plain walls. Connor hasn’t really tried to escape. There’s nowhere for him to go.

Outside, the sounds get louder. Connor frowns, pushing himself up to stand. It almost sounds like people are arguing, plus a few distant thuds. Okay, not the AC. Maybe Roberta’s throwing a fit and finally started tossing around a few punches? Not likely, but what else could it be?

Connor slowly walks over to the door, pressing his ear against the smooth wood. It really does sound like the noises are getting closer, almost right outside– He backs up immediately, practically tripping over himself in an effort to get away. It’s good timing on his end too, because he’s hardly cleared the area before his door caves in. Connor chokes on the dust and smoke from the outside hall. Raising an arm to shield his eyes from the debris, he glances through the hole in what had once been his secure door and sees–

Risa.

Connor feels his breath catch in his chest, and not just because of the chaos with the door. “Risa?” He asks slowly.

She smiles at him. “Surprise.”

Connor takes a few tremulous steps forward, his shoes crunching on splinters of wood beneath him. She’s still in her wheelchair, but holding a large gun that she must have used to knock down the door. “Don’t point that thing at me,” he jokes, but his voice goes weak with relief and he doesn’t sound half as cool as he means to.

He’ll have to save the coolness factor for Risa. Further down the hall, Connor catches glimpses of other unwinds chasing off the guards. “You broke me out?” He asks, unable to believe his eyes.

“Of course we did,” Risa says. “What, did you think we’d just leave you there after you went to all that trouble to warn us about the attack? Not a chance.”

The attack. The sheer shock of seeing Risa had thrown that from his mind, but the memories came back full force. He reaches out desperately to take her free hand, begging her to understand him. “Risa. I didn’t want to say all those things, but they made me. Told me they’d blow you all to pieces if I didn’t support unwinding. I didn’t want to, not at all, but they said they’d kill you. You have to know that it wasn’t my choice.”

Risa just smiles. “I know, Connor. You looked so uncomfortable during all the broadcasts that we suspected something was up. Plus, the last one made it pretty clear that you didn’t believe all that bullshit.”

At last, Connor feels capable of cracking a smile. “Bullshit, huh? And here I thought I was doing a great acting job.”

Risa snorts. “Well, there might not be any Oscars in your future, but that doesn’t mean you’ll live out the rest of your days with only the PC as your company. What do you say we get out of here?”

“I’d like that a lot,” Connor says, voice thick with relief. Then, glancing at Risa– “Do you want me to take the gun? To make it easier to travel?”

Risa gives him a disbelieving glance. “Don’t be ridiculous. The gun stays with me.”

Connor raises his hands in mock surrender. “That is absolutely fine by me.”

“Good,” Risa grins, and they head back out of the twisting corridors. The other unwinds fall in line as they go, hurrying out of the complex.

As they escape out into the bright sunshine, Connor has to ask, “How did you know where to get me? And which room was mine?”

“Funny story,” Risa remarks offhandedly, “As we were breaking in, we met some strange guy named Camus Comprix. He told us where to go.”

“Cam helped you?” Connor asks, flabbergasted.

“Well, he had to be encouraged through threats of violence,” Risa admits, “but honestly, I think he was glad to be rid of you. That’s what he told me, at least. Also, he wanted to keep his kneecaps.”

Connor laughs. “Both of those are great reasons.”

There’s a helicopter waiting for them; Risa and Connor get inside, plus the unwinds who’d come with them. Connor vaguely recognizes the pilot from the Graveyard.

“So,” Connor asks, still unsettled by the realization that he might finally be free, “Where are we going, if not the Graveyard?”

“We’ve got a new place in order,” Risa says. “Don’t worry.”

An unwind by Connor’s shoulder breaks out into barking laughter. “Yeah, she’s whipped us all into shape. Got us out of the Graveyard before the place went nuclear, plus set up the new location. Most organized person I’ve ever met in my entire life.”

“That sounds about right,” Connor says, letting out a low whistle. Risa smiles at him when he says it, and Connor can’t help but smile back. He’s out of the clutches of the Proactive Citizenry. His friends are alright. Most importantly, he’s back with Risa. For the first time in a while, it occurs to Connor that he might be on the up and up again. He likes the feeling.

requested by @bopeisdope, i hope you enjoy!!

unwind tag list: @reinekes-fox, @sirofreak, @locke-writes

all tags list: @wordsarelife

#connor lassiter #connor lassiter imagines #connor lassiter oneshot #connor lassiter fanfic #risa ward #risa ward imagines #risa ward oneshot #risa ward fanfic #conrisa #conrisa fanfic #unwind #unwind imagines #unwind oneshot #unwind fanfic #unwind dystology #unwind dystology imagines #unwind dystology oneshot #unwind dystology fanfic

8 notes · View notes

heliads · 6 months

Text

everything is blue • conrisa space au • Chapter Nine: Stay Whole

series spotify playlist

previous / series masterlist / next

Connor is used to the routine. It keeps him sane. It keeps him whole. He wakes in the morning and he sleeps in the evening. The schedule may be arbitrary, oriented around a central sun somewhere light years away from him as required by Coreworld standards, but it makes sense. Connor has just enough energy to get through his day without dragging, and when he closes his eyes each night, he’s so exhausted that he can travel through the dark hours in mostly dreamless sleep. The repetition is clinical. It keeps him grounded, or as much as it can when he’s locked in a tin can stuck somewhere in space.

Connor tells himself that having each day be damn near identical is good for him. He believes it at least half the time. When he’s stuck trying and failing to get various ship systems to function properly for the billionth day in a row, the message is a little harder to get across, but it’s better that Connor sees it through than not. He and Risa celebrated one year since their arrival in the Graveyard last week, so it’s not like his blind hatred is really going to do anything to get him out of here any faster.

After all, it may be a little bit mindless, going through the same day over and over again, but at least it’s safe. Out there in the never ending galaxy, there are always new turmoils and bigger troubles. Connor isn’t actively running for his life. Hiding is more efficient, and you die at least twice as infrequently.

At this point, Connor is pretty sure that he could do the whole day in his sleep. He wakes, he eats, he tells Risa to have fun in the med wing so he can see that adorable glare she gives him every time. Connor waits in the crux of the corridor in which they part ways so he can watch her go until she disappears out of sight, and then he turns and goes his own merry way towards the engineering sector. Once there, he’ll toil among stardust or spanner wrenches until the day is done, stopping only for a quick midday meal before throwing himself back into his latest project.

Finally, Hayden’s voice will sound over the ship intercom system, announcing that the day’s work is over. Then, and only then, can Connor join the teeming mass of other Deadmen to get the final meal of the day. No one likes lingering in their workplace longer than they have to, so the corridors are always a sprawling mess of kids going every direction so long as it’s away. Even still, Connor manages to find Risa in mere moments every time. No matter how many distributes are surrounding them, each and every day Connor turns around to spot her instantly across the crowd. It’s the easiest thing in the worlds, somehow. Finding her. He knows her like he knows himself.

And so Connor has become accustomed to the cycle, the cycle that never ends. He gets up and he gets older. He’s taller, maybe; he’d like to think so, at least. He told Risa that once and she told him he was kidding himself, like she knew better. He’d asked her why she would be such an expert on his appearance and she just blushed and looked away. Connor has hopes as to why that happened. They’re probably not true, of course, but what else are hopes for except to want too much too fast?

The little things, the offhand conversations, make the days better anyway. Connor knows how to fix the parts and walk the halls, but the people change from day to day, they always change. Sometimes for better, sometimes for worse. But they’re always different.

Connor reckons he can tell the good differences from the bad ones. He’d know it in a flash, probably, like a spy from one of those old action movies he used to love as a kid. A man in a dark suit, walking into a room, pausing to whip off his sunglasses and announce ominously: Someone’s been here. I can feel it.

Connor thinks he feels it now. There’s an unsteady lurch to the recycled air pumping out around him. Connor’s fixed it up enough times to recognize the hum of the beaten motor inside. It’s working fine, though, so that’s not it. Maybe the lights– are some out? No, the glow is steady, if a little dim, but that’s just because they’ve been running on reduced power for a month or so now to try and conserve supplies. Connor thinks, and then– and then he knows.

The Graveyard is quiet, and it is the quiet more than anything that tells Connor it’s finally over. He’s had a long and varied history with trouble, and after several offenses, Connor recognizes the pattern as it repeats itself. It’s quiet first. It’s always quiet first. The quiet makes you let down your guard, and that’s when they strike. Always. Even now, on a cruiser in the outer reaches of space somewhere not even Connor knows. Things will always end the same, and they will always end badly.

(Later, he will find out that they used signal cloakers, which had the added effect of not only muting their presence to any Graveyard scanners but also beginning the preliminary shutdown of the Graveyard systems themselves. The quiet can be explained scientifically, but that does not change the way it felt, nor the fact that Connor should have known it was coming. There is no hiding from Them. Even if you run from the shuttle destined for a distribution colony, even if you spit in the eye of the Collective with your little contraband radio show, even if you’re the starsforsaken Akron AWOL himself, you’re still a filthy unwind, and that means They’ll always find you. He knows this. He thought he could be the exception anyway. Everyone does.)

The Graveyard is quiet, and the Graveyard is doomed. Connor slinks into the corridor outside, a wrench slack in his hand from where he’d been trying to fix up an old recirculation unit in the back of one of the engine rooms. He wanders aimlessly for a little bit, not sure what he’s looking for, just that he needs to find it. It, which he will recognize when he sees it.

Connor turns a corner and then he knows. He freezes in place in front of a large window. The glass is dingy with the faded dust of asteroids that disintegrated in the empty space around them decades ago, if not centuries, but the panel is still clear enough that Connor can still see through it to the score of warships outside. Their exterior lights aren’t on, not yet, in fact, they’re still pulling off their camouflage settings so they can ripple into view, but Connor has spotted them anyway, and he knows what they are even without the extra identification. This is the Collective. This is the end.

The shout that rises from his throat is louder than anything Connor has heard before, guttural and emanating from deep within him. “They’re here!”

At first, no one responds, and then the first kid pokes his head out a nearby door, looks at Connor then past him through the window, and his eyes bulge like he’s been strangled. “Juveys!” He shouts, and then another kid appears behind him, and another, and another.

The message spreads like wildfire, and then a thousand footsteps echo in the hallway, a swarm of synth-bees leaving a burning nest. Maybe Connor shouldn’t have done it like this, maybe he shouldn’t have caused a mass panic, but he figures everyone should have as much time as they can to put their lives in order and prepare for the worst. If he had kept his mouth shut, someone else would have looked out the window soon enough anyway. It might as well have been him to end their world.

Connor pauses for one last moment, drinking in the sight of his soon-to-be killers, then remembers himself and tears off down the hallway towards the nav center. It’s slow going at first, as he pushes through crowds of terrified distributes, but then they clear up and he can run again, forcing himself to go faster than he ever has before in the name of trying to do something, anything, to delay the inevitable.

The nav kids are pacing back and forth, and they all flinch when Connor throws open the door. One of them starts to ask timidly what the fuss is about, but Connor cuts him off, fighting for breath even as he spits out the words.

“Juveys outside,” he gasps, “At least a dozen ships. Too many for us to fight. We have to go.”

Even as he says it, Connor knows it’s pointless. There’s no way in sunfire this ship can move. It’s become bloated with temporary fixes to constant problems, continuously smoothed over just to break back open again. With this many kids on board, with the fact that it hasn’t been used to actually fly in decades, the chance of it moving more than the length of one teenager lying down is abysmal.

The kids exchange nervous glances. They know it too, don’t they? There’s no way any of them are making it out. “This thing hasn’t tried to fly any distance since before we got here,” one of them starts nervously.

“Well, it’s this or distribution,” Connor says, and the color drains from their faces. “Try anyway. We have no other choice.”

They spring to attention, hurrying to the banks of controls in front of them. The oldest, clearly the one in charge, flicks several switches, calling out directions to the others. They all work with urgency, good for them, but even their focus won’t be enough to convince what’s essentially a self-contained colony to make a jump between star systems. Nothing can save them. Not even hope.

After several failed attempts, the leader looks up, shaking his head sorrowfully. “We don’t have enough power from the engines. Nothing we can do.”

Connor lets out a particularly vicious string of swears. “Thanks for trying, though. I mean it.”

The leader takes a hesitant step towards Connor. “What do we do, then? If we can’t move?”

Connor feels sick to his stomach as he takes in the expectation in the faces surrounding him. Even after facing the truth that they cannot fly away, that there are more than a dozen fully stocked warships of Juvey-cops surging ever closer to them, these kids still think that Connor can come up with a master plan to get them all out alive and intact.

“Why do you think I would know?” He asks bitterly.

A girl next to him lifts a shoulder. “You did it before, right? You got away from the cop back in OH-10. You’re the Akron AWOL.”

“That was one guy,” Connor says desperately. “And it’s not– Look, there’s nothing I can do against that many cops. Get as many kids as you can into the escape pods. If they leave before you can get on one, hide. Maybe they’ll pass over you.”

It sounds absurd even as he says it. There are escape pods on the ship, but not enough, not nearly enough, and there’s no way that the Juvey-cops are going to let anyone go. They’ll be scouring this ship for weeks. No kid can hold out that long. They’re just kids. Just kids who wanted to be alive. What a terrible crime indeed.

