Darkness, rolling darkness. There was nothing quite as all consuming as being enveloped by such overwhelming blackness, one that swallowed you whole and threatened to never let you go. Then, slowly, things changed. The darkness became dissipated with bursts of electric colour and whizzing. A calmness settled over Sarah and she was floating, floating…

Until she wasn’t.

Sarah groaned and dismissed the prompt from her LENS, her body was spasming and it felt like she had been hit by a tonne of bricks. A low thrumming echoed through her head and her muscles suddenly stopped their jerky movements. With her head twisted to the side, Sarah violently vomited up streams of water. Disgusting, pungent river water.

Oh god, I’ve lost all feeling in my body. I’m paralysed.

This didn’t feel right. Sarah didn’t feel good. Her brain was in a downward spiral of confusion and pain. What had happened? Was there anyone around she could call for help? Sarah’s eyes shifted side to side to try to catch sight of anyone who may be nearby. Maybe whoever - or whatever? - did this did stop and she just couldn’t see them. Sarah held her breath and strained her hearing, trying to catch any whisper of a sound. There was nothing other than the hammering of her heart, and pounding of her ears as her body fought to recover.

They probably kept driving. Maybe they didn’t realise they had hit someone. Sarah was trying to justify the absence of help, though her imagined excuses were falling flat fairly quickly. Maybe the person who had hit her couldn’t afford to get in any trouble and the collision would bring it all to a head. Either way, despite the agony she was in, Sarah supposed it was best for everyone that they didn’t stop. If they had, and the cops had found her, well…

Confusion flashed across Sarah’s face as she read the message. Why was her LENS waterlogged? The river. Ugh, the river. The stagnant, toxic river that she fell in, inhaled, swallowed and had now flooded her system.

If I fell into it, how the hell did I get out?

Given the pain she was in and the immobility she currently felt, there was no way she got out of the water, and pulled herself up the bank.

Was someone nearby, or -?

Yep. Thanks. Got it, LENS.

Sarah wracked her brain, trying to think of what to do next. She couldn’t keep lying there, not with her LENS threatening to shut down until it had been cleared of water. Her body felt weird, tingly, but the pain was subsiding, though she wasn’t sure that was a good thing. There was only one thing Sarah could think of doing, and it was the last thing she wanted to do right now, all things considered.

Her LENS connected almost immediately, and an image of Jax’s angry, betrayed face appeared.

“What the fuck do you want?” he spat.

“Jax, I -” Sarah’s mouth wouldn’t work properly. The words didn’t form quite right. She tried to speak, but slurring was the best that happened.

“Oh shit, Sez are you alright?”

With a mouth that refused to cooperate and give an informative reply, Sarah pinged her location to Jax, and waited for him to get the notification.

“See you soon sis, hang tight.”

Sarah closed her eyes and sighed, the camera retracted back into the LENS the moment the call disconnected.

As she waited she thought this would be the perfect time for self reflection, for a life evaluation, to come up with some sort of eureka moment of how she was going to turn her life around, to come out better on the other side. But, that was really just a load of shit. There wasn’t anything Sarah could do right now to help herself or Jax. They were dealt the hand they had and they were doing the best they could do with it.

Weeeellllll, that wasn’t quite true.

They could probably do better.

To prevent that wheelhouse from developing into something either too negative, or too inspirational, Sarah instead brought her attention back to her current situation. She was lying on the grass embankment, absolutely dripping wet. Her black jacket was thick and sodden, and the cotton clothing adorned underneath it were at this point just holding vessels for water transfer.

The shivering came on quickly as the initial shock of the situation left Sarah. The night wasn’t cold, but with the rain still coming down, and the wee dip she had just had, Sarah felt her body temperature dropping. She wasn’t the leanest of individuals, given their living situation and lifestyle, it was a challenge to eat balanced all the time, so her weight ebbed and flowed with the food availability at New Haven. Currently, Sarah was a little on the meatier side of her weight range, so she was hoping this would help with some warmth retention. As the cold began to seep into her bones though, she wasn’t sure it was really working in her favour.

Something else to think about then... Who had pulled her out? She tried to think about who her would-be rescuer would be. Or maybe Sarah wasn’t knocked unconscious like she thought, and she experienced a brief moment of amnesia and that coincided perfectly with pulling herself from the polluted water.

