Norbu wasn't out of breath. They ran, Dawson's voice chasing them, accompanied by a chorus of crickets. Their hot breaths were rhythmic. When the forest broke and they vaulted into the farmer's empty cornfield, Norbu wasn't breathing heavily. In fact, he was laughing.
"What do you think those kids were, fifteen?" he shook his head. "As if they could fight us."
Gale collapsed in the cornfield. Cosmia kicked him over, barely able to keep herself vertical.
"Were they right?" she tries to snarl but can barely pant. "What are you in for?"
At the truck nearby, Eurydice hears them. Blood trickles out of Titus' nose. He still pinned himself down to the rusted thing he hopes will be his getaway machine. Eurydice is about to pull away when Titus smirks, lips and teeth crimson.
She kicks him in the groin for good measure before heading off.
Cosmia goes to kick Gale again and Faris puts himself between them.
She scoffs, "of course you'd protect him, creep."
When his face falls, she recoils. Swallowing her words, she peers at Gale, who was doubled over and coughing.
"Well?"
His breaths are raspy. Norbu jogs closer and snatches Gale's hand. He pulls the boy upright. The force nearly sends Gale tumbling once more, and only Norbu's steady grip keeps him upright.
"I threw..." he huffs once. He hits his chest with the butt of his fist, and tries to clear his throat. "I threw firecrackers into a house. It wasn't... I'm not like that."
"Mischief."
Gale glares at Faris, "and vandalism and arson. Not just mischief."
Eurydice arrives with just enough time to hear the charges. The fire near the house glows through the trellises. There's another thing Eurydice can give Harvey. Certainly she's got more favours to collect than Titus.
"Big crime for a big boy," she pouts out her bottom lip.
Gale ignores her, catching Cosmia's eyes. Unnaturally red hair peeks out beneath the frizzy brown strands on top. Gale recognizes it, recognizes the lift to her chest, the tightness in her throat, the pinch of her lips.
"I'd... I'd never." The lack of words finds him. "Believe me, Cosmia. I'd never."
Eurydice rolls her eyes. It is Cosmia who keeps her gaze steady on Gale. A night full of stars, but she searches his eyes for constellations, for order, for some direction. They're just as blue as his hair.
In the quiet, Norbu hears movement. He spins, expecting Dawson. Instead, Titus has stumbled over. His nose is red, swelling, but otherwise his skin is pale. It's tinged grey, no silver sparkle.
"Became well-acquainted with a fist or what?" Norbu snorts.
Eurydice runs her tongue along her teeth.
"No fighting," Faris says the words quietly. "We've got to calm it with breaking Benji's rules."
"Who gives a damn about his rules?" Eurydice glares.
Cosmia looks up at the stars. She'll miss them. In MedFack, apparently, if that's where they send her when Benji's sent them all home, there won't be stars. Doesn't matter really, because there is nothing but grey cloud cover in Neo Elysium.
All the while, Gale doesn't look away from her.
"It's worse than it looks," Titus coughs out the word, blood spraying out of his mouth.
"We're going to get sent home," Gale whispers.
Eurydice cackles, staring Faris down, "more afraid of the bitch farmer than the panopticon?"
Faris' chest puffs out, shoulders back, and Norbu leaps between him and Eurydice, "I already have enough injuries on my hands without you two scrapping. Come on, lets go to the farmhouse. And you better bet your life savings that the farmer's got wound closure strips, buckets of ice, and liquor."
~~~
In the glow of the porchlight, Kae looks more like a North Marcadian than an Elysite. Calath isn't in the farmhouse. Kae bolts back to the fire but only Harvey and Rhiannon Rose are there. They sit quietly around the flames.
Harvey looks Kae before she can sprint away, "what is it?'
Kae clamps her lips tightly and bows her head.
"Well?"
"I..." she looks down. "I need Calath."
"Why?"
Harvey doesn't need sharpened teeth to scowl.
"I..." Kae's voice is caught in her throat.
She sprints off around the house. He can't catch her. They both know it. There is nowhere she can avoid him though for the next ten weeks. Her hand is sweaty. Kae's father should have listened to her. She's going to get caught anyway, was then too. There is no violin for her to play in the meantime. At least this way she can lessen the blow.
Unbeknownst to her, Harvey grabs his cane off the ground. He bowed his head, forehead sweating, caramelizing over the fire. "Goodnight, Hestia."
Rhiannon Rose turns away from the fire to watch him head into the farmhouse. Pity. She has always liked her name.
For Kae, finding Calath is more difficult than she had anticipated. She isn't hiding in their shared quarters, curled up underneath a thin quilt, or in the bathroom. There aren't many places to hide there, but still Kae looks. She already searched the farmhouse. The shed is unlocked and Kae whispered Calath's name to no avail. She wandered back further and further until she heard something scurry and slipped out of the room.
Perhaps Calath is in the fields, but Kae had heard a scream somewhere out there. Benji's wrath isn't worth facing whatever hurt that woman. The only other place Kae can conceive is inside the chicken coop.
Then, something rustles in the shed behind her.
"Calath?" Kae steps into the doorway, her feet so loud they seem to shake the earth.