Connor is saved from the burden of having to watch their expressions crumble when the entire ship shakes. He nearly loses his balance and has to cling onto a nearby table to stabilize himself. Other kids who weren’t as light on their feet go sprawling, joining the debris on nearby desks in an untidy mess on the floor.

There’s a brief hissing from the intercom system, and then a grown man who definitely isn’t Hayden starts to speak. “This is Officer Reed of the Juvenile Authority. On behalf of the Collective, this ship is now under our control. Come out quietly and no further harm will come to you.”

The man’s cool tone does nothing to assuage the fear on the faces of the distributes around Connor, obviously, because despite his promise that none of them will be harmed, they’re still definitely going to get distributed after this. The other kids stare back at him, and Connor takes one last moment to memorize their faces, the way this room looks, because odds are he’s not going to see it again.

“Run,” Connor repeats urgently, and throws himself out the door and into the hallways, which are even more chaotic than before. He’s got to get to Risa, got to find her first. Once they’re together, they can figure something out. They always do.

Connor forces himself through throngs of people. The crowds are becoming unmanageable as so many Deadmen realize that they really are, at last, about to die in every way that a person can die bar one hypothetical exception. His feet are trampled about a dozen times in a second, and when a hatch at the far end of the hall opens up to reveal the silhouettes of rows of Juvey-cops ready to board their shuttle, the insanity only becomes worse.

Suddenly, everyone’s pushing and shoving each other in an effort to get away. Connor tries to keep his head above the fray, but he’s continuously pushed back and down. He might get pulled underneath if this gets any worse, but just as he has this terrible thought, someone reaches through the crowd and yanks him to the wall of the corridor, out of the way of the main surge.

“Thanks,” Connor gasps.

Glancing up, he realizes that Hayden was the one to save him. He frowns. “What in the worlds are you doing over here? The ComBom is on the other side of the ship.”

Hayden just sighs, gesturing for Connor to keep moving. “I was called away about half a standard hour ago so I could help some of the security kids. They said they picked up some strange readouts overnight and they couldn’t figure out what they were. Someone thought they were from my show, but it wasn’t me. I think someone else sent out a broadcast behind my back, but they weren’t too good at keeping their tracks hidden.”

Connor’s stomach drops. “You think that’s how they found us? Someone tried to reach out a little too far?”

Hayden’s face is ashy even in the weak light of the crowded corridor. “I recognized the signature, Connor. It was from the ComBom. Maybe even from my computer. It wasn’t me, though. I swear it wasn’t me. I’m always careful.”

“I believe you, man,” Connor assures him, but on the inside his mind is abuzz with this new information.

If not Hayden, then who? None of the kids in the ComBom would be stupid enough to send out any broadcast without thoroughly vetting it to make sure it wouldn’t give them away. It would have to be someone else, someone who was less familiar with the equipment so they wouldn’t know how to keep everyone safe. Someone who maybe didn’t even care about keeping the rest of them safe so long as they could send out their message and really stick it to the man. Someone who would have learned just enough about how to work the radio systems through word of mouth, or, for instance, eavesdropping in a hallway while Hayden talked to Connor and Risa about it.

“Starkey,” Connor gasps out in the midst of a thunderous realization, “It was Starkey. He must have heard us talking. Damned runners are always trying to learn all our secrets. He listened in and thought he could one up your little show with his own message.”

Hayden swears, although half of it is drowned out with the calamitous roar of the warships surrounding them. A kid is screaming somewhere behind them, yelling bloody murder like they’re actually distributing him on the spot. Connor doesn’t dare turn around to check if they are.

“Gotta be him,” Hayden agrees, yanking Connor down a nearby hallway so they can start to shake the crowd, “None of my guys in there would have done something so stupid as that. We always checked what we sent out to make sure it couldn’t get traced back to us. Always.”

Connor risks a glance towards his friend and feels another wave of grief wash over him at the sight of the look in Hayden’s eyes. The blond boy has always been upbeat, always quick to a joke, but right now, he looks totally destroyed. Even if Hayden wasn’t the one to send out the one transmission that led the Juvenile Authority to the Graveyard, it was still done on his machines, in his precious ComBom. It may not have been his hands to reveal them, but it was his fault nonetheless. Months, if not years, of being careful, of never letting the Juveys know where they are, and it’s all over now for Starkey’s one bright, bold moment of fame. What a way to go.

Something rocks the Graveyard again, sending both boys tumbling against the corridor wall. “Must be the nav kids trying to get us moving again,” Connor says, wincing as he prods a quickly forming bruise on his hip. “I told them to run, but there’s nowhere for us to go. They’re doing the best they can.”

“I can help too,” Hayden breaks in. “The ComBom is not far from here, I can get on and try to tell kids what to do.”

Connor shakes his head. “That’s a pointless risk. It’s chaos in here anyway, a few directions won’t save anyone. The soldiers are going to go for the ComBom first, you know that. You’ll get caught in seconds.”

Hayden’s mouth is a thin grim line. Connor wonders how it could have ever smiled before. “I have to, Connor. Let me make this right.”

Connor wants to persuade him otherwise, but he knows it’s a lost cause. Hayden will never forgive himself for letting that one transmission pass by him. If he thinks staying behind will make things right, who is Connor to take that from him?

“Alright,” he says at last, “But stay safe, Hayden. Make it to one of the escape pods. Promise me that. The galaxy needs more Radio Free Hayden.”

“Don’t I know it?” Hayden cracks wryly. A ghost of a grin flickers over his lips, perhaps the last one he’ll ever get, and then he takes off down a nearby hallway and is gone for good. Connor has no idea if he’ll see the blond again. He hopes to the stars themselves he will, and not in parts of someone else.

Having lost Hayden, Connor’s main priority will now be getting to Risa. He runs along, dodging around the madness surrounding them. The nav kids are trying to pull away from the Juvey-cop shuttles, but making the Graveyard move at all is a hopeless cause. Every bit of energy directed to the engines, every inch they crawl along, just serves to tear the cruiser apart from the inside out. The lights are flickering more than ever, and smoke is starting to fissure out of some of the vents as he passes by.

The destruction is only aided by the Juveys. They’ve swarmed into the corridors by now, dragging kids off to their ships. The Deadmen are putting up a fight as best they can, grabbing parts of pipes and wrenches to use as weapons, but there’s nothing they can do against that much firepower. Connor catches a glimpse of one officer aiming a tranq gun at one of the older kids who used to guard the Admiral. The kid dodges and the blast goes into a nearby instrument panel, sending up a shower of sparks.

Each pull of a trigger sends Connor’s heartbeat to new, dizzying levels. When he passes a girl unconscious on the side of the hall, he drags her to safety. He checks her face at least five times to make sure she’s not Risa, but even after he keeps running, Connor is not entirely sure that he hasn’t just abandoned her by accident. The roar of sound around him makes him dizzy, unable to think clearly. He’s going to get himself killed if he doesn’t– if he can’t–

A hand on his arm. Connor whips around, ready to fight off a soldier, but it’s her, it’s Risa, and he can breathe again. Forgetting himself for a moment, Connor clutches her to him, one hand against the back of her head, another pulling her close. For this one brief and glorious instant, he’s got her tucked against him, he can hear her heartbeat, cool as ever, against his own, and he thinks that he might just make it out alive.

A round of gunfire too close to them makes him startle away again. Even still, he can’t stop himself from looking over her constantly to make sure she’s not injured. “You’re alright?” He asks.

Risa nods, although she looks a little shaky. “For now, at least. We have to get out of here, the Juveys are everywhere.”

Connor sees no problem with that. As if he’d just heard them, the intercom system crackles to life above their heads and Hayden’s voice rings out like an avenging angel. “Ladies and gentlemen of the Graveyard, it’s been an honor to live with you. I want to invite you all to get on the escape pods located along the southern and eastern edges of the ship. I hope we see each other again soon, and until then, stay whole. Hayden, signing out.”

He’s gone in another loud rush of static, and thus the Deadmen are abandoned to their fates. “He said it too late,” Risa mutters sadly. “Most of the pods will be gone by now. There aren’t nearly enough for everyone.”

“I know,” Connor says back. It’s all he can do. “Let’s hurry over now, though. Maybe some will still be there when we arrive.”

Distributes are disappearing by the second. Connor yanks kids out of the way of rogue tranq shots as he goes, but he can’t go up against the soldiers teaming up in groups of three or four to pull Deadmen down the corridors and into their awaiting ships. There’s nothing he can do to fix this, but that does not stop the relentless surge of guilt from boiling in his chest.

“Wait,” Connor says, skidding to a stop as a terrible thought occurs to him, “The Admiral. We have to get the Admiral.”

Risa shakes her head sorrowfully. “He’s a traitor to the Collective, Connor. They won’t be giving him a stern talking-to or something like that. We can’t help him any more than he can help us.”

Connor’s mouth feels dry. “That’s why we need to get to him, though.”

Risa looks away. “Connor. It’s too late.”

He follows her gaze back down the corridor to see a squad of Juvey-cops breaking down the door to the Admiral’s office. There are shouts that turn into a terrible, drawn-out scream, and then the resounding bang of one final gunshot and everything turns quiet again. Risa was right. It was too late, and now the Collective has taught a lesson to the Admiral and anyone within their ranks who thinks about trying to save kids from distribution: take them away from their fates, and they’ll deliver you to yours faster than you expect.

The squad appears in the doorway again, scanning the corridor in an almost mechanical motion, and then one of them spots Connor and Risa and points, “There!”

The cops start to run in their direction, which is all the goading Connor needs to stop wavering and start moving again. He grabs Risa by the hand so they don’t get separated in the chaos and they take off, moving as fast as they can despite the chunks of debris now littering the floor. Everywhere around him, Connor hears terrified yells, the shattering of equipment. It’s carnage out there. No one’s getting killed, but kids are vanishing anyway, dragged into the bowels of the Juvey ships.

Everyone here thought they could escape distribution, but this is the grim reminder that no one ever can. Some ferals have spent years on this ship. They probably thought they could make it, but no more. Never again will they be stupid enough to dream of survival.

As they draw closer to the eastern edge of the ship, Connor picks up the pace. The number of kids has dramatically increased, and Connor can see fights breaking out not just between distributes and Juveys but among the Deadmen themselves. Kids who used to be best friends are shoving each other to the ground in an effort to make it to the few remaining escape pods.

Even from here, Connor can tell that they’re running out fast. “Down here,” he blurts out, pulling Risa into a side corridor, “We can cut around to the back edge of the sector. Maybe there are still some left.”

They race down the corridor, pausing briefly at the end so Connor can tap into a control panel and check on the status of the escape pods. Judging by the rows of blanks, most are gone, but there’s still two left on the very end, single seaters that have been neglected by the rest of the kids because they’re just far enough out of the main thoroughfare so as to avoid detection by the stampedes of desperate teenagers.

The two of them duck around a corner, rejoining the sector with the pods. Connor can make out the bays for the two remaining pods; they’re hidden in a shadowy crevice of the sector, but still there, and that means there’s still a chance for them to make it out alive.

The rest of the sector is in chaos, but Connor isn’t looking. He’s got tunnel vision now, able to think about two things and two things only: one, the escape pods, still waiting in their bays, and two, Risa’s hand on his, reminding him that she’s still here, still with him. That’s all he needs. All he’s ever needed. He has lived two lives in the past sixteen years, first a child in a home that was never truly his and then this, now, a runaway distribute with a girl who wanted him like no one ever had. If he wants to survive, he’ll have her. He has to have her.

They skid to a stop in front of the two pods. “You first,” Connor says, opening up one of the pods and helping her inside.

There’s just enough room for one person to sit, but they’ll be able to follow each other down to the nearest planet surface, plus the comms systems should be functional, so they can talk if something goes wrong. The engineers have ensured that the escape pods work properly, there are mandatory checkups every month, so there’s no issue there. They just need to get in, that’s all, but they’re already here, and no one has noticed them yet, so it should be fine.

Once Risa’s in her pod, Connor reaches in to help fasten her in. She allows him to set up the nav system, but once he tries to do much more than that, she bats his hands away. “I can figure out the rest. Get in,” she tells him.

He manages a half smile. “So bossy.”

She rolls her eyes, but her returning smile is taut with nerves. “I’ll let you complain all you like once we’re out of here.”

Connor nods and pulls away, but before he can access his own escape pod, there’s a loud juddering of machinery and large chunks of the ceiling start to rain down, sending metal panels tumbling to the ground. Connor hits the floor immediately, rolling away just in time to dodge a particularly sharp section.

The sharp tang of copper fills the air, but other than a few mild scratches, Connor’s not hurt badly. The same cannot be said for everyone here; several of the teenagers who were fighting over the few remaining escape pods earlier are lying motionless on the ground now, crushed beneath chunks of steel. The kids they’d been fighting with stand over their bodies, horrified, then rush back to the pods, now with significantly fewer defenders than there had been just moments before.

Risa cries out in fear, and Connor doggedly pulls himself up. “I’m fine, I’m fine,” he mutters, although from the way his head is ringing, that might not be entirely true.

He’ll have time to sort out his injuries, though. If you’re going to strand yourself in the farthest reaches of the galaxy, it’s not a bad thing to have an expert healer like Risa out there with you. He just has to get into his pod, and then he can slump against the seat and try not to pass out before he lands.

