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heliads · 7 months

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

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.

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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

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heliads · 8 months

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

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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?”

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heliads · 7 months

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

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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

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heliads · 7 months

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

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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

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heliads · 7 months

Text

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

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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

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heliads · 8 months

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

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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

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heliads · 6 months

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

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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

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heliads · 4 months

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everything is blue • conrisa space au • Chapter Seventeen: Returning the Favor

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Connor Lassiter stares at Death. Death stares back at Connor Lassiter.

Dorian Heartland is not an easy man to look at. Connor doesn’t like doing it, but taking his eyes off of this infernal creator for even one moment could offer Heartland a chance to take Connor’s pupils for his own, so he refuses to budge his gaze even one millimeter.

All this does, though, is to give Connor a good look at everything that makes Heartland so horrifically wrong. He can see in the stiffness of Risa’s posture, the flightiness of her breath, that she’s caught on to who this is too, although by this point that would almost be impossible to avoid. Dorian Heartland is like no other man Connor has ever met before, though that might be because Dorian Heartland is no longer made up of any of his original birth parts, nor the secondary parts that replaced him, nor the ones that swapped him out after that. Connor can’t even begin to fathom what iteration of lungs he must have inside someone else’s ribcage– is the fourth generation of blood pumping through his veins, perhaps? The fifth?

Connor wonders what parts Heartland will take from Connor as some sort of grisly hunting trophy. The eyes, maybe. Everyone likes the eyes. Snatching his heart would be a particularly satisfying touch, too. If Connor wasn’t so disgusted by the idea of harvesting someone else’s bits and pieces to keep himself intact, maybe he, too, could see the allure in holding Heartland’s brain in his head, clenching the pink matter between his knuckles and knowing that someone else’s entire life and soul was in his hands.

Well. His and Roland’s. Connor is no better than this grave robber. Even though the switching out of arms was unintentional, Connor still bears the limb and tattoo of another teenager. Does that make him any closer to Heartland? Will it spare him from Heartland’s punishment? No and no, but it does paint a rather more confusing portrait. It would be easier if Connor were totally blameless, of course, but no one in this galaxy ever is. The same chain that breaks our wrists will help us up one day, and then it will kill our best friend and worst enemy in turn. All Connor can do is hope to stay alive, but even now, that seems like one last possibility that’s slipped out of his reach.

Heartland smiles indulgently, taking in the startled looks on their faces. “Now, now. Don’t give yourselves an aneurysm trying to figure out how I tracked you down. I need all of your brain matter to be as functional as possible. You won’t believe the number of potential buyers who have been contacting me in the hopes of getting a piece from the two of you.”

“I’m trying extra hard now,” Connor says dryly.

Heartland has the nerve to roll his eyes like a petulant teenager. Connor wonders if that motion is uniquely Dorian, or if it’s from an actual AWOL who’s still not past his rebellious teenager phase even if he’s landed in the body of someone like Heartland. Regardless, the sudden movement makes Heartland’s whole face bulge unevenly as different sections of skin resist tension with varying rates of success, old and young parts making themselves known. For a moment, Connor swears he can see every piece of Heartland for what it is, can map every seam and stitch, and then the man’s face returns to neutral again and the effect is undone.

“Don’t be sulky, Connor, it does you no good.” Heartland admonishes him.

Connor folds his arms across his chest. “Oh, so you’re going to lecture me before you rip off my limbs? How charitable of you.”

“I’m not ripping off your limbs, that would be my expert team of surgeons,” Heartland clarifies. “Besides, ripping is entirely too gory of a description. Distribution is a perfectly reasonable procedure. The galaxy has ensured that it’s completely scientific, with as little pain to the distributes as possible. You simply must get your mind out of the gutter. Speak elegantly or don’t speak at all, Connor. I don’t want that tongue to be corrupted more than necessary.”

Beside him, Risa narrows her eyes at the man. “Was that little flower bed over there produced in the name of elegant speech, or did you just want an excuse for other people to talk about unwinding without putting words in your mouth?”

She jerks her chin towards a display somewhere beyond them. Connor thinks he remembers her coming from that direction when she’d run over to tell him that they had been caught. He wishes fleetingly that he had been closer, that he’d never suggested splitting up at all, that they had just put themselves first like every other soul in the galaxy seems wont to do, but the dreams evaporate in time, leaving him only the stark reality of having been caught in the pointless effort of trying to save lives.

Heartland chuckles, evidently remembering what Risa’s talking about. “Oh yes, the flowers. The last band of upstarts had the same reaction. I love it when we’re all on one page.”

Connor frowns, wondering if some other group of runaway unwinds had made it here before them to be the ‘band of upstarts’ Heartland referred to. He hadn’t seen anyone in the airspace above them when he landed, and certainly Connor would have heard if someone sprung Heartland’s trap a few standard hours ago, but then it occurs to him that Heartland isn’t mentioning events earlier that day at all.

No, Heartland is recollecting the last group of kids who tried to act as heroes for the galaxy. Connor hasn’t heard of any in a while, but even without the Collective’s propensity for propaganda whitewashing everything into blank silence, the last batch of would-be saviors would have been around decades ago. Heartland could be referring to infinite rounds of kids who didn’t want to die, all stretching back for centuries.

How many unwinds have stood in this exact spot? How many generations of children have tried to kill off Heartland or his policies but failed? Connor and Risa are far from the first, nor, judging by the fact that they’ve already been caught, will they be the last. This cycle will go on forever, as surely as a thousand suns rise and set across the galaxy, as certainly as the never ending rotation of fresh organs from the body of a child into the frame of an adult. Teenagers will rise out of obscurity, challenge the notion that the young should die for the wastefulness of the old, and then they will be struck down all because one man has cheated them of their last resource: time.

Of course Dorian Heartland wins every round. He has the luxury of knowing the full story every time. Heartland knows how the rebellions start, so he can crush them in their infancy. He knows how the last stragglers turn into martyrs, so he can lay expert traps and avoid their attempts to save their friends. Starkey’s little attack may have caught him off-guard, and Connor may have been able to run from him once, but now Heartland has had time to consider their strategies and plan accordingly. Dozens of Connors have tried to make a stand, and Heartland has killed them every time. What is Connor now but one more replacement? Heartland is swapping out another one of his parts: the rebel, the fighter, the loose end in his plans. He’s done it before. He’ll do it again.

Connor feels his stomach roll, low and heavy. He wants to scream and scream until the sickness leaves his body and goes into Heartland, until Dorian Heartland of old-Earth and always having enough remembers what it’s like to crave survival more than anything else.

Instead, he rocks back and forth on his heels twice, trying to force himself to stay under control. He’s got to stall so he has time to plan. Connor can hear slight rustling on the paths surrounding them. The other park visitors are conspicuously not looking their way, leading him to believe that they’ve been planted here to alert Heartland to their eventual presence without tipping off Connor and Risa that anything was wrong. That means everyone here will try to stop them if they run, plus more soldiers are likely on the way. There’s a clear opening somewhere behind Heartland, a path out of the park and into the surrounding streets, but they’d have to get past Heartland first.

In order to give himself an opportunity to conjure up an escape plan, though, Connor needs what he has always lacked: more time. He stares at Heartland, and asks, “How did you find us, then? Did you put a tracker in my blood while you had me in your hospital?”

Heartland scoffs. “And risk damaging the product like that? Certainly not. I will admit, you had me worried when you threw yourself from the window, but as it turns out, I didn’t have to worry. You wanted yourself intact as much as I did.”

Risa scowls protectively. “Don’t act as if you cared about his survival. You just want his pieces.”

Heartland turns to her with an affronted stare. Immediately, Connor wants to say something stupid so the man will focus on him instead. Nothing good comes of Heartland’s gaze, Connor can say that for certain.

“Oh, and you care so much more? Risa Megan Ward, abandoned to a State Home when you were a child. You value the Akron AWOL more than I do? Not just because his survival ensures that you’ll end up alive?”

Risa meets his gaze coolly. “You’re wrong,” she says simply. “I don’t have to prove a damn thing to you. Connor trusts me and I trust him.”

Her expression is completely certain, but Connor swears he still sees her relax microscopically when he adds on, “You can’t turn us against each other, Heartland. Save your tricks for someone who cares.”

Heartland just shrugs. “You’d be surprised how many battle-scarred partners in survival will abandon each other for the opportunity to live. It’s worked before.”

Not for us, Connor thinks decisively. Like every other AWOL before him, he believes at once that the two of them will be the first to actually make it work.

Dorian Heartland ignores this, unaware or perhaps simply not caring that yet another round of teenagers believes that they can save themselves. He’s seen it often enough that it probably doesn’t even register. “No, Connor, I couldn’t track you. I simply had to lay a trap. I was going to ransom your friends from the Graveyard so you’d come to me, but you beat me to it.”

Connor realizes he’s referring to the massacre at the harvest colony. “That wasn’t us,” he blurts out before registering belatedly that he probably shouldn’t give away more than Heartland expressly tells him.

Heartland, however, doesn’t seem surprised by this. “Oh, I know. My men arrived perhaps a few standard hours after you left. They checked the security holos and saw both the attack and your shocked reaction. I must admit, however, that I already guessed it wasn’t you. You two didn’t seem the type for tasteless bloodshed.”

“As opposed to the tasteful bloodshed of unwinding?” Connor fires back. He can see Risa eyeing the exits as well. She’s always been good at planning; so long as he keeps Heartland talking, he gives her more chances to save them. If there’s one thing Connor can do, though, it’s talk. This is fine. It has to be.

Heartland sighs. “You must let go of this unnatural fear of yours, Connor,” he chides. “You don’t run around screaming at cosmic pilots for transcending humanity by exposing people to the horrors of spaceflight, do you? Even though the risks from accidentally entering a wormhole or dying star are far more gruesome than a clinical distribution.”

Connor stares at him, bewildered. “Those aren’t even remotely the same thing. Get better metaphors.”

“If you insist,” Heartland remarks, looking vexingly unbothered by this, “I’ll tell my surgeons to have my next cranial implant come from a writer or a poet. Will that make you feel better?”

Connor wants to tell Heartland in no uncertain terms that something that would make him feel better would involve Connor’s fist going somewhere very nonclinical indeed, but Risa places a gentle hand on his arm, a quiet reminder to cool it, and he manages to swallow back the anger before it consumes him entirely.

“So,” Connor says, fighting the urge to scream, “The trap. It didn’t work.”

Heartland arches a brow dubiously. “Of course it did. You’re here.”

Connor shakes his head, exasperated yet again by the man’s wording. “No, no. The trap with the Graveyard kids. We’re going chronologically. It failed because everyone in the colony was taken.”

“Did it?” Heartland remarks. “Because I still have all of my distributes back with me.”

Too late, Connor realizes that he’s misread the situation again. “Starkey already came back here,” he whispers quietly. “You got them back.”

“Of course I did,” Heartland says mildly. “He fell for the same lie you did. Funny, no matter the technique– blood or bargaining– both of you dropped all of your good sense the moment you heard there were distributes about to die.”

Risa lets out a slow gasp. “You have everybody?”

Strangely enough, Heartland wavers slightly before he answers. “Yes.”

“No,” Connor guesses. “You don’t. Someone escaped. He’s got a big group, someone could have slipped through the cracks.”

At the bright flash of warning in Heartland’s eyes, Connor knows he’s struck it right. Risa grins. “Starkey got away didn’t he? Little starspawn always puts himself first.”

Heartland’s mood has gone sour, and when he starts to move forward, Connor knows that the time for monologuing is over. “It doesn’t matter. He can’t run far. I have you, I have his supporters. All of you will be in pieces by the end of the week. A few hours in between captures makes no difference to me.”

Connor grabs Risa’s hand, throwing himself forward towards the gap he’d seen earlier. Immediately, a few passersby try to block their passage, but they’re both running now, as fast as they can. Connor knocks into somebody as he hurtles back through the park, but he doesn’t check to see who it was. Anyone who isn’t Risa is an enemy now, and anyone in their path will be trampled on their way to freedom.

Something whistles over Connor’s shoulder and buries itself in a nearby synth-hedge. He recognizes the slim dart as he passes, calling out to Risa in between gasps for air, “They’re shooting tranqs at us! Be careful.”

“Always am,” Risa growls under her breath, pulling him around a tight corner.

The tall gate marking the entrance of the park is within sight, and Connor puts on an extra burst of speed, willing them to get there. They can lose the guards in the streets if they have to, but right now, with everyone so close behind them, there’s no way they could last forever.

As he thinks this, Connor hears a tranq gun fire somewhere behind them, plus the whistle as the dart flies through the air. A quiet thunk sounds, and since Connor can’t feel any pain, he assumes it’s another miss, right up until the point when Risa stumbles and starts to fall.

Immediately, he starts to panic. Connor catches her before she hits the ground. As he helps her up, his hands brush the dart sticking out of her shoulder. “No,” he mutters urgently. Connor needs Risa to be able to run. It’ll be tricky to carry her unconscious body as he sprints through the city, trying to shake the Juvey-cops, but Connor has made the last year or so banking on similar impossibilities. For Risa, he might as well stop distribution altogether while he’s at it.

Clutching Risa to him, Connor stumbles through the gate. They’ll get out, they have to. Risa’s body slides from his arms the second before he’s past the twin iron bar doors, though. Already over the threshold, he spins around to retrieve her, but the doors of the gate slam shut in his face. Belatedly, he realizes that Risa is the one who pulled herself free, and it is Risa now who is locking the gate between the two of them, making sure that no one else can get out. More specifically, she is ensuring that Connor cannot get her back.

Connor tugs desperately at the metal bars of the gate, but they don’t budge. Risa has grabbed a synth-vine from the ground and is knotting it around the handles, taking extra precautions to avoid them opening.

“No!” He screams, voice raw. “Don’t you do this to me, Risa. Don’t you leave me. You promised.”

Connor feels like a child begging for something he can’t have. You promised. But they had promised, both of them, they’d sworn they’d either make it out of this alive or die together. Yet here Risa is now, locking herself and the Juveys on the other side of a wall from him.

Risa tries to answer, but already, her words are slurring, her movements impeded as the tranq works its way through her system. “You– you can’tttt– get both of us outt,” she tells him. “Save yoursellllfff, Connnnnnor. Like you did for meee.”

Connor yells that he won’t do it, he won’t, but the Juveys are upon her already, dragging Risa’s unconscious body back from the doors. It’s too late to save her, and as a gate farther down the length of the park opens up, spilling out cops onto the street about half a block from Connor, he knows that he can’t waste her sacrifice, either.

So, hating himself with every step he takes away from her, Connor turns and runs down the street, pushing himself faster and faster. Connor swears that half of his life has been running at this point. He wonders if he’ll ever stop. He wonders if he will ever forgive himself for not being the one to sacrifice himself for Risa again. He wants to tell her that he wasn’t worth this, not at the cost of her, but she can’t hear him anymore.

Connor skids down a series of alleyways. There are guards everywhere, it feels like, breathing down his back and drawing closer to him with every step he takes. Connor pulls himself up a rickety fire escape so he can use the roofline to skirt over a high gate. After that, it’s easier to drop into a new set of alleys, to cling to the shadows, to shove a hand over his mouth to muffle the wild gasps for breath as the cops go thundering past. Connor’s good at hiding, but hiding won’t save anyone but himself.

Connor sags back against the grimy wall of the back alley as reality comes crashing in again. Risa is gone. The Deadmen who managed to escape their harvest colony when Starkey saved them have been captured once again. Connor is well and truly on his own. What can one boy do to save all of his friends from dying?

Heartland would tell him nothing. Connor’s brain is telling him nothing too, but his heart whispers a different story. He can’t give up hope, not now. Hundreds of AWOLs are counting on him to break them out. Even if it kills him, Connor can at least try.

He pokes his head out of the shadow, risking a glance into the relatively dim light of the alleyway. He doesn’t hear anything, nor see any crowds of Juvey-cops waiting on him, so he creeps out a little farther, taking careful, treacherous steps down the alley and into the sun again.

Connor emerges onto a quiet scene. He can see streets unfurling somewhere in the distance. In between them, an abandoned court for some sports game that was too expensive to make it over to the OH-10 sector. Connor pads onto the smooth ground. He can’t tell what material it is, just firm enough to make him feel like the ground is solid beneath his feet, but giving just enough that he won’t risk injury.

Is this what it means to live at the heart of Centerworld? Forget the synth-gardens and false flowers; they can create entire worlds for themselves, custom-tailor planets and star systems to fit their plans. No wonder Heartland could get away with rewriting his physical body. There is no limit to innovation here, and no limit to how much they’ll strip away from the outer systems to make that happen.

Connor makes it halfway across the court before someone calls his name.

“Connor. Long time, no see.”

The words make the hairs on the back of Connor’s neck stand up. He hasn’t heard that voice in a while, but he’d recognize it anywhere. Even from somewhere behind him in the creeping metal tunnels of the Graveyard. Even glitchy and broken up from a security holo. Even now, on a planet that belongs to neither of them.

Starkey.

Connor turns around slowly, hands raising from his sides to be ready for whatever trouble is about to come his way. “What do you want?”

Starkey chuckles. His hair has gotten brighter since Connor saw him last; lighter, closer to gold than red, like a fire that’s heightened to an inferno. Connor certainly feels as if he’s a bit of pitch and charcoal, crumbling away to ash. How is it fair that Starkey had time to sit around and re-dye the locks while Connor was hurling from star system to star system in an effort to save the people he holds dear? It’s impossible. This confrontation was not supposed to happen yet. Connor needs to direct all of his focus towards saving Risa. There is no room in his plan for tangling with Starkey.

Starkey, like usual, does not seem like he cares much about what Connor wants. “That’s rude, you know. I thought you’d have kinder words for an old friend.”

“We’re not friends,” Connor spits. “Not since you had your little show on that harvest colony.”

Starkey’s grin broadens, clearly delighted. “You saw that? I was wondering if you would. Do you have any constructive criticism? I mean, you’re the king for taking down Juveys, you did do it first, but I think I did mine with a bit more flavor. You were never willing to commit. You can’t save the unwinds without willing to do whatever it takes.”

“And butchery is whatever it takes?” Connor asks dryly. “Funny, I thought that’s what we were trying to stop in the first place.”

Starkey’s incandescent smile flicks out in a second. Connor still feels like the manic grin was creepier than the dead stare, though. At least now, Connor knows what’s coming. They’re not friends and they never have been. The sooner Starkey put away the adoring fan image, the better.

“Don’t tell me you miss the doctors who would have unwound us,” he hisses. “They wanted us in pieces, Connor. They would have taken your organs in a heartbeat, and they sure as sunfire wouldn’t be crying for you like you are for them. Niceness won’t get you anywhere. They don’t have a moral compass, so why should I?”

“It’s not just the distributors you have to win over, it’s the entire galaxy.” Connor tells him. “Can’t you see that? No one will agree to stop distribution if they’re terrified of us. We have to convince people in every single star system that we deserve saving, but so long as you’re bombing out harvest colonies, that’s not going to happen. You have to play the long game.”

Starkey’s eyes flash, and Connor is briefly reminded of the flare of the exploding engines back on the Graveyard right before the whole place went nuclear. “No, Connor, you’re the one who doesn’t get it. They’ll only respond to shows of force. If we stay quiet, we’re easy to ignore. Look, right now I’ll give you the opportunity to take it back. This is your chance for redemption. You’ve been afraid of getting your hands dirty for too long. I’ve never been scared. There are no shades of gray, just black and white. You’re with them or you’re with me. Pick who you want to be, Connor, but either way, you’re not walking out of here as anything but one of my men.”

Connor’s breath feels harsh in his lungs, grating against his ribcage. He can’t join Starkey, he can’t, but what if this is the only way? “One of your men? I wasn’t aware you had an army.”

Starkey’s lip curls. “We’re better than that. They’d follow me everywhere. See, I watched you, Connor. I watched you for a year in the Graveyard. I saw what you did. Those kids loved you, even though you didn’t deserve it. I couldn’t wrap my head around why they’d willingly devote themselves to someone who clearly wasn’t willing to go all the way, but then it hit me. Everyone loves a hero. So I made myself one.”

The dots are connecting in Connor’s head, but the picture they reveal is far more terrible than he’d ever envisioned. “That’s why you sent that message through Hayden’s radio frequency, isn’t it? It wasn’t an accident, you wanted the Juvey-cops to find us. You wanted a showdown.”

“Of course I did,” Starkey sneers. “I’d been planning it for weeks. No accident there. The second the Juveys were sighted, I directed all of my closest followers plus a few extra kids towards one of the shuttles that was still docked in the Graveyard. We got out before shots were even fired. After that, it was easy to track down the harvest colony. Once I swooped in and saved the day, they loved me more than they’ll ever love you. Best decision I ever made.”

Connor wants to kill him. “Sentencing hundreds of kids to distribution, destroying the Graveyard, killing the Admiral– that was the best decision you ever made? People died in the riots. Dozens have already been unwound. All so you could get some hero worship.”

