Not Alone

Hide and Seek (Part Three)

Brown held the Parasite over the molten glass.

He was in control again.

This was going to be his first act of free will in ten days.

A brutal kill.

Brown... realized he was... hesitating.

The Parasite had bragged about seeing into his mind, but... he had seen back into what there was of her tiny brain, and he knew she was something barely more than an angry child.

Brown didn't have to be a monster like Bishop.

But he couldn't just let her go running back to the Professor...

The Parasite was fighting his grasp, her forked black tongue straining towards him like a snake. She wanted Brown under control again.

None of that.

Brown switched his right hand to a knife and sliced the hateful appendage in half, letting the tentacle which had turned him into a puppet for ten days fall into the boiling glass and melt.

No more leeching off the strong. You're not even a Parasite anymore. You're just a small, rude toilet now.

He turned the knife back into a hand and flipped Jellybean off.

Pushing through what must have been terrible pain, Jellybean managed a lispy scream around the remains of her tongue:

"HOW IMMATURE!"

Her voice sounded so much smaller now it wasn't going right into his earpiece.

Brown was free.

Now what?

He remembered his last rampage all too well. Brown didn't want to lose control again, and he certainly didn't want to hang around long enough for that Professor Toilet to become gigantic once more and find those speakers. Yet right at hand were massive barrels of acid, prototypes of Titan-killing weapons, computers and other valuable equipment.

Before Brown left, he could at leave his hosts a goodbye present in the form of a massive act of sabotage...

He turned back in the direction of the acid drums, but before he took two steps a bolt of lightning struck his mind.

Green light and shimmering, vertical columns of computer code descending through darkness were all he could see. Then, through the black-and-green snowstorm, the glitchy outline of— a human?

A face behind orange sunglasses, frowning.

Words filled Brown's mind:

Canon Event!

Brown hesitated, one foot above the floor. What had he been walking in that direction for?

He was leaving the base, never to return, wasn't he?

Brown turned back to the Strider and gestured at the teleportation belt with his right hand, Jellybean still struggling in his left.

"You're leaving?" the Strider asked. "Good for you. Don't get caught again."

Brown raised both arms, lifting Jellybean.

"Let me go, Tin Man!" she spluttered, bleeding from the mouth. "LET ME GO!"

I don't think so... Brown almost wished he could make her hear his thoughts again. If I'm going to be soft and let you live, I'm going to have to drop you off in the middle of nowhere. It's far more mercy than you deserve. But it seems I'm fated to never make good decisions when it comes to women...

Brown gestured at the teleporter belt again, and then pointed at the Strider.

Why couldn't he understand camera hand-signs like Ulysses?

He thought about it, approached the vat, switched his hand to a knife, and scratched words into the blackened metal, making the wobbly letters as large as he could for the benefit of the Strider's giant eyes.

COME WITH ME

Not trusting in his ability to write in Skibidi, Brown hoped that the Strider at least knew English, a language that he remembered hearing both Michael Jackson Toilet and Jellybean speak in Singapore.

"Can you carry me?" the Strider tilted his enormous head, looking skeptical.

Brown raised his thumb.

This teleporter belt is only the reason Mount Everest is now known as the second tallest mountain on Earth...

"Are you going back to the Alliance? To... your Titan?"

That... was a good question.

Brown hesitated, and scratched:

NO-MAN'S LAND

He needed time and space to think.

The Kalahari Desert would do.

There was nothing there but several nuclear craters, and rumor had it, deserters hiding from the war.

"Fine. I'll go with you. But first..."

The Strider pushed his welding mask back, raised one of the swords that was still glowing, and struck through the chain that tethered him to the workshop.

"Get up here so I can smash that vat to pieces before anyone else reads that."

Brown took a lightspeed hop onto the Strider's toilet seat, still keeping a tight hold of Jellybean, who had extended her neck and was gnawing on his arm and clawing away at the sleeve, rending the fabric.

It didn't hurt, but it was annoying.

Brown ignored her and watched the Strider systematically hack everything in the workshop apart, bathing the floor in an orange glow that melted and warped everything it touched.

It was a such an entrancing sight even Jellybean stopped her tantrum.

"The floor is lava!" she giggled. "For real! Wow, wait till they bring the Overseer back to tell you off and he sees THAT!"

"Good riddance," the Strider surveyed the damage, smiling like a demon as he creakily began to rise to his three legs. "THAT'S FOR CALLING ME A LIVING DISASTER, YOU HATEFUL SLAVE DRIVER! I'LL SHOW YOU DISASTER!"

That earth-shattering shouting must have been audible to everyone in Alpha-Hills.

It was time to go.

Brown typed in the co-ordinates for the Kalahari.

"I don't want to go to No-Man's Land!" Jellybean whined, kicking her little legs. "Let me GO! I hate you! I HATE YOU!! I'll make you pay for this, just like I did with the Bogeyman! No robot crosses me and gets away with it! YOU'LL SEE!!!!"

Brown ignored the screeching, and kept hold of the back of her tank. He grasped the corner of the Strider's welding mask with his free hand. Then he thought better, and threw his arm around Blade Strider's neck.

The first time he had willingly hugged anyone (unless you counted a dream) since...

...TV Woman...

Blade Strider looked down, a little taken aback, and awkwardly leaned into Brown.

"You won't survive out there," Jellybean muttered. "You're both too stupid to live."

Black smoke swallowed them all.

Brown was leaving the Alpha Hills base the same way he had arrived.

He prayed he would never see the place again.