Connor forces himself to his feet, and his vision is so spotty that it takes a few moments for the black dots to clear from his sight, and a few more seconds after that to come to terms with what he’s seeing. Or, more specifically, what he isn’t seeing. Connor had been able to dodge that chunk of the ceiling panel that had come so close to killing him, but the pod hadn’t been able to move, and it had been thoroughly wrecked.

Escape pods are meant to take a wide variety of blows, all part of space travel, but that’s when they’re sealed off from the elements. This one had been open and awaiting a passenger, but now it’s only host to a smoking pile of metal, which has sliced cleanly through the control panel that controls both nav systems and life support. There’s no way in all the worlds it can fly anymore, which means– which means–

Which means Connor isn’t getting out of here anymore. Risa leaned out of her seat to see what he was looking at, and the second she sees the sparking mess of what was supposed to be Connor’s ticket out of here, her face crumbles to pieces.

She starts trying to stand up and get out, but she’d already fastened the harness, and her hands are shaking so badly that the clasps refuse to undo themselves. “No. No. Connor, get in here. We can both fit. It’ll work out. We can still both make it.”

Connor shakes his head. “They’re designed for one passenger. We’ll run out of air.”

Risa glares at him, but the tear tracks on her face ruin any impression of hostility. “If we suffocate, at least we’ll be together. Don’t you leave me, Connor. Not after everything.”

Connor doesn’t realize he’s crying until his hand touches his face and comes back wet. “It’s okay, Risa. It’s okay.”

“No, it’s not,” she argues. “None of this is okay. We were supposed to make it out. It was supposed to be us.”

Risa finally manages to get the harness off, but Connor slams his hand onto the control panel outside the pod, locking the door shut. Risa pounds her fist against the glass, but this, unlike the interior of Connor’s escape pod, was designed not to break, and it holds firm.

“Thank you,” he says over the thunder of her fists on the hatch, “Thank you for everything, Risa. Live your life, alright? Make it a good one.”

He presses another button on the escape pod, shutting it off from the ship and beginning exit protocol. Once the pod seals, Connor can’t hear her anymore, can’t tell when her screams turn to a broken, pleading goodbye except by watching her lips. The pod finishes disengaging from the ship and launches itself into space. Connor watches Risa pull away from him, and then she’s gone, and Connor is on his own for the first time in more than a year.

He rocks back on his heels. This is it, then. This is how he goes. He turns to a nearby control panel and repeats what he’d done before to check for any more pods, just in case, but only turns up blanks. All of the escape vehicles have launched, and there are no more shuttles or smaller ships on the cruiser. Everyone left in the Graveyard will die or be distributed. A ghost of a memory in his head, a laughing voice: which is worse?

Connor still isn’t entirely sure of the answer, but he doesn’t have to decide now, he doesn’t. He can still hide. Connor is great at hiding. He’s done it for the last year, and even if they’ve found the Graveyard, the soldiers won’t know every last nook and cranny, not like he does. They won’t risk blowing the cruiser to pieces either, the explosion would probably incinerate their ships as well.

An idea is blossoming in Connor’s head, a terrible death wish born of this last twist of fate. Connor begins moving again, walking then running towards the engine room. The ship is tearing itself to pieces at this point, unable to stand against the combined threat of the guns of the Juvey-cop warships outside and the nav kids’ unsuccessful attempts to fly away. Several times, Connor attempts to head down one corridor only to find it blocked off by mountains of rubble.

He keeps having to dodge Juveys, but they’re easy enough to shake. The cops are moving slower now, taking their time. They know there’s nowhere any of them can go. It’s like trapping synth-rats in a rotting house. The floorboards can be burned away, the carcass of their hideaway ripped to pieces. The vermin will always be found.

The engine room is worse off than anywhere else in the Graveyard. Connor has to fling an arm over his mouth, instantly doubled over and coughing on the fumes. Something’s leaking, maybe fuell, which doesn’t bode well. Connor is here to hide, but his hiding space shouldn’t kill him, too.

No Juveys linger in the engine room. They’re cocky, but not that stupid. The whole ship is tearing itself to pieces, the last place anyone rational would go is the room with the power sources. If the engines were to stall and implode, the subsequent reaction wouldn’t just tear the Graveyard to bits, it would take out those warships, too, and every soldier of the Juvenile Authority on board. No one wants to mess around here, which makes it perfect. All Connor has to do is lie low long enough to wait out the cops, even if it takes days, and then crawl out long enough to send a distress signal. He can figure this out. He can still make it.

Pulling the neck of his shirt over his nose and mouth to avoid the bite of the fumes, Connor plunges further into the engine room. All of the overhead lights are out, leaving only the beeping pinpricks of the panels near the engines themselves. The machinery in here is massive, practically the entire height of the cruiser. Connor climbs up the precarious structures in search of a spot no one will look at. At least if Juveys come in here, he can see them coming and try to avoid their gaze.

Just as he has this thought, a silhouette appears in the doorway. In the darkness of the engine room, Connor can’t make out if they’re a kid or a cop. If it’s a Juvey, Connor can probably run before the soldier drags him off. There’s no chance of remaining hidden since the guy obviously followed him in, but Connor might be able to give him the slip in these shadows.

“Just a moment, officer,” Connor shouts, still squinting to make out details on the guy’s face, “I don’t want to be locked away quite yet. Give a guy a few more minutes of freedom, will you?”

“I’m not a cop,” the stranger chides, and Connor feels his body start to lock up.

The boy stalking into the room certainly isn’t a cop, he’s Roland. Somehow, some of the last few Deadmen left alive on the cruiser include himself and Roland, and of course the older boy has taken it upon himself to track down Connor. What a great use of his last moments whole.

“What do you want? A friendly conversation before we’re both dismembered?” Connor asks, moving even more frantically than before.

“I don’t want to talk,” Roland drawls, and Connor swears he’s halved the distance between them in the time it took to blink. Connor can barely hear the guy moving over the clanging of the machinery behind him, which isn’t good.

He peers over the lip of the structure he’s on and sees Roland clambering up the machinery after him, eyes locked in blind hatred on Connor’s form. “What’s your plan, Connor?” Roland shouts up. “Going to hide until they went away? Like that’ll work.”

“It’s this or distribution, you tell me which is worse. I can pull this off, have some faith.” Connor calls back, but his voice wavers.

Roland cackles, sensing the hesitation in his voice. “Are you sure? Do you really think you can outsmart an entire army of Juvey-cops? And either way, are you just going to ignore every other kid they’re dragging off out there? I thought you really cared.”

Connor scoffs, still backing away down the narrow walkway surrounding the machinery. He swears the thunder of noise from the hall outside is getting louder, but maybe that’s just the panic setting in. “It’s sweet of you to care about my conscience. What, do you want to team up and stop all of our little friends from dying?”

“I’m not interested in their deaths,” Roland spits, “Just yours.”

Connor wheels around again, panicked, just in time for Roland to strike him across the face. Connor slams against the control panel, which probably does more to sabotage the ship than any of the chaos from before.

Roland’s face is barely recognizable in the dark. Connor can only make out harsh planes of his countenance as Roland looms over him. “This is our last shot, Connor. I’m taking you out before I go. Consider it revenge.”

Oh, this is bad. This is bad. Connor flees, but already reeling from the collapsing ceiling in the eastern sector, plus the punch, plus the darkness, he trips almost immediately on the thin railing of the walkway and bites it.

Roland laughs somewhere above him. “On the ground already? And here I thought you were a fighter.”

“Stop talking,” Connor grimaces, one hand rising to clutch at his aching head while the other helps push him up and off of the floor.

Roland, surprisingly, does as told, and the walkway rattles as he heads towards Connor again. The older boy swings again, but Connor manages to duck this time, and he hears the whoosh of air moving as Roland’s fist glides through empty air.

It occurs to Connor now that Roland is just as blind as he is. Neither of their eyes have adjusted yet, so even though Connor is struggling to see a thing, Roland is no better off. He surges forward, knocking into Roland, and manages to drive a fist against his nose.

Roland yells, crashing backwards into the railing. Connor can taste blood in the air again, so it must have been a good hit. When Roland speaks again, his voice is funny, so maybe he even managed to break a bone. “Oh, you’ll pay for that, starspawn.”

Connor readies himself for another blow, but instead of aiming another punch at Connor’s shifting silhouette, Roland grabs something from his belt. The faint light from the beeping buttons on a nearby instrument panel casts just enough light that Connor can see the glint of a metal barrel in his hand and he realizes with a sickening lurch that Roland is holding a gun.

“Now you’re not the only one to have shot a Juvey with his own tranq,” Roland hisses. “I grabbed a souvenir too. Only, this one isn’t a tranq. I got the real deal.”

Connor’s eyes widen in the dark of the engine room. He had wondered if Roland would have the stomach to actually kill him, but a shot in the dark wouldn’t take as much guts. All this kill would require is the pull of a trigger, and anyone with flighty reflexes can do that.

Connor flings himself backwards, scurrying further into the darkness. If he could just shake Roland long enough to get away, if he could just get out of range of that awful gun– The weapon goes off, sending a bullet flying off the walkway and into the endless shadow below them.

“Careful with that,” Connor scolds, “These engines are on the verge of blowing up anyway. One bad shot and you’ll kill us all.”

“I’ll hit you next, not the engines,” Roland threatens, and gives chase once more.

Connor peers back over his shoulder when the footsteps on metal stops, and it registers that Roland can’t run and fire the gun at the same time. If he pauses, it means he’s readying to shoot again. Connor flings himself down, feeling the smooth chill of the metal walkway against his cheek. Seconds later, another bullet flies overhead, but this one doesn’t go off towards the ground. Instead, it whistles towards the overheating engines, punching a hole in several of the connective pipes as it goes.

“You idiot, you’re going to blow this place up,” Connor yells.

This only serves to give Roland a better idea of where he is in the shifting blackness, and another round shoots by, even closer than before. This one doesn’t just strike pipes, though, it goes directly into the roaring machinery itself. This one is bad.

Connor has about half a second to understand just how bad it is before the explosion begins. It’s that one moment of silence, again, in which it all ends. Connor has just enough time to wonder how he keeps getting so close to finding his way out just for another sour twist of fate to take it all away, and then the engine behind him ruptures and Connor loses track of the walkway beneath him. All is open air.

Roland is falling too, he thinks. They collide midway through the descent. Roland’s grip on him is heavy, impossible to escape. A voice by his ear, hot and guttural: “If I die, you’re dying with me,” and then the explosion consumes them both and Connor can’t think about anything else.

The engines of the Graveyard are unusual. The Deadmen in charge of maintenance have taken to outsourcing power as much as they can in an effort to maintain the central engine system as long as possible. Some power comes from solar panels, others from various electrical and chemical systems throughout the ship. The engines, though, make up most of it. Derived from hugely capable power cores, they keep a behemoth like the Graveyard functional even decades after it was initially created.

They’ve also been suffering from extreme wear for far too long. This means that bullets shot through the regulators will finally allow the pent up energy to expand quite rapidly, triggering a reaction that could consume the entire engine room in seconds flat. It wouldn’t just be a typical fiery explosion, it would be laced with nuclear remnants and quantum particles. It would melt the very divisions between elements. In the case of two boys falling together, some of their limbs and organs would separate during the first onslaught of radiation and then reattach almost instantaneously. Most of that would be done correctly, but mistakes might be made here or there.

Mistakes, for instance, like a genetic mutation, an arm recoupling with the wrong person. A boy loses a shark tattoo and another gains it. An arm for an arm, a life for a life. When they collide with the ground, one dies on impact and the other survives. Some time later, when the radiation has sufficiently cleared away and soldiers can be sent out from scout ships to survey the wreckage and collect bodies, they’ll find that the boy they were looking for, the one they were specifically directed to collect, somehow stayed alive. The very explosion that destroyed the Graveyard has used the other boy’s life force to keep this one alive.

They pull him out and put him in a medical cubicle to heal quickly. Even still, they won’t be able to solve the mystery of why Connor Lassiter’s right arm is no longer his, but of all the worlds to struggle with someone having pieces that aren’t theirs by birth, this is the most welcoming. If you think about it, it’s kind of like the universe decided to distribute Roland’s arm to Connor during the supernova of the exploding power core. Someone bigger than any of them out there in the galaxy knew that it would be more important that one of them stay alive, that Connor keep that piece of Roland. Something knew that the reshuffling of body parts would be necessary. Isn’t that what Connor has been fighting all along?

Ah, well. He’ll have plenty of time to grapple with that when he wakes up. If, of course, he does.

a/n: sorry for the delay, i have been super stressed with the engineering workload. technically, this is posted at 11:45 pm so it's still thursday right haha? anyway i hope you enjoyed and none of you are worried about our guys!!

unwind tag list: @schroedingers-kater, @sirofreak, @locke-writes

all tags list: @wordsarelife

8 notes · View notes

heliads · 9 months

Text

Unwind Masterlist

Connor Lassiter Masterlist

Grace Skinner

One More Game to Play - Based on this request: "grace and argent reunion? After the events of Unbound, Grace and the rest of the gang meet up and they’re all hanging out on some port. Grace and Argent bump into each other and hurt/comfort reunion ensues" Oneshot

Hayden Upchurch Masterlist

#unwind #unwind imagines #unwind x reader #unwind oneshot #unwind masterlist #unwind dystology #unwind dystology imagines #unwind dystology x reader #unwind dystology oneshot #unwind dystology masterlist #hayden upchurch #connor lassiter #conrisa #grace skinner

9 notes · View notes

heliads · 4 months

Text

everything is blue • conrisa space au • Chapter Nineteen: Call Up the Cavalry

series spotify playlist

previous / series masterlist / next

Connor fears that this might be the moment at which he finally goes mad.