Starkey just shrugs. “Every battle has its casualties. We’re still alive, aren’t we? I knew you would pull through anyway. I hate to say it, but I was counting on it. I always use you to spring the trap. I slipped up this time, I tried to free the kids first, but next time I’ll let you challenge that weirdo before me so I can get it right.”

“What do you mean, next time?” Connor asks, voice tightening. “Just what are you planning?”

Starkey spreads his arms theatrically. “I’m ending it. No more distribution. It was one thing to take out a harvest colony, but with the amount of explosives I’ve got on my ship, I could take out this whole damn city.”

Connor tenses up. “You’re not just targeting the distributors. You want to kill the civilians, too.”

Starkey chuckles remorselessly. “Of course I do. You think I give a damn about Centerworld? Look around you, Connor. Look how much they have that we don’t. This is what they deserve. It’s what we deserve. We’re going to bomb them to pieces. Maybe then they’ll have a deeper appreciation for what it’s like to be unwound.”

“No,” Connor breaks out. “You can’t. He captured Risa. I have to get her back first.”

Starkey lifts a shoulder. “I don’t care, I’m not stopping for one girl. Now come on. You’re either with me,” he says slowly, drifting closer to Connor again, “or you’re against me. Make your choice.”

Connor shakes his head. “I’m not joining you, Starkey. If you’ve been watching me this long, you know there’s no way I’d do anything to risk Risa. You killed my friends. You’re no better than the rest of them.”

Starkey’s face shuts down. “Actually, I was about to say the same thing about you.”

Connor sees the flash of Starkey’s hand to his belt right before the first shot rings out. Connor only just manages to drop to the ground and catch himself in a tight roll to the side. He hears the bullet whistle over his head and realizes that Starkey isn’t bothering with tranqs. Only one of them will be leaving this place alive, and since Starkey is the one with the gun, it isn’t looking great for Connor.

Another shot goes in the ground just a few inches from Connor’s head. He springs to his feet, racing towards the nearest exit. Already, the sound of gunfire is attracting attention: a few heads poke out of nearby windows, and Connor can see the distant silhouettes of passersby pointing out the two of them.

“Stop this,” Connor urges. “I’m not your enemy, you idiot. You’re going to get the Juveys on us again.”

“They’ll only find your body,” Starkey challenges, and fires again.

Swearing violently, Connor throws himself around a corner. The bullet hits the wall, sending forth a shower of sparks and loose debris.

“Come out, Connor, come out,” Starkey calls, his tone a mocking sing-song beat.

Obviously Connor is not about to do this, so he drifts further down the side of the wall. Starkey is just on the other side of him, about to fire again and end it for real, and then his eyes widen and his mouth goes slack with shock.

Too late, Connor peers past him and sees that Juvey-cops have broken into the scene. One is lowering a tranq gun. As Starkey slumps over, Connor can see the dart embedded in his back. Quickly, the cops rush over and restrain him, hauling the boy to his feet. Starkey tries to fight back, but the tranq is slowing him down and it’s easy for the Juvey-cops to get him under control.

Starkey locks eyes with Connor as they drag him away. All of a sudden, his jaw unhinges and he starts to scream at the top of his lungs, spittle flying from his mouth with the force of his yells. “Wait, stop! He’s the one you want, not me! Connor Lassiter is right in front of you. You can get the fucking Akron AWOL. Kill him! Kill Connor! He’s your enemy. He’s the one you want.”

Connor’s eyes widen, and he presses himself further into the shadows. Starkey redoubles his efforts to break free, writhing in the arms of the Juvey-cops even as they pull him farther from Connor. “Get Connor!” Starkey screams again. “You don’t even want me. I didn’t do anything to you. It wasn’t my fault. It wasn’t my fault. Fuck the Juveys. Fuck Centerworld. I’m just a kid.”

Nausea threatens to black him out, and Connor has to press a hand against his mouth to bring himself under control. Starkey disappears down the street, but the rest of the Juveys don’t follow him out of the court. Instead, a few exchange glances, then start to head Connor’s way, evidently wanting to see what Starkey was talking about just in case.

Sunfire. Not what he wanted. Connor turns to run for what might be the hundredth time today, but he has no idea where to go. He’s out of the alleys now. All that’s left is the street lined with luxurious houses, and anyone watching from their gilded windows could tell the Juveys where Connor went. He starts moving anyway, a brisk walk turning into a jog, but there’s nowhere to hide out here.

So he thinks, at least, until a hand latches onto his and starts to drag him away. Connor’s first instinct is to fight, but then he realizes that this mysterious stranger is leading him farther from the cops, not towards them, and he slackens his grip. He doesn’t recognize the teenager, nor the one who joins them half a block down, nor the one at the door of a house who ushers them all through the door and into the relative safety of the building.

Connor does, however, recognize the blond tween who’s waiting for him inside. It’s been a long time since they crossed paths, but when Connor gapes at the boy in front of him, the name that rises to his lips is still the correct one:

“Lev?”

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

all tags list: @wordsarelife

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heliads · 6 months

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everything is blue • conrisa space au • Chapter Ten: Still Here

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At first, Risa can’t even think because of the screaming. She cries and shouts until her vocal chords are raw; past that, even, because when she looks up in a daze some time later, she wouldn’t be surprised if she’s lost the ability to speak altogether. This doesn’t hurt her as much as it should. Who would she speak to if not Connor?

Connor. Connor is gone. It’s been more than a year since she first met the boy, and she was kind of counting on the fact that she wouldn’t ever have to be without him. Connor is her one constant. When she’s on the run from the Juveys, when she’s hiding in the Graveyard, when any trouble comes her way, Risa has always had Connor. Always, until now.

Risa gives her grief one last moment to consume her, then forces herself to snap back to reality. Connor is tenacious. He’ll have found a way out. Connor will have tracked down another hidden escape pod or else made one himself out of spare parts. Maybe he’ll even have forced his way onto one of the Juvey-cop warships and masterminded his way into a one-man coup. He’ll come to her in command of a fully armed battalion, and brush it off as just a bit of fun in his free time.

The thought makes her laugh, and it is this last bit of hope that makes Risa surge forward and take hold of the controls once more. Yes, Connor will have found a way to survive, and he’ll find a way to her again. Until then, Risa must manage to make it out of this tiny escape pod and onto a planet so they can meet up, because they will, and then everything can be okay again.

Risa turns her attention back to the control panel before her. Admittedly, she’s not the best pilot, but escape pods were designed with the knowledge that most people using them had already managed to grievously mess up their original ship, so the layout is exceedingly clear. An infant could manage to make this work, so at this point, it’ll be more embarrassing than anything if Risa can’t figure it out.

In the chaos back on the dying Graveyard, they had set a destination in the navigation interface, but she doubts Connor remembers it. They hadn’t had the time to leisurely peruse their options for the best scenery and general tourism, after all. She’s fairly sure that Connor had just picked the first option that came up on the loading screen. Seeing as Risa still has no clue where they are, and thus has no preference to be sent anywhere else, she decides to stick with that for now.

Risa leans back in her seat, trying to get her bearings. The escape pod has rotated such that she can’t see the Graveyard anymore. Instead, the only sight around her is space, wide and desolate. Connor’s always had a fondness for it, she knows that, but to Risa the vision of that many stars just makes her think of all the places she could hide, all the people she wouldn’t know about. The galaxy is huge. What are the odds that Connor finds her again even if he does manage to make it off of the Graveyard in time?

The fear from earlier threatens to cascade over her again, but Risa puts herself on mental lockdown. She won’t think about it. She can’t. The only option is to assume that Connor survived. She’ll have time to grieve later, but she won’t have to.

A beeping from the nav panel draws her attention back from the precipice, and Risa’s stomach lurches when she realizes it’s flashing red in an alarm signal. Squinting at the fine print, she reads the warning in full, but what she sees only makes her stress heighten, fissuring into her brain like a needle. She had assumed that the rogue chunk of ceiling debris that had put an end to Connor’s escape pod back on the Graveyard had left her pod intact, but it must have clipped the pod after all because the readout indicates that her fuel tank has been steadily leaking this whole time. It’s already half empty now, and she’s definitely not halfway to her target planet, at least according to the live map on the nav readout.

Swearing softly, Risa pokes cautiously at the nav screen until she can find a menu. It’s not too late to change her destination, so she probes around until she finds another option that’s closer to her. It’s quite small, more like a moon than a full-blown planet. More than that, it’s not where Connor sent her, but it’s not like Risa has much of a choice at this point. She’s sure he’d prefer her to land on a different world than to run out of fuel in the middle of empty space and die out in the endless cold.

The pod flies. The fuel continues to drip out somewhere behind her. As both the journey and the power source come increasingly near to the end of the line, Risa grips the armrests of her seat, fingernails digging into the smooth silicate material. There’s absolutely nothing she can do now but sit and wait for either a semi-smooth landing or no landing at all, but the powerlessness does nothing to calm her nerves.

All this time, Risa has always had an option, something she could do: run away, choose Connor, flee to the Graveyard, find an escape pod, but now, in the face of yet another danger, Risa’s hands are tied. Either she dies or she doesn’t, but it won’t be by Risa’s actions. Some would call that a relief, but to Risa it just feels like a cop-out. Shouldn’t she always be able to do something? Dying from a power out of her control after everything she’s been through would be obscene.

She nears the small planet. As the pod enters the atmosphere, its surface starts to heat up. The torn edge of the fuel tank doesn’t take kindly to the sudden air compression. Sparks flare along the metal seams of the pod, sparks that lengthen into ribbons of white hot flame. Risa shuts her eyes and begs anything out there– the stars, the suns, even the Collective in all its self-righteous tyranny– that she will survive this. Her last moments cannot be in a tight metal coffin. Not when there’s nobody here beside her.

A click, a shudder, a jolt; Risa’s fingernails dig so hard into her palms that she’s certain they’ll bleed, but instead of tearing into pieces, the escape pod’s landing gear begins to move into place. The pod’s acceleration abruptly staggers when a parachute unfurls from the top. When Risa dares to crack open her eyes, she sees not the assumed inferno of her death but thick clouds gently drifting past her, which give way to long expanses of flat brown and gray land, like the grain of synth-lumber.

Risa was hoping that the tendrils of flame still playing upon the side of the pod would die out as the metal adjusted to the atmosphere, but no such luck. The second the escape pod touches down with far more shaking than Risa would like, she immediately unbuckles her harness and slams the button for the exit hatch until it creaks open. What lies before her is an empty clearing of barren ground, surrounded on all sides by the rocky fingers of a few occasional stone outcroppings. Not exactly hospitable, but better than the pod.

Dizzy from the shaky landing, Risa stumbles over the mouth of the hatch, head spinning. Peeking out the door, Risa’s heart chills when she realizes that the flames are almost at the cracked fuel container. She has to get away in case it explodes, but walking feels impossible. Risa makes it out of the pod, the landscape swimming before her, and immediately trips on the uneven ground. She struggles to pick herself up, but the fabric and ropes of the parachute have tangled on the ground in front of her, and Risa just can’t figure out how to liberate her ankles from the mess of cloth.

Tugging fruitlessly at the material, Risa’s gaze is jerked away when she spots movement at the corner of her eyes, more than just the black dots swimming in front of her vision with each unsteady breath she draws. She pulls harder at the ropes, but the knots around her legs refuse to come undone.

The shadow in her peripheral vision lengthens into the silhouette of a person. Frantic, Risa tries to stand again, but she falls again before she can get higher than her knees. The figure surges forward and Risa flinches away, certain it’s going to kill her. It stops a few feet away, cocking its head in confusion and what Risa swears is indignance. The way it moves is strange, a little too quick and unpredictable to be fully human. It looks like a person, certainly, but there is something about it that most certainly isn’t right, something that Risa’s addled brain can’t quite piece together at the moment.

It crawls forward on its hands and knees, but slow and deliberate, as if keen to prove it’s not a threat. It raises its hands in surrender, and when Risa doesn’t move anymore, it flicks out a knife and starts to saw at the web of ropes from the parachute. Risa holds deathly still, all too aware that one false move could liberate her legs not just from the clutch of the material but the rest of her body, but the humanoid doesn’t hurt her, not in the slightest. Once she’s free, it puts away the blade with an odd flicking motion, and Risa realizes belatedly that the knife wasn’t a knife at all, but somehow a part of its finger.

Risa coughs, trying to clear her dusty, aching throat. “Who– who are–”

She’s interrupted by the shrieking of collapsing metal from the pod, and both she and the figure turn in unison to watch the fuel container finally give in to the relentless surge of the fire. The figure’s eyes widen, and it lunges forward, grabbing Risa in its arms before sprinting away. It moves fast, too fast, and picks her up as if she were no trouble at all. They’re across the clearing in what feels like a matter of seconds, and the creature huddles behind the cover of a rock face, Risa still cradled in its embrace. She draws one shaky, terrified breath, and then an explosion booms across the space they’d just crossed, shaking the rocks with the force of its fury.

Well, Risa thinks wryly, There goes my future as an escape pod pilot. She wants to think more about the implications of losing her only way out, but for some reason thoughts are very difficult to form right now. The edges of her vision are fuzzy and getting fuzzier. The thing in front of her frowns, starts to position its mouth as if it wants to ask her something, but Risa never gets to figure out if it can. Instead, she’s dropping deep into endless blackness, and Risa Ward feels no more.

She is not dead. That would be unfair. After everything, Risa will not die of exhaustion or trauma from a damaged escape pod or even the destruction of an explosion so nearby. It takes her a while to wake up, though. Her body needs the rest, and wants to cling to unconsciousness for as long as it can before forcing itself to face reality once more. Still, it takes some time before her eyes open completely. There is still much to do, many things to learn, and plenty of ground to cross.

When Risa comes to, she is not alone. It takes her a moment to realize that this is abnormal. She has been placed on her back on smooth ground, and is being watched by a person leaning against a rocky overhang. No, not a person; Risa remembers now, and more than that, she’s able to recognize why this being had unsettled her before the explosion. It’s not that the creature before her isn’t human, it is. Just not completely human.

The figure eyeing her with the same placid gaze is a conglomeration of parts. Many are from humans. Different humans, but humans nonetheless. Both of its eyes are different colors, different shapes. The hands folded neatly in its laps are host to fingers of a variety of shapes. They don’t all line up neatly. The hair on its head switches from burnished copper to dark brown to thick curls. The seams of the different pieces are smooth, practically nonexistent, even where– even where the flesh ends and the metal begins. The figure isn’t just made up of different people, it’s also made up of different materials, flesh and bone but also smooth polymers and curving metal plates. It makes this humanoid a–

“Cyborg” Risa says, surprising herself, “You’re a cyborg.” An amalgamation of living pieces and metal. It might even be made of redistributed limbs, parts of unlucky ferals that ended up in creatures like this instead of supposedly extending the greater life of the universe or whatever lie the Collective likes to push.

Most people would be annoyed if she called them out like that. Instead, the figure just inclines its head in one steady, sedate motion. “Yes,” it says, “I am a cyborg. Android. Robot. Gizmo. Gadget. Not all of those at once, of course, but they’re roughly correct. Almost certain. Not quite true. You can call me what you please.”

Risa sits up a little, frowning at the torrent of words that pour from the cyborg’s mouth. “Do you have a name?”

It tilts its head to the side, considering this. A string of small lights on a metal panel near its left temple turns a deep yellow, almost gold. “I have been called Camus Comprix.”

Risa arches her brow. “You have been called that? Were you involved in the decision?”

Something that could objectively be called a smile graces the cyborg’s face. Its lips turn up, but there is no warmth in the expression. “I was made in a laboratory. Not all decisions involving me, involved me.” It pauses, making the lights by its temple flash a pensive orange, then adds on, a little hastily, “Although I have sometimes thought of myself as Cam.”

“Cam,” Risa repeats, “I like it.”

Cam flashes her a grin of perfectly even teeth. “What is your name? Common practice dictates that questions someone asks should be asked back to them. It is as if we only want to know about others what we most want them to know about ourselves.”

“Or they just want something to call you,” Risa comments.

The lights on Cam’s temple turn green. “Or that.”

He looks at her inquisitively, and Risa remembers to actually answer the question. “My name is Risa. Risa Ward.”

“Ward,” Cam muses. “Patient. Protege. Dependent. Who do you depend on, Risa Ward? You came down in a pod. Do you not depend on anyone anymore?”

His manner of questioning is far more forward than anyone Risa’s met. She has the brief, involuntary thought that if Cam was ever allowed in a room with Hayden, they would be able to draw out anyone’s secrets in mere moments, but the accompanying agony of thinking of any friend she can’t see face to face makes her quickly tuck the idea back away in the darker crevices of her mind.

“I try not to, but that doesn’t always work out for me,” Risa admits. “I’m looking for a friend of mine, actually. We were both on this big star cruiser together but it– I had to leave. I don’t know when he’s coming, but he will be. I need to meet him.”

Cam’s gaze turns from quizzical to piercing. “This was close by, wasn’t it? Local. Nearby. I detected many ships going towards a cruiser just a few standard hours ago.”

Risa leans forward, unable to hide her desperation. “You can sense ships up there?”

Cam nods. “Telescopic lenses. I can see what happened. Spot it. Sight it. That’s how I knew to come find your pod. You were one of the last ones that left, and the only one that came over here. So far, at least.”

Risa’s fingers knit together. “Can you see all of the pods? Did any leave after me?”

As a cyborg, even with all of his organic parts, a being like Camus Comprix will never entirely be able to replicate human emotion. Still, the expression that flickers onto his face reminds Risa a little too much of regret.

“None left after you,” Cam tells her. “If any pods were left, they were not able to escape the inferno that consumed the cruiser.”

He looks as if he’d like to add on several more adjectives about the explosion, but bites his tongue so as to not release the stream of synonyms into the air, clearly out of respect for Risa.

It wouldn’t matter if he couldn’t hold them back, anyway. Risa can hardly hear a word he says afterwards. She’s reeling in shock and deep, grave agony. The Graveyard blew up. She had thought that the Juvey-cops would have left it intact so they could search the place more thoroughly, but the cruiser had been in the process of tearing itself to pieces when her pod launched. It would have been simple for any one of the complex systems to misfire and put the rusting skeleton out of its misery.

Although it seems foolish, Risa can’t help a brief twinge of loss for the ship. That’s yet another home she’s lost, never to see again. Her med bay, kept carefully organized for so many months, is so much space dust now. Every corridor she learned by heart, every secret room she explored with Connor. Her bunk, her desk. It’s all gone now.

More engulfing than the loss of the Graveyard, though, is the loss of Connor. Connor Lassiter is a lot of things, capable of infinitely many daring tasks and expert close calls, but an explosion like that– the Juveys would be lucky if they got out of the danger zone, and they were on fully stocked warships. Connor just had his skin and bone.

Risa is still vaguely aware of Cam somewhere in front of her, watching her closely, so she slowly folds all of her grief back into her heart, tucking it away until the rocks and stones around her come back into focus again. At some point, Risa will be alone again, and then she can let the grief consume her as she pleases. Until then, she’ll just have to keep going.

Roughly wiping the tears from her face, Risa straightens up. “The cruiser is gone, then. Fine. I need somewhere else to go than just this clearing. Is there a city nearby? I didn’t see one when I landed.”

Despite his smooth exterior, Risa swears Cam freezes in place. “There is,” he says at last, “But– it’s not– There are no humans on this planet, Risa. It was never designed with people in mind.”

At first, the thought doesn’t even register. “It’s all natural? That’s impossible. I thought the Collective wiped out all wildlife generations ago.”

The lights at Cam’s temple burn a low, dark red. Anger, maybe, or even the faintest pinpricks of shame. “They did. This small of a moon, though, it would never take to settlers. Not enough space. This town’s not big enough for the two of us. They built the labs instead. They made us, but we didn’t pay off the way they hoped. No cash cow. Didn’t make a killing. No bread on our table. They packed up and moved on. Now we’re all that’s left.”

Risa’s starting to put the pieces together. “Wait, so there are more of you? More cyborgs? And when the scientists who made you changed their minds about what they wanted, they just abandoned you on this moon?”

“Eureka,” Cam says glumly.

Risa blows out a low breath. “That’s terrible. Are they at least sending supplies?”

The raw skepticism on Cam’s face tells Risa all she needs to know. “So the city–”

“It’s nothing,” Cam supplies. “Rusting buildings. Everything is falling to pieces. I’ve maintained myself the best over the years, so I take care of the rest when I can. It won’t last forever, though. Already, they’re falling apart. It’s certainly no place for a human to stay.”

Risa feels a swarm of guilt press against her throat. “What about you, then? There’s nothing here. You can’t hold out forever.”

Cam’s eyes are unsettlingly empty. She hadn’t realized how hard he was trying to keep up his expressions, to stay human, until he let it go. “I shut down. Lights off. Case closed.”