Sarah lifted her hands to inspect her fingers; there wasn’t any mud or debris on them, which suggested she hadn’t come out on her own volition.

Oh - my hands!

She could move them. Sarah began playing with her hands like an infant, she bunched them into fists, wiggled each finger in turn, and twisted her wrists. That was a good sign, maybe there wasn’t a broken back in play. Or there was, and it hadn’t affected anything important.

As Sarah laid, with pain at a manageable level and hands that moved, she was a little miffed that the cloud cover blocked the view of the stars. Or what she imagined would be the stars, light pollution, and actual pollution, probably drowned out most of what should have been visible. Sarah supposed the little stars dancing in her vision would have to do for space representation.

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

Where was Jax? Sarah wasn’t sure how much time had passed, and she was tempted to close her eyes and just… rest.. Her LENS had powered down pretty promptly after the call, so there was no easy way to reference the time, or how much had passed. And, she didn’t exactly know how far from New Haven she was. So, her wait could be a little longer than she’d like..

Sarah was half tempted to try to activate the Strip-tech™ on her shoes, to see if that would help her stand, or move, but a comical vision of her legs flailing about while the rest of her dragged behind them stopped. Given these strips were a little newer, and by all accounts, much more powerful than others she had used, she didn’t want to fuck anything up right now. Nothing more anymore.

A shadow fell over Sarah, and she let out a low sigh, relieved that Jax had made it. She was about to give a smart ass hello, when a couple more shadows fell alongside this one.

Not Jax then. Sarah swallowed. If this wasn’t Jax, who was it? Sarah’s stomach fell, this wasn’t good. And she wasn’t in a position to do anything about it.

_______

Jax was angry. Really fucking angry. The Strip-tech™ envelopes should have been in his room, on his desk, where he had left them. But they weren't, and he didn’t want to blame Sarah without any solid evidence, but he knew it would’ve been her. She was always meddling in, and with, his business.

His room had been upturned during his search; his bed and mattress were askew, the makeshift desk was laying asunder and his clothes had been thrown from their usual metal drawers. There were five envelopes this morning, but now there were none. Frustration bubbled to the surface again, and Jax clenched his fists and teeth to avoid releasing his anger through a physical outlet, like punching a wall.

He had sold a few of the Strip-tech™ earlier, promising top results to the buyers, and assurances that he had more when they needed them. Jax hadn’t tried them himself, but considering the source that he had uplifted the goods from and the accompanying material, he knew they were worth at least triple what he had sold the samples for.

The buyers would be back too, and now he was empty handed. Empty. Fucking. Handed. Jax let out an angry growl. These buyers weren’t people he wanted to mess with, and his source wouldn’t be available to pilfer anymore from any time soon. He needed to find Sarah.

But first, he needed to calm down. She never listened to him when he was this irate. Focus. Jax’s big brown eyes were buried beneath furrowed brows, which lifted as he took steadying breaths. The stress lines eased and his face relaxed. He focused on the air coming in through his nose, counting to five as he drew it in. Jax held his breath for an additional five seconds, then he released the hold and breathed out for another five. His teeth unclenched and he rolled his shoulders back, trying to relax the muscles that had risen with his temper.

Okay. Calmer. Just. Enough to sit down, and begin a reasonable plan of next steps. Jax repositioned his stretcher, picked his limp thermo-stable blanket off the ground and made the bed, tucking the corners in just as he was taught at reform school. Finished, Jax sat on the freshly made bed, pleased that something from that bullshit school had stuck, and leaned his head against the wall. Jax closed his eyes, focused on unclenching his jaw, relaxing his face, taking deep breaths and dropping his shoulders, which had risen near his ears due to stress. Once he felt more at ease, he began to rearrange his thoughts.

Next steps. First, find the accompanying material he had purloined with the strips. Jax glanced at the state of his desk and everything that had once sat upon it, regretting the mess he had made in the midst of his unmanaged rage. A new first step then - tidy up his room.

Jax was about to start the arduous task he had just assigned himself when a knock sounded at his door. A downside of New Haven was that the rooms were all just connected by hallways, so there was no ability to easily ignore or hide from anyone. Jax lifted the small flap of fabric he had taped over the window to his room and looked out to see AJ staring back at him, a curious expression on his face.