He’s undergone enough to make the snap happen, at least. How much bending can a mind take before it breaks? How many separations, how much running, how much death and chaos can one teenage boy undergo before he starts to lose himself? Connor wouldn’t be surprised if this is all a hallucination cooked up by a brain that doesn’t want to separate itself from its familiar skull.

However, just why Connor would hallucinate this tithe of all people, he can’t understand. He stands there, blinking at the blond kid, until the figure of Lev Calder sighs, cracks a grin, and says, “Hey, Connor. Long time, no see.”

This, truly, is how Connor knows this has got to be fake. “Since when have you been friendly?” Connor asks doubtfully.

One of the teenagers next to Connor chokes out a laugh. “Lev, I thought you said you were friends with this guy.”

“I am,” Lev says, flashing the stranger a dour glare so severe that Connor is immediately thrust into more than a year of memories. Yes, that’s Lev alright. No one can cast judgment quite like a boy who’s worn tithing whites all his life.

Lev clears his throat pretentiously and motions for Connor to continue into the house. “Surprised to see me?”

“Surprised would be an understatement,” Connor remarks. “Do I have a concussion or something?”

Lev grins again. “I would make a terrible figment of your imagination, but that’s beside the point. No, Connor, you’re not dreaming. I should hope not, it’s taken ages to track you down. Hasn’t anyone told you to stop moving around all the time?”

“Yeah, the Proactive Citizenry,” Connor says wryly. “The two of you can argue over custody claims for me.”

Lev’s face tightens. “Trust me, there’s nothing I’d like to do more than poke a fight with the PC. They’re no friends of ours.”

Connor arches a disbelieving brow. “Really? Because the last time I saw you, you couldn’t get to a harvest colony fast enough. I seem to remember you arguing with Risa and I in an effort to turn the ship around when we saved your ungrateful ass.”

It’s difficult to keep the bite out of his words. Even though it’s been more than a year, Connor still hasn’t forgiven the kid for the stunt he pulled back in the boundary checkpoint leaving the OH-10 sector. When Lev had sounded the alarm, Connor and Risa had been forced to go on the run again, requiring the help of a sympathetic checkpoint worker for them to escape undetected. Even so, they’d barely made it out alive, and no thanks to Lev.

One of Lev’s friends doesn’t seem to take kindly to Connor’s hostility. He starts to move towards Connor, but Lev waves him off with a small gesture of his hand. Connor watches all this with faint curiosity– since when has the short tithe been able to inspire this kind of loyalty– but doesn’t say a word.

Lev picks up on his lingering irritation. “I wouldn’t blame you for being annoyed with me for how things ended in OH-10. None of us do,” he says smoothly, aiming a pointed glare at his vocal friend before carrying on. “I was a different kid back then. I didn’t know the importance of staying alive. I thought distribution was saving the world. Then I learned otherwise.”

Connor sits forward in his seat, unable to disguise his curiosity. “What changed your mind?”

Lev smiles softly. “Actually, I started having second thoughts the moment I turned you guys in. I couldn’t shake the guilt I felt, thinking that I had sent you guys to your deaths. I slipped away in the chaos when the checkpoint cops were trying to find you, and ended up hitching a ride on a mass transit shuttle. It was going to the farthest reaches of the galaxy, which I figured would be a good way to start clearing my head. Along the way, I met up with these guys. They call themselves the Chancefolk.”

Connor glances at the assembled group. None of them seem to be from the same place, all different heights and builds, different complexions, but the same haunted look in their eyes. Whatever they’ve been through, it’s been just as long and winding a road to walk as Connor’s.

“The Chancefolk?” Connor repeats. “I’ve never heard that name before.”

“I would be surprised if you had,” Lev tells him. “The Chancefolk are the native people of the galaxy. The group you see before you is only a small fraction of their true number.”

Connor turns to face him, startled. “I thought the Collective wiped out all of the native species from the worlds they conquered. People, plants, animals, everything.”

“Think again,” says a woman from the back. “The Collective would love you to believe that they’re the supreme authority on everything, but they couldn’t be more wrong. They miscalculated and mishandled the galaxy, but we’ve been maintaining the worlds all along. There are pockets of us in every system if you know where to look. We may keep our heads low, but that doesn’t mean we can’t look around and see where we need to be.”

Connor nods slowly. “I can’t believe none of us ever knew about you.”

“The Collective’s got a pretty good propaganda blanket across the galaxy, but I have a feeling that times are changing,” Lev tells him. “For one thing, you’ve got a friend who’s pushing that boundary.”

Connor breaks into a grin despite himself. “Don’t tell me you’ve been tuning in to Radio Free Hayden? Even in your outer rim hideaway?”

Lev chuckles. For a moment, he looks younger again, more like the boy Connor remembers meeting, and then promptly abducting, all that time ago at the beginning of it all. “Of course we did. That’s how I knew you and Risa were still alive, actually. I turned to his frequency one day and heard the three of you joking around like you’d never had a care in the world.”

The smile lingers on Lev’s face for a moment longer, but then his expression sobers again. “Speaking of Risa, where is she? From the way you two used to talk on that radio show, I thought you were joined at the hip, but you showed up here by yourself. Did something happen?”

A wave of grief washes over Connor again, even stronger from its absence. “Something bad. We were ambushed by the PC. She sacrificed herself so I could get away.”

Lev closes his eyes momentarily in grief. “I’ll pray for her. In the meantime, what do you say we break her out of there? We were planning a raid anyway. I think it’s time to show the PC that they’re not nearly as strong as they think they are.”

Connor nods excitedly. “I can’t think of anything else I’d rather do. In the meantime, there are a few things you guys should know about the PC before we draft a plan.”

The Chancefolk draw closer as Connor tells them about Dorian Heartland. He sees the outrage in their expressions, the pain and agony of knowing that their centuries-old foe is still alive. Judging by the steely resolve in their eyes, though, Heartland’s over-extended life may not continue for that much longer. Not if Connor has anything to say about it.

In the end, they walk away from that meeting with a plan. To take on Heartland and the PC, they’ll need an army. However, between the Chancefolk scattered across the galaxy and a fair number of personal friends that Connor and Risa have made along the way, they’re halfway there, and that’s not a bad start. First, though, they’ll need someone capable of uniting the worlds behind their cause, and he’s imprisoned in a harvest colony waiting to die.

“You’re certain this is going to work?” Connor asks for the tenth time. They’re approaching the exterior of the harvest complex now, nearing a service entrance at the back with weapons drawn, but even though they’ve been through the plan many times, all Connor can imagine are possible avenues of error.

“It’ll be fine,” Lev assures him yet again. “Listen, you saved my life when we first met, even if I didn’t appreciate it then. Let me help you out now. I’ve been owing you that favor for a while.”

“Don’t I know it,” Connor mutters under his breath, but he shuts up and lets himself believe in the idea that this might work.

Una Jacali, one of Lev’s closest friends among the Chancefolk, is leading the expedition. She looks as if she might be ready to assassinate Dorian Heartland herself using nothing more than her bare hands and raw anger should they accidentally cross paths. Connor never thought he’d say this, but he actually feels bad for the guy. Having someone as unbreakable as Una on your tail can’t be good.

Una signals to them, counting down from three with a free hand. When she lowers her hand, the explosives they’ve placed on the far side of the harvest complex go up in a fiery rage, drawing the attention of all nearby cops far away from them. The group sneaks through the service entrance and into the shadowy halls. Una and Connor fire at guards when they need to, but their path to the harvest colony is surprisingly clear, likely thanks to the inferno distraction still sending wailing klaxons through the complex.

“They’ll all be in the dorms thanks to the alarm,” Lev tells them. “We should head there now.”

“Remember, Hayden is our first priority,” Connor urges them. “Get everyone out, of course, but we have to make sure he’s safe.”

“Or at least his voice box,” Una supplies. “He can be shot in the leg and be fine.”

Connor shoots her a dour look. “The whole body needs to be fine, Una. He’s our friend.”

Una doesn’t acknowledge this with anything more than a raised eyebrow, which makes Lev clap a hand to his mouth in an attempt to silence his bout of laughter. “We hear you, Connor,” the former tithe says when he manages to get himself under control. “Hayden Upchurch won’t be harmed.”

Connor would appreciate a little more confidence on that front than just the word of Lev, but then again, the boy’s done this well in getting them thus far, he might as well have a little more faith. If anything, the religious upbringing in the younger boy would appreciate some good honest hope.

The group of rescuers breaks into the central portion of the harvest complex when the service corridor ends. Immediately, shots break out as several guards notice them. Evidently not every soldier had been sent to check out the disturbance.

“Go on,” Una urges Connor and Lev. “We’ll hold them off.”

Connor shouts his thanks, then takes off towards the dorms, Lev just behind them. Surprisingly, Lev manages to keep up, even despite his shorter stature. “Since when did you learn to run this quickly?” Connor asks, unable to keep the surprise out of his voice.

Lev chuckles. “A lot happened in the Outer Rim. I’ll have to tell you sometime, but the stories would take a while.”

There’s a dark glint in Lev’s eyes, one Connor doesn’t quite recognize from the short window of time they’d spent together a lifetime ago on the stolen shuttle of a Juvey-cop. Connor makes a mental note to sit Lev down once they get out of here and ask him just what in sunfire happened in the year since they last saw each other.

That is, of course, assuming they do get out of here. It is not lost on Connor that Heartland brought all the AWOLs from the Graveyard here to trap Connor once and for all. Although Connor and Risa already sprung that trap in the synth-park, there’s no telling if Heartland had a backup scheme that could be playing out right now. All Connor can do is keep running, and hope to all the heavenly bodies that this, at last, is something the immortal murderer didn’t see coming.

The two of them reach the door to the dorms. A quick blast from Connor’s gun sears through the lock, and he kicks it open. The door surges forward on its hinges, and hasn’t even opened all the way before Connor sprints through it. Kids are everywhere inside– sitting in the corner, talking in quiet voices, poking their heads out of doors, all of them staring at Connor with these wide eyes. It occurs to him that they might be afraid of him. When did he become something worth their terror?

Then a girl near him stands up with a start. “Connor?”

He recognizes her vaguely from the Graveyard, and although they never personally met, Connor seizes this opportunity to get back control of the situation. “Yes,” he says as loudly as he can, “It’s me, Connor Lassiter. From the Graveyard. I’m here to get you guys to safety. There are some men and women outside, they’ll help you to our shuttle.”

Too afraid to believe their good luck, no one moves at first. Connor takes a few more steps inside. “Come on, hurry. Unless you guys want to wait around and get distributed?”

That does it. The girl who’d spoken to Connor earlier hastens to the door, pokes her head out, then quickly waves to the rest of the distributes to get going. “He’s right, none of the guards can get us. Hurry, everybody.”

The teenagers follow the girl, pouring out of the dorms in a shouting, cheering wave of kids. Connor can’t help a smile as he watches the life spark back into their eyes. They’ve got a shot again, and he helped to give it to them. Maybe, just maybe, he can finally make up for what he’s done. He can reverse the tides. Little by little, Connor Lassiter can get back into the good graces of the universe.

Connor pushes further into the crowd, checking each face as he passes for Hayden or, with pitifully shrinking hope, Risa. He doesn’t really think Risa will be here, if he was in the mood for being honest with himself. She’s too important a prisoner for Heartland to just toss her in here with the rest. Still, it would make his rescue attempt very efficient if he could get both Risa and Hayden out of here in only one shot. He’ll have to suggest to Heartland that he re-organize his method of exterminating teenagers so Connor is best served by it.

The ridiculousness of that thought makes Connor smirk to himself as he wades further inside. It’s a little difficult to get through as everyone inside does their damndest to get out as fast as they can. Painfully, it reminds Connor of the mass stampede inside the doomed Graveyard when they had been found out.

Just like back then, too, Connor looks up across the crowd to find someone lingering on the outskirts, someone blond and tall who makes eye contact with Connor and breaks into this wild, bright grin that Connor hasn’t seen except in his nightmares in a very long time.

Immediately, Connor throws himself against the crowd until he’s in front of the boy. For a moment, he just stares, and then he wraps his arms around his friend, squeezing him until he almost thinks he’s forced the air from the other boy’s lungs.

“Hayden,” he says emphatically.

Hayden Upchurch, because of course it is he, hugs Connor back so hard that he picks Connor off of the ground entirely before letting him back down again. “Connor! Suns, I heard a few of the religious kids talking about how they got guardian angels when they died, but I didn’t think I’d get such a heroic one. I’ve got a poster of you up on my wall, do you want to see it?”