They drift into uneasy silence for a while, musing on that, and then Cam stands up abruptly, his knees and joints flexing seamlessly like they ran on gears instead of muscles. Which, being unable to guess at his innards, Risa reckons they might.

“I will take you to the city,” he announces. “A few of the labs are still intact. None of us like going in there, so they’re in pretty good condition. You might be able to send a signal there.”

Risa nods, taking the hand he offers so she can stand as well. “You’re willing to do that for a stranger?”

“You are not a stranger anymore, Risa Ward,” Cam informs her. The lights at his temple blink a lovely emerald green. “You are my friend.”

The journey is tedious. At this point, Risa’s starting to think that the scientists who abandoned Cam and the rest of the cyborgs must have designed this planet in a lab, too. The ground is perfectly flat, everything coated with a thin film of dust that clings to her shoes with each step she takes. Occasional rock formations pepper the landscape, but for the most part, it’s all the same. In the distance, Risa can make out the skyline of what must be the city Cam was referring to. It’ll probably take at least an hour of walking to reach it, but the air is cool and she’s got interesting company, so the time won’t drag.

Cam asks about how Risa came to be in the pod, and she ends up telling him everything. At first, she had wondered if that was the best idea, but it’s obvious that he would have no way of getting her in trouble for it. Since Cam is pretty much the only thing keeping her alive at this point, she figures a bit of small talk can’t hurt.

It is somewhat fascinating to get to spill her life story like this. Risa’s been around the same people for a year now, give or take the slow rotation of kids in the Graveyard as some age out and others are brought in. Her circle of friends already knows who she is, so she’s never had to explain herself.

Cam, however, is a fresh start, a clean slate. He has no idea who she’s supposed to be, only who she is right now. In a way, it’s kind of nice to be able to decide who she is again. Risa is more than just the smart one, the one who makes the plans. And she’ll prove it now, by making such colossally stupid mistakes that no one would ever think about connecting the past Risa with whatever she is right now.

Cam doesn’t know about her inner turmoil, though. He just knows that she’s Risa, and she’s got plenty of new stories to tell that he hasn’t heard yet, so right now she’s, like, the greatest thing ever. He seems particularly delighted by the idea of the Graveyard, and keeps asking about just how many people were there, just what it was like to wake up in the morning and be surrounded by all that noise. When she describes the gentle din of laughter and conversation that used to fill the halls during break hours, Cam actually closes his eyes and inhales deeply, like he could travel there just by breathing in her words, a figurative file transfer.

“But it’s gone now,” Cam mumbles, brow furrowed. “It blew up this morning.”

“Yes,” Risa whispers. Its absence still haunts her like a phantom limb.

“I can see why you were upset.” Cam tells her. “It sounds like an excellent place to be. So many friends. Allies. Compatriots. All with their own stories to tell about escaping distribution.”

Risa nods. “I am sad to leave it, and not just because it was how I stayed alive. But there’s also–”

“Connor,” Cam supplies. The topmost light in the string by his temple burns scarlet before quickly clearing again.

“Connor,” Risa repeats. Even saying his name hurts. She’s fully aware of the fact that she could go to this city of cyborgs to send out a signal only to be picked up by the Juveys, but even the remote possibility that Connor might hear her is enough.

Cam is silent for a while. “You have other friends than Connor, yes? You will try to reach them, too?”

“I will,” Risa concedes. “Hayden’s probably listening, if he made it out. But Connor is the one I want to find the most.”

The corner of Cam’s mouth flickers into a disappointed frown, and he says no more on the subject. They talk about the city, the lab building they’re trying to find, but the reverence with which Cam had spoken of the Graveyard is gone.

As they draw closer to the city, Risa starts to spot more and more evidence of its decay. They pass the first body about ten minutes out from the border, but a few more appear as they draw ever nearer. Just as Cam said, every slumped figure belongs to a cyborg. Some seem as if they’ve fallen just that morning. Others show signs of having given out quite some time ago, the rotting chunks of mismatched flesh completely erased to reveal solid metal and polymer structures beneath their multicolored skin.

Cam looks away when they pass each one. It occurs to Risa that this is probably like stumbling upon the bodies of his friends. “How many cyborgs are here?”

“The records indicate somewhere around a hundred,” Cam recites. “I have no idea if that number is true. Many of us spread out when the scientists left, though most stayed in the city proper. The rest could be anywhere on the planet. I know the ones who let me help, but many would rather no one saw them go to pieces.”

The shadows of the city fall upon Risa’s feet, and she cranes her neck to stare at the crumbling buildings. There are a few skyscrapers in the very center, but the exteriors are in poor condition. The rest of the buildings around the base of the towering structures are far worse for wear, as if every available material has been harvested long ago. Risa can see houses with missing front doors and broken windows like gap teeth. Everything that hasn’t been nailed down was taken away a long time ago to maintain cyborgs that still corrode by the day.

Cam takes her on a looping, backstreets way to the center. “It’s best if we stay out of sight as much as possible,” he tells her. “It’s too dangerous to go by night, but I don’t know how the rest of us would take to the sight of a human. Keep close to me.”

She follows him down narrow alleys, occasionally hovering in the shadows of a building while they wait for a cyborg or two to pass by before skirting around an intersection. They do their best to move quietly, but Risa swears she can still feel eyes watching her as they plunge further into the rotting city.

Once, they turn a corner to find a cyborg sitting on the ground, leaning against a wall and staring directly at them. Its hair is long and greasy, falling in many-hued sections far past its shoulders. Both of its feet are metal, although the left one is missing several toes, so Risa cannot tell for sure if they were once flesh or merely metal that got lost over the years. She has the absurd mental image of an arguing husband and wife from one of those sitcoms some of the faculty members loved to watch back at the StaHo– Honey, have you seen my toes? I swear I put them right here– and has to bite her lip to avoid hysterical laughter.

The cyborg watches them go, but doesn’t make a move. Even still, they pick up the pace, and don’t let up until several blocks are between them and the metal-footed cyborg. The sun is still relatively high in the sky overhead, albeit sinking more quickly than Risa would like, but the streets still seem gray and uninviting. Everything seems faded and worn, like old holos of neighborhoods that have long since been demolished.

Waiting under a tattered storefront awning for a pair of cyborgs to limp past the street beyond, Risa pivots in a slow half circle to get a better look at her surroundings. There’s a large poster on the wall of a nearby building, and she squints to get a better look. She’s actually seen this before, she thinks, or at least a holo-copy of it in one of her classes in the State Home. It’s an old political design from the early days of the Collective, featuring a man in an old-timey suit holding a test tube and grinning proudly. The text reads, Saving Our Worlds– And Our Neighborhoods!

Risa had to analyze variations of that image plenty of times in history classes, so she’s able to identify the man pictured as Dorian Heartland, the guy who created the Proactive Citizenry. He was a huge supporter of distribution, so obviously he’s not her favorite historical figure, but the guy had a chokehold on the up-and-coming Collective. Without him spreading his pro-distribution propaganda, especially with his massive financial backing, there’s no way distribution would have caught on as fervently as it did.

“Why do you have that sort of stuff out here?” Risa asks in a low whisper, jerking her thumb towards the poster.

Cam follows her line of sight and shrugs, both shoulders rising exactly the same distance in one perfectly orchestrated move. “The Collective payroll made this city. They might just want us to remember their beliefs.”

She wants to ask more about just what that might entail, but he’s already moving on, gesturing for her to stay close, so she brushes it off and keeps going. They’ve got more pressing issues to deal with than the all-encompassing spread of Collective propaganda, namely getting Risa off of this planet before someone or something finds out she’s not supposed to be there.

Risa almost thinks that they might make it to the lab buildings without incident when Cam makes a detour away from the skyscrapers when they’re just a few blocks away.

“What are you doing?” She hisses as they twist farther down sidestreets.

“There’s someone I need to see first,” Cam whispers back. “Trust me, it won’t take long.”

It’s not as if Risa has any other great prospects at the moment, so she fights the urge to scream or run and goes after him. After glancing around to make sure they aren’t being followed, Cam pulls her into a ramshackle building that, according to the long-dead neon sign on the front, was once a beauty parlor.

“Do you want to get your nails done?” She asks Cam, bewildered.

He just chuckles. “I’m seeing a friend. Although I’m sure she’d love to give you a manicure if you asked. She’s very eager to practice her craft.”

Cam shuts the door behind them, reaching somewhere to the side to turn on the lights, which only flicker on with great reluctance. “Audrey?” He calls. “It’s Cam, and I’ve brought a friend.”

There’s a shuffling sound from one of the back rooms, and while the owner of the sound comes over, Risa takes the time to study the building they’re in. This is indeed a beauty parlor, albeit a very dilapidated version. There are old, cracked mirrors in front of high chairs, each one supported by a desk containing broken hair curlers, dusty makeup brushes, and other basic supplies. A cabinet at the close end of the room does indeed hold rows of nail polishes, but judging by the rather volatile smell coming from some of the broken lids, Risa isn’t sure that she trusts her fingers anywhere near the shades.

“Why is there a beauty parlor here?” Risa whispers to Cam. “No offense, but it doesn’t really match the vibe of the rest of the city.”

“Appearances are very important,” Cam mumbles back. “They wanted us to feel like we were real people.”

The last sentence is muttered with undisguised disgust. How infuriating, to be placed in a mock city by your creators like dress-up dolls only to be abandoned the second they were interested in better toys. No amount of hair dye nor dried-up mascara will disguise the fact that this is no real place to live.

The owner of the shop bustles in at last. Her ear-to-ear grin is only highlighted by the lurid pink of her lipstick. Her hair has been carefully teased into a big updo, although it’s starting to deflate unevenly, giving Risa the impression that the cyborg is slowly tilting over. Her entire left arm is replaced with robotic pieces, and even the metal parts change color and texture from shoulder to wrist, matching the patchwork of skin tones on the rest of the cyborg’s body.

“Camus,” the cyborg says reverently, “You’re back! Oh, I knew you couldn’t stay away forever. What can I get for you, sweetheart?”

Cam chuckles as she wraps him in a hug. The cyborg’s metal joints creak alarmingly, but neither of them pay it any attention. “I’m not here for me, Audrey. I wanted to introduce you to a friend.”

Risa’s eyes widen as the sheer force of Audrey’s cheer is directed towards her. “It’s nice to meet you,” she begins smoothly, but she’s interrupted by Audey eagerly beaming towards her.

“Oh, what a dear! Cam, if anyone else in this whole city came up to me with a human girl I’d be absolutely dumbfounded, but this makes complete sense. You’re just quick like that, my boy. Always on top of the trends.”

Risa frowns, not aware that finding a human who crash-landed on your planet was considered a popular trend. Cam looks as if he’s trying not to laugh, and quickly steers Audrey’s attention back to him by speaking up. “Actually, I was hoping you could do us a quick favor. This is Risa. She needs to meet up with some of her friends, but she’s on the run. You wouldn’t be able to help disguise her a little bit, would you?”

Audrey claps her hands together. “A project! I love it. How much can I do?”

“Very little,” Risa rushes to say. “I’m perfectly fine the way I am. I just don’t want to be immediately recognized, that’s all.”

A disappointed frown tugs Audrey’s fuschia lips down into a depressed crescent. “Are you sure? I would love to do a full makeover. It’s been so long since I had a willing customer.”

From the way she’s eyeing Risa, it’s unclear whether that means there haven’t been customers or that there haven’t been victims. Either way, Risa’s not entirely thrilled with it. She sends a pleading look towards Cam, but he just smiles placatingly. “This is a good thing, Risa. If the Juvey-cops are after you like you say, you need a disguise. Camouflage. To go incognito.”

Audrey nods, her head jerking up and down like a puppet on a string. “Very true, Cam. Very true. I’ll go get my things, sweetheart. You’ll be thrilled with the final look, I guarantee it.”

As Audrey disappears into the back of the shop again, Risa turns to Cam. “This is why we’re here? You wanted me to get a disguise?”

“That, and I wanted to say goodbye,” Cam says. His face is quiet, but the lights at his temple are a soft, somber blue. “I’m not coming back to the city when you leave.”

“You’re coming with us,” Risa says, trying not to sound surprised. “No, that makes perfect sense. I couldn’t just abandon you after you helped me like this.”

“I’m not coming with you,” Cam specifies. “I’m just going offworld.”

Risa frowns. “I’m not sure I follow.”

“All of the cyborgs in this city have tags embedded subcutaneously,” Cam says conversationally. “I believe I removed mine, but I can never be sure. I will not risk your endeavor by allowing them to track me while I travel with you. All I ask is for one pod so I can make my way in the worlds. I would like to see the galaxy. I can be a tourist. A traveler. An adventurer.”

Risa nods. “Of course. Anything.”

Cam turns to her with the most hopeful expression when she says this that Risa, for the first time all day, is quite grateful to see Audrey hurrying back into the room, arms laden with supplies. Risa takes the excuse of helping to take some of the products from Audrey to escape the soft, naked longing in Cam’s eyes, and when they’re finished setting everything out, Cam has managed to focus again.

Risa is steered into one of the high styling chairs under the room. Every time she moves, dust is sent showering to the floor beneath her, but Audrey seems not to notice. She bustles around Risa, peering at her face from a position so close that Risa can feel the cyborg’s breath hot on her cheeks. If the proximity weren’t unsettling enough, the fact that each inhale and exhale, no matter when Audrey is moving or speaking, is exactly the same duration, only adds fuel to the fire.

“I think I’ll touch up your hair,” Audrey announces at last. “Lighten it up a little, at least. You’d be surprised what a change of color and texture can do to transform somebody. And then we’ll probably do a pigment injection, too. Just in case.”

Risa freezes. “A what?”

“Pigment injection,” Audrey says crisply, picking up a syringe from the pile of goods she’s assembled and waving it happily at Risa. “It’ll change your eye color. Loads of people have it done.”

Risa wants to ask whether that means actual human beings or cyborgs, because the difference is quite important to her. The syringe looks nasty, with the tip bearing at least a dozen miniscule needles arranged in a circle.

She swallows faintly. “What about if we just do the hair?”

“Nonsense,” Audrey says breezily. “You want to be disguised, don’t you? This’ll work like a charm.”

Risa glances at Cam for backup, but he’s wandered off to the far side of the salon, peering with great interest at a panel of old styling holos. So much for sticking by her no matter what.

Audrey hovers right in front of her, flesh and metal fingers curled so tightly around the handle of a hairbrush that Risa is stunned it hasn’t snapped off yet. “Can I start then, dearie? Can I start?”

Risa nods, but Audrey remains in place, practically vibrating from tension. “Yes,” Risa says, when it becomes clear that Audrey is waiting for approval, “You can start. Go ahead.”

The cyborg sags forward in relief. “Thank you, dearie. Thank you.”

And so begins the strangest makeover of Risa’s life. Technically, it’s the only makeover of Risa’s life, but even without prior experience Risa knows this is uncommon. All of Audrey’s tools bear the marks of age; the brushes are all missing bristles, the combs have teeth knocked out of them like they’ve lost a fight, and even the blow dryer has to be whacked repeatedly against the table before it turns on all the way.

Audrey’s hands shake the whole time, no matter how the cyborg tries to contain herself. At first, Risa is afraid for her hair, but it becomes clear that even with the loss of motor control, Audrey’s makeover skills are nothing to doubt. Even still, receiving the pigment injection takes more than a little bit of trust on Risa’s end.

At the end, though, Audrey wheels Risa’s chair around to face one of the cracked mirrors and Risa is greeted with the sight of a figure that logically has to be Risa but seems like a different girl altogether. The reflection’s hair is lighter, closer to auburn, and falls in highlighted curls past her shoulders. Her eyes are green, but not piercing. The shade oddly reminds Risa of the lights on Cam’s temple when he’s pleased about something, which is a comparison she probably shouldn’t have made, but she can’t help it.

Audrey is poised by Risa’s shoulder, grinning hopefully. “What do you think?”

“It’s lovely,” Risa says honestly. “You’re excellent at this.”

Audrey beams proudly. “Oh, you’re too sweet. I can tell why you and Cam get along.”

Upon hearing his name, Cam wanders back over to rejoin the group. He stares at Risa’s changed countenance, mumbling the expected compliments to Audrey’s labor when asked but refusing to look away. Risa feels her cheeks heat up and breaks the staring contest first by gazing pointedly at the ground until he turns away.

Audrey claps her hands together, sending a low metallic thunk through the quiet salon. “That was so much fun! Cam, dear, you’re next. What’ll it be?”

Cam laughs, the sound clipped and punctual. “I don’t need anything, Audrey. I think we’ll be on our way now, actually.”

Audrey��s face falls. “Really? I can’t convince you to stay any longer? At least tell me you’ll be back soon. I miss your company whenever you’re out.”

The cyborg’s hands sag by her sides, and Risa can’t help but feel a rush of compassion for her. Looking at Audrey in the middle of this desiccating salon, she’s forcefully reminded again of an abandoned dollhouse. Audrey has been placed here with her disintegrating tools and products, a stylist with no clients on a planet with no escape. At some point, the last of her mechanical parts will fail her, and then the salon owner will join the salon in the empty ashes of what had once been a grand experiment.

Cam’s smile is only a smile in name, his eyes bleak and despairing. “Of course, Audrey. I’ll be back soon. Don’t wait up.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” Audrey assures him, “I’ll just tend to the other clients, then.”

The worst part is that she’s not even sarcastic, but genuinely hopeful that there will soon be others. It hasn’t occurred to her yet that no one else is coming. It hasn’t occurred to her that no one ever will.

Cam takes one last despairing look around him, then ushers Risa out of the salon and into the cold air of the city once more. Even when they’re out of Audrey’s lonely clutches, though, the grief on Cam’s face refuses to lessen.

“She’s been getting worse as of late, but Audrey has always been a good friend to me,” he whispers. Cam glances back at the shop behind them a few times as they go, like he’s trying to convince himself not to return.

“And she’ll still be your friend,” Risa says soothingly. “No one would blame you for wanting to leave. If she knew, she would be happy for you.”

Cam’s expression drops. “Would she?”

Risa can’t answer that, so she waits for them to cross the street before changing the subject. “So, how did Audrey come to be in charge of the salon? Are there other stylists in the area? How’s the competition?”

Cam doesn’t laugh, but the lights at his temple shift from desolate gray to a lighter yellow. “No one else, just Audrey. We were all put here with a task in mind. There’s a doctor, a teacher, a baker. They made the streets and shops and made cyborgs for each task. They wanted to make a real town, and that needs a lot of different types of people.”

Risa glances around at the shuttered windows and locked doors. “I can see that. Where’s your place?”

“I don’t have one,” Cam says coldly. “This isn’t my home.”

Risa frowns. “I don’t get it. If you take care of the others like this, and you’ve got friends like Audrey, why wouldn’t you stay in the city all the time?”

Cam’s face twists. “They don’t like me as much,” he admits. “Said I was too different. Too human.” From the way he says it, Risa can tell it’s not a good thing. “They let me visit in short intervals, but they always get uneasy when I stay too long. I think I remind them too much of the scientists.”

What a terrible fate. Not human enough for the scientists to stay. Too human for the other cyborgs to want him around. Constantly bouncing back and forth between the city and the outskirts, allowed to stay only to help but never to linger. No wonder he wants to leave; Risa is surprised he even takes care of the others despite them consistently rejecting him. That shows his humanity more than anything.

“Well,” she says slowly, “It’s a good thing we’re getting out of here, isn’t it?”

Cam’s lips start to prick up again. “It is.”

They make it to the lab buildings at last. Cam shows her how to sneak in through a back entrance. Although most of the other structures in the area have been pillaged for spare parts, the lab complex is almost pristine save for a thick layer of dust covering anything. Cam tells her that the other cyborgs are afraid of what happened within these walls, which keeps out intruders. It’s a good sign for the two of them, although there’s no guarantee that anything in here actually works.

They search the building methodically for some sort of comms center, anything that might be capable of producing a transmission that could travel beyond the reaches of this star system. It takes at least an hour or two, but eventually they track down a room filled with banks of equipment. Risa’s no expert on communication systems, but after all the time she’s spent around Hayden, her knowledge is at least passable, and that’s good enough for her.

Risa pauses before she begins her transmission. “How do I know this won’t just bring the Juvey-cops down on our heads? They’re probably scouring the galaxy for kids from the Graveyard.”

Cam tilts his head to the side, considering this. “You said that your friend Hayden did a lot of work with communications. Did he have a channel he used? A signal, just for him? If you know the code, we can put it in and send transmissions only on its line. Connor could pick it up too if he remembers it.”

“That’s a good idea,” Risa muses. It takes her a little bit to remember Hayden’s signal, but she manages to plug in the necessary codes soon enough. After that, all that’s left to do is record.

