Summers sat beside his father in the passenger seat of an ice cream truck. The man had seen the truck broken down on the side of the road, and after a few minutes looking over the engine, he’d decided that this was a learning experience.
“Don’t you need gloves for that sort of thing?” Summers watched as a spark shot out, eliciting a curse from his old man.
“Don’t worry about me, just keep watch.”
Summers hesitated before turning back to the dark streets outside.
“You should take me home soon.”
His father turned to him. “Why?”
“Because you said I’d be home today. Mom needs to eat dinner.”
“…You’re what, ten now?”
“Eleven.” Summers corrected.
“Eleven. Christ kid, you should be enjoying life a little more. Don’t let your mom’s bullshit keep you from being happy. She’ll be fine for one more night.”
Summers watched as his dad reached back, pulling a bag of frozen popsicles from the back.
“There.” His father set the bag in his lap. “If you want, we can stop by your little friend’s and dump the rest of them. They’d just go bad when I scrap this, anyway.”
Summers immediately brightened.
“Aw man, that’d be awesome. We can just give it away, like robin hood?”
“Just like robin hood, yeah.” His father agreed, placing a hand on Summers’ head.
After another minute of work, the engine started to turn over, and the truck came to life.
His father sat back up, groaning.
“…About fucking time.” He smiled. “Now, let’s see about getting you home.”
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Summers awoke, sitting upright in his bed aboard the ship. He moved so fast he nearly slammed his head into the ceiling before he caught himself.
“You know you talk in your sleep?” Cortez chided him from the hammock below.
“Mhmm.” He responded, reaching for the journal at his side.
“…You’ve been doing that a lot lately.” Nowak observed from the floor of their small room.
“Yeah.” Summers answered, half paying attention. After a minute, he stopped. A look of frustration on his face.
After a moment he gave up, putting the journal down and laying into the hammock once again.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” Summers started. “Or - I don’t know. I keep having these vivid dreams.” Summers tapped the charcoal against his journal. “Or more like memories.”
“…Like they’re memories, or they are memories?”
“I don’t know.” Summers repeated. “I decided to write them down, seeing if there’s a pattern or something.”
He turned the book over to Nowak, the man looked at it tentatively for a moment before taking it and reading the last page.
“This is way too coherent for a dream.”
“I know. But I don’t remember anything about them. And they weren’t as… they didn’t make sense before. They were just snippets of things.”
“Like what?” Nowak looked at him, confused.
“…There was a guy with us. A kid, here in this world.” Summers explained.
Nowak stared at Summers a long moment before he spoke. “…What else did you remember?”
He saw Cortez eye him as well.
“…Just something about Bambi...”
“Show me the page.” Nowak gestured to the book.
“What?”
“Did you write it down, this thing with the kid?”
“…Yeah.” Summers took the journal for a second before handing it back.
Nowak read, then reread the page he’d given him. Then looked back up to Summers.
“…Do you know who Adams is?”
“…Should I?”
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Summers wrote as fast as he could, trying to fill the journal with as much information as possible.
“…Should we write about ourselves?” Cortez asked. She and Nowak flanked him from the side.
They’d tested Summers on the few things they’d known about him. Other than Adams, he hadn’t forgotten much else. Which wasn’t saying a lot, he’d always been a private person, now that was biting him in the ass.
“….I don’t know, maybe.” Summers answered.
Synel leaned down beside him, she’d shown up a few hours ago, curious about his writing along with Asle. They both stared at him with worried expressions.
“This might be a strange question, but do you know how much you’ve forgotten?” Synel prompted.
Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
She spoke with an obvious anxiety in her voice. Asle looking along from her side.
“…No.”
He put the book down for a moment, taking a long breath.
“…You know it kind of reminds me of something.” Cortez offered. “Like after an explosion - when you have a ringing in your ears. It’s supposed to be the ear cell dying. Once it’s gone, you’ll never hear that frequency again.”
Cortez looked to Summers. “Could be the same thing, it plays one last time before it’s erased.”
That sent a chill through Summers. If she was right, everything he’d dreamt since his time in the city had been something he’d lost.
“…Great.” Summers declared. “Guess I’ll just stop sleeping for a while.”
“You know that’s not going to work.” Nowak replied.
“…I know.”
Synel moved to put a hand on Summers shoulder, then winced in pain herself. Summers looked at her, worried.
Nowak considered Summers a moment longer before he turned to Synel, speaking in Nos.