A brown bag splits open, the crunch of its tear echoing in the shed. Dried husks of corn and spiders and Calath tumble out. A pair of shears clatters to the ground beside Calath and they snatch it. Dirt clusters in their eyebrows and lashes. They blink up at Kae.
"What are you doing?" Kae whispers.
"Hiding!" Calath answers. "Were you looking for me?"
"I called your name!"
Calath looks at the torn bag, and keeps whispering, "it's hard to hear in there. I ran out of air."
Kae hurries inside. She grabs hold of Calath's wrist. They drop the shears and run back to the homestead, Calath explaining along the way how their tool broke. Together, they bound up the stairs. Kae guides Calath to the back of the house. They round the corner and find Harvey, leaning against the door. He pokes the broken metal stuck in the lock.
Harvey goes to his wrist to touch his watch. It isn't there. He stills, just for a second, before smirking, "took you long enough."
~~~
Down below, Titus sits on the kitchen table. He holds a cloth filled with ice to his nose. Water drips down his arm, tinged pink.
"You're lucky I've reset noses before," Norbu says. "They aren't going to bring a plastic surgeon out here, pretty boy. It'd be a shame if I couldn't admire your good looks while working in the field."
He's not looking at Titus though. Instead, he's got one knee on a chair and he's leaning back to get a better look at Gale's bottom lip. Also sitting on the table, Gale tries to keep himself still. He flinches when Norbu pokes at his face.
"Strips will hold," Norbu says. "I'm not good enough at stitches to try them. You've got nice lips too."
Gale's face is bright pink.
Norbu pulls back, digging into the medical kit. Benji had showed them where it was and went over the contents with each team once they were cleared to work without a silent chaperone. Not that Norbu was paying attention.
"You're..." Gale clears his throat. He sits on his hands. "Is there anything you're not good at?"
Norbu laughs, "running from officers."
Titus grins, but then winces as his nose pulls. He presses the ice tighter to his face.
"Didn't even get to run," Gale shrugs, keeping his arms in close. "They got me at the factory while I was working."
"I fell off a building," Norbu chuckles. "Had to see a physician in the panopticon until my ribs healed. I had already agreed to some sort of suppressant, but it would have reacted negatively with the pain meds so, they kept me around. Lucky for me, since I got to come here."
"Lucky?" Titus furrows his brow.
Norbu grins. He starts to peel back the sticky thing, "yeah, I guess. I've always needed to move around, and this gives me something to do instead of lagging for a few months on a suppressant. I know everybody else hates it here, but it's kind of charming, in it's own way. Besides, the farmer's nice on the eyes."
Gale feels his face flush when Norbu touches his face again, "it's growing on me, I think."
"Not the only thing of yours growing," Norbu winks.
Gale instinctively covers his crotch.
"What about you, Titus?" Norbu starts to place the adhesive down, gripping Gale's skin tightly. "How'd they catch you?"
Titus shifts. He remembers the feeling of Norbu's warm hand on his, showing him how much pressure to apply. Off the field, Norbu smiles less. He also asks more.
"My mother drove me to the officers."
Gale darts his eyes over to Titus, who only shrugs.
"Bitch move," Norbu agrees. "You'd think she'd be proud to have a hacker. It means you're smart. Do you often antagonize women, or just Eurydice and your mother?"
Titus huffs, "not really into women."
"Good news," Norbu smirks. "Saves half of them for me. Although, I'd rather not compete against you for the farmer's affections. You'll win."
Gale blasts out a laugh just as Norbu puts the tape in place. He can't stop smiling even if the adhesive sticks around his busted lip. He scratches the back of his head, looking from Norbu to Titus. Neither of them work the fields with him, but maybe the days wouldn't be so bad if they did.
~~~
Rhiannon Rose will not leave the fire. She does not put on more wood. Eurydice and Cosmia join her. The embers crackle and pop, and she yearns to grab one, to snatch it and put it in her pocket.
"Why'd you punch him?" Cosmia smirks, looking over at Eurydice. "Risking Harvey's wrath isn't anything small."
Eurydice plants her hands on her hips. It would be impossible to explain to anyone who wasn't from The Arch, and explaining it would mean she was from there. She loves her name but hates how it betrays who she is. A family of Lyres.
Still, she can't hold herself back from mumbling, "entitled Arch pricks."
Rhiannon Rose smiles. She left too. So did Cosmia. It is odd, Rhiannon Rose thinks. Leaving is the easiest verb to reach for when describing what happened, but it is not accurate. Ran, escaped, fled.
There are no good places left. How could she explain that to people from Cocta, while they ask an ancient goddess for the blessing of having their homes burnt down? How could she cry over the sound of children singing in factories in Leth? Bubbles wash through Neo Elysium, cleaning out half the people her age. Where could she ever go and feel fire?
The flame finally dies. No one needed to smother it. Rhiannon Rose doesn't always get to see the end of a fire. The beginning is never enough. Her stomach rising and rising in her throat, her hands rushing and twitching and it just needs to be there and done. Why does it take so long? Pressure building and building, body tightening, and then the flame and release. She usually flees before it's out. She doesn't care for the sight of it extinguishing. The disappearance isn't so sudden that she is left cold. It wasn't final, on and off, impulse and release. Even emptiness would fill her. Rhiannon Rose feels nothing.