Risa raises the receiver to her lips, breathes out slowly, and presses a button to start. “Hey, Connor. This is Risa. If you can hear me– well, you’re alive, and that’s a relief. I made it out, but I’m stuck on a planet somewhere near the Graveyard. My pod was damaged and I can’t leave, but I can’t stay here, either. I don’t know your situation, but I need you, Connor. I’m on–”

She pauses for a moment, turning to Cam, who’s doing his best to seem as if he isn’t hovering on her every word. “Where are we, again?”

“Molokai,” he supplies. “Outer edge of the H-I star sector.”

Risa flashes him a grateful smile, which Cam eagerly reciprocates, then repeats the name into the receiver. “I’m on Molokai. Find me, Connor. Please.”

Risa stalls on the line, trying to think of something, anything else to say, but the words don’t come. She has no use for long, extended sentences. Either Connor is out there somewhere, alive and able to find her, or she’ll never see him again. Regardless, one more paragraph from her isn’t going to affect either of them all that much.

She presses the button to end the transmission with one trembling finger. Wherever he is, she hopes that Connor can hear her. Maybe he’s coming. Maybe, after all of this time, she can still have him. Only time will tell.

a/n sorry again for the delay, hope you enjoy this chapter! aaa i have been waiting to write about cam FOREVER i was looking forward to this since like chapter three lmao

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

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heliads · 4 months

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

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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

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heliads · 4 months

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everything is blue • conrisa space au • Chapter Eighteen: So Die the Kids Worth Saving

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Risa is no stranger to captivity. Sixteen of her years around the standard sun were spent in a jail for children, forced there by parents who couldn’t spare the expense of committing to the dominoes they’d already pushed over. Even the Graveyard had been a bit of a prison, even if it had been the best damn prison of her life. This latest one, then, should be fine. It isn’t.

Maybe it’s the throbbing headache threatening to split her skull that truly makes the difference. This is Risa’s first experience being on the receiving end of a tranq dart, and she’s already decided that she would quite like it to be her last. For the first hour or so, it took everything in Risa to lie very still on her back with her eyes squeezed shut and not throw up. The nausea has worn off a little by now, but every part of Risa hurts, and her brain only seems to want to work at half speed.

Slowly, painfully, she puts the memories together to remember how she ended up here. She had been with Connor in that synth-park, and they’d been found by Dorian Heartland. They’d tried to run, and Risa had sacrificed herself to lock the gates so Connor could get away after she was shot.

She can only hope that her little stunt had worked. Maybe he’s lightyears away by now, free and alive. If he were smart, Connor would use this last bit of freedom to get as far from Dorian Heartland as he could. He’s got a bit of a head start; if he went fully off the grid, there’s a good chance that he might never be found again. The galaxy is a big place. There’s plenty of room for a boy and his ghosts.

Knowing Connor, though, he’s probably lurking nearby until he can get a chance to break her out. Secretly, Risa’s both mad and glad of it. She doesn’t want to be here, she doesn’t want to get distributed. She wants Connor to live, but she wants to live, too. She wants them to be alive together, if possible, and she most certainly does not want the guilt on her shoulders if he dies trying to get her out of here. Risa knew what she was getting herself into when she locked the park gate between them.

Still, the idea that someone might eventually come for her is appealing, even as a metaphorical safety blanket to clutch in her mind while she waits for her captors to come back for her. Once her head clears enough for Risa to slowly raise herself onto her elbows, she takes a good look at her surroundings. She’s been placed in a room that, by some miracle, has managed to beat out her old quarters in the OH-10 StaHo in terms of raw minimalism. There is no furniture here, not even a chair on which she can sit. The walls are bare, the ground smooth and uncovered by rugs. The only object in the room other than Risa herself is the narrow cot she’s been placed on to recover.

Clearly a cell, then. This place obviously isn’t meant to hold anyone for a long time, which means that she’s going to be moved pretty soon. They were probably waiting for Risa to wake up before they could do something with her, but what? If she was headed straight for her distribution, she’d just wake up in the Chop Shop of the nearest harvest complex. Suns, they probably wouldn’t even bother to wake her up, just put her in the embrace of a dozen scalpels. Her last memory would be of Connor screaming her name back in the park, reaching out to her before the darkness of the tranquilizer pulled her under.

Honestly, not the worst moment to be her last. Risa’s done a lot of living. It’s been depressing and boring at times, gritty and terrifying at worst. The brightest spark has been Connor by far. If she had to die now, having not quite made it to the upper age limit of distribution, maybe it would be alright if her last recorded thoughts were of him. At least then she could end on a good note. The last taste on her tongue would be sweet instead of copper-bitter like blood.

Risa gathers her strength, then forces herself into a seated position, swinging her legs over the edge of the cot so she can stand. Immediately, her head protests, and Risa sways so badly that she almost falls over before catching herself in the nick of time. Once she blinks the last of the swirling black spots from her eyes, Risa stands straight again and walks over to the door. Trying the handle once, she discovers it’s locked, although this doesn’t exactly come as a surprise.

The only thing left to do, then, is to wait. Risa’s thoughts, although desolate at times, are certainly a better threat to face than whatever calls her name outside that locked door. She lies back down for a while, then stands up again when the nerves get to be too much, pacing back and forth in an effort to drive off the stress. Time passes, might be hours or just minutes. It’s hard to tell in this windowless box.

She’s just starting to think that they might have forgotten about her when the lock clicks open. Risa springs back, regarding the door warily as it swings wide to reveal Dorian Heartland, hands clasped comfortably in front of him. The man files in, followed by two soldiers, who stand on either side of Heartland.

“Risa Ward,” he says by way of greeting. “Good to see you up.”

“What, afraid that you damaged the product too badly with your tranquilizers?” Risa asks daringly.

Unfortunately, Heartland doesn’t even bat an eye. Risa wonders why she bothers with emotional appeals; this man has no soul on which such claims would grate. “Precisely. I’m glad that you’re able to see things from an efficient perspective. Connor was awfully emotional.”

“Was?” Risa asks, struck by horror. “You don’t mean–”

But Dorian Heartland just waves a hand absentmindedly, clearing her worries from the air like smoke from a snuffed flame. “No, no. I misspoke. I simply mean that, the last time I had an AWOL captive, it was Connor and he repeatedly jumped to conclusions. Connor Lassiter is not dead. Not yet, at least,” he muses, “But he will be. No one can hide from me forever.”

“We did,” Risa hisses. “You had to go to the trouble of laying a trap, remember? You couldn’t find us on your own.”

“Yes,” Heartland admits, “But then I captured you. So the point remains.”

Risa greets this with harsh silence, staring at Heartland as if she could tear the flesh from his borrowed bones with only the force of her eyes upon him. Heartland sits contentedly in the hostile atmosphere, then jerks his chin towards the two men bracketing him.

“I hope you don’t mind the guards,” Heartland says abruptly. “They won’t be casting judgment on anything we say here, trust me. They’re just a necessary precaution, I think.”

Risa arches a brow. “What, in case I go crazy and try to rip the distributed parts out of your body with my bare hands?”

Heartland’s expression doesn’t even flicker at the threat, which is a shame. Risa would like him to be disgusted or afraid. Anything to upset this power imbalance. “Something like that, yes. Were you considering it?”

“I do whenever I look at you,” Risa tells him matter-of-factly. Her old administrators at the State Home would be horrified. So much for only treating adults with respect. Then again, she’s already failed them once, right? Might as well commit until the end. If she’s a wreck, she’ll be one through and through.

Dorian Heartland just chuckles. “Such spirit. It’ll go to good use in a better host, of that I am certain.”

“If you’re so keen to distribute me, why are we still talking? Save your breath and ship me off to the Chop Shop.” Risa says.

Heartland shakes his head. “There’s something I need from you first. I’m certain you won’t mind the delay between yourself and the knife.”

Risa’s forced smile turns a sickening shade. “Hundreds of years alive, and you still need something from teenagers other than their body parts?”

He doesn’t respond to the insult. “Yes, actually. If there’s one fault of the older generation, it’s that we often aren’t the best at connecting to the younger ones. You’re going to do that job for me by speaking to the distributes across the world.”

“How would they possibly all hear me?” Risa asks. It’s somewhat of a pointless question, more a matter of buying time before the inevitable than anything else. Risa has already seen firsthand the impact of one AWOL against the world, and it was called Radio Free Hayden.

“A broadcast,” Heartland answers her. “Pre-recorded, obviously. I don’t trust you enough to do anything live. I have a feeling that you’d try to act out. As for your script, I should think it would be obvious. Scores of teenagers around the worlds have felt inspired by you and Connor. They think anyone could avoid distribution by just running away or even fighting the Juvenile Authority officers. It’s inconvenient to my policies, I’m sure you can understand. You’re going to convince them that distribution is a good thing.”

Risa actually laughs. It feels good to clear her lungs. “That’s absurd. I’m not going to say that, obviously. Who in sunfire do you think I am?”

Heartland sighs, although his polite smile hasn’t shifted for an instant. “You know, I have to say I’m disappointed, Miss Ward. I was really hoping that you’d be willing to think a little more rationally. Then again, I suppose I learned my lesson with Connor when I asked him the same thing. No one likes to feel as if they’re betraying their friends.”

“So you knew better,” Risa summarizes. “Fine, nothing changed. Kill me already.”

He scoffs lightly. “Oh, no, no. You misunderstand me. Just because you are not willing does not mean that you won’t film it. If there’s one thing I have learned over my centuries, Miss Ward, it is the importance of control. If you cannot inspire it naturally in others, then you must have a way of manufacturing it synthetically.”

Risa’s throat dries up. “What are you talking about?”

Heartland’s sinister smile broadens. “I have a way of making people do what I want. Trust me, you won’t feel a thing.”

Risa’s head rears up. “No. Whatever you’re talking about, I won’t do it.”

Heartland takes a step forward, leering down at her with his unsettlingly asymmetric eyes. “That’s the thing, my child. You will.”

He beckons his guards with one finger and they lunge forward, seizing Risa and dragging her from the room. She fights the whole time, but these soldiers have the benefit of a steady diet and workout regimen, plus several more years of experience under their belt, and they hoist her down the corridor like an errant child.

She’s deposited in a larger room. There’s a machine in the corner that she doesn’t recognize, sized to hold either a small engine or a large person. Most of it is underneath a polished, curving shell, but there’s a window on the side near the top. A conveyor belt feeds in and out of the coffinlike center piece, and a bland logo on the side labels the machine as UNIS.

Risa doesn’t recognize it, although she is more familiar with the several cameras pointed towards a chair in the center of the room. She’s steered into the seat and held there by the guards, while someone in a doctor’s scrubs appears in the door after Heartland, preparing a syringe loaded with a substance even Risa can’t recognize.

“What are you doing to me?” She asks. Risa tries to sound brave, but her voice cracks along the way, and she’s exposed for what she really is– terrified, absolutely terrified. Risa wants to be courageous, but in this moment, hope seems like a far and fleeting thing.

Heartland sits down on a chair opposite her, giving Risa the vague impression of a particularly fascinating holo about to be studied. “I’m taking over your self control. It’s a simple procedure, merely a matter of adjusting your brain to be more open to receiving instruction. I’ve had plenty of time to develop it, so don’t worry about that. It’ll fade once I’m done, so I can still have your cerebral matter harvested without issue.”

“Sounds like you’ve thought this out perfectly,” Risa growls, watching the doctor loom ever closer, syringe in hand.

“I have,” Heartland says pleasantly. “All things according to plan.”

Risa wonders about this plan, if he’s been working on it since his first natural lifetime, if it’s ever shaped or changed. She wonders if her life factored into it at all, if her death will affect it. If there’s any conceivable way she could throw it off kilter.

Then the needle is in her vein, and the only thing Risa can wonder about is just what is being pumped into her, and how to fight it. Already, she feels that something is shifting in her mind. Her head is a little fuzzy, more so than just the lingering aftereffects of the tranq. Something is wrong, very wrong. She tries to struggle against the guards holding her in place, but halfway through flailing around, Risa can’t entirely remember why she wants to do this. It would be much more convenient to just sit there and wait for instruction. There’s a man opposite her. She hates him, she thinks, or did at one point. Why? He wants her dead– yes, that’s it, but the deep cut of that is blurred a little, no longer relevant. It is simply a fact, and Risa is not affected by facts.

“Risa Ward,” the man says. “Do you know who I am?”

Risa ponders this. The hands are gone from her shoulders, but she has no need to run. “No.”

“Think harder,” the man urges. “You will remember.”

Now that he’s suggested it, Risa recalls it easily. “Dorian Heartland,” she answers, the name rising readily to her lips as if she were answering a question in school.

“Yes,” he nods. “That’s right. Do you know what I need you to do?”

“Film a holo. About distribution. I’ll say it’s the right thing to do,” Risa says obediently. Something churns in her stomach when she relays these words, but she can’t fathom why. This is what is expected of her. Why would it be wrong?

Heartland claps his hands together once. “Technology. You have to love it.”

This makes no sense to Risa, but she watches motionlessly as Heartland abandons his chair to stand behind a recording device in front of her. His empty chair is removed by an assistant, who returns moments later holding a holo in her hand. It projects only a few large words into the air, just out of sight of the recording device.

“You’re going to say exactly what we show you on the holo display,” Heartland informs her. “No deviations, no improvisation. Our story is sufficient.”

“Okay,” Risa affirms.

They click a few buttons on the recording device and a green button flashes on the side, indicating that the camera is live. Risa’s attention is forcefully dragged over to the holo with her script. It feels as if an invisible hand is pressing against her skull, forcing her to look at the words, tugging her jaw open and shut to speak the words.

“My name is Risa Ward, and I am an AWOL,” she begins. “I ran away from my State Home when I heard I was going to be distributed, even though they only wanted to help me. I didn’t understand that this choice was for the best, and by becoming an AWOL, I was ridding the galaxy of the resources it desperately needed.”

She pauses for a moment, frowning. Her heart is beating erratically in her chest, and she wants to suggest to Heartland or the doctor holding the empty syringe that she should perhaps be checked out, but then she remembers that she was not to say anything but what was projected by the holo, so she stays silent before carrying on as normal.

“Distribution is a necessary task for the survival of the human species. It’s a good thing, and I realize that now. All distributes who have run away should turn themselves in to the nearest harvest colony. We all know what is right, and we have a moral duty to fulfill our responsibility to the galaxy that raised us.”

Bile is rising in her throat. A voice flashes across Risa’s mind, screaming no, no over and over again. A heartbeat later, she realizes that it is her own. Risa doesn’t want this.

Heartland snaps his fingers, dragging her back to reality. Risa realizes that she must have gone silent; although she was urged to say only what was on the cues, Risa was never given guidance as to how slowly she could say it, or if she could pause for an exceptionally long time, or even stop speaking. Somehow, her body is rebelling, even if her mind can’t recall why this is important.

Now that she’s been reminded of the task at hand, Risa straightens up. “I say again, stop running from distribution. It’s for a good cause. I stand by it.”

Heartland joins her, standing in front of the recording device with a pleasant smile. “You heard it there, from one of the galaxy’s most notorious AWOLs. To prove it, Risa Ward will conduct a distribution right now.”

Risa’s eyes widen. Her blood runs cold in her veins. This isn’t a direct order, and since the assistant has put away the holo with Risa’s script, she realizes that she can’t say anything at all. Her lips feel stretched thin in a forced smile, so dry that they crack and begin to bleed. She can’t move to fix it. She can’t do a thing at all, not unless Heartland tells her.

The door to the room flies open. In struggle three guards. At their center is a shifting figure, thrashing about wildly in an attempt to escape. Risa stares at him unblinkingly, watching as the guards force the boy to the machine in the back of the room. Once they’ve got him pinned, standing in place in front of the machine, she realizes she knows him. This is Starkey, from the Graveyard. And, according to Heartland, she is about to distribute him.

Heartland’s hand comes down on her shoulder. It’s supposed to be comforting, she thinks, or maybe just a reminder that she must obey him. That wasn’t a problem before. It isn’t supposed to be a problem. Maybe it is.

“What do you think of this boy facing his necessary distribution, Risa?” Heartland asks her.

Risa feels as if she’s being torn apart. “No,” she grits out through bloodied lips. “No.”

It’s just two words, but Risa feels as if she’s fought a battle. Unperturbed, Heartland just sighs. “We’ll have to cut that out of the final holo,” he directs his assistant, then turns to Risa again. “One more time. How do you feel about Mason Michael Starkey’s distribution?”

“It’s good for the galaxy,” Risa’s mouth says.

Across the room, Starkey’s face contorts. “Risa! Don’t let them do this to me.”

It is Heartland, however, who interrupts. “She’s not just going to let them do it,” he remarks, “She’s going to oversee it herself.” Turning towards the recording device, Heartland continues, “This is our new UNIS system, capable of distributing a patient without needing a doctor. The latest technological advance around. All Risa has to do is press a button on the side to begin the process. She’d love to do that, wouldn’t she, Risa?”

Risa bites down on her tongue so hard she tastes a spill of copper in her mouth. Her voice box is begging to say one thing, just one thing, that will stop all of this pain. The yes gets muffled somewhere in a desperate cough Risa lets out, a cough that turns into a choking, hacking spill of blood into her lap.

Heartland sighs again. “Risa.”

“Yes,” she mutters bitterly. “His distribution will be good.”

Starkey screams at her again. Risa’s head is a mess of right and wrong, complacency and rebellion. Briefly, she wonders if this is how Dorian Heartland feels with all of his hundreds of different brain donors– a broken, raucous symphony of overlapping voices, all shouting over each other until he goes mad. She thinks she’ll crack first. She’s got less experience with insanity.

Heartland grips her by the arm, leading her over to the distribution machine. “On the illegal AWOL sanctuary known as the Graveyard, Risa Ward as a medical officer in charge of healing runaway distributes. Now, she’ll put that knowledge to good use by overseeing this AWOL’s distribution.”

Risa’s head shakes back and forth, a violent denial. “No,” she grits out once more.

Heartland’s gaze feels like a brand burned into her skin. She can practically hear the hiss of searing flesh. “Try again.”

Risa straightens up like a puppet on a string. “This is the perfect process.” She gestures to Starkey, who’s staring at her in abject horror. “This boy was selected to help us all. Now he will. Distribution is required to save our universe. A person is not a person. A person is nothing more than the sum of their parts. Sometimes, the galaxy wants those parts back. We are giving them back now.”

The guards force Starkey onto one end of the conveyor belt. He tries to fight, but he’s been strapped in with thick metal bands that resist even the smallest of motions. “Risa,” he begs, tears starting to slip out even despite his attempt at a stony demeanor. Risa is embarrassed for him. “Risa, please. I know I messed up. I know I did. Please, don’t do this to me. I won’t bother you again, I swear. Not you, not Connor. Please don’t do this.”

Risa stays silent, unable to do anything but stare at him. He’s sobbing openly now; so much for the brave boy, so much for the bold one who stalked Connor deep in the bones of the Graveyard, who swore he could do the whole savior thing so much better than any of them. “Please, please, please. I’m just a kid.”

Risa leans closer. She can’t explain why. Starkey seizes hold of her hand, clutching to it so desperately she almost thinks he’s trying to break her bones to stop the process. Quietly, in a voice scraped raw from pleading, so fine of a whisper that Risa barely hears him at all, Starkey begs, “Just kill me now, Risa. I’m scared of this. I’m scared.”

Risa is crying. She wasn’t told to do this, so she automatically stops once she realizes it’s happening, but the tear tracks refuse to leave her face. They burn treacherously against her skin. She’s doing something wrong. This is wrong.

“I can’t,” she tries to say. Only some of the syllables make it out.

“Yes, you can,” Heartland soothes. “Just press the button, Risa. I am asking you to do this.”

Her body lurches forward, towards a panel on the side of the machine. Starkey is pleading with her again, saying anything to get her to slow down even a little. He’s choking on the tears and saliva in his mouth, blood running out of fresh wounds on his face. He’s telling her to take one of the guards’ guns and shoot him now. He wants it fast, and unwinding won’t be fast. Please, Risa. Please.

“Just one button,” Heartland repeats. “Do you not have hands capable of completing the task? A mind with which to listen and receive commands? I ask this of you, Miss Ward. I demand it. Heed not the boy. He would say anything to avoid this fate.”

“To avoid agony?” Risa asks. Her teeth gnash down around the syllables, and she has to force her jaws apart to keep speaking. “How horrible, that he would want to live.”

“Yes,” Heartland says. “Horrible. End it.”

Risa’s arm flies up on its own command. She half expects to see Heartland gripping the wrist, compelling her to this awful task, but this is Risa, all Risa. The instrument panel is smooth. Risa’s mind knows how to start it. She can do it right now. It is what has been asked of her.

No.

The button awaits.

No, please.

So easy to activate.

Risa, please. I never wanted to hurt you.

She can’t tell if it’s Starkey speaking or her.

Risa. Risa!

She presses the button.