Connor chokes out a laugh, eliciting a proud grin from Hayden when they finally break apart. “Yeah, I totally believe that the PC let you have an Akron AWOL poster in their harvest colony. That’s such a bad joke, man.”

Hayden snorts. “They only allowed me to put it up because I promised I’d get them a signed copy. Do you carry a pen with you, or should I get one of my own? You know I have to honor my promises.”

Connor just grins. “How about you keep your promise to shoot those starspawn in the legs if you ever saw them again?”

“That sounds good to me, too,” Hayden assures him. “Now come on, I want to get out of here. I don't fancy the idea of spending any more time, even in these fine living conditions.”

Connor casts one last glance over Hayden’s shoulder, but the throngs of AWOLs have already started to disperse, and he doesn’t see a particular brunette girl anywhere. “Hayden– you haven’t seen–”

He can’t quite get the words out, but Hayden, careful as ever, figures out what he’s trying to say. He puts a sympathetic hand on Connor’s shoulder, gently but firmly steering him out of the dorms. “No, Connor. Risa isn’t here. I’ve been looking out for both of you in case either of you turned up, you know that, but she never showed. I’m sorry, man.”

“No problem,” Connor says with a heavy heart. “I didn’t really think she’d end up here, anyway.”

“The two of you split?” Hayden asks, surprised. “I thought you were together forever.”

Connor shoots him a questionable frown. “What in the stars are you talking about?”

Hayden chuckles, even as stray gunfire from the cops rakes towards them. “You know exactly what I’m talking about. The two of you were practically joined at the hip. It used to drive me crazy in the Graveyard, actually. Jeevan and I had a bet going on how long it would take the two of you to finally spill your lovesick little guts. Speaking of which, how long did it take?”

Hayden spares one quick glance at Connor’s face as the two of them run towards the exit and winces. “Don’t tell me you never said a thing. Connor, you’ve been leading that poor girl on for months.”

“It’s not that,” Connor protests. “And come on, seriously? A bet? I didn’t even realize I liked her until just recently.”

At the entrance to the service hallway, Lev joins them just early enough to hear the end of the conversation. “You’re talking about Risa, right? How they act like they’re supposed to be together forever?”

“Yes,” Hayden says emphatically. “Thank you.”

Connor sputters. “That’s absurd. Lev, Risa and I were arguing like crazy when you were there. Don’t join Hayden’s side, you have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“You should absolutely join Hayden’s side,” Hayden says. “Hayden is always right.”

“He’s right about this,” Lev says as they race down the corridor. Then, to Hayden, “It’s the way they look at each other, right? They can’t stop staring. At first, I thought he had an eye problem or something.”

“Hey,” Connor complains, but Hayden just throws up his arms in victory.

“Exactly! The staring thing! Suns, they were hopeless. You’d think they got married years ago.”

“Can we please focus on getting out of here without dying?” Connor begs.

Were they anywhere but here, he’s certain he would have been ignored, but the rapid gunfire of Juvey-cops can derail any conversation. “Fine, but we’re definitely talking about this later,” Hayden warns.

“I’ll do my best to miss it,” Connor grumbles under his breath. Maybe he should have insisted that Lev stay back at the house, or told him that he wouldn’t ever get along with Hayden so he shouldn’t bother trying. Anything to avoid whatever surreal hell this is.

It takes a while to get all of the Graveyard AWOLs back to the house Lev’s friends are using as their hideout. The journey isn’t totally smooth, either: two Chancefolk and three distributes get shot as they’re running. Although the wounds aren’t life-threatening, every person with an injury is out of the final rescue, and Connor needs every single soul he can get so they’re not totally outnumbered.

Once back inside, Connor and Lev sit Hayden down to explain their plan. At the end, Hayden stares at both of them, obviously baffled. “I’m sorry, you want me to do another radio show? And that’s going to save the galaxy?”

Lev nods. “You would be surprised how many people can be saved just by hearing one voice. Or how many already have. You’re well known in the groups of people protecting AWOLs. What you need is to reach everybody else. Sound the alarm so they know it’s time to come out of hiding.”

Hayden shakes his head in disbelief. “This plan makes no sense. If the galaxy can hear me, so can the Proactive Citizenry. They’ll know we’re coming, and they way outnumber us, especially if we tell them when and where we’re attacking.”

“They already know we’re going to attack,” Connor assures him. “They knew that the second they took Risa. The only thing they’re not expecting is how many people are going to show up. If they hear your broadcast, fine. Heartland is assuming that everyone is going to brush it off again like they have all this time.”

“And we’re sure that they won’t just brush it off again?” Hayden asks, clearly dubious.

“I’m sure,” Lev answers. “I’ve been traveling all over the world since Connor convinced me to abandon my tithing. I’ve seen a lot of people in a lot of places, but everywhere, they’re starting to wonder if distribution is really the right way to go. We’ve got a serious chance now of changing their minds.”

Connor nods in agreement. “That’s the problem with Heartland, he’s gotten overconfident. He assumes that things will be the same way they’ve always been, but that’s not the case anymore. Times are changing, even if he hasn’t realized it yet. The time of distribution is over. We get to live again.”

Hayden whistles under his breath. “Damn, nice speech. Are we sure you’re not the one who should be making this broadcast?”

Connor chuckles. “Trust me, man, you’re the one with the star power. It’s your show, we’re all just along for the ride.”

Hayden’s bright spark of a grin shines again. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard a better thing. Out of curiosity, how in sunfire is my broadcast reaching the entire galaxy? I mean, my old signal barely made it a few star systems over. There’s no way I can reach everybody on my old tech, plus it was all blown up when the Graveyard went nuclear. Unless the two of you went scavenger hunting around that wreck, we need more comms equipment.”

“Consider that settled,” Lev says. “I’ve got some stuff from an anonymous donor, really nice gear. They’ll be able to hear you from Centerworld all the way to the outer reaches.”

Hayden rubs his hands together excitedly. “In that case, I think it’s time for a show.”

Lev takes the two of them to the room where they’ve been storing the comms gear. He informs them that the Chancefolk have been using this place as a home base for technology and missions operations, hence why so much equipment has been stored up. Hayden’s eyes light up when he sees the new gear, and can’t contain his excitement as he rattles off all the specs of this top-notch equipment. Several times, he has to be reminded that he’s not just here to sightsee, but actually record something.

At last, after some quick tune-ups and test runs, Hayden finds his old frequency and starts to talk. He planned out a loose script with them beforehand, mainly just a few talking points, but they’re more than happy to let Hayden run wild with whatever he comes up with. So long as it gets to the main conclusion in the end, of course.

“I’m not dead,” Hayden announces dramatically to the microphone, “That may come as a surprise to some of you, given the recent lapse in broadcasts, but Radio Free Hayden is still alive, and so am I. So are runaway distributes across the galaxy, or so I hear. Personally, I have Connor Lassiter to thank for my survival. We’re still alive. AWOLs, if you’re listening, I hope you’re still out there, still whole. I’m glad to be back, but I need something from you.”

Hayden takes a deep breath before continuing. “The Collective wants your pieces. All we did was live, and yet total strangers are perfectly willing to tear us apart just because our parents and State Homes gave the say-so. I know this is wrong, and so do you, listeners. However, for once we’ve got a chance to fight back. I need you all to come to Dandrich-IV. Yes, in Centerworld. We’re making a stand against the Collective, and that means we have to go to their home base. I’ll relay the coordinates in time, but I need everyone to show up and be willing to fight. I’m sure all of you remember Risa Ward, a good friend of mine and Connor’s. We need to save her life, listeners, just as she saved your lives by proving that AWOLs could exist out there in the open sky. She’s our friend, and she’s your friend. Let’s get her back.”

Hayden sends a nervous glance Connor’s way, but Connor just responds with a single thumbs up. Hayden’s doing great, now he has to send it home. “We were never meant to survive for long, you know. The Graveyard proved otherwise. Connor and Risa and I, we did our best to show you that we’re real kids, worthy of living even if someone decided otherwise. I know that we deserve to live. We all know it. The Collective is trying to make you think that the fate of the galaxy depends on all of us dying for the cause, but that’s not true.”

“There is nothing any of us can do. We are children. We are kids. As a species, it takes us years to be able to tie our own shoelaces. We’re not even able to drive a hovercar until almost a fifth of our life has gone by. Why, then, is it that the burden of fixing an entire society falls to us? Maybe it’s because we’re the only ones left to care. We’re going to die anyway, listeners. We might as well die doing something worthwhile. Follow me to Dandrich-IV. We’re going to make a stand. We will be heard. And if we lose our lives out there, at least it’s more living than we would have done if we’d been distributed at the start.”

Connor’s heart is pounding in his chest. Surrounded by his equipment, Hayden’s lip curls. “Besides, our enemy won’t understand what it’s like to fear for his life. Did you know that the head of the Proactive Citizenry hasn’t been honoring his promise to only give distributed parts back to the galaxy? The CEO of the PC is a man named Dorian Heartland. If that name sounds familiar, it’s because he’s been around since old-Earth days. He’s been cheating death by swapping out his own rotting parts with fresh ones from kids. To all the adult listeners out there, do you think your children deserve to die so some rich guy out there can have eternal life? To the new generation, do you want your life to go to some man who’s already had more than his fair share of lifetimes?”

“We’re taking back our lives, listeners. We’re winning the war. I want to see you at the gates of the PC. I want you to make a change that generations after us will remember. I’m sending you the coordinates now. If you believe in life, I’ll meet you there. One last time, I’m signing off with everyone’s favorite tune. And remember– the truth will keep you whole.”

With that, Hayden decisively presses the button to end his recording. The grainy beats of some old-Earth song fills the room. Hayden closes his eyes, basking in the sound, his chest rising and falling dramatically. Connor, too, feels as if he’s undergone some great physical exertion, and all he was doing was listening.

When the last bars of the song fade from Connor’s ears, he breathes out unsteadily, not sure what to do in the face of this sudden stillness. “That was incredible,” he says.

Hayden cracks a tired grin. “Thanks. Good to know I haven’t lost my touch.”

Lev shakes his head in awe. “Not a chance. Man, if you hadn’t been slated for distribution– if you could have lived a normal life– you would have made a killing as an actor or something. You’ve got a knack for speeches.”

Hayden’s face twists. “A lot would have happened if we’d had normal lives. You’d still be with your families. I’d be with mine. They had a lot of rich actor friends. Maybe they would have sent me into that life. Who knows.”

Connor’s heart sinks at the grief plainly written on Hayden’s face. “A lot would have changed if we were never supposed to be distributed. We probably never would have met. I’d be a completely different person.”

“So would I,” Lev echoes hollowly.

“So would I,” Hayden repeats, his voice distant and toneless. All of a sudden, his head snaps up, and he makes eye contact with both of them in a row, quick and fierce. “I’m glad we met. I didn’t want to die, obviously, but I’m glad to have you guys. And Risa, and Jeevan, and everybody else. I wouldn’t trade this life for anything, but I do want to end the circumstances that brought us together. It doesn’t mean I like you guys any less, just that–”

His voice breaks off unevenly, but Connor can fill in the gaps. “Just that no one else should have to die even though we lived.”

“Exactly,” Hayden says.

Lev nods slowly. “We’ve got a chance to turn things around. All we have to do is wait and see how many people heard your signal.”

Although he hates to break the tentative peace that’s settled over them, Connor still has to ask: “What if nobody comes?”

Lev looks at him with grim determination. “Then we go in alone, and save Risa or die trying. We won’t hide in the shadows anymore. And if we die in there, then our blood is on the hands of everyone who didn’t participate. Maybe that’ll move them even more than Hayden’s speech.”

The back of Connor’s throat is raw like acid, but he makes a sound of agreement. Lev is right. Whatever happens from here on out, Connor will still go into Dorian Heartland’s center, and he will find Risa. Maybe he’ll have an army at his back, maybe he’ll only have a couple of friends. But Risa will be found, and for once, Heartland won’t have the last laugh. That, at least, he can guarantee.

They allow themselves a couple of standard hours for everyone to show up. As it turns out, they don’t have to wait that long. Within half an hour, ships are already starting to tune up. Voices are popping up on Hayden’s frequency, different people chartering trips together or announcing that they’ll be meeting Hayden on Dandrich-IV. It occurs to Connor, listening to all of these strangers he’s never met saying that they’ll follow him to death or salvation, that he may have started a revolution, or at least helped build a spark into a blaze.

If this inferno consumes them all, at least Connor’s last hours will have been something bright, something beautiful. He’s had an awful lot of time to run and hide. At some point, he has to turn that restless energy into a fight. Now is the time.

He’s interrupted from his reverie by Lev running into the room. The younger boy can hardly manage a word, too excited by something outside. He gestures for Connor to follow, and Connor doesn’t need any extra encouragement, breaking into a run as the two boys hurry from the room.

Lev leads Connor to the door of the house, then pushes it open. Connor stands for a moment on the threshold, blinking in the light, staring in abject astonishment at all of the faces looking expectantly at him. Some are strangers. There are adults and children, bodies young and old. Some bear the wounds of previous fights. Others wear clothes so nice Connor is certain that they must have come from Centerworld itself. All in all, there are dozens of people scattered around the road leading to their hideout, maybe even hundreds, and more arrive by the minute.

“So many people,” he chokes out in a daze.