"Those ROM pricks scattered," Eurydice points out, chuckling. "Good to know they've got our backs in the fields then, if anyone comes onto the property with a weapon or something."
"You sure they're from The ROM?" Cosmia twists her head to look. "Could be Serment?"
"Serments don't speak English," Eurydice swallows again. "Only ambassadors do. The rest speak some weird old dead language. Besides, they look too fucking hopeless to be from Serment. Serments believe in a God, foolishly."
"They believe the earth's already been raptured," Rhiannon Rose stands up, turning her back on the firepit. "Sounds pretty fucking hopeless to me."
The other two follow her inside.
~~~
Faris finds Harvey upstairs. He can hear the clinking from here. He wanders to the back of the house. Calath sits on the floor, a tool in her hand and an another palm open. Curled next to her, Kae reaches over and passes her a different instrument. Harvey hovers over them both and looks over at Faris.
"Who screamed?" he asks.
Faris explains the encounter in the forest, describes the two young people, and explains everything he saw and said.
Harvey reaches over and clasps a hand on Faris' arm, "thought I'd lost you for a minute there, Ace."
He hadn't realized he was doing it, at first. Relaying all of the information, smoothing over marks, twisting his way in. Memory matters. Lying requires consistency. The panopticon couldn't take it from him. It could take all sound and voice and new thought, but it doesn't have him still.
"You wish," Faris says. "Then, you wouldn't have to deal with me back home."
"Already asking for favours?" Harvey cracks a smile.
Below them, Calath tries not to whisper. She would shush them, but she learned the hard way what an errant mouth receives back in her gang days. Instead, she pulls and the piece snaps. Again.
"Pliers," Calath says.
"It's going to break inside the lock," Kae whispers. They already tried the pliers. "There isn't much left."
"I've loosened it," Calath disagrees. "It won't break this time."
Kae's hands tremble as she goes to grab them. She isn't used to moving in plain sight.
"You're break in?" Faris leans in.
Harvey grabs his cane and grips it tightly, "no, but I've got it handled."
"It broke," Kae looks over at Faris. She shrinks in on herself a bit. "Calath is going to get the tool out."
"Calath is our resident genius," Faris agrees.
She smiles.
Then, Faris hushes his voice, "we need to decide what we are going to tell Benji. If we are telling Mullins anything."
Calath lines up the pliers. Harvey raises his hand to quiet Faris. The pair lean in to watch Calath pinch the metal rod. Her fingers wrap around the pliers. She rips her body backwards, so forcefully she slams into the wooden floor.
The metal piece clinks into the floor. It rolls and Kae snatches it before it slips into the floorboards.
Harvey smirks, "get everyone in the sitting room. We're coming to an agreement."
~~~
When he pulls into his lot, weak headlights guiding his way through a farm he could navigate deaf and blind, Benji yawns. Something in the right wheel well of his truck is ticking. Benji turned off the radio a while ago to listen to the sound. The radio only plays the same ten albums anyway, always has, and the news it reports is long-winded and never good. The ticking finally stops when he pulls the truck over the patch of dirt that has become its home.
Benji twists the key out of the ignition. In the darkness, Benji digs through his wallet. He flips through the fraying loose bills. The Adam Collective is supposed to agree on who will mint and print North Marcadian currency soon. Today, according to Jeremiah and the radio. Of course, the radio never brings good news. Negotiations have stalled, worse than his truck.
He touches the photo in his wallet. His family only posed for photos twice. The first one they have printed in frames all over the house. There are only half a dozen copies of the second photo. Enough to preserve to show the next generation of Mullins what their parents looked like as children, but not enough to display. There would be no joy in looking at the four faces. All of the photos around the house have five.
It's risky to keep the photo in his wallet amongst the crumbling cash. Every ten years a photographer comes through, and he ain't cheap. He came to the trading post again last year. Nobody was home, and Benji couldn't justify the cost for just himself. His children would only see the first year of his teens. Next time the photographer will be back, Benji will be thirty. No pictures of him would ever exist between those years. By then, he probably won't be alone. They'll be in the photo, a wife by his side, an heir and at least three spares. Two spares weren't enough for his family.
He took the photograph back. One photo when he was six, this one at thirteen. Down a member, down a member, down again and again. In 10 years, he won't even have anyone left to invite in.
It's eerily quiet when he approaches the farmhouse. Smoke lingers in the air. He opens the door for only a split second before all the flies can invade his home.
"Benji, you home?" Faris' voice echoes down the hall. "Can you come here for a second?"
~~~~~
For those of you who missed Benji, lets pretend his return here is happy and good, yeah? Not terribly sad and overwhelming heart-wrenching. I'm trying to pre-write more for this, but honestly each chapter is so long and requires so much brain power. Still, expect another one next week! I'm already really excited for one of the scenes I've written.
Definitely only good vibes to come. Nothing sad ever again.