Starkey screams once, never-endingly, a high, drawn-out sound that makes Risa clap her hands to her ears in a failed attempt to block it out. The conveyor belt jerks him forward into the machine. A hatch shuts him inside, and the scream is abruptly cut off, like a slashed throat. Through the small window in the side, Risa can see Starkey thrashing about. Something metallic flashes near the bulging veins in his throat, a needle maybe, and his muscles slacken completely. They’ve paralyzed him to conduct the procedure. Starkey’s eyes drift slowly in his skull, and then they roll up to meet Risa’s gaze. She sees it in his expression when they start to cut. He may not feel it, but the brain knows anyway when it starts to disappear.

Risa spins away from the window, and, unable to suppress her gag reflex any longer, throws up in the corner of the room. This is wrong. This is wrong. Starkey is being distributed, and she can’t stop it. She started it. It was all her fault. No, not her fault. Heartland’s. Heartland’s fault, because he was the one who injected her with that solution, the one that took over her neurons and made her comply. Risa doesn’t want to comply anymore.

When she straightens up from the fetal position, Risa realizes that the machine has gone silent. The rest of the guards have shifted around in the room, as has Heartland, leading her to believe that significant time has passed while she was trying to undo the mental lock on her self control. A hatch at the opposite side of the machine clicks open, and a series of small containers roll out, each individually labeled with pre printed signs. Heart. Hands. Liver.

It’s Starkey, in pieces. Unwound. Acid surges forth in Risa’s throat again, but she manages to fight it back. Across the room, Heartland rises from his chair, clapping his hands together matter-of-factly.

“Well, that’s over, then. Not so hard, was it? A job well done.”

He moves to inspect the vials and flasks, but Risa stands in between them, blocking him off. “You don’t come near him,” she hisses.

Heartland frowns. “Why not? It’s not a him anymore. Just pieces.”

“Still Starkey,” Risa glares. She couldn’t protect the boy from this awful fate, maybe, but she can watch out for him now.

Heartland sighs. “Come on, now. You have to obey me. Step away from UNIS.”

Risa doesn’t. The tug is gone from her brain, the metal hook slipped out from the cerebral matter. It can pull her no longer. “Not a chance.”

Heartland’s brow furrows. “Let’s try that one more time. You have to step away.”

“No,” she spits. “You can’t mess with my head anymore. Get the fuck away from me.”

Heartland glances back at the doctor, who’s still idling in a corner, scrubs creasing from his awkward posture. “You gave her the full dose, right?”

“Yeah,” the doctor confirms. “No way it should have worn off this quickly.”

Heartland swings around to look at her again, peering at Risa like she’s a lab rat on a dissection table. “Fascinating. What could have caused that breakthrough?”

Risa just grins, sickening and slow. “Me. We’re better than you think. Stronger than you know.” She turns back towards the recording device, which is still blinking a methodical green in the background. They must have forgotten to turn it off during the process, or maybe they were hoping for a triumphant speech after Starkey’s unwinding was over.

“It’s wrong,” she shouts, “All of it is wrong. Unwinding will never be worth it. Get your parts and pieces somewhere else. The children don’t have to bear your burden. Unwinds deserve to live.”

Instead of being genuinely alarmed, Heartland just looks disappointed. “That accomplishes nothing. We’ll just cut that clip out. And seriously, Risa, language. I thought I’d only have to lecture Connor about that.”

Risa feels maniacal. “We’re more alike than you think. It’s him and me, always will be.”

Heartland tsks under his breath. “I can see that now. I had hoped that at least one of you would be able to listen to reason, but I suppose the same fate will befall you anyway. No matter,” he says crisply, directing his guards towards the unwinding machine, “Take the samples away. We can finish their packaging and send them off later this evening. Who knows, maybe I’ll even keep some skin. I could use a new graft or two.”

The thought of any bit of Starkey ending up in this monstrosity makes Risa’s stomach sour. Not entirely aware of what she’s doing, Risa reaches behind her, grabbing a container. Lungs. Trying desperately to ignore the fact that she’s holding the still moving samples of someone she knew, Risa holds it high.

Heartland’s face pales. “What are you doing? Put that down.”

“No,” she mutters. “Starkey wasn’t yours when he was whole. He won’t be yours in pieces, either.”

She holds the glass container in her hand for a second longer, then throws it down onto the ground, where it shatters and breaks. Pink liquid spills onto the floor, depositing a pair of intact lungs onto the ground. Risa watches as they desperately beat, fluttering in the air from the sudden lack of nutrients, and then go still.

“What are you doing?” Heartland shouts.

“I’m killing him,” Risa announces. “He’s not your toy anymore. None of him.”

No more will Starkey suffer. They say you’re still conscious even after distribution, that each and every one of your pieces remembers what it was like to be whole and responds appropriately. If any semblance of Starkey is still alive and thinking in these vials, Risa will put him out of his misery. She launches another container to the ground– kidneys– then grabs the brain samples as the guards attempt to draw near. These are the ones she needs to destroy most of all, the parts of Starkey that can still form thought. She couldn’t save him from unwinding, but she can save him from the awful, permanent afterlife of being a foreign part in someone else’s body. Maybe he’d want it. Or maybe this is just the only thing she can do to destroy Heartland’s carefully laid plans.

Risa’s hand and legs are stained with pink and red from where the vials shatter. Her limbs are covered in gore, but still she keeps going, until each and every sample is gone. It’s a mercy, she thinks. No one should continue like this. She eyes the pieces visible in Heartland’s own face, how the seams ripple with the contortion of his face. If she launches herself at him now, is there a chance she could claw those parts out, too?

She’s taken down before she gets the chance. Once they no longer have to fear the threat of destroying any more of Starkey’s samples and incurring the wrath of their boss, the guards tackle her in moments. Risa is sent plummeting to the ground. Her hair becomes matted with blood, Starkey’s blood, but she still fights and punches and kicks and claws until they drag her to her feet. The last thing Risa hears before she’s forced back into the hall again is Heartland shouting to the guards to prepare her for her own distribution, and then the door shuts on him and the only sound is her scuffling against the iron lock of the guards’ hold.

A nurse is sent in to take Risa’s vitals. Risa is tied down firmly to a chair; they had to hold her still and send more guards to bring in the seat, plus tie her down. She bit at least one of them. When the nurse comes inside, she almost drops her supplies in shock at Risa’s condition. She must be an absolute mess; blood and cell media has dried on her clothes, her skin, her hair.

“What did you do?” The nurse asks, horrified.

Risa grins slowly, deliberately. Madly. “I killed him. I killed Starkey.”

She’s happy about it, the killing. If there was ever a girl named Risa Ward, a girl who thought that she could be good enough to beat the rising distribution rates at the OH-10 State Home, who believed that she could maintain her morals and decency even as an AWOL, she died on that bloodstained floor with the bits and pieces of Mason Michael Starkey. So die the damned. So die the innocent.

This is how Risa loses herself. Blood splashes and bone splinters. In a few short hours, she’ll be nothing more than that. So much for victory.

a/n: are we having fun guys

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

all tags list: @wordsarelife

#unwind #unwind imagines #unwind oneshot #unwind series #unwind fanfic #unwind dystology #unwind dystology imagines #unwind dystology oneshot #unwind dystology series #unwind dystology fanfic #connor lassiter #connor lassiter imagines #connor lassiter oneshot #connor lassiter series #connor lassiter fanfic

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heliads · 4 months

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everything is blue • conrisa space au • Chapter Sixteen: Heavy is the Head

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Connor isn’t doing well.

He’s trying to hide it, of course. Sometimes Risa swears that half of Connor’s ill-stolen life is spent running or hiding or trying to pretend he’s something that he isn’t. She loves him, she does, but she hates this too. Connor will drive himself into the ground trying to take responsibility for crimes he didn’t commit. He’s got a good heart, a heart that Risa has carved out a place to hide inside, but it’s getting awfully cramped in there with every other hopeless crusade he pioneers.

Seeing Starkey burn down the harvest colony was the nail in the coffin. Risa has told him that wasn’t his fault about a dozen times, and is running out of new ways to put it, but the repetition doesn’t matter. Connor thinks he’s seen enough. He believes Starkey was trying to send him a message or something by killing that one guard like he did, but even if the tether hadn’t been used, Connor would have felt the blow to his conscience anyway.

After all, it is Connor’s significantly more brutal alias, the king of unwinds, the Akron AWOL, that got Starkey hooked on this idea of violently liberating distributes like this. A very long time ago, so far away in space and time it could have been a wholly separate boy in a wholly separate galaxy, Connor Lassiter tried to run away from home and ended up tranquilizing a Juvey-cop with his own gun before stealing the officer’s ship. The story was warped across an entire universe, and then it reached a boy named Mason Michael Starkey whose only goal was to find a way to make the whole galaxy remember his name.

Starkey succeeded. Connor will always remember that it was his fault first for wanting to survive and having the terrible luck of being celebrated for it. Connor has gone sickly silent ever since they arrived at that harvest colony, and now Risa doesn’t know how to get the Connor she knew back.

Truth be told, she doesn’t think he’s going to come back unless they can find a way out of this whole mess. Storming the harvest camp and liberating their allies from the Graveyard was supposed to be the final chapter in this affair. It would be difficult to survive on their own, of course, several hundred Deadmen do not a secure future make, but they would find a way. They wouldn’t be alone anymore, and then they would grow up and age out of distribution. Risa was supposed to have her future with him. Now she’s not even sure he wants their past.

It’s exhausting, to put it simply. Every day, they’re constantly pulled from one corner of the galaxy to the next. They escape the exploding Graveyard only to be split up. They find each other only to pivot to save their friends. They attempt to break into a harvest colony and discover that an even more twisted villain has the Deadmen. Heartland is still out there somewhere, and Starkey is holding their friends in the belly of his stolen ship, and it feels like so long as Risa and Connor are alive they will never be able to rest. This was supposed to be the end. This was supposed to be the end.

And, Risa is starting to realize, it never will be. There will always be one more mountain to cross, one more impossible feat to pull off. They’re kids. Just kids. Kids who were meant to die. Kids who have no choice but to survive. Survival has never been anything but a bloody, brutal thing, but for once Risa wishes it were easy. Hasn’t she done enough? Haven’t both of them done enough? At one point do they get to rest?

Never, maybe. Never at all.

A shadow in the door; Risa looks up to find Connor looking at her uncertainly from the threshold. Wordlessly, she holds out a hand to him, and he crosses over at last to join her. They sit together on a bench along the wall. Connor presses a soft kiss to her temple, then whispers against the still air, “Do you think they’re safe with him?”

His voice is doubtful. It cuts her a little inside, wondering how long it will take him to sound secure again. She doesn’t know what he said to Grace Skinner to explain how her brother died, but the gloom in his eyes when he came back to her could have spawned any ghost.

“He’s not going to hurt any AWOLs,” Risa tells him. “He’s not stupid. The whole point of his little crusade is that he’s protecting the distributes. None of them are going to die.”

Connor shakes his head. “That’s not the only way he can hurt them. I mean, do we think he’s cut out for leadership? How can Starkey possibly keep all of them safe?”

Risa blows out a quiet breath. “If some of the older kids from the Graveyard are there, they’ll be able to watch out for the younger ones even if Starkey doesn’t manage it. Hayden could.”

“Hayden could,” Connor agrees. “Plus some of the nav kids for sure. Yeah, you’re right. They can do it.”

“Don’t worry about them,” Risa urges. “They’ll be fine. To be honest, you should worry about us. Heartland’s been quiet ever since you escaped. I don’t like that. One man has the power of the entire Collective on his side and he just lets us go? No way.”

Connor frowns, his lips pressed together as he considers this. “He didn’t have a tracker on me, I checked before I stole a ship. Odds are he’s just waiting for us to slip up. To be honest, he doesn’t need to capture us to further his message. If Starkey pulls something like this again, Heartland will have all the anti-AWOL propaganda he needs. All he needs to do is frame us like insane killers and the whole galaxy will be up in arms against us.”

Risa shudders, realizing he’s right. “We need to shut down Starkey, then.”

“That’s what I’m saying,” Connor insists. “We need to find him first, though. He’ll have to go somewhere to refuel. We need to check nearby spaceports and see if any ships big enough to transport a couple hundred kids have passed through. In fact, they might even get caught at a boundary checkpoint. Let’s check some records and see what we come up with.”

This seems like trying to find a needle in a synth-haystack, but Connor’s got some light back in his eyes, and Risa isn’t willing to shoot down this idea if it means he’ll slump back into nothingness again. So, she heads to the ship holodeck, and the two of them start to painstakingly sift through reports on the comings and goings of large shuttles within several units of their current star sector.

Suns, it’s slow going. Risa swears half their time on this new, ill-gotten starship has been spent combing the galaxy in search of distributes who will never end up found. Risa pores over news holos and headlines for several standard hours. At last, though, it’s Connor who leaps to his feet excitedly when he comes across a report of another mass distribution on a nearby planet.

“Look at this,” he tells her. “It’s got to be more Deadmen. I mean, the Graveyard was massive, right? It would make sense that they had to split everyone into two groups, there’s no way everyone could fit on just one colony.”

Risa’s heart leaps at the same time Connor’s does, but she coaxes her hope back down from that high place with great reluctance. Something about this feels off. It was too easy, and if there’s one thing she’s learned from continually charting new courses across the universe, it’s that nothing is ever easy.

“It’s on a planet, though, not a colony,” Risa points out. “Isn’t that strange?”

Connor waves this concern away, starting to pace back and forth across the floor. “After Starkey’s horror show at that one harvest colony, I wouldn’t be surprised that the Collective tried to distribute the rest someplace with a little more security. It’ll be tougher getting in, of course, but we’ve got to give it a shot.”

Risa swivels over to where Connor had been standing, and hesitantly scrolls through the article he had found. “This seems unusual.”

“Unwinding is unusual,” Connor argues. “Come on, Risa. Our friends are there. We have to save them.”

“I’m not saying we won’t save them,” Risa snaps back, feeling oddly defensive, “but we have to give this more thought. What if this is how they catch us? They know we’re trying to find our friends. Suns, even Starkey could have done this if he threatened someone in communications. We have no proof that this is real.”

Connor bounds over to her again, seizing her hands to his and holding them to his lips as if in prayer. “We are together on a massive starship that is totally empty. We are capable of making one hyperspace jump that will put us in that very star system. We have friends who need us, Risa, and we have the opportunity to keep them whole. Why shouldn’t we leap at the chance?”

“What if it’s a trap?” Risa asks desperately. Connor wants this more than anything, she knows it like she’s reading his mind, but she needs him to understand that this might not be the total victory he hopes it is.

“Then we spring it,” Connor says, suddenly giddy. “We spring it and we get away anyway, maybe even with a few new AWOLs in tow. We show the galaxy that Starkey’s mass murder isn’t how all unwinds think. We win, Risa. We win. Isn’t this what we’ve always wanted?”

What we’ve wanted is to stay alive, Risa wants to tell him. What we’ve wanted is to avoid obvious traps and take life one day at a time. That’s survival. That’s what we’ve always wanted.

Instead, she forces an unsteady smile, and says, “I’d follow you anywhere. You know that.”

“I do,” he says, and kisses her. Risa tries to forget her worries with the gentle pressure of his hand against her cheek. It almost, almost works.

Connor charts a new course. Risa watches and worries from the door to the cockpit. She tells herself that it’s fine and it isn’t, but what more can she do? Since her issues have been avoided in the face of wild, desperate hope, the only thing to do is pivot and try to save them from themselves anyway. She pulls up maps of the planet they’ll be attacking, figuring out exactly where they need to land and what buildings will serve as the harvest location. Anything and everything to avoid the seemingly inevitable.

The site of the latest mass distribution is on a planet called Dandrich-IV. It’s nice, actually, pretty far into Centerworld, the core of the grand sprawl of the galaxy. This means that Collective presence is going to be off the charts, another fact that makes Risa uneasy. Still, Connor just takes this as a sign that this endeavor will be real. After all, the Deadmen are now highly prized property. They wouldn’t be shunted off to another backwater colony.

All too quickly, the Unwind converges on Dandrich-IV. They land a short distance from the supposed location, using the cover of some tall synth-oaks to hide their ship. According to Risa’s research, the Chop Shop and other distribution buildings are in a complex about a ten minute walk from their current location. To get there, they’ll have to navigate a bustling city full of wealthy Centerworld families. Worse still, they’ll have to look normal while they do it.

Risa and Connor stroll down the sidewalk, doing their best to blend in. Their clothes aren’t exactly typical of the luxury common around here, bearing too many signs of having survived a couple of long interstellar voyages, but there’s not a lot they can do about that. Connor uses his fake grounds license to buy them jackets that they can sling on over their clothes, plus caps they pull low over their eyes to hide their faces. Hopefully that’ll do something.

It’s as good of a disguise as they can hope to get around here. Even after a successful purchase, they still attract several dirty looks from shop owners. Seems like solo teenagers are suspicious customers no matter where in the galaxy you end up. The familiar routine should comfort Risa, but instead she’s just reminded of the terrible stakes awaiting them should they mess up.

Risa guides them across the street to the entrance of a nice park. No gates bar their entrance, no tall fences keep out ruffians; here, apparently, polite behavior is expected to the point of trusting anyone.

“Nice place,” Connor mumbles, staring at the topiary.

Risa nods incredulously. The whole point of this park is somewhat pointless– everyone here knows everything from the individual blades of grass to the vibrant flower bushes are fake, produced somewhere in a lab and shipped over here– but the effect is marvelous. Risa doesn’t think she’s seen this much green in her whole life. The synth-wildlife budget for the OH-10 State Home grounds wasn’t exactly extensive.

They walk further inside, following a curving path that carries them past lines of meticulous synth-trees and even a few stone fountains spitting tall columns of water into the air. Around them, wealthy families preen and pose, showing off the glories of their laboratory flora to whoever’s in sight. It’s like nothing Risa has ever seen before. Secretly, she has to admit she’s glad that she and Connor got to Dandrich-IV before Starkey; he’d probably burn the whole place to the ground out of spite.

“Let’s amble a little more,” she whispers to Connor. “I don’t want to attract attention.”

“Good idea,” Connor returns. “What if we split up so they stop staring? I’ll go pretend to look at some of the statues and pretend I’m working on a school project or something.”

Risa agrees with this and watches him wander off, trying not to act as if the thought of not being side by side with him freaks her out completely. Splitting up is always a bad idea, but they stick out like a sore thumb in the midst of all this faux greenery. One individual teenager attracts less attention than two. All Risa has to do is smile and walk and act as if none of this is new to her.

Risa meanders down a side path, taking in the displays. One flowerbed in particular attracts her attention, and Risa comes to a stop in front of it. It’s a strange design, but since when have the aesthetic tastes of the rich and famous ever made sense to her? There used to be this one girl at the StaHo who had an obsession with these mansion mags that were occasionally downloaded to the State Home holodeck. Risa remembers that girl spending hours flipping through holos depicting the interior of some of the nicer Centerworld estates, remarking on anything from the patterned wallpaper to expensive footstools.

The girl had loved those houses, but Risa couldn’t believe the elites would spend their money on such terrible designs. She’d come up with her own dream place to stay someday, of course, somewhere with big windows and absolutely no other orphans. Funnily enough, it hadn’t involved a spaceship in the middle of the cosmos holding only her and one other boy, but if Risa had to pick a dream future now, she can’t imagine anything but that. Time changes all of us. Sometimes for the worse, yes, but sometimes for the better, too. Risa isn’t alone anymore. That one fact is worth more than a thousand fortunes.

Risa tilts her head to the side, considering the flowerbed. According to the placard below it, the design was just approved in the last few days and submitted by some anonymous wealthy donor. It must make for a very interesting garden if bits and pieces here and there are constantly swapped out. Since everything is lab-grown, the visitors wouldn’t have to wait for the right seasons or temperatures. They could have a new display every day so long as the designers installed the right part in time.

Risa likes this design, though. As she’s looking at it, someone walks up to her, smiling gently. At first, she panics, thinking she’s been recognized, but then she notices they’re wearing a uniform with a logo on the breast pocket labeled with the name of the garden, and she relaxes a little.

“Do you like the flowers?” The gardener asks. “Put them in myself just a short while ago. Lovely things, I think.”

“Yes,” Risa mumbles, “Very lovely. Nice colors.”

It sounds basic to her ears, but she has no idea what else to say to this stranger. The State Home didn’t exactly train her on how to talk about gardens.

However, when the man immediately breaks into a wide grin, she can guess that it was taken the right way. “I quite think so too. The designer specifically chose a few plants they had in mind that would just make those colors pop. A certain D.H., I believe. Didn’t leave us anything but his initials. It’s a right shame if you ask me, I hope he will submit more ideas in the future.”

Alarm bells are going off in Risa’s head, but for a moment, she can’t imagine why. “Did the designer say anything else about the flowers?” She asks politely.

The gardener shakes his head. “Oh, no, nothing much. Only that he hoped these flowers would help everyone unwind a little. Great message, if you ask me.”