Hayden emerges from the house by his side, holding up a hand to wave to the gathered crowds with a dazzling grin. “Turns out a lot more people believe in the cause than you think. Still having trouble believing that we’ll win?”

“Not anymore,” Connor manages. “I mean, I didn’t even know that many strangers knew who I was.”

“They’re not just strangers,” Lev corrects.

And, looking out at the throngs of people, Connor realizes that he’s right. Shading his eyes from the sun, he recognizes Bam, Mai, Diego, and the rest of the group that had saved him when Heartland first tried to get to Connor. He leaves his friends at the doorstep, weaving through the crowds until he’s in front of them.

“You guys came,” he says in a daze.

Bam nods impatiently, although she can’t seem to hide a proud grin. “You kept your promise.”

“Plus, someone wanted to meet her hero,” Mai adds. Bam elbows her in the ribs, but the embarrassment on the girl’s face shows some truth to the statement.

“Go talk to him,” Connor encourages. “Hayden always likes meeting new people.”

He doesn’t stick around to see if Bam goes or not, distracted by another face in the crowds.

At first, he can’t quite place the old woman in the security uniform, but then she sighs deeply at the confusion on his face and the name instantly comes back to him. “Sonia?” Connor asks in astonishment. It’s the woman who rescued him and Risa at the OH-10 boundary checkpoint.

“Don’t look so surprised, boy,” Sonia says irritably. “I saved you once before, I assumed I’d have to do it again. Didn’t expect this sort of support, though.”

For once, the perpetual glower on her face lightens into a half smile. “I’m proud, Connor Lassiter. This change is a long time coming.”

“It is,” Connor agrees. Another figure emerging from the crowd calls his attention yet again, and he heads past Sonia to come to a stop in front of one particular cyborg that Connor never thought he’d see again.

At first, all of Connor’s systems go on high alert. Then, before Connor can even ask what in sunfire he’s doing here, Cam holds up a mechanical hand and answers the unspoken question, “I’m here for Risa, not for you. Trust me. She saved my life by getting me off the planet. I need to return the favor, and for real this time. In all honesty. To be completely genuine.”

Connor chuckles. “I think we’re in agreement there.”

He spins in a slow circle, still surprised by all of these faces smiling at him, ready to go to war so that he and every other teenager there can live. When he stops moving, another person has replaced Cam.

Connor’s heart lurches in his throat. “Grace,” he says. “I didn’t know you were coming.”

Grace Skinner taps her fingers together, her expression as practical as ever. “I didn’t know either,” she answers honestly. “I think it’s good, though. That man has to pay for what he did to Argie. He killed my brother. I want to be part of the group that kills him. It’s only fair.”

“That sounds good to me,” Connor admits. “And Grace– I’m sorry. Even still.”

“I know,” she tells him. “Let’s get our revenge, then.”

A careful smile rises to Connor’s lips. This emotion coasting over him in waves isn’t happiness, not exactly, but it feels pretty damn good, too. Looking around at all of these people, the Chancefolk talking to Lev, the crowds of old friends from the Graveyard, the AWOLs and adults who have united under this one banner, Connor realizes that he’s finally got his army. The only thing left, then, is to get his girl.

Dorian Heartland has no idea what’s about to hit him.

unwind tag list: @locke-writes, @reinekes-fox, @sirofreak

all tags list: @wordsarelife

10 notes · View notes

heliads · 6 months

Text

Connor Lassiter Masterlist

angel ex machina - Based on this request: "guardian angel y/n x connor lassiter where in unwind instead of lev saving him after the happy jack explosion its y/n." Guardian Angel AU

Made it Back to You - Based on this request: "Connor is the one who gets taken from the Graveyard by Roberta (for propaganda reasons not because Cam likes him) and Rise goes and saves him?" Oneshot

Find Another Way - Based on this request: "Connor meets a former friend, and he has turned a Clapper and than he tries to persuade him to not blow himself (and the other one) up?" Oneshot

guess that's growing up - Based on this request: "an angsty what-if fic where Connor doesn't go deliver his letter and is there when Nelson finds the antique shop" Oneshot

everything is blue • conrisa space au - Risa Ward escaped a shuttle destined for her certain, painful death. Connor Lassiter ran away from home before it was too late. Lev Calder was kidnapped. All of them were supposed to be dissected for parts, used to advance a declining galaxy, but as of right now, all of them are whole. Life will not stay the same way forever. Completed Series

Love is Stored in the Sonata - Connor Lassiter thought he’d stop hearing the Graveyard’s piano once Risa Ward left. Y/N L/N may prove him wrong. It does not hurt him as much as he thought it would. Far from it, actually. Imagine

#connor lassiter #connor lassiter imagines #connor lassiter x reader #connor lassiter oneshot #connor lassiter masterlist #unwind #unwind imagines #unwind x reader #unwind oneshot #unwind masterlist #unwind dystology #unwind dystology imagines #unwind dystology x reader #unwind dystology oneshot #unwind dystology masterlist #connor lassiter fanfic #unwind fanfic #unwind dystology fanfic

10 notes · View notes

heliads · 6 months

Text

everything is blue • conrisa space au • Chapter Eight: Time Must Pass

series spotify playlist

previous / series masterlist / next

Risa Ward planned on living in the Graveyard as long as she could, but that doesn’t make it any more enjoyable. It’s been what, more than half a standard year by now, if not getting close to a full turn by Centerworld standards, and the days keep stretching out, one by one into hundreds. This is what survival is really like, not one grand and glorious battle but a slow thing, hiding in back corners and watching the time pass as a mute observer. Risa knows this, but it doesn’t make the tedium of it all any easier to stomach.

She tries to be a good sport about it all, though. She won over the other kids working in the med wing by sheer utility. After their shifts let out, they’ll often sit around talking about their old lives. Risa stays quiet most of the time, listening to the others discuss school trips or offworld voyages.

The State Home back on OH-10 didn’t have the budget for any unnecessary expenditures, obviously, so she doesn’t have much to tell them, but it’s still interesting to listen to their stories and imagine what it might have been like to grow up in that way. If her parents hadn’t given her up, if Risa hadn’t gotten a bad draw in the luck of life and actually had a childhood where people wanted her as more than just a sum of parts, maybe she too could have stories to tell about growing up with friends and family who liked having her around.

None of these kids had that, though, not really. In the end, despite their new toys at birthdays, stellar report cards, and everlasting athletic victories, they were all discarded and sentenced to distribution. Nothing off of their highlight reel was ever enough to save them.

In the end, that’s Risa’s saving grace. Maybe she didn’t have a heavenly upbringing, but when people talk about her, they won’t just mention her childhood. The stories will come from what she still has yet to do. Risa doesn’t know where she’s going, if she’ll even make it to eighteen or find a fulfilling career after that, but in the many months since she escaped the StaHo shuttle that should have taken her to a distribution colony, she’s learned that she’s made of far tougher stuff than anyone envisioned, even herself. Risa is a survivor. She can do incredible things when she sets her mind to it.

Until that happy day when she can finally say goodbye to the Graveyard for good, Risa’s only choice is to throw herself into this life before she trades it off for a better one. She’s promoted to head of the medical workers, and utilizes her position effectively to organize the straggling ranks into a well-oiled machine. These kids need her, and she’ll be damned if she’s going to let them down now.

Besides, Risa’s not doing this alone. In addition to the med wing kids, she’s been introduced to the groundsless in the ComBom, and, of course, she’s still got Connor. Although Risa would certainly never admit it to his face, she was secretly afraid that he’d get tired of her after meeting so many other kids in the Graveyard. There are plenty of girls here willing to throw themselves at his feet, but for some reason, Connor has never paid attention to any of them. Risa has witnessed many girls batting their lashes at him, but the second Risa walks into the room, Connor abandons them to be at her side.

It certainly helps her ego, to say the least. Every time it happens, Risa can’t help a bright spark of something from lighting up her spine, making the back of her neck prickle with heat. She’d be lying if she said she didn’t enjoy every jealous look, every pining stare. Connor’s hers. The others can try to intervene every chance they get, but it doesn’t matter. Connor picked her. Risa might not entirely understand why, other than the sheer necessity of having flown a stolen ship together, but she’s quite glad for it.

Truth be told, Risa can’t really explain why she’s chosen Connor so many times either. She does know him better than the others, but only by a few days. She sees the kids from the med wing more often, certainly, but when it’s been a long day and she only wants the sweet relief of having to do nothing at all until lights out, Risa thinks about him and him alone.

There’s a reason for that, of course, but Risa won’t admit it, not even to herself. Now is not the place nor the time. They’re stuck in a rotting cruiser by fate, but even this rusting prison won’t hold them forever. At some point, they’ll both age out of the Graveyard, and then there’s no guarantee that they’ll ever see each other again after that.

It’s best not to think about it, then. Still, when Connor grabs her hand to catch up to her after she gets out of medical duties, when their shoulders brush together as they walk down the hallway, Risa can’t help but think about it. Sometimes, she thinks he must have to think about it too. There’s no way that he doesn’t feel a thing when Risa feels as if she might burn alive from the inside out from the sheer force of trying to hide it.

There was, of course, the one day they came the closest to saying something. Connor had insisted on leading Risa away from the crowds of other distributes. He said he’d found a secret spot while fixing things up that day and he just had to show her. Risa had glimmered with the proud knowledge that she was the first and only person he thought to show, and let him tug her down a few corridors and deep into the twisting web of Graveyard rooms and backrooms.

Connor’s secret place ended up being one of the dozens of storage closets littering the Graveyard. He’d laughed at her disappointed expression when they first stopped in front of it, and asked her for a little faith, Risa, please, after all this time, and carefully unlocked the door. The room was bigger inside than she’d expected, and twisted down into shadowy corners that went so deep she would never find the end just by looking. It had been dark inside, too dark to see, and she’d relied on the firm lock of his hand around hers to know the way.

Risa had thought that she might go on that way forever, stumbling blindly through the shadows with only Connor to guide her. She’s still not good in the shapeless dark, even months after leaving Cleaver’s ship behind, and as they went further inside and it felt as if they might never see light again, Risa’s breath had started to catch in her throat involuntarily.

He must have been listening to her somehow, keeping track of her even in that shifting blackness, because his grip had tightened a little, two of his forefingers straightening to tap twice against her skin. A physical heartbeat, just like when the two of them were back in that never ending night. Despite the pounding of her heart, Risa had felt herself start to relax, the pattern of her breathing starting to even out again.

At last, they’d come to a stop in front of a tall panel of glass facing the outside of the ship. Risa couldn’t fathom why someone had put a window here of all places; maybe it had made more sense in the Graveyard’s past life as a military cruiser, before it had been stolen away from the shipyards and used to hold hundreds of dead children walking. Still, it’s one of the larger ones on the ship, and it hasn’t yet been covered up by decades of cracks or scuffs, making the view even more pristine than usual, and better yet, a secret known only to the two of them. No wonder he liked it so much.

Connor had steered her in front of him so she could get a look. She’d craned her head up to look at his expression first before fully committing to the cosmos outside, so she would know how to properly react. An entire galaxy of stars in front of her, and Risa wanted only to look at Connor. If she didn’t know before, she knew then, the secret she would never tell him until they took away her very lungs. Even with her heart in someone else’s chest, it would still beat for him.

Connor’s expression was soft for once, untouched by the stress of staying alive that has furrowed his brow for as long as she’s known him. His eyes were wide, the light of a thousand stars reflected against the pupils. It’s a view he must see every day, but it still has the capability of rendering him awestruck every time he’s confronted by it. His mouth slackened slightly as he took it all in, and Risa mentally traced the bow of his lips as his expression shifts into one of peace.

He’d looked down at her then, catching her in the act, and grinned. “What do you think? Good, huh?”

“Yeah,” Risa had managed, her head tucked against his collarbone, “Really good.”

Connor had grinned proudly, as if he had single handedly been responsible for dragging each and every constellation here for her to witness. “I know. You’re not paying attention, though.”

She’d laughed at that, finally turning her eyes to the unfolding night sky with no small amount of reluctance. It was a wonderful sight, really, the inky spill of it. Somewhere before her were dozens of star systems, hundreds of planets. In the milky droplets of the galaxy, other ferals were staring back at her. Maybe they know they’re going to die soon, maybe they haven’t figured it out yet. They’ll have time to come to that conclusion, though. We all have time.

Connor’s hands were still loosely on Risa’s hips from where he’d guided her to the window; she wasn’t sure if he remembered they were still there or not, but she couldn’t forget it if she tried. Risa has never associated touch with a good thing before; a punch is skin against skin, but in a terrible way, and pressing cloth to someone’s face to stop it from bleeding is not a sensation she cherishes. This was different, though. This was Connor, and he has always been different. This was a feeling she wanted to chase forever.

It had ended, of course. All moments do. No matter how she stood there, pressed against him in that billowing darkness, wishing upon every star she saw that they could be like that and never leave, they did. Good things come to a close much faster than torment. Risa had fallen asleep that night dreaming of his hands on hers, gently guiding her through the darkness towards panels of infinite light, and for once woken up the next morning to find herself wholly rested.

She had waited for Connor to say something about that day, but any explanations of just why they had spent so long alone together were seemingly unimportant on his end. Risa didn’t dare bring it up for fear of revealing herself for feeling too much, but she thinks about it often, and hopes that he does, too.