“AJ, do we have to talk right now?” Jax called through the door to AJ.

“Well, no,” AJ hesitated, “but we should.” AJ tried to sound confident in his response, but his worn sneakers, scraggly shirt and crinkled pants ruined the facade pretty swiftly.

“Why?”

“It’s about Pelham.” AJ shifted awkwardly.

Jax held in a sigh. Pelham was trouble, and he didn’t need any more of that in his life, Sarah had given him more than enough right now.

“What about her?”

“Jax…”

Jax took another calming breath, trying not to snap at AJ who he knew was just here to do the right thing. Opening the door, he took a step back and allowed AJ in.

AJ was about Jax’s age, maybe a year or so younger - keeping track of birth years wasn’t an easy thing when you were raised on the streets. He was hyper intelligent, especially in the techzone, and his lean and angular frame accentuated a small round in his shoulders: a trophy of the time spent working on tech. As he walked in, AJ took the hairband from around his wrist, and quickly tied up his mop of black curls, something he did when he really needed to concentrate. That, and the nervous edge to his tech-enhanced lime green eyes let Jax know that this was serious.

“Oh wow Jax, did someone toss your room? Do we need to go get Captain Ha-”

“No, no,” Jax quickly shut down AJ’s suggestion of getting Captain Haddock, the leader of New Haven, involved. “I did it.”

“You did?” Confusion clouded AJ’s eyes and the brightness of the green in his eyes flickered a shade of higher intensity.

“I… lost something.”

“Okay, if you want I can help you look for it, I might have some tech that - “ AJ started walking towards Jax’s trashed desk, speaking faster than his brain was processing Jax’s lack of acknowledgement.

After another few sentences, and picking up Jax’s items while his friend remained motionless, AJ looked up. He saw the raised eyebrows, and an unamused expression on the face looking down at him and righted himself.

“Oh, right. Sorry J.”

AJ was Jax’s closest friend, and while AJ pissed a lot of people off with how oblivious to social cues he could be, Jax always found his eager enthusiasm and ability to let his mouth run amusing. Except for right now, that is.

“So - Pelham?” Jax prompted, snapping AJ out of his abashed silence.

“Uhhhhh, oh yeah.” AJ motioned to Jax’s bed, awkwardly asking to sit down.

Jax sighed, nodded, and they both sat on the stretcher. Jax was getting anxious with AJ here, he had to focus, and find the missing envelopes. His friend's presence was only distracting from the task at hand, and Jax was barely focusing.

“Right, well. Earlier, I was going to the servo to get a drink - they’ve got the new drinks, EnerG3, I haven’t had the vanilla one yet, but the raspberry one was good, even though raspberries went extinct they’ve still managed to keep an extraction around that’s pretty good. I mean I guess it’s pretty good, I don’t have anything to compare it to and -”

“AJ!”

“ - ah, sorry. Uh, well anyway I went to the servo.” AJ purposefully paused to prevent another tangent trail off. “And when I was on my way back I saw Pelham at Grouse Park, she was kind of hunkered behind one of the rotundas and at first y’know I thought maybe, uh, you were there with her and -”

Jax closed his eyes and shook his head. He and Pelham had a thing once upon a time, but he’d never do anything with her in public, especially not in Grouse Park.

“ - and then I realised she wasn’t even doing… that.” AJ cleared his throat. Awkwardness oozed from him as he tried to get back on track. “Um, but then I saw who she was with.” AJ’s fingers were twiddling and he was working anxiously on pulling the top of his thumb nail off.

“Who?!” Jax asked, trying to get AJ to hurry up. He had so much to do and he wasn’t going to get to doing it any quicker with AJ here stuttering around the point.

“She was with Jet and Tyke.”

“Jet and Tyke.”

“Yeah, from the Greenfield Gang.”

“Okay…?” Jax didn’t see the point of this conversation, and he was starting to get frustrated at the time wasted talking to AJ, when he could be starting to solve his problem.

“Jax - “ AJ’s words were cut off as Jax’s LENS signalled an incoming call.

Jax saw who was calling and rage flooded him as he answered.

“What the fuck do you want?” he spat.