Risa flinches involuntarily. Technically, she knows the word ‘unwind’ has two meanings, but she’s only ever heard the bloodier definition in so long that she almost forgot it could mean something else. It must be simply a mistake on her end to assume something gruesome, but as Risa looks back at the bright, lurid flowers, she can’t help but feel fear creep back up on her. Under this new context, the colors seem grotesque somehow; the red of blood, the white of bone.

“To unwind?” She asks faintly. The gardener nods and says something else, Risa thinks, but she’s so far beyond thinking of mere flowers that she can’t pay attention.

Suns. Wait. Only one person would put together a display like this, just asking to be noticed. Only one person would require a filthy word like that in the middle of this beautiful place. Only one person would play games like this and make a mockery of their own lives. Only one person, and she and Connor have just walked into his embrace.

Risa turns around abruptly, racing back to Connor, who’s still ambling slowly through the garden walkways. He looks up when he sees her, though, startled out of some reverie.

Connor opens his mouth to ask what’s wrong, but Risa doesn’t give him the chance. “We have to go. Now. They’re here, they’re–”

Halfway through her panicked words, Risa realizes that Connor is staring at her with wide eyes. No, not at her. At something just over her shoulder. Risa turns slowly to see a man who could only ever be Dorian Heartland strolling out from behind the cover of a particularly tall row of synth-trees. His unsettling, mismatched eyes pass over her fleetingly to settle on Connor with an expression of great satisfaction. “Hello, son.”

“I’m not your son,” Connor says reflexively.

Heartland tuts reproachfully. “Technically, you are. You belong to all of us. You’re parts of my universe, Connor, and that means I can refer to you however I please.”

Risa stares at him uncomprehendingly. Connor had repeated descriptions of his encounter with the villainous man many times, but even those heated explanations could not come close to fully encapsulating the horror that is Dorian Heartland. Even without hearing that the man was fully made from separate pieces, Risa can tell that something is deeply wrong with him. His voice seems to be woven together from many different inflections, forced through lips that don’t belong to the tongue nor the voice box that forms each syllable.

He has the air of a man who knows everything about them, who could predict their escape opportunities and has already shut down each and every avenue they could hope to run to. This man has seen many other teenagers who thought they could be the ones to save the galaxy, and he has killed all of them. Dorian Heartland has centuries of experience in shutting down rebellious young upstarts.

Risa and Connor thought they could outsmart him– why? You cannot outthink time. You cannot outrun someone who has already chased off Fate. All they could hope to do was keep to the outskirts of Heartland’s time and patience such that he would get bored of him, yet they’ve already messed that up and been found out. All their planning has come to this, a showdown in a glimmering false garden that, just like the rest of their stretched-thin galaxy, was brought to fruition by a collection of parts that calls itself Dorian Heartland.

This, Risa decides, is the end. For her, at least. Maybe she can buy time for Connor to get away, but somehow she doubts that’s possible. After all, she recalls gloomily, they’ve both sworn that they would be together forever. Even in death. Even in distribution. Even in this.

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

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heliads · 3 months

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everything is blue • conrisa space au • Chapter Twenty: The Final Call

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The nurse in charge of Risa’s last rites is surprisingly cavalier about the whole affair. Probably because she’s been too busy flirting with one of the guards outside to really care about Risa’s personal feelings regarding her own imminent demise. Once the nurse got over the lingering remains of a boy named Starkey still encrusted on Risa’s skin and clothes, she started ignoring Risa entirely. It’s as if Risa is nothing more than a beating heart and breathing lungs.

Then again, to the workers of the Proactive Citizenry, that’s all she’s ever been, ever since her distribution order was signed by the OH-10 State Home. More than a year ago, Risa Ward was marked for death, and now she’s finally about to face her fate. Funny, she really thought she could escape it. Guess it just goes to show that no one can avoid their path, not forever. Not Starkey. Not even Risa.

The nurse cranes her neck to glance at the soldier standing guard just outside the door of Risa’s holding room, and blushes saccharinely. Risa fights the urge to roll her eyes and asks dourly, “How’s the sweetheart?”

“Charming,” the nurse gushes, then remembers that she probably isn’t supposed to be talking to the sacrificial lamb and shuts up.

Risa snorts. “Yeah, I just love it when my future boyfriends are supportive of killing kids. It really brings out the best in both of us.”

The nurse’s eyes narrow, and she deliberately wraps the cuff too tightly around Risa’s arm when checking her blood pressure. “It’s not murder,” she says, “Murder is what you just did to that boy. This is distribution. It’s different.”

Usually, Risa would like nothing better than to engage in a fascinating debate on the true meanings of distribution, but all of a sudden it strikes her that the whole thing would be pointless. Risa is going to be dismembered regardless of whether or not she can argue with one of the Proactive Citizenry’s many nameless nurses. She’d just be wasting her breath, as if that isn’t also going to be taken away from her in a matter of hours.

The nurse smirks slightly when Risa goes silent, evidently assuming that she’s won. In a way, Risa supposes she has. Everyone in the PC has won. All this time, Risa’s been running around the galaxy in an attempt to escape this, yet here she is, having her vitals checked in preparation for the one problem she couldn’t solve, the one trap she couldn’t help but fall for.

The nurse enters something into the records, then unwraps the cuff from Risa’s arm and places it back in her basket of essentials. Her hand moves towards another device, but stalls halfway there when she gets a message, no doubt from her complicit boyfriend out in the hall. The nurse’s face flushes a happy pink when she opens the message, but quickly her smile fades, replaced by an unnerved, tight-lipped stare.

“What is it?” Risa asks, unable to resist.

The nurse shakes her head tightly. “Nothing you’ll have to be concerned with, I can assure you. Your operation will continue as scheduled.”

Risa groans. “Just tell me what’s going on. Like you said, I’ll be distributed anyway. What if my cranial matter is damaged because I’m dying of curiosity when you slice me up?”

She’s not entirely sure if that’s a thing or not, but evidently the nurse isn’t willing to risk her job like that, so the woman sighs and answers Risa. “Apparently, some contraband radio broadcast went out a few hours ago while that boy was being distributed. It told all listeners to meet up here to protest distribution. Ridiculous, I can assure you, but it’s got some of the stockholders worried. The guards have all been placed on high alert, so be confident in the fact that the PC will hold strong.”

Inside, Risa’s heart leaps. The broadcast the nurse was talking about has to be Radio Free Hayden, which means that Connor is still alive and somehow managed to get the Graveyard AWOLs to safety. No one else would have the means of uniting that many people.

If Hayden’s calling the galaxy to arms, that means they must have a plan. Admittedly, Risa would have appreciated it if they could have rescued her first, then maybe sent out the broadcast later, but perhaps it’s harder to break into the PC headquarters than she thinks. Or maybe that’s just the terror in her talking, trying to dissuade her from thinking that Connor and her friends will have enough time to break her out before Risa gets split into a thousand different vials. If they fail, this time there will be no one there to shatter the pieces and put her to rest.

Risa’s lip curls. “I don’t know. I’d tell your little boyfriend that he’ll get slaughtered with the rest when they come to save me. Don’t you know what the Akron AWOL does to Juvey-cops?”

The nurse rears back. “Don’t talk like that, young lady.”

Risa eyes her maniacally. “You already know it’s true,” she says in a sing-song voice. “Even if we lose, they’ll still get to him. Do you think you could still love your boyfriend if he had unwind parts?”

The nurse jams a syringe into Risa’s arm. Risa hisses in pain, but the nurse doesn’t seem particularly bothered by it. Suns, the nurse is even pleased by prospect of throwing Risa off. “Nothing will happen to Heyward. Don’t be absurd.”

“Tell Heyward to watch his back, or we’ll take it back,” Risa grins.

“Sick, all of you,” the nurse spits. “This is why we distribute kids.”

Risa’s stomach twists. “Every one of us is more deserving to live than you.”

The nurse’s lips thin to the point where they look as if they’ve been stitched shut. She doesn’t answer Risa, instead opting to tighten the restraints keeping her in place, just in case. The nurse takes a few more readings, all the while glancing frantically towards her small holo display whenever a new message from Heyward pings in. For someone who insists that Hayden’s broadcast was nothing more than a scare tactic, the nurse looks awfully worried.

As if catching her looking, the nurse grits her teeth and mutters again, “Nothing is going to happen.”

Just as she says this, Risa starts to hear voices out in the hall, shouts of surprise and confusion. Around the same time, the ground shakes. Risa lurches forward in her seat, kept in place by the restraints and only able to loll around like a doll with its strings cut.

“That doesn’t feel like nothing, does it?” Risa asks, pushing herself back into a sitting position.

The door flies open. A young man in soldier’s fatigues stands in the door, eyes wide like a startled synth-rabbit. “Time to go,” he shouts to the nurse, who wastes no time in abandoning Risa to run to the guard.

This must be the illustrious Heyward of the nurse’s giggles and blushes, but Risa quickly realizes that he isn’t here on official business. “Wait!” She shouts desperately as the pair head to the door, “Aren’t you going to take me with you?”

The nurse doesn’t spare so much as a backward glance towards Risa, shutting the door behind her with a loud click. Risa screams again, a guttural, twisting yell, and thrashes against her restraints to no avail. The building rocks again. Risa doesn’t know what’s going on out there, but it feels as if the whole PC complex is about to be ripped from its foundations. Normally, Risa would have no problem with this, but there is the small issue that she’s still inside it, and if Connor is coming to get her, she would like him to retrieve her, not just her corpse.

The door flies open again. Risa looks to it eagerly– could the AWOLs be inside already, are the defenses here that bad– but instead, she’s just greeted by the sight of four armed guards. They undo the restraints on her chair and start to yank her into the hallway. Risa’s feet give out beneath her when the walls shake again, but other than a slight stumble, the soldiers carry on.

“Wait,” Risa says, suddenly frantic, “Where are you taking me?”

“Last minute distribution,” one of the guards grunts out. “Orders from higher up.”

No. Risa puts her entire body weight into the sole task of trying to get free. She twists and writhes and claws at the guards, hoping to slow them down or otherwise break away, but their grip remains firm. She is carried down the corridor regardless of her attempts.

When they turn around a corner, Risa realizes that she remembers this particular hallway from earlier that day. The door at the far end is marred slightly, its surface blotted by bloody handprints. Risa’s handprints. This is the room where Starkey was distributed, and soon, Risa will face that same fate within those same walls.

As they draw closer, Risa starts screaming again, the words scraping her throat as they’re forced out. No, no, NO, NO. Vividly, forcefully, Risa cannot help but remember Starkey’s last moments outside of the machine, how he had begged and pleaded with her to kill him or otherwise save him from distribution, how his words had lost all sense at the end until the only thing out of his mouth was loud, horrified gibberish. She’s there now, fully mad, absolutely terrified of what is about to befall her.

The force of her screams brings tears to Risa’s eyes, and then she’s sobbing in earnest, tripping over the sound of her begging for her own life. She doesn’t want to die. She doesn’t want to die.

(No one listens).

They’re at the door now. One of the guards pauses, reaching in his pocket for the key. Risa stares at the dried blood and gore on the surface before her. They’re here. Connor is too late. Stars, she hopes he forgives himself for it, that he won’t spend the rest of his life wondering if there were moments he wasted that, if used properly, would have led him to her in time. She’s wondering this now, and remembering a long-ago conversation with a blond boy named Hayden Upchurch, back when she was safe with friends and thought she might live to die of natural causes, if she would ever die at all.

The boy had asked her a question.

Which is better?

In front of her, the key clicks in the lock.

Death?

The guards ready themselves to pull her inside. She’s screaming again.

Or distribution?

Risa makes a choice right now. Dying is better than this. Dying is better than this. She screams once again, gutturally, and stamps her foot down hard on the shoe of the guard who’s attempting to open the door. Risa’s ears are ringing to the point where she can’t hear anything but the tumultuous beat of her heart against her temples.

And– it’s funny, really, what the power of a stressful situation can do to you. Risa didn’t think she was that strong, but the second she slams her foot against the guard’s ankle, he crumples and falls like a stone. He doesn’t move, just lies there on the ground, pulling Risa down somewhat with him. The guard doesn’t land on the ground immediately, supported as he is by the dense web of arms of the other soldiers. Risa pauses in her escape efforts momentarily, staring with confusion at why this guard has suddenly gone silent. The soldier’s head lolls to the side, and then she sees his empty eyes, the perfect circle of red leaking out from the back of his neck.

The other guards see it at the same time, and start shouting in surprise. They wheel around, dragging Risa with them. She blinks stupidly at the people rushing towards her down the hallway. They’re too young to be soldiers, but they’ve got guns, big ones. They aim at the soldiers around Risa. She flings her hands in front of her face instinctively, as if that’ll do any good to stop real bullets, but she isn’t hurt. The other guards either get killed or take off running, leaving Risa’s attackers to run after them, all except one, who takes her in his arms like she’s a dying synth-dove, and whispers tenderly, “Risa?”

She blinks, and then the face comes into focus. Connor. Suns. Risa chokes and flings her arms around him. Connor holds her close, tighter than he ever has before. She thinks it’s a better embrace even than when they had been separated across the worlds and he had found her in the avenging path of an angry cyborg. One of his hands rises to cradle her head all too carefully, and when he finally leans away, he can’t stop looking at her, eyes raking her body over and over again. There’s a horrified expression on his face, a sick and twisted guilt, and it takes Risa a moment to realize why before she remembers that she’s still covered with the debris of a boy named Mason Michael Starkey.

“No,” she says quickly, “It’s not my blood, Connor. I’m fine, I promise. Look at me. I’m fine.”

Connor breathes out slowly. “But– there’s so much of it–”

He raises a shaking hand to trace at Risa’s cheek, her throat. Risa can feel the uneven stickiness of dried blood on her skin. She must look a fright, but the only thing that matters now is convincing Connor that she’s still alive.

“They unwound Starkey,” she chokes out. “I smashed the pieces so they couldn’t use him. I killed him, Connor. I killed him. Starkey wanted me to save him and I couldn’t.”

It’s strange. Risa hasn’t cried about Starkey since he came out of the distribution machine. When the nurse had expressed discomfort about Risa’s condition, Risa had been proud of what she had done. Once she’s face to face with Connor again, though, all Risa can think about is the horrible, horrible thing she had been forced to do. Sunfire, it must be all he can see when he looks at her. There is no Risa anymore, just some creature in her skin, covered in the gore of what had once been a living, breathing boy.

She waits for him to let go, to take several steps back, to run from her as you would any other monster. Instead, Connor holds her close again, and whispers against her ear, “It wasn’t your fault. None of this was your fault.”

Risa is shaking and she can’t seem to stop. “No, you don’t understand. I pressed the button. I did it. All Heartland had to do was stand there and watch. Starkey was begging me to help, and I couldn’t do it.”

If she tries hard enough, Risa thinks that she might be able to float away into the vast and unknowable sky. Her soul could leave this terrible, exhausted frame and find somewhere else to stay, somewhere she wouldn’t have to think about everything that she has done. She could, maybe, except Connor is holding on to her tight, keeping her back on the ground like a tether. She couldn’t leave him if she tried.

“I know you, Risa,” Connor says softly. “I know that you’ve saved my life about a thousand times. I know that I fell in love with the kindest girl I ever met. I know that girl wouldn’t do something like that unless she had no choice. I know that this wasn’t your fault, and I know that we’re going to get out of here now. Is that okay with you?”

Slowly, carefully, Risa pieces herself back together enough to answer in a shallow voice, “Yes.”

Connor smiles. “That’s my girl. Come on, the others will help us out.”

Risa lets Connor lead her carefully back the way they’d come. “I’m confused. How were you possibly able to get in here? Heartland must have a small army of Juvey-cops just in case you tried something like this.”

“Well, that’s the thing,” Connor says. For some reason, he’s grinning. “I had to get a large army, just in case.”

Risa frowns at him. “You have an army?”

Connor’s grin broadens. “Wait and see.”

He pulls her to a stop in front of a large window. They look out at the chaos surrounding the PC complex. At first, Risa doesn’t understand what she’s looking at. She can see the Juvey-cops immersed in fights across the area around them, but she doesn’t recognize any of their opponents at first glance.

“Who are those people?” She asks, craning her neck to see farther.

“Everybody,” Connor answers, a trace of raw wonder in his voice. “Bankers and scientists and regular, ordinary, every-day people from across the galaxy. They all heard Hayden’s distress call and showed up. There are hundreds of them, and more show up by the minute. Some of them you might recognize, though. Sonia from the boundary checkpoint. Your best friend Cam from Molokai. Suns, even Lev.”

Risa’s jaw actually drops. “You can’t be serious. Lev Calder is here? The tithe?”

“The tithe,” Connor confirms, halfway to a laugh. “Trust me, I had the exact same reaction.”

Risa shakes her head in disbelief. “I can’t imagine how he found you again.”

“You can ask him once we get out of here,” Connor promises her. “My plan was just to get you and then leave.”

Risa nods, but before she can say anything, a voice from down the hall tells them, “You won’t be doing either of those things, Lassiter.”

Risa bites back a scream. Slowly, they both turn around to see Dorian Heartland walking towards them. How is it that he always shows up when they least want to see him?

Connor grabs her arm, tugging her back down the corridor and away from Heartland. She follows him, but the door slams shut in front of their faces before they can make it out. When they pivot and try a different direction, the doors shut again.

Behind them, Heartland clicks his tongue disapprovingly. He holds up a small remote in his hand. “Security systems. You have to love them. When you run a building full of AWOLs, you have to be able to shut down sections of the complex whenever you want.”

Connor pushes Risa behind him. “Let us go, Heartland. You’ve lost.”

Heartland cocks his head to the side. “Have I? Yes, you’ve amassed quite a cult following, but those always die down over time. They’ll lose interest and we’ll be right back where we started.”

“They won’t forget this,” Connor vows. “Look around you. The galaxy is up in arms because of who you are and what you’ve done to us. No one is willing to settle anymore.”

Heartland sighs. “Yes, I must admit that your little exposé of my true identity was vexing, but I can come up with a suitable lie to hide it again. Do you think you’re the only people to attempt to reveal me over the years? I’ve had plenty of practice with making ends meet. I’ll get a new face and it’ll be like none of this ever matters.”

Risa actually snarls at him, her anger coiling white-hot in her throat. “No, you won’t. The hounds are at your door, Heartland. Your time is up.”

Heartland sniffs. “Is it?”

He pulls a gun from his waistband and aims it at Risa. His grip is perfectly steady, and Risa has no doubt that he has centuries of experience that would give him impeccable aim. She drops to the floor at once, tugging Connor down with her. The shot goes right over her ear, cracking the glass of the window. It’s a long drop down to the ground, where the only salvation would be Juvey-cops frothing at the mouth at the thought of re-capturing them.

Not a good end for Risa, then. But– an idea occurs to her. She locks eyes with Connor. “The window,” she says unsteadily.

His eyebrows lift, and she sees that he understands. They stand up shakily, each drifting slightly to the side such that their shadows seem to cut off Heartland like dark pincers.

Heartland laughs bitterly. “You won’t get another window escape, Connor Lassiter. I’ll shoot you before you manage to get that thing open, and there’s nothing to throw and break the glass here.”

“You’re right,” Connor drawls. “The only thing to break the glass is you.”

Heartland’s eyes widen. For a moment, Risa looks into the gaze of an old-Earth man and she swears she sees fear, real fear. It takes a lot to shatter a monument, to reintroduce terror into a man who thinks he’s past such base humanity.

When she and Connor lunge at Heartland, she sees it again. Heartland fires blindly at both of them, but his aim is off when he’s no longer careful and assured of himself. The bullet pings uselessly against the glass, fracturing it further. Risa’s hands connect with the man’s torso and she digs her fingers into the fabric of his clothes. His gun is next to her, and she rips it out of his hand with such brutal force that she thinks she takes some skin off his palm with it. The gun clatters to the ground behind the downed Heartland.

Risa’s fingernails are tinged with blood. Not hers. Not Starkey’s, either. Heartland’s head hits the floor with an audible thunk, but he doesn’t stay there for long. Risa and Connor force him up again, dragging the man down the hall and towards the window. He fights against their hold, but this time the momentum is in their favor, and they make traction before Heartland can shake them.

Risa sees the scene as if in slow motion. One of her hands is behind Heartland’s skull, digging into the snug skin with such force that she can feel the seams of different forced donors beneath her fingertips. The other is on his arm, pulling him forward even as he attempts to fight his way free of them. Connor’s stance mimics hers, except his hand is on Heartland’s throat instead, leaving bloody red crescents as Heartland’s diaphragm rattles for breath. Around them, soldiers and AWOLs streak past, fighting battles intense and totally independent of their own. Somehow, the three of them traverse on, interfered by no one. For Heartland’s claims of a loyal workforce, none of his guards stop to help their boss.

Or perhaps they simply don’t care. Right now, there are no age-old monoliths of distribution glory to be seen. Only an old man forced to his knees by two kids. They say the passage of the torch from generation to generation isn’t always easy. Sometimes, the old ones don’t want to give up control. Sometimes, the kids have to force the change themselves.