Connor has enough to worry about, though. He’s off-put by Roland (who isn’t) and Starkey (again, who wouldn’t be), so if he sees Risa as a dependable constant, who is she to mess with that? He’s been burning the candle at both ends as of late; the ship is having even more troubles than usual, apparently, and of course it’s up to Connor to fix it. Never mind the fact that cruisers like the Graveyard have an expiration date even when they’re just being used to house several hundred groundsless, never mind that asking a handful of teenagers to keep a behemoth like this spaceborne is completely insane, Connor has been assigned a job to do and he’d rather die than let them all down. He’s fiercely protective, her boy. Risa has come to appreciate that about him.

Still, Connor makes time for her and for himself. He hangs out in the ComBom more often, and Risa likes to join him when she can. There’s something about Hayden that makes their smiles come easier. Although some selfish part of Risa will always wish she was the sole one making Connor laugh, she’s grateful to the blond comms master for being able to carry on the task.

They’re all together now, actually, the three of them plus Jeevan and a few other comms kids completing their daily tasks in the background. Technically, Risa doesn’t think she or Connor are supposed to be in there with all the tech just lying around, but Hayden’s not a snitch, and they all have a better time joking around together than trying to force their way through work shifts anyway, so no one ever complains.

Well, not about them. Hayden complains plenty, mainly about the terrible inconvenience that he wasn’t born into the body of an established deity on a resource-lush planet or at least put on this earth with naturally straight teeth so he wouldn’t have to go to the trouble of straightening them just to die. He does it all with a natural charm that leaves Risa laughing more than she ever plans to. There is no disliking Hayden. It’s simply inhuman not to get along well with him, which is a good trait for someone to have when they’re in charge of the cruiser’s connections to the galaxy around them.

So no, Risa doesn’t mind Connor meeting up with her after their shifts end just to head over to Hayden’s little hideaway. Risa swears Hayden both starts working earlier and finishes much later than any of them, but he also gets to sit down all day, so maybe there’s a reason for his extended shifts. Honestly, the long hours might be enforced by Hayden and Hayden alone. The kid’s practically glued to his radio channels and beeping readouts. He’ll probably avoid distribution by accidentally burning the shifting lines into his retinas from staring at them too long, if it wasn’t his plan already.

Hayden’s squinting at a computer readout when they arrive. The tech in the ComBom is incredibly outdated, as Hayden has groused about at length; physical screens instead of holographic readouts, clunky buttons that aren’t even fingerprint locked, and so forth. Hence the old-fashioned 3D monitor in front of Hayden.

“Sorry,” Hayden mutters absentmindedly as he clicks around, “Forgot you two were swinging by. Lost track of time, I was having so much fun.”

Risa slides into one of the available chairs, Connor doing the same by her side. “What sort of fun, if you don’t mind me asking?” She queries.

She probably should know this by now, but a concise explanation of just what Hayden and the rest of the groundless of the ComBom do on a daily basis has eluded her for months now. She’s probably a bad friend for forgetting, but there’s only room in her head for so much, and Risa finds it more useful to remember how to set a bone than the results of random button-mashing up here.

Hayden, thankfully, doesn’t point this out. He’s got a sort of quiet tact that Risa has come to appreciate. He has a knack for sensing when certain topics are off-limits or what bad habits shouldn’t be a source of teasing. Although he’ll loudly proclaim to anyone around that he’s one hundred percent incorrigible, as evidenced by the removal of his grounds license, Hayden’s still very careful when he wants to be.

“I’m monitoring radio waves,” Hayden says, leaning back in his chair so she and Connor can get a better look, “All sorts of stuff is sent out in space. Most passengers have no idea that we can pick up their comms channels even lightyears away from where they were sent. The signals just keep bouncing off of stars, and we can collect them sooner or later.”

Risa nods. “What are you listening to now? Classic pop hits of the 3000s?”

Hayden pulls a face. “That would liven things up around here, certainly. I know Jeevan would love it if I started breaking out into song.”

Across the room, Jeevan lets out a trademark exasperated groan. “I hear enough of your singing thanks to your little radio show. I know you insisted on picking a theme song to end your broadcasts, but just because it’s stuck in your head doesn’t mean you have to hum it until it’s stuck in ours, too.”

“What’s yours is mine,” Hayden says affectionately. “Hey, maybe I’ll get distributed and you can permanently have what’s stuck in my head. Every time that song plays in your mind, you can always blame it on my faulty cerebral tissue. Consider it a parting gift from me to you.”

“Just as pleasant as always, Hayden,” Connor chides, but he’s grinning. Risa too. Usually, she doesn’t find distribution jokes all that funny, but among the aptly nicknamed Deadmen, gallows humor is kind of the way to go.

“Besides, my radio broadcasts are nothing to bat an eye at,” Hayden carries on. “I get a dependable four listeners every time, and I’m certain that no more than half of them are Juvey-cops trying to find my location. They’re absolutely mad for my music taste, of that you can be certain.”

Risa’s eyes widen. “You’ve got Juvey-cops listening to your show? Hayden, what if they track us?”

The last thing they need is someone tracing Hayden’s broadcast, but the blond doesn’t seem that concerned. “They’ve got no chance of it. We’ve whipped up the best signal mufflers this side of the galaxy can offer. Trust me, if they could hack it, they would have found us months ago, but they can’t get through. All they can do is hang onto my every word in the hopes that I’ll give something away, but I’d never kiss and tell about the Graveyard.”

Connor doesn’t seem convinced. “So if you can’t give any location information because the Juveys are listening, then what’s the point? Are there groundsless across the galaxy who just can’t get enough of your motivational speaking?”

Hayden points a finger at him. “Obviously yes, but there’s more to Radio Free Hayden than just my overwhelming charm. The radio show provides ways to stay alive. Clues. I have a remote beacon they can signal if they need to be picked up, that’s how we’ve found a lot of rogue distributes recently. We see them, but they can’t see us. And more than that, it gives them hope. The Collective makes it seem like there’s nothing out there. I make sure that no one believes that.”

Despite Hayden’s normally cavalier attitude, a fervent light begins to shine in his eyes as he says it. He truly believes that his show can do some good, and even though they’d all been making fun of him earlier, it’s hard not to lean in and want to hear more.

“What kind of hope?” Risa asks. Her voice drops closer to an awed whisper than she’d really meant, but it seemed to suit the mood.

Hayden grins, entranced by the sheer idea of it. “It means there’s someone else out there than just the Collective. They can’t stand the thought of it. They went out of their way to shut down resistance, but they can’t stamp out every pocket of it.”

Hayden’s voice takes on a darker tone. “Suns know they tried, though. All of humanity came from just one planet, and now we’re on all of them. Something happened to eliminate whatever came before us, but they went too far.”

Risa shudders. This is something that’s plagued her before. How do you get rid of hundreds of civilizations across the galaxy? Some of the worlds the old-Earth explorers discovered were uninhabited, yes, but not all of them. The Collective killed off their opposition, but they didn’t just kill the inhabitants. They killed everything.

There are no living things left in the galaxy, not anymore. All that’s left are replicants, synth-plants and lab-grown animals. You can blame the mass extinction on anything you like, but in the end, the truth is this: we choked out life itself because we were so desperate to grow that we forgot to leave space for everything else. Every flora must be grown by hand. Every fauna must be cloned. It’s an exhaustive cycle, and extraordinarily inefficient. Hence the need to strip ferals of their parts so any leftover bit of living matter can be injected back into the dying galaxy.

Hayden’s gaze has gone cold. “It’s not just the Collective we’re fighting, though. One government can’t hold back the population of the entire galaxy forever. Luckily for them, they’re backed by the richest people in all the worlds, and they had to go make the Proactive Citizenry.”

Connor’s expression flickers over with distrust. “I hate those guys. They used to send representatives out to my system every now and then to warn us against misbehaving. It happened like once a year or something, they’d leer at us about how our eyes would end up in someone else’s sockets if we didn’t keep our grades up.”

Risa nods in assent. The Proactive Citizenry may have started out as a small grassroots organization, but it’s become severely inflated over time, bloated with the weight of its own moral superiority. Turns out, all it takes are a hundred or so extremely powerful donors, and you can do just about anything. Distribution might have disappeared on its own within a few decades of its creation, but the PC made sure that would never happen. Whenever distribution rates start to plummet, the PC steps in with several large donations, spreading their message far and wide across the galaxy. All it took was one man, one Dorian Heartland, to start it up around the same time humanity started exploring space centuries ago, and his gory machine has kept them all in check ever since.

Risa can never be sure why in sunfire they feel the need to do it. All the big donors in the Proactive Citizenry are well above the age of distribution, obviously, so they’ll only benefit from having new skin and organs to pass around, but certainly some of them should have gained a conscience after all this time. Instead, they pass on their ideals from generation to generation, and the wheels of lost flesh keep turning.

They’ve fine-tuned their message over the years, turning the public focus away from the kids losing their lives to the galaxy who needs all the help it can get. That’s how the PC makes money, supposedly, by turning raw distributed matter into life again. Recycling. Rejuvenation. A redistribution of creation into the ecosystems that need it.

Despite the moral overtones, it’s impossible to ignore that their grand society is built on blood. Risa, for one, does not intend to forget it anytime soon. However, she’s only one girl without even a grounds license to stand on. How can anyone fight the richest people in the galaxy? How can anyone take on a system like that and walk away with the victory?

Hayden must be thinking the same thing, because he lets out a harsh sigh before continuing on. “That’s what I’m trying to do, at least. If someone can stand up against the PC, maybe it’ll have to be me. I’m the only one with the means of contacting anyone outside of this cruiser, anyway.”

Connor nods, half in his own world. “The Admiral knows about your little talk show?”

Hayden pulls a face that makes it quite clear what he thinks about the Admiral, but agrees. “Yeah, he knows. I may like the sound of my own voice more than my handful of listeners, but I wanted to make sure it was actually safe. Even so, he was pretty harsh about it. All of the comms systems have to be locked down every night, and no one except the ComBom workers are allowed inside here. Except for you two, of course, but I make an exception for my fans. It’s just not worth the risk of anyone else getting their hands on this stuff.”

Risa shudders. “It’s dangerous, is what it is. All it takes is one kid wandering in here and we could send out a signal the PC could pick up in no time. Then we’d have an entire army of Juvey-cops on our tail, and stars know the Graveyard is in no condition to fight or fly.”

A shuffling sound outside the door makes all three of them startle. The door’s half open– environmental controls have been shoddy as of late, despite Connor and the other engineers working to fix the issue, so anything to encourage air flow is a must– and although she can’t see anything in the glimpse of the corridor outside, Risa swears she heard something.

Jeevan grimaces, temporarily glancing up from his work to aim a glare at the door. “Gotta be a runner. Man, those starspawn piss me off. Always strutting around like they’re so important just because their jobs let them hear everyone’s gossip.”

Hayden chuckles. “You’re just bitter because one of them caught you admiring your reflection in one of the polished viewports and told half the ship. Anyway, Risa, I wouldn’t worry about the odds of our discovery much more than usual. Like I said, I’ve been doing this a while, and nothing has happened.”

“Nothing has happened yet,” Connor clarifies.

Risa leans back in her chair, lost in thought. She’s always known that their situation in the Graveyard was precarious– put a couple hundred runaway distributes anywhere and you’re going to have people looking for you, obviously, but this puts things in an entirely different light. Hayden made it seem like the Juveys are actively listening in, just waiting for one of them to slip up and send out a tracer they can’t pull back. It’s easy to forget that the rest of the world exists when she only ever sees her friends on one behemoth of a star cruiser, but the galaxy isn’t as inclined to return the favor. All it takes is one mistake, and they’re all gone. All of this work, running and hiding and fighting, and it would be for nothing.

Connor senses her paranoia, and casually drapes his right hand over the arm of his chair so he can tap twice against her left forearm. It calms her down immediately, like she’s some kind of sleeper soldier who can only be activated by him. Hayden watches this happen with a faintly bemused expression, but says nothing.

“No one’s finding us, Risa,” Connor says. “How could they?”

unwind tag list: @schroedingers-kater, @sirofreak, @locke-writes

all tags list: @wordsarelife

7 notes · View notes

heliads · 5 months

Text

everything is blue • conrisa space au • Chapter Fourteen: Dancing in the Moonlight

series spotify playlist

previous / series masterlist / next

Risa isn’t sure how long this is going to last, but stars, she hopes this sort of feeling sticks around forever. She hasn’t been happy like this– effortlessly, unchangingly happy– in a very long time. Risa was happy in the Graveyard, of course, they all were; they were groundsless who weren’t dead yet, who wouldn’t be? There was always a slim undercurrent of fear running through every one of their conversations, though, the knowledge that even the brightest moments could be swiftly brought down by their eventual discovery.

Now that trap has been sprung, yet Risa still managed to make it out alive. She’s still with Connor despite no longer being in that safe haven. They might be flying straight towards their deaths, but for right now, they are together, together and happy. The little victories are worth twice the big ones, Risa has learned that since she ran away. This one feels like it might be worth her whole life.

