Vanguard | ONC 2020 ✔

Onyx

The boy shot to his feet so fast he'd have to have gotten some form of whiplash. "What...what is that?" he stammered, looking terrified as he backed away from Alisa.

Alisa felt the massive eye roll she sent his way was well-deserved. "Um, a dog, duh. What did you think it was, a rat?" Although I suppose Jada does look a bit like a very large rat right now, she thought, glancing over her dog's matted coat, tufts of fur sticking up in messy spikes. She looked like she hadn't been brushed in weeks, which could have been the case. Alisa had no idea how long she'd been in the government's custody.

"Dogs...rats..." The boy bit his lip. "I think I am going to pass out. I'm not quite used to these creatures you call animals."

He didn't pass out, fortunately, but he did turn rather green when Jada bounded out of Alisa's arms and headed straight for him. In fact, he screamed like a little girl and scuttled away. "We didn't have anything like this on X9-7!" he cried out, his expression quite panicky.

What the hell?

Alisa scowled, nudging her brother's limp form with the tip of her boot. They were nice boots, she noted, steel-toed and thick-laced. And different from the regular canvas sneakers the boy and her twin were wearing. Combat boots. No wonder the boy had been in so much pain when she'd kicked him. Then her gaze landed upon the loop of rope---like a noose---in her brother's open palm, and it hit her.

She whirled around. Jada circled around her feet with a confused whine. "What did they give you?"

"What?" The boy's already-large eyes widened even more. Alisa had never seen eyes quite like his before, clear and feather-lined and emerald-pure.

"Them. They gave you something, didn't they?" Alisa enunciated each word heavily like she was speaking to a toddler, since the boy in front of her obviously had the intelligence of one. "Left it in your hand or anywhere on your body, perhaps? Something besides whatever was originally in your backpack?"

"Oh! Uh, I have something called a gun, and, um, you can't eat it or anything...I think it's some kind of weapon..." the boy stuttered, reaching for his backpack.

Alisa stared at him. "You're fucking stupid, aren't you." It wasn't a question. Who has a gun and doesn't use it? What kind of idiot...

"I'm...I'm not really from here," the boy whimpered, backing away slowly.

"You Canadian or something?"

"I didn't mean it...that way. I'm from a different planet. I...I'm an ambassador of X9-7. It's a small planet between Saturn and---"

Alisa cut him off with a withering glare. "So you're telling me you're an alien?"

The boy's expression could only be described as helpless. "Pretty much, yeah?"

Alisa snorted. He was obviously straight from the looney bin. What a crazy piece of work. "Sure. And I'm a Mary Sue."

"Uh...is that your name?" He looked even more confused than Jada. "I thought you were Alisa..."

She was on him in a flash, a fistful of his collar in her hand. "How do you know my name?" At her feet, Jada---having finally found a purpose---snarled and bared her teeth. She probably didn't know what was going on, but her mistress was angry, so she would be angry too.

Dogs were good.

"Um...I---I mean Red...well, I suppose I'm Red now---the original Red...he knew your name...it was in his memories..." the boy babbled, a thin sheen of sweat covering his forehead. He had turned so pale that even his light hair looked stark gold against his skin.

"Uhhh," came a groan from the floor, making Alisa release her hostage and drop to her knees once more. Her brother rolled over, looking dazed as all hell, but very much alive.

And uninjured, which was something Alisa couldn't say about herself.

Cheng Xin's eyelids fluttered open. He stared around, at the steel ceiling, at the steel floor, at the steely-eyed glint in Alisa's remaining eye. "What...happened? Where am I?" His voice sounded almost foggy and disconnected, like he was speaking from some faraway place. His gaze shifted to Alisa. "What happened to your eye? You're...you're bleeding."

Alisa swiped her fingers under the gauze. They came away scarlet. "Nothing for you to worry about," she said. "Just...a small cut."

"You said they gouged out your eye," the boy volunteered.

"WHAT?" Cheng Xin shouted, bolting straight up. He swayed a little, seeming groggy and unsteady. Alisa rushed to catch him, her bloody hand streaking crimson on the back of his t-shirt. It was black, anyway. It wouldn't show up.

"He's kidding," she told her brother. She got up, swinging around to the skinny boy and snatching him by the front of his shirt again. "Red, wasn't it?" When the boy nodded nervously, she hissed, "Shut the fuck up."

Cheng Xin was fully awake now, fending off Jada's need to cover him in dog slobber from head to toe. "What did they do to you, Li?"

"Nothing for you to worry about," she repeated, keeping her tone as calm as possible as she continued to glare at the idiot she now knew as Red. "Don't panic."

"You're my sister."

The pain in her empty eye socket was worsening by the second. "And we're trapped in fucking Vanguard with no clue how to get out. I'm pretty sure we have more important things to worry about."

"I---" Red started. Alisa contemplated choking him into silence. He swallowed. "I know how we can get out."

Suddenly, Alisa wanted him to keep talking.

Cheng Xin perked up immediately. "You do?" He didn't seem to care that he was talking to a total stranger who they didn't know jack shit about. He instantly gave in to the promise of freedom, letting his guard down and putting his trust into the other---whose name he didn't even know. Alisa scowled. It was an amateur mistake. Her brother was lucky she was around, if not he'd have already died. He was too naive, too careless.

She was the smart one in the family, and it showed.

Red's demeanour changed, becoming more shy than nervous. A faint blush painted his cheeks in light pink. "Yeah. Uh---the old man told me."

"What old man? Is he reliable? Are you sure this isn't a trick?" Alisa fired. She didn't trust this shot-in-the-head idiot, who spoke of being an alien with complete seriousness and didn't know what dogs were.

"Let him finish, Li," Cheng Xin said, his tone placating. He slowly stood up, one hand running itself through Jada's fur. The dog keened into his touch, growling lowly. Her twin smiled, his grin soft at the edges. Just like him, Alisa thought to herself. Everything about her brother was almost sweet. Cheng Xin turned to the boy. "I didn't get your name? I'm Cheng Xin, by the way."

"Red." He said it with some difficulty, like he wasn't quite used to pronouncing the word. "Um, Vanguard's a...game of some sort? We have to, uh, survive it to get out. I...I don't really know much other than that."

Alisa couldn't tell whether he was fibbing or not. "Great, well, I guess we'll go on our way and pretend we never saw each other."

"I think we should work together---" Red began.

"I'm not working with an idiot," Alisa shot back. "Especially not a crazy one who thinks he's come from Mars."

"Actually, X9-7 is---"

"Shut it." Alisa picked Jada up, swivelling around. "Let's go, Cheng---"

She stopped once she noticed that the passage she'd just come from was simply...gone. What remained was a smooth sheet of metal. Her eyes widened once she noticed there was only one passage---straight ahead.

And it looked very, very, very dark.

"Looks like you don't have much of a choice," came Red's voice next to her ear, soft, almost a sigh.

Alisa threw up a hand in defeat, nearly dropping her dog. "Where's that gun you were talking about?"