Heartland’s breath is fogging up the glass before Risa even knows what’s happening. His mismatched forehead leans against the window. “Please,” he says unsteadily. “You don’t know what you’re doing. We can reach an agreement.”

“No more agreements,” Connor hisses.

“Please,” Heartland insists. “You don’t– you can’t–”

A sick sense of victory taints Risa’s tongue. “Every AWOL begs for life before you unwind them. You never listened to them, why should we listen to you?”

“You children,” Heartland says, licking cracked and bloody lips, “So uncivilized.”

Risa and Connor shove in unison. The window has taken several bullet beatings by now. It doesn’t take much for the glass to break, and the full weight of Dorian Heartland is enough by far. The panes shatter around him as he falls through space. For a moment, he hangs there effortlessly, twisting midair to reach back to them for any sort of salvation, diamonds of glass collapsing around him like the rings of a planet.

Then he falls, and falls ugly and beaten. His body crumples on the ground below. Everyone fighting outside turns to stop and stare. Heartland starts to claw his way up, gaze still fixed single-mindedly on Risa and Connor up above him like a wounded synth-dog.

The first AWOL to reach him steps down hard on Heartland’s hand, sending him back down to the ground once more. Another teenager joins in, then another, then another. Heartland is engulfed in a swarm of tearing, kicking, beating AWOLs in a matter of moments. Risa catches one last glimpse of Heartland’s asymmetrical eyes glaring hatefully up at her, and then even that sliver of skin is gone, replaced instead by the mass of people. There’s one low, choking scream of agony, and then Dorian Heartland goes silent.

The teenagers don’t clear out for a while, and when they do, the lump of flesh on the ground is unrecognizable as a man, let alone a distribution magnate.

“They took back their pieces,” Connor says under his breath.

Risa feels a twisted sort of satisfaction cloud her judgment. “Good,” she says.

Turning away from the grisly scene below them, Risa notices that some of the doors have opened up again. “Guess Heartland’s remote got damaged in the fall. I think we can leave now.”

Connor sighs, an exhalation of something far more grave and terrible than just breath. “I would like to leave.”

They depart together. They’ve collected injuries throughout this whole affair, and limping slightly, they emerge into the bright sunlight of their long-awaited freedom. Risa lets her eyes close against the harsh glare, and when she opens them, a blond boy is walking towards her.

“Hayden,” Risa says gratefully.

Hayden extends an arm, pulling her in for a quick hug before releasing her to Connor’s waiting hand again. “It’s good to see you, Risa. Glad you haven’t been distributed.”

“Right back at you,” Risa says. “Thanks for calling up an army for my rescue mission.”

“Connor insisted,” Hayden replies gallantly. “But of course, I could hardly pass up a chance to do another good speech.”

“I’m sure you couldn’t,” Risa says fondly.

Hayden cracks a grin, then turns upon hearing his name called and heads over to a girl several paces away. She’s got a deep glower, but it fades slightly when Hayden says something to her, probably one of his classic jokes.

“That’s Bam,” Connor supplies. “They’re hitting it off, actually.”

“Are they, or is Hayden just wearing her down with bad jokes and sentimentality until she caves?” Risa asks doubtfully.

Connor chuckles quietly. “Hey, it’s been known to pay off before.”

She looks over at him and smiles. “I suppose it has.”

Risa leans against Connor, resting her head against his shoulder. For the first time in a very long time, she realizes that she’s got nothing more to fear, no immediate concerns.

“What happens to us?” She asks.

Connor hums slightly, thinking. “I don’t know. That’s the best part, I guess. We get to decide.”

Risa likes the idea of that. As it turns out, they’ve got plenty of time to decide.

The fight is not over. It never will be. No one will ever stop looking for reasons to provoke each other, not until the last of the stars burn out, not until all of the ships and outposts and starfights are gone. First blood will continue to be drawn, but for once, it will not be the problem of two runaways from the OH-10 sector. Wars will be waged, and they will be safe. Those battles are not their story. They’re finally out of the books, but not for terrible reasons. Just because they’ve finally found peace.

Some people would say that peace doesn’t make for good stories. Connor and Risa would disagree. For once, their worries will be mundane. If a day goes badly, it’ll be because of something small. Maybe the galaxy doesn’t want to hear about the pitfalls of normalcy anymore, but Connor and Risa do. And they’ll do it as they have done everything since their lives started over again, how they’ll go on living for years and years to come: together.

With Dorian Heartland out of the picture, the Proactive Citizenry lost momentum, and, over time, significant chunks of its influence. Legislators across the galaxy were severely pressured to do something about distribution, and although the Collective initially didn’t seem inclined to change it, the sheer force of the galaxy is something no one anticipated. Laws were passed dropping the age of distribution, and then, eventually, it fell off the map altogether.

This is significantly helped by one formerly contraband and now supposedly historical broadcast entitled Radio Free Hayden. Hayden and Bam poked around the PC complex after Heartland’s death and ended up finding evidence of the Proactive Citizenry working in concert with the Collective to hide scientific progress regarding organ synthesis technology. Turns out, there actually isn’t a need for distribution outside of political control, and hasn’t been for a while.

Once that information was leaked, and a subsequent uproar was kicked up, distribution was obsolete almost immediately. Information never passes quickly through space when you want it, but the universe made an exception this time. Some things are important, like our children. When they’ve gone this far for their right to live, who are we to take it away again?

The galaxy is changing. The Chancefolk are returning to their homes in greater numbers. The veil of Collective propaganda is starting to slip from our eyes, and soon, it will disappear entirely. We have a lot to learn as a species. The galaxy holds many secrets that we’ve overlooked in our mad spree to conquer all of it. Slowly, carefully, we must retrace our steps, and look for the small details that hold the greatest of importance, the most enchanting of lessons.

As for Connor and Risa? Well. Their story is over. It’s a good thing, for once. They’re free. Free of the Proactive Citizenry, free of distribution, free of Dorian Heartland. Free of fear.

And, also, free of us.

a/n: the space au has ended!! thank you all so so much for reading, this ended up being wayyyy longer than i expected but i truly had so much fun writing it + interacting with everybody about it. please feel free to ask questions about worldbuilding/yell at me for creating too much drama, i would be delighted to hear from you. over 103,000 words later, it's been a lovely time. xoxo lisa

unwind tags: @reinekes-fox, @sirofreak, @locke-writes

all tags list: @wordsarelife

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heliads · 6 months

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everything is blue • conrisa space au • Chapter Eleven: I Still Miss You Most of All

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Connor Lassiter should not be alive.

He is aware of this before he even opens his eyes, before he even wakes up at all. The knowledge is lurking somewhere in his mind without Connor being able to vocalize why it’s true. He doesn’t remember the explosion, not at first. That comes later, with the realization that he will never be wholly Connor again.

Other than the yawning maw of the terrible truth that he should have died many standard hours ago, Connor wakes to dead silence punctuated occasionally with the expensive sort of beeping only heard in nice medical zones. There’s a certain clarity to the mechanical chatter that you don’t get in haphazardly patched together med bays like the ones on the Graveyard. Connor can’t describe it with words, but he’d know it when he hears it, and he knows it now. There’s something to the fact that nothing whines or groans with exhaustion, maybe, like everything is new and actually works the way it’s supposed to. When you’re used to listening to your world collapse around you, anything that’s properly functional stands out like a sore thumb.

Connor wakes up, dreamy and relaxed. He is calm for once in his life. A voice in the back of his head tells him that isn’t right, but he shuts it out for now. Connor has been stressed for years. Can’t he have one moment to himself?

Already, though, the peace is draining away from him, collecting in puddles on this perfectly polished floor and slipping through invisible holes between the tiles. There is no grime in this room. Everything is bright and clean, and the linens covering his body are pristine white. Connor hasn’t seen something that’s actually pure white in months. Everything in the Graveyard accumulates dust and rust so quickly that it’s no use trying. It doesn’t matter how many times you wash your clothes, they’ll wear out soon enough anyway. Might as well save the effort for something that matters, like not dying.

The Graveyard. For some reason, the name of the place strikes an odd chord somewhere in Connor’s mind. He should be there now, shouldn’t he? He wasn’t supposed to leave it for a while, at least another year, but now he’s in this chamber of expensive lighting and legitimate medical equipment, so obviously something’s gone wrong there. This could be Death, but Connor doubts he’d have to deal with medical infrastructure after his heart ceased to beat.

He has the brief, horrible thought that maybe he’s been unwound and this is just some part of his brain waking up in another kid’s head, but then a nurse in crisp scrubs walks through the door and greets him with a resounding, “Good to see you awake, Connor,” so maybe he’s still himself after all.

Connor squints at her. “What’s going on?”

The nurse smiles placidly. “You’ve just woken up, of course. We’ll need to run a few tests, but after that you should be cleared to go.”

Connor frowns. “Go where?”

Her smile doesn’t waver for a second, even despite Connor’s outpouring of questions. “To meet our boss, of course. He’s been waiting for a while, but of course you can’t be blamed for your tardiness. Truthfully, we weren’t even sure if you were going to wake up at all.”

Somewhere between his ribs, Connor’s heart begins to hammer. “What do you mean? Why wouldn’t I wake up? Who are you?”

“Connor,” the nurse says sweetly, laying a hand on his shoulder in a gesture that’s probably meant to be comforting but comes across more like a prison warden keeping her inmate in line, “You survived an explosion that decimated an entire star cruiser. No one would blame you for succumbing to the blast.”

As she says it, the memories come back in a rush. It’s not like he’d been suffering from amnesia, more like he’d been willfully trying not to think about all of the horrors he’d just experienced. Images flash through his mind in one fatal string: the Juveys, boarding the ship, the screaming of the Deadmen as they were dragged off to their fates, Risa, climbing into an escape pod, Connor’s own pod destroyed in a shrieking of metal come undone. Roland, chasing him down. The fight in the engine room and the resulting inferno.

Nothing makes sense after the explosion. Connor remembers Roland yelling in surprise, the sudden upheaval as the ground beneath his feet was shot away, and then falling, falling without respite. For what could either have been half a second or perhaps an eon, Connor’s mind had been a mess of confusion, like he was hearing not just his own panicked thoughts but Roland’s terrified inner monologue as well, but then everything had sorted out and Connor was just Connor, unconscious in the burning wreck of the Graveyard, utterly alone and waiting to die.

Except he hadn’t died and he had woken up here. Connor doesn’t remember getting picked up, but he hadn’t remembered a lot after losing consciousness, which is often how unconsciousness works in the first place. Another thing that Connor doesn’t remember is what happened to Risa, and that troubles him even more than whatever happened to him. What if her pod was engulfed in the blast? What if she’d come that close to getting out alive just for the Graveyard to pull her back into death?

Connor would never forgive himself. Although the explosion in the engine room wasn’t necessarily his fault– he distinctly remembers yelling at Roland to stop shooting wildly, after all– but he was still there, and that puts enough blood on his hands to paint everything in red.

Connor needs to see her. It’s an urge akin to dying of thirst, he craves the sight of her more than anything else. If he dies here and now, at least he could see her one more time before he goes. He misses her like a chopped off limb. If this is where their stories diverge, Connor thinks he will nurse this wound until he can do nothing else. He’ll lose his mind gnawing at the stump of where there was once something bright and beautiful, a girl who knew him better than anyone else and still wanted him at the end of the worlds.

Maybe she’s here. Maybe this is where they put all the victims of the explosion. “Where is she?” Connor asks, voice thick and dry.

The nurse cocks her head to the side. “Where is who?”

Connor opens his mouth to answer, but it occurs to him that, if these people aren’t one hundred percent on his side, he probably shouldn’t give them any more reasons to look for Risa, so he snaps his jaws shut again. It won’t matter anyway, they already knew Connor and Risa ran away together back at the start of it all. Even if they both die from this, their names will always be spoken together in the same breath, two halves of the same story. Connor likes that far more than he would care to admit. It only makes sense that she would be a part of him forever.

The nurse is still looking at him quizzically, so Connor starts talking again to distract her from his slip up. “So, I can leave after you declare me fit or something?”

The nurse shakes her head. “You’ll have to talk to the man in charge, of course.”

Connor nods impatiently, “Yes, but after that, I can go?”

The nurse laughs as if he’s told a funny joke, although Connor isn’t sure that he has. “Oh, no. You’re still to be distributed, of course. We’re not going to let one conversation get in the way of that.”

Connor immediately tenses up and starts to catalog all the ways he could get out of here. His body still feels a little tired, but that’s nothing. The door is at the far end of the white, shiny room, and although this nurse is between him and the exit, Connor is fairly certain he could knock her down if he needed to.

“You’re going to distribute me?” He asks, trying to buy time while he thinks of an escape plan.

“Why wouldn’t we?” The nurse queries, seemingly oblivious to the obvious answer. “Distribution benefits the galaxy, Connor. Surely you don’t think just one life is more important than all of us in the grand scheme of things. Besides, I thought you would have seen the importance of distribution by now, especially considering your arm.”

Connor’s frantic search of the room comes to an abrupt stop. “What do you mean, considering my arm?” He asks slowly.

The nurse gestures to his right arm, which up until now has been comfortably hidden beneath the pristine white linens. “It was replaced in the explosion. Funny how that works.”

Cautiously, carefully, as if expecting to see a monster instead of a limb, Connor reaches out his left arm to pull the sheets away from his right side. Immediately, he has to clap his good hand to his mouth to stifle a scream. There is still an arm attached to his right shoulder, yes, but it isn’t his. The skin is darker, the muscles stronger in unfamiliar places. And, most pressingly of all, there is the tattoo of a shark inked into the skin of the forearm that is not Connor’s. Which means, of course, that this is Roland’s arm on Connor’s body.

Connor presses himself back against the bed, trying to swallow back the wave of nausea that crests over him. He’s heard rumors of things like this happening, of course, freak accidents out in the farthest reaches of space that ended up with two people accidentally swapping parts, but he always assumed they were just ghost stories fabricated to scare students out of making hyperspace jumps without correctly calculating their trajectories. He never thought it would actually happen to him, nor that, of all the donors, he would end up with the arm of someone who wanted to kill him. Who tried to kill him, and was shooting at Connor until his very last breath.

As if thinking along the same lines, the fingers on Connor’s stolen right arm twitch a little, forming a fist before relaxing again. Connor does not remember ever commanding the digits to move, which means that some part of Roland is still in control. The doctors saw the arm swap, obviously, but how do they know for certain that Connor’s brain wasn’t affected? What if there are still bits and pieces of Roland left in Connor’s head, never to return to normal again? When Connor thinks of Risa, when he thinks of hurting someone, will it be his own choice or Roland somehow, poisoning his mind?

Fighting back bile, Connor asks the nurse, “Can you put it back? My arm, I mean. Can you give me back my arm?”

The nurse chuckles. “That would be incredibly difficult. The donor is in a, ah, precarious position right now. The explosion decimated his body so much that even we couldn’t use it. So no, you can’t have your arm back.”

Something in Connor feels a strange sense of sick joy that these people, whoever they are, wouldn’t be able to use the rest of Roland as distributed material. He may have died, but he got out without giving in, and that’s more than most ferals can say. Again, Connor isn’t wholly certain if the thought is his or Roland’s, but regardless of the source, he gets the feeling that they’re both in agreement over this.

While Connor is at war with himself, the nurse stands, checking a few readouts on a holopad before gesturing for him to stand. “You seem in fine condition, so we’ll take you to meet the boss. He’s right down the hall. I wouldn’t want to keep him waiting for long.”

Connor eyes her closely, but the woman gives nothing away. It’s probably smart to run now, but Connor is, admittedly, a little curious to see just who’s in charge around here. There are no logos anywhere, no clue as to where he is, so getting some answers would be nice.

The second the nurse escorts Connor out of the med room, he’s greeted with the sight of at least a dozen soldiers loitering in the hall outside. So much for trying to run away. Trying to instill a sense of false bravado into his voice, Connor asks casually, “All this security for me? Gee, I’m honored you think so much of me.”

The nearest soldier glares but says nothing. So much for getting a reaction. Committed to the cause now, Connor steps in front of him, grins, and says, “Nice socks, idiot.”

The soldier glances down at his boots, confused, thus breaking his cold demeanor for what he eventually realizes is just a little trick on Connor’s end. Connor flashes him a jaunty smirk, which makes the glare return to the soldier’s face in full force. One small victory is enough for Connor, though, and he heads down the hall to his fate with his spirits high.

The nurse leads him to a door, and knocks once before ushering him inside. The door shuts tight behind him, leaving Connor with no choice but to face the man waiting for him.

They stare at each other for a long moment. Something about the guy fills Connor with a sickly sort of dread, although for the life of him, he cannot explain why. He looks a little young for someone to be treated with this sort of respect, more like mid-thirties instead of in his fifties or sixties, but this, again, feels wrong.

As the man leans forward to get a better look at Connor, the harsh lighting overhead reveals details of his face that hadn’t been visible at first glance. Although great care has obviously been taken to ensure that each surgery was as smooth as possible, evidence of many new pieces of flesh still reveal themselves under the bright lights. The cheekbones are a little too high for his facial structure, his eyes are too bright for a man of this age, and his skin is impossibly tight and smooth. Connor has seen many rich parents with a lot of work done, but this guy beats them all out. Connor can’t imagine how many kids must have been put under the knife to keep this man looking fresh, but they probably could have filled the whole damn Graveyard.

“Who are you?” Connor hisses.

The man smiles. “Honestly, Connor, I was hoping you’d piece that together a little sooner. Here, I’ll give you a hint: you’re speaking to the head of the Proactive Citizenry.”

Alarm bells go off in Connor’s head. Of all the people to want Connor in pieces, the PC has got to be at the top of the list. They’ve hated Connor ever since he stole that Juvey-cop’s ship what feels like a lifetime ago. Hayden, Connor, and Risa have listened in to Centerworld radio frequencies on countless nights, laughing themselves senseless over the vitriol of the pro-distribution propaganda aimed at Connor. It’s not so funny anymore, though, when Connor is in the belly of the synth-beast with no friends left to protect him.

“So, you’re the CEO or something?” Connor asks. “Fascinating. Do you meet with all of the kids you’re about to distribute? Do you like to know our tragic backstories before you steal our parts?”

The man scoffs. “We’re not stealing, Connor, we’re taking what we’re owed. And no, I’m not the CEO. Try again.”

Connor squints at him. Maybe the guy’s older than he thought. “You’re the, uh, father of the CEO? Grandfather?”

The man rolls his eyes. “Don’t be silly, Connor. I am PC. I started it.”

Connor shakes his head. “No, that’s impossible. Proactive Citizenry is old-Earth ancient. It was made when humans first started exploring the galaxy. There’s no way even your great-grandparents could have started it.”

It’s unthinkable. Connor hasn’t brushed up on his history in a while, so he doesn’t remember the exact name of Proactive Citizenry’s creator, but it can’t be this guy. That was centuries ago. Whoever started this whole mess is long dead, their bones withered away to ash.

Unless.

Unless, of course, they found a way to stay around. Maybe the creator’s original bones are ash, but who’s to say that they couldn’t just swap them out, piece by piece? Donor by donor? Distribute by distribute?

Connor draws in a sharp, horrified breath, and the man nods, looking pleased. “You get it now, don’t you? I can see it in your eyes. I always liked the eyes, I must say. That was the part I hated getting rid of the most. I held onto my original pair for as long as I could, but they gave out in the end. Everything does. No matter what anyone tries, Connor Lassiter, resistance will get you nowhere. Even if you’re the Akron AWOL.”

Connor feels like he might throw up. “You’re the one who created the PC? You must be centuries old. There’s no way you could have kept swapping out dead body parts that long, you’d have to give out at some point.”

“Maybe if you didn’t have the money for it,” the man muses, “But that has never been a problem for me. The Heartlands have always been blessed with wealth. Any problem can be solved if you just give people a good enough reason to solve it. Money often does the trick.”

The Heartlands. That does it. Mental gears click into place, and Connor remembers the guy’s name at last. “You’re Dorian Heartland. The original supporter of distribution.”

Heartland spreads his hands indulgently, as if expecting applause. “There you go. See, maybe I’ll be able to turn a profit from your brain matter after all.”

Connor stares at him unthinkingly. “You want my brain?”

“I want all of you,” Heartland says soothingly. “That’s how distribution is meant to work, remember? No part wasted. I would love one of your eyes for myself, though. Mine are starting to get a little foggy, and I only take parts from the best characters. Having the irises of the Akron AWOL, now, that would be something. I am made of history, Connor Lassiter. Both the successes and the failures. It’s a reminder to all of my people that they can join me in two ways: under my empire, or under my knife.”

Connor’s stomach roils. “Those aren’t all just feral parts, then. You’ve had adults unwound.”