That, perhaps, is why she’s okay with the fate that awaits her on the distribution colony. Risa doesn’t want to die, obviously, and she will be fighting tooth and nail to keep herself intact even while she’s breaking her friends out of the colony, but she can take this risk because she trusts Connor with her life. Before this, Risa would have stayed on the ship and never meddled with a danger like this. If she’s got Connor, though, Risa can do anything. Even beat the odds by dragging a small army of Deadmen out of their looming distributions.

Risa never thought of herself as a hero. No one is, not here, not in these worlds. When she was escaping the StaHo shuttle that should have taken her to a similar harvest colony, Risa didn’t stop to usher any of the other kids out. When she and Connor were running through the collapsing corridors of the conquered Graveyard, they didn’t help any distributes they saw. In a survival setting, you have to put yourself first.

Now, though, they finally have the chance to do something good, something that won’t just directly benefit them. There is, of course, the looming threat that the runaways Connor ran into could cancel his fake grounds license, but both of them know that’s not the real reason they’re doing this. Over the course of that year spent in the Graveyard, they made friends, true friends. They can’t simply abandon those friends to their fates just because she and Connor have already gotten themselves out of trouble.

Thus, they’re shipping out to a distribution colony to spare as many kids as they can from dissection. It took a little while to find out the right place to go– the amount of distribution colonies in the galaxy is sickeningly high, even higher than Risa was expecting– but eventually they stumbled across a few mentions of a sudden mass influx of distributes into a particular colony not far from the Graveyard and they knew they had their target.

Now all that’s left to do is to pass the time until they get there at last. Stars, she can’t imagine what it’s going to be like when they touch down. The guards will see some nice ship on their scanners and assume it’s, like, a Centerworld official or something come to see the progress of that particular harvest colony’s child dismemberment systems. They’ll all file up to receive their guests and then two teenagers will file out, an escaped StaHo ward and the Akron AWOL.

Talk about a surprise. Nothing about this arrival will be good by Centerworld standards. Imagine for a moment that you work for a harvest colony, that you’ve already thrown away enough of your morals to work for a harvest colony, and one day you get visitors. Two visitors exactly, two visitors that are, in fact, Deadmen, and their ship– their ship, it’s called the Unwind.

Suns, Risa had to practically force that little bit of information out of Connor. He’d been hesitating to tell her the name of the ship like he’s been hesitating to tell her literally everything else, probably out of fear of her judgment. And why shouldn’t she judge? Unwinding is the derogatory term for distribution. Only Unwinds ever use it, because why waste breath on the proper way to call a process designed to end your life in the most horrific way possible? Connor naming his ship, the guardian angel of those fleeing distribution everywhere, after a revolting slang term only used by the damned– Risa can admit it’s something. Stupid or brave, she’s not sure yet. But it’s something.

Risa is wandering around the ship as she is prone to do, taking in every corner and crevice lest she forget what it was like to briefly rule every square inch around her. She’ll miss this later, maybe, having all the open area to herself, knowing that the only other souls aboard were her and Connor, or maybe what she’ll long for most of all was still being alive and knowing the heart beating in her chest was her own.

Regardless, Risa is happy for it. The closer she meanders towards the nav center, the more aware she becomes of a distant sound. It starts off quiet, gradually growing louder as she creeps closer. It’s a gentle rhythm, an occasional melody. The pianist in her simply has to investigate. Eventually, she pokes her head through the door of the nav room to discover Connor messing around with one of the many instrument panels. Each time he presses a button or directs one of the many holodecks in front of him, speakers embedded somewhere in the floors and ceiling change their tune from happy to sad to anything that Connor’s heart desires.

He looks up when he sees her, grinning with excitement. “Did you know they’ve got music in this thing? Tons of songs, old and new. Crazy.”

Risa lets out a slow, disbelieving laugh. Although it sounds insane, she genuinely cannot remember the last time she listened to something like music. Every now and then, Hayden was able to intercept a signal or two with radio frequencies bearing songs, but they were always a little too glitchy or staticky to fully enjoy. They pretended otherwise, of course, anything can pass for greatness in the Graveyard, but they all knew it wasn’t quite the best. What Connor’s playing is perfectly crisp, though, every beat on time, every note in tune. As a musician, albeit a former one, it makes Risa’s heart soar.

“What songs do they have?” She asks, drawing closer so she can check it out.

“Anything,” Connor says, “Come on, let’s pick one.”

They scroll through aimlessly, playing a few seconds of this track or that so they can giggle at the absurd melodies. Rich people have terrible taste. At last, Connor gasps in delight and points at one song title in particular.

“What’s that one? No, it can’t be– Dancing in the Moonlight?”

Risa cocks her head curiously at him. “Do you know it? It looks old.”

“It’s super old,” he says, smiling fondly at some memory or inner thought, “It reminds me of one of my old teachers in school, though. She used to play it on the days I didn’t skip class. Or maybe she played it all of the days, I just didn’t know it because I skipped.”

Risa laughs at that. “Come on, then. Play it. We’ll see if it’s good enough to stay in school.”

Connor rolls his eyes, but he does as told and queues the song. A few seconds later, it starts to play, billowing around them in clear, rolling measures. She taps her foot a little, trying to sense the beat. Connor grins at her, stepping side to side in exaggerated motions.

Risa grins. “Just as good as you remember?”

“Even better,” Connor tells her. “Come on, dance with me.”

They start to move side by side together. Risa spins a little, just because she can. When she turns back around, Connor is beaming ear to ear. On a whim, she grabs Connor’s left hand with her right, placing his other hand on the small of her back. Two teenagers, swaying together to an upbeat song. It’s been done a million times before all across the galaxy but it still feels like such a startling and sweet surprise for each new couple. Every pair of young souls feels as if they’ve come up with something extraordinary. And, for them, it is.

“Are we waltzing?” Connor asks, wiggling his eyebrows a little to be annoying.

“We are,” Risa decides. “Come on, it’s easy. Box step. Step forward, then to the side, then back again. Simple.”

“Simple,” Connor agrees. She expects to have to lead him a little more, but his steps are easy and assured, and Risa realizes a little too late–

“You know how to do this, don’t you?” She asks.

“A little,” he admits, but he keeps dancing with her anyway. “My parents used to dance like that. I learned along by watching them. Figured it might come in handy sometime. You know, for picking up girls like I do all the time,” he says, flashing Risa an obvious, terrible wink. She laughs anyway and lets him spin her.

This time, when she comes back from the twirl, he’s a little too strong and she ends up closer to him than expected. To catch herself, Risa presses a hand against his chest, but she forgets to pull it away again. She can feel his heartbeat through his shirt and skin. They stop moving, just breathing together there, in and out. Risa is certain that he must sense the way her pulse is pounding.

“Risa,” he whispers.

She doesn’t pull away. His hand slackens from the small of her back, moving slowly to her waist. He isn’t pushing her away, but he’s giving her an opportunity to leave, if she wants it. Risa doesn’t want it. She only wants him.

She looks up at him. Connor’s eyes are half-lidded, and meet hers as if on the other side of an unfathomable distance. Risa doesn’t think she could say half what she wants to right now, doesn’t even know if she could fully think it, so all she can do is look back at him and hope he understands.

Connor has always understood.

Even now. Even when it’s the one boundary they have yet to cross.

He crosses it. She meets him halfway.

The kiss is a long time coming, Risa thinks. It’s the product of more than a year of endless pining and secrets kept for the benefit of a friendship both of them were scared to lose. However, it turns out there’s something far more valuable than a perpetual friendship, and that is the love that both of them have been hiding behind half-closed doors for almost as long as they’ve known each other. Risa doesn’t know how long Connor has been holding back, but it must have been almost as long as her.

Connor pulls back slightly, tilting his head down so the crown of his head touches her forehead. “Y’know,” he says absentmindedly, “You could have told me you liked me any time back in the Graveyard. You didn’t have to wait until we were about to storm a harvest colony to let me know.”

Risa laughs quietly. “You could have told me, too. Besides, I thought you liked it when I had a flair for drama.”

“I do,” Connor smiles, and kisses her again to prove it. It is just as exhilarating and earth-shattering as the first time. Risa wonders if each and every kiss will sweep her off her feet like this, and immediately wants to test that theory again and again, just to make sure.

Just as Risa begins to think that she might want this forever, an alarm goes off, the piercing klaxon rattling off of the fine walls of the spacecraft. She flinches against Connor’s lips, and he draws back at once.

“That’s the alarm I set to warn me when we were within an hour’s distance of the colony,” he whispers in a daze. His lips are swollen from the kiss, his pupils shot, but the look on his face is nothing short of horror, no sweetness of new love there. “We’re close. It’s coming up on us now.”

Risa draws in a sharp breath. “I thought we had more time.”

Connor looks at her, and the expression on his face is nothing short of heartbreaking. “So did I.”

Is that not what they have always wanted, time? Just when they finally find each other again, when they finally manage to confess the truth that’s been weighing on both of them all of this time, they are interrupted. Risa has no idea if they will survive this. She can hope, of course, but hope is a feeble thing to rest one’s strength on. Hope will always disappear when you need it the most. Hope is no excuse for reality.

Slowly, they make their way to the cockpit. Along the way, they make final preparations to hold a host of newly free distributes. Risa doesn’t ask him if he thinks they’ll survive this, and Connor pretends as if they will. When the colony comes into view, Risa almost doesn’t want to look. She realizes belatedly that this might be one of her last sights, though, so she forces her eyes open again, and what she sees is empty, unearthly stillness.

She tilts her head to the side, considering it. “I don’t see a whole lot of movement on the surface.”

Connor frowns. “Well, maybe they’re keeping all of the kids inside? I mean, they’re probably not letting them run around all the time. Wouldn’t want one of their prisoners to accidentally break a leg or something and ruin their profits.”

His tone is bitter. Risa can’t help but match it. “I don’t even see lights. Surely they want them to be healthy, right? They wouldn’t keep them in total darkness.”

Connor leans forward to get a better look, then points out one particular part of the harvest colony. “No, look over there. That’s light, right?”

Risa peers at it, then nods. “Faint, but yeah, it is. Maybe we angle towards that?”

Connor nods in agreement, manipulating the controls to accordingly change their trajectory. They stand in silent union, hands interlocked, watching the distribution colony loom ever closer. Risa waits for some alarm to be triggered, some sentry ship to be sent after them, but nothing happens.

“I don’t like this,” she says uneasily. “They should have seen us by now.”

“We’ve got good cloaking technology,” Connor mentions hesitantly. “Could be that their scanners just haven’t picked us up yet. To be honest, the fewer confrontations, the better. The element of surprise is best when it’s on our side.”

Risa shrugs, accepting this. Sure, she’s glad not to be fired on immediately, but something about this whole affair still seems off somehow. She can’t help this uncanny sense that something is terribly wrong, and more so than just the fact that they’re taking a crazy risk.

“Five minutes to landing,” Connor announces. “Strap in. I’ll try for a clean landing, but I’m still not an ace pilot yet.”

“You’re excellent at bedside manner, though,” Risa quips.

Connor glances up just long enough to shoot her a wry grin before returning to his controls. Risa takes a seat, buckling herself in just in case. To Connor’s credit, his landing is quite smooth. The second the ships start moving, they’re instantly hurrying to the escape hatch. They won’t have long to make this work, they’ve got to make every second count. Connor tosses Risa a tranq gun then takes one for himself. She flashes him a smile right before they open the hatch.

“We can do this,” she tells him. “We’re getting out.”

“We’re getting out,” Connor agrees, and opens up the hatch. Risa has no idea if they’re lying or not. She supposes she’ll find out soon enough.

They run out as quickly as they can. Risa can see the tower of a security station not far off, which isn’t great. As they hurry towards the doors leading towards the heart of the harvest colony center, Risa waits for Juvey-cops to run out and start shooting at them. Maybe a colony like this, with this many distributes all waiting for their end, would even have hired private soldiers, just in case.

Still, nobody comes. No klaxons blare even despite the obvious intrusion. Risa exchanges a nervous glance with Connor. “Someone should have noticed by now,” she whispers.

Connor nods his agreement. They arrive at the tall gate leading to the center. Connor reaches towards the control panel, but, as it turns out, he doesn’t have to. It’s already been shot to pieces, a small ribbon of smoke rising from the destroyed controls. The doors are cracked open; Connor kicks one open and it falls to the ground completely, the resulting clang echoing off of empty walls. They freeze, but no one comes.

Connor moves to go inside, but Risa holds out an arm to stop him. “Do you smell that?” She asks.

He pauses, then frowns. “Smells like smoke. A lot of it.”

A terrible idea is occurring to Risa. “You know the light you saw when we were nearing the colony? What if it wasn’t the light of a building?”

Connor turns back to her, ignoring the empty doorway behind him. It won’t matter, actually. No one will come to kill him, because no one is here at all. “What if it wasn’t a light?” She repeats, “What if it was a fire? A fire that consumed everything here?”

Connor’s eyes widen. He turns back to the doorway and carefully steps through. Risa joins him a heartbeat later, and together they stare at the empty grounds. Bullet holes riddle the walls, the windows, the ground beneath their feet. Risa hears no sounds save for the wind whistling through holes in the complex and her own harsh breathing.

“Connor,” she says unsteadily, “I think everyone here is gone.”

unwind tag list: @reinekes-fox, @sirofreak, @locke-writes

all tags list: @wordsarelife

6 notes · View notes