Heartland tsks. “Naughty word, Connor. Unwinding. We’ve made it a professional process, there’s no need to degrade it like that. But yes, you’re right. The parts still work, even when they’re not young. I am made of many men and women. Do you remember that cop whose ship you stole? I have one of his ears so I could hear you in a crowd and know it was you, just in case. There was a parts pirate once who thought he could outdo me, a man named Divan. I have a good chunk of his brain, now there was a man who could do business. Another pirate was a little too brutal for my tastes– the Burmese Dah Zey, I’m certain you’ve heard of him before. These are his hands. And then, a woman named Roberta Griswold– I told her to make cyborgs a thing, and she let me down. Now her lungs keep me breathing.”

Heartland takes a deep gulp of air, chest heaving with the passion of all the people he's dismembered. Connor wants to yell at him to shut up, but some horrified part of him is fascinated by all the names, all the sick ends, and he stays silent.

“Part of my heart belongs to a useless boy named Argent Skinner. You probably don’t remember Argent, actually. He was really obsessed with you, you know.” Heartland’s voice is wheedling, like a teenager teasing a friend about a schoolgirl crush. It sets Connor’s teeth on edge. “You didn’t even notice him. He worked at the boundary checkpoint where you slipped under the radar. He was going to track you down while you were passing through his little station and take you with him, but you managed to give him the slip. That made him so angry that he came to the PC. I took that anger and I made it glorious. I made it me.”

Connor’s right arm twitches at his side, the foreign fingers curling into a tight fist. He wants to slam it into Heartland’s nose, hear the bones crack and watch the blood gush forth. Connor’s been in fights back when he was still in school, and he’s definitely been angry before, but nothing like this. This rage consumes him, but it isn’t Connor’s. Judging by the way the arm with the shark tattoo keeps jerking forward like it has plans of its own, Connor would wager a guess that it’s Roland bursting forth again, wanting to make his vengeance known.

Heartland follows Connor’s line of vision and his lips curl into something almost akin to a smile. “See, Connor? I’m not the only one with borrowed pieces. You’re just like me.”

Connor shakes his head frantically. “I’m nothing like you. I didn’t want this. You did.”

Heartland tilts his head to the side, acknowledging this. “True, I did want it. I wanted it better than anyone else, too. Even when Centerworld started losing steam for distribution, I wanted it still. I had to step in a few times to convince them to keep it up, but they got there in the end.”

Connor feels like screaming. He kind of wants to, except he’s afraid that if he shouts too loudly Heartland will come to admire his vocal chords and decide to take those, too. He has a twisted mental image of Risa hearing his voice from the shadows and running towards it only for Heartland to emerge, smiling as coldly as her as he is at Connor right now.

“This has all been a lie, then. Everything about distribution being used to further the life of the galaxy. It was never about the galaxy, was it? It was only about protecting you. Your life.” Connor chokes out.

Heartland nods, extending his hands in a theatrical gesture. “I don’t care about the rest of them. Why should I? I made the distribution project work in the first place. They didn’t help, why should they reap the rewards? It’s about equal labor for equal pay, and they didn’t contribute one thing. Now they will. I mean, don’t you hate it when slackers get all the privileges that you had to fight for?”

Connor’s throat is tight. “Why are you telling me all of this? Why are you even talking to me at all? Does monologuing make you live longer, too?”

Heartland chuckles. “No, no. I just want you to understand. I hate to say it, Connor, but your little adventure has caught on across the galaxy. I want you to release a holo saying that you condone any attempts to avoid distribution, that you’ve learned your lesson and it’s better for everyone to follow the rules. Once you prove you’re with us, the little hero of the ferals will be forgotten, and no one else will be inspired by your misguided attempt to run. It’s as easy as that, boy. Five minutes of your time, that’s all I need.”

Connor’s brow furrows. “So you want me to go against literally everything I believe, and then what? You let me go?”

Heartland’s borrowed eyes dance with mirth. “No, no. You misunderstand me. This is not a deal we’re making, this is an order. You will make the speech, and then you will be distributed. I do not trust you to live in any world. I want all loose ends tied up, and that involves you.”

Connor’s stomach does a slow roll. “If you’re going to kill me anyway, why the sunfire would I help you? Usually, when someone wants something, they have to give a little first. Thought you’d know about that from all your high profile business bullshit.”

“Watch your mouth, Connor, or I’ll take your tongue first,” Heartland says chidingly. “This isn’t business. This is me extracting use from a useless bit of biological matter. I don’t need you alive. I don’t even need you to want to do this. I have ways of making you comply.”

Connor takes an involuntary step back. He tries the door behind him, but it’s locked; Connor didn’t even hear the pin slide into place. He must have been too distracted staring at the monstrosity before him.

Heartland smirks. “There’s nowhere to run, Connor. Nowhere to go. Your only option is me.”

The man sinks back into his chair, not even bothering to block Connor. And why should he? They’re high up in some kind of office building, several stories off the ground. There are no other doors except the locked one behind him. According to Heartland, there really is no way out.

Heartland, though, has had several centuries worth of comfortable, cozy life. Heartland has not had to risk himself in a very long time. Heartland has no idea the distance a feral would go to survive, because he has not had to fight tooth and nail for so much as one more day alive. Connor, however, has, and Connor will never go out like this. As long as there is any way out, Connor will take it. Even if that way out involves the window overlooking a drop at least five stories to the ground.

Connor launches himself towards the glass pane. Of all the ideas he’s had, this is probably the worst, but it’s that or get distributed, so no hurt feelings there. He grabs an office chair as he goes, slamming it through the window and breaking it instantly.

Heartland’s face goes waxy. “Lassiter, be serious. You cannot possibly–”

Connor silences him with a glare. “Never tell me what I can’t do. Don’t you know ferals never follow the rules?”

And with that terrible bit of drama, Connor throws himself from the window. He turns as he falls, catching hold of the narrow lip. He’s not strong enough to hold himself from this forever, but he doesn’t have to be. All he needs is to slow his fall bit by bit, piece by piece, by dropping from ledge to ledge until he’s on the ground. An awning stretching over a few windows catches him for a while, letting him roll to a stop before crawling to the next ledge, and so on and so forth until he’s halfway down the side of the building.

Victory practically within his grasp, Connor makes the incredibly stupid decision to look down, and immediately regrets it. The ground, although closer to him than when he’d first leapt out of the building, seems lightyears away. Connor’s feet loll perilously over the precipice, and he has to snap his eyes shut so he doesn’t lose it completely. It’s not about making it to the bottom. All he has to do is find the next window ledge. Connor reaches out with trembling fingers and it’s within his grasp, then he can awkwardly shuffle his body down and over. Then the next ledge, and the next. He can do this.

Eyes still shut, Connor stretches out a foot to find the next ledge, but his legs refuse to go any lower. Risking another glimpse down, Connor realizes that he’s actually on the ground. He shades his eyes with his hand, staring up at the building he’s just escaped. Heartland may have centuries of knowledge over Connor, but the man has no idea how to handle a mad runaway. Funny, except he’s definitely sending reinforcements to track down Connor right now, so he’s got to get a move on.

Right on cue, the doors to the building burst open and a swarm of soldiers flood out. Connor turns and runs into the city around him, not caring where he’s headed so long as it takes him away. He has absolutely no idea what planet he’s on, let alone what system, but that doesn’t matter. Connor always knows how to run, regardless of his exact position in the galaxy.

He takes an abrupt turn down some alleyways, hoping the tight quarters will shake at least a few of the soldiers as they scramble for position. Connor whips around corners left and right, but his mad dash comes to a sudden halt when he comes face to face with a dead end. Swearing under his breath, Connor doubles back, but the soldiers are bearing down on him and there’s nowhere to go. The walls are high and slick with something that’s hopefully just oil, so Connor can’t climb his way out of this one.

Well, he’s never backed down from a fight, has he? Connor swallows hard, glancing around for something he can use as a weapon. There’s no way he can fight off all of these soldiers, but maybe he can try, at least. There’s no way he’s going down without giving it his all.

Just before Connor can pick up an unwieldy piece of metal pipe and hope for the best, a door swings open to his left and a voice hisses at him, “Quick! In here!”

Connor has no other options, so he lunges for the door, which slams behind him just as the soldiers round the corner. Connor is immediately plunged into darkness, but he can just make out the snap of a lock into place.

A handheld light flicks on; harsh and fluorescent, probably an old industrial bulb. That design is common in outer territories, but Connor didn’t expect to find anything so cheaply made here. He hadn’t been able to get a good glimpse of the city due to the fact that he was running for his life, but the brief snippets of the cityscape he had caught seemed polished and very, very expensive.

The light doesn’t just reveal income, though, it also draws into focus several faces all clustered around Connor. They seem to be of various ages, but all are teenagers and, judging by the slightly haunted look in their eyes that Connor saw most fiercely in the Graveyard, all are kids running from distribution.

One of the younger boys stares unabashedly at Connor. “So, it’s true. You’re actually the Akron AWOL.”

An older girl with bright streaks of pink in her hair glares at the boy who had spoken. “Shut up, Emby. You promised you’d be cool about this.”

“I am,” Emby protests, “I’m just asking, that’s all. No need to get defensive, Mai.”

Connor chuckles in spite of himself. After hearing Heartland’s little sermon, he wasn’t entirely sure that he would ever be able to laugh again, but the easy banter broke through his defenses before he realized what was happening. Painfully, it also reminds him of the Graveyard, all the conversations he’ll never hear again.

“He’s fine,” Connor assures Mai. “And yes, I’m Connor. You’re, uh, Emby?”

“That’s what they call me,” the younger boy assures him with an audibly congested sniff. “Mai came up with the nickname. Short for mouth-breather. She said it’s right on the money.”

“You don’t have to directly quote me every single time,” Mai grumbles.

Connor smirks, then turns to the other teenagers still standing around him. “Who are the rest of you?”

“Diego,” another boy announces himself. His eyes flash, giving the impression of cleverness. Clever enough to not get involved in Mai and Emby’s squabbling, at least, which gives him some credit.

An older boy introduces himself as Vincent. The harsh light from the bulb shines off of countless piercings all over his face; Connor has no idea what piercing shop would have agreed to give a teenager that many studs, everyone knows that giving tattoos or piercings to AWOLs is just damaging the merchandise, but Connor himself is standing here with someone else’s ink, so maybe he shouldn’t be so quick to judge. Seeing as Vincent is idling rather close to Mai, Connor immediately suspects them of being together, and his theory is proven correct when their hands brush together in a move that’s probably not nearly as slick as they think it is.

Two more teenagers introduce themselves as Blaine and Bam, respectively. Both of them seem vaguely unapproachable, but that energy kind of extends to the whole group save Emby. It makes sense, though; if you want to survive on your own in the underbelly of a city like this, you’ve got to be able to cut off anyone at a moment’s notice. These kids are used to living off the skin of their teeth, although this doesn’t explain why they risked their necks to get Connor to safety.

Connor folds his arms across his chest. “Why am I here?”

Bam scoffs. “Would you like it better if we dumped you back out there for the soldiers to find you?”

Connor arches a brow. “If that’s your attitude, why did you save me in the first place? Suns, how’d you even know I was here?”

Blaine flashes Connor a sharp grin that’s about as warm as light reflecting off of a scalpel. “We keep close watch of everyone in this city. Dozens of Juvey-cops converged on one building out of nowhere. When the Juveys made that mass arrest on some unclaimed cruiser two days ago, we all waited for the news that Connor Lassiter had been caught, but it never came out. There’s no way they’d pass up a chance to brag about getting you at last, so we put two and two together and figured out you’d have to be here. We’ve been keeping an eye out in case you managed to run, but we didn’t think you’d be lucky enough to run right by us.”

“That’s a great coincidence for me, then,” Connor says, still not entirely believing it.

Diego snorts. “He left out the part where we hacked into the citywide security cams months ago. We tracked you the second you left and hurried over so we could catch you before it was too late. Coincidence is for cowards.”

This earns him an irate glare from Mai. “Feel free to spill any more of our secrets while you’re at it, Diego. I’m sure caution means nothing when it comes to the starloving Akron AWOL.”

Diego just chuckles, which Connor has to respect, because Mai looks like she wants to tear the boy to shreds. “He’s not going to trust us unless we give him a reason, obviously. Look at him. He’s already thinking about running.”

This is, admittedly, true. Like Connor thought at the start, then. Diego is the smart one. Well, if they’ve got access to every sec-cam in the city, maybe they’re all the smart ones. That would explain how they survive down here, certainly.

Connor does his best to look as casual as he can. “You want something from me, obviously, or you wouldn’t have bothered to save me. How about we cut to the chase and you tell me what that is?”

Bam shrugs. “We want you gone. Sooner you’re offworld, the better. We don’t want the Juveys nosing in on our operation. Plus, we’ve got friends at some of the distribution colonies. Figured you’d be inclined to at least pretend to help.”

Connor frowns. “What friends? Maybe I know them.”

Bam actually looks a little chagrined at this. “Well, I don’t know him personally. But, uh, we tuned in to his radio show. Thought it was great. He convinced us to try and rescue AWOLs if we found them. That’s how we got Emby and Vince. He’s a friend of yours, actually. We want you to save Hayden Upchurch.”

Connor feels his shoulders sag in relief. “Hayden’s alive?”

“For now,” Bam mumbles. “He’s in a colony somewhere, so time is ticking. It feels wrong that he should die when he’s done so much for us.”

Connor can’t help a wicked grin. “So you’re a fan, huh? I’ll have to tell Hayden that he’s got admirers across the systems.”

Bam slugs him in the shoulder, which, ow. “Shut up, Lassiter. Just do it.”

Connor rubs his aching arm. “Alright, alright. I’ve got no problems with that. Say, how do you know where he is? Have they been announcing where the kids from the Graveyard went?”

He tries to keep the obvious longing from his voice, but clearly he doesn’t do such a good job of it, because Emby pipes up loudly, “You’re looking for Risa Ward, aren’t you? Is she, like, your girlfriend?”

This immediately earns the younger boy swats on the head from Mai and Bam at the same time. “She’s not my girlfriend,” Connor hastens to say, which only makes him feel more like an idiot instead of less.

His cheeks heat up while he forces out the words, so he’s pretty sure that no one believes him at all. It’s not Connor’s fault if he got distracted by the idea. It seems nice, after all. Having Risa be his girlfriend. It would probably be cool. If, you know, Connor had any idea where she was, or if she was still whole.

Mai’s visibly smirking now. “Relax, she’s still alive. Actually, we caught a transmission yesterday that you’ll probably want to hear.”

Confused, Connor follows her to a corner of their little hideaway, where he’s presented with an absolute abomination of a radio unit. It’s been patched together from the wrecks of several old computing systems, practically a distribution project in its own right, but it turns on when Mai presses a few buttons. She has to knock it on the side a couple of times before the control panel turns on, but then Mai selects a past broadcast and Connor doesn’t care about anything anymore, because he hears his own name crackling out of the system, and best of all, it’s Risa who says it.

The voice is grainy and heavily distorted, but Connor would know her anywhere. “Hey, Connor,” Risa’s recording begins, “This is Risa. If you can hear me– well, you’re alive, and that’s a relief.”

Connor feels as if he’s falling forever. Maybe he did slip when he was trying to climb down from Heartland’s building after all, and maybe this is just a hallucination his brain has cooked up to distract himself from a slow, painful death at the bottom of a skyscraper. If this is what death brings him– Risa talking to him at last, wanting him there with her like he wants her– then maybe he’ll accept it after all.

Connor mentally shakes himself, trying to focus again. Risa keeps talking, heedless of Connor’s mental distraction. “I made it out, but I’m stuck on a planet somewhere near the Graveyard. My pod was damaged and I can’t leave, but I can’t stay here, either. I don’t know your situation, but I need you, Connor. I’m on–”

A break in the recording. Connor leans forward instinctively, terrified he’s missed something, but then he hears faint sounds in the background and realizes that Risa must be talking to someone else in the room. She asks a question, and the voice that answers her is distinctly male, which makes Connor irrationally angry. He does his best to calm down, though. Risa is stranded. She can’t help it if there’s some guy with her. She’s still talking to him, trying to reach him against the odds.

A rush of static and Risa’s voice appears again. “I’m on Molokai. Find me, Connor. Please.”

The transmission ends and the room fills with silence, but Connor stays there still, swaying slightly, hoping that she’ll say something, anything more. He would listen to her describe the weather or the flight over to Molokai in her escape pod, even the boring things, just so long as he could have one more moment with her voice in his ears. He misses her desperately, he realizes. More than the Graveyard, more than anyone he’d met on that doomed cruiser. It’s been him and Risa for so long that he’s almost forgotten how to be by himself again, despite the fact that every other year of his life was just that.

The quiet persists, and Connor comes to the understanding that the others must be waiting for him to say something. “Well,” he says awkwardly, “I need to get to Risa. You don’t have a ship that I could borrow, by any chance, do you?”

Mai beams triumphantly. “I was hoping you would ask. We don’t have a ship of our own, but we have something better.”

Connor turns to her curiously. “And what’s that?”

“A way to get into any ship,” Vincent answers him. “Any ship, any building, anywhere. We figured out how to make fake grounds licenses, but these hack the system every time. It doesn’t know how to handle your license, so it just bypasses every security barrier on instinct. It’ll let you in any door. You can walk right up to a shipyard and take whatever you want. That’s how we’ve stayed undercover so long, we’ve all got new licenses. We have a few extra just in case, you can take one.”

Connor eyes him cautiously. “You’re just going to give me one? Free of charge? That’s awfully nice of you.”

“We’re not terrible people,” Blaine snorts. “We just expect you to uphold your end of the bargain. Get to Risa, then get to the colony. Pick a ship big enough to hold the kids you save. We have friends who don’t want to get distributed, and more than Bam’s celebrity crush.”

This earns him a vengeful kick to the knees from Bam, but Connor’s the one who feels like his legs have been knocked out from under him. “You want me to storm a distribution colony?”

“We want you to repay the favor we’re giving you now,” Mai clarifies. “You owe us, Lassiter. Don’t die with the debt.”

Connor nods slowly. “I’ll try. You’re not the only one who doesn’t want their friends in pieces.”

“You’d better mean that,” Blaine threatens, but he allows Diego to open a carefully locked box and pull out a holopad.

“This is your new identity,” Diego announces. “You’re now Elvis Robert Mullard, a Juvey-cop who recently celebrated his nineteenth birthday. Congratulations.”

He flicks through a few holoscreens, snapping a quick photo of Connor which probably looks terrible so he can enter it into their prepared false license registration. Connor frowns. “What about the real Elvis Mullard? Won’t he be mad that I’m stealing his life?”

Diego shakes his head. “Elvis died in the Graveyard explosion. I’d say rest in peace, but he wanted us in pieces, so actually I hope it was, like, super painful for him. Now you get his license and we all live happily ever after.”

Connor nods uncomfortably. “I’m fine with that.”

“Good,” Diego says crisply, “Because from here on out, you are Elvis Mullard. Forever.”

He swipes up on his holopad, and a blue band of light appears around Connor’s left wrist, flashing fast-paced streams of text before disappearing again.

“So that’s it?” Connor asks, staring at the place above his hand where the hologram had just been.

“That’s it,” Diego confirms. “You’re a new man. How does it feel?”

“The exact same,” Connor mumbles.

Blaine chuckles. “Well, you did nothing. Not yet, at least. Remember your end of the bargain.”

“I’m going to,” Connor assures him.

Bam eyes him suspiciously. “You’d better. Anyway, you need to get going before they send reinforcements down on all of us. The shipyard’s just a couple of blocks from here. Steal any one you like, get to Molokai, then repay your debt. If we think you’re backing out, we can cancel your license and set the cops on your ass in a heartbeat. Just remember that.”

Connor holds up his hands in mock surrender. “I’m not going to back out. Jeez. Trust a guy, will you?”

This earns him six blank stares, and Connor sighs. “Fine, fine. I’ll save them. I promise.”

Emby waves as Connor heads to the door. “It was nice to meet you, Connor!”

Somehow, Connor finds it within himself to grin. “It was great to meet you too, Emby. Don’t let the rest of these killjoys get you down.”

“I won’t,” Emby pledges.

Connor breaks into a broad grin, letting that be the last the shady group sees of him, then heads back out into the street. The soldiers have evidently attempted to retrace their steps to find Connor, because the alleyway is long deserted.

Connor stands for a moment in the dull darkness. Somewhere above him, a small, one-man starship screams up to the atmosphere. Connor tracks it with his eyes until it’s gone. In that ship could be a Juvey-cop ready to sentence another feral to death, or a flight student taking off on their first solo trip. Or maybe it’s holding a boy, a boy like Connor, utterly alone again but this time bolstered by the knowledge that he will not be that way forever. He will find Risa. He will find his friends. And then, at the end of the galaxy, they will rest in the knowledge that they outsmarted a man older than distribution itself. There is still time for everything to go according to plan.

a/n: at last, the dorian heartland easter eggs make sense.

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

all tags list: @wordsarelife

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