“How are the…” Nowak forgot the word, instead pointing to his side, the same that Synel had been injured on. “Stitches?”
“Painful, but it’s doing better.” Synel bowed a head to Nowak. “And I’ve had worse.” She added, looking at Summers.
“…Thanks, by the way, sarge.” Summers muttered.
“Yeah, yeah. I’ve gotten depressingly good at sutures since we got here…”
Summers turned back to Synel.
“How long before we get to the next town?”
The last few villages they’d passed were either abandoned or burned to the ground, likely casualties of the approaching army. Synel and the captain had expected as much and planned accordingly. Thankfully, they’d be breaking into their former enemies’ territory soon.
“A city, actually. And I believe it will be another two days or so.”
“You haven’t heard of anything that might help, have you?”
Synel shook her head.
“I know of cures, salves, and the like. However, most, if not all are frauds. It’s a… very prevalent problem in cities.”
“…Of course, it is.”
Summers sighed again. He’d have to think of something. If he didn’t, at the rate this thing inside him was progressing, this might be his last stop.
----------------------------------------
Summers watched as Cortez sparred with Orvar. To his credit the man knew how to handle himself, Cortez had been one of the better hand to hand fighters he’d seen. Most soldiers didn’t bother with anything past the most basic fundamentals of hand to hand. After all, if an enemy gets in close while guns are in play, knowing how to punch isn’t going to help much. Only those with a real interest would get to be at Cortez’ level.
While that wasn’t true for this world, Orvar was apparently one of those people. He dodged a left hook from Cortez and shot in, tackling her to the deck.
She patted his back and he got back to his feet, helping Cortez up. Summers watched them a second longer before turning back to his journal.
He yawned as he began to write. It had been a day since his revelation, and though he didn’t seriously think avoiding sleep would help, it had made it significantly harder to get there.
He heard someone sit only to find Asle beside him.
“What are you writing about now?” She looked at him, curious.
Summers thought about how to respond, until he eventually decided to tell her the truth.
“My mom. I don’t remember a lot about her anymore, just… pieces. Things she said. Or that I think she said. I wanted to write down what was left.”
Asle nodded, thinking.
“Can I write about me? When you’re done, I mean.”
Summers considered that, the throbbing in his writing hand told him that it wasn’t the worst idea.
“You know how to write in English?”
She nodded. “Also Nos.”
“All right, sure.” He agreed. “We’re blood, right?”
Asle cracked a small smile as he handed over the book.
Summers shook out his right hand, almost thankful for the break. He looked back to Cortez and Orvar’s fight, Cortez landed a solid hit to the man’s side. He crumbled to the ground, wheezing. Summers cringed in sympathy.
It looked like Cortez was apologizing to him. After a moment, he waved her off, struggling to his feet and putting his hands up again as if nothing happened. They fought like that for a while as Summers watched.
After some time, sleep took him.
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Summers sat in the back of a dark cell, long hair covering his face. The cop that had booked him was pacing nearby, glancing in his direction every so often. Summers hadn’t said a word to the man since they’d caught him.
The cop finally stopped pacing, moving to the front of his cell.
“Come on kid, just give us your parents’ number.”
There was a knock on the door then, the cop looked at Summers one last time before he moved off.
Then he heard muffled voices, one was a woman’s. Someone… familiar.
The cop returned a few minutes later, unlocking the cell door.
“Follow me.”
He was led to the front of the station where a woman was waiting for him. His mother. He couldn’t see her face but, somehow, he knew it was her.
“You know I should beat your ass, right?” The woman looked at him sternly.
He didn’t respond.
She spoke with the man behind the desk a few minutes more before they left. He didn’t hear what they’d said, he didn’t care.
Outside, the woman started towards a car. She moved slowly, as if walking was a strain for her. She rubbed at a head only covered with a scarf.
“…You’d better drive.”
Summers nodded. He opened the passenger side door for her, and the woman all but collapsed in her seat.
They drove in silence for a long time before Summers got the courage to speak up.
“…I’m sorry.”
“You better be.” She answered. She must have seen the look on his face, her expression softened. “Your father told me what happened. Was this your idea, or his?”
“Mine.”
“Why?” She looked at him. “We’re fine on money.”
“No, we’re not.” Summers answered. “We’re never fine.”
“We’re doing well enough.”
“Why doesn’t he help us? Help you?” Summers asked.
“Because my life is none of his business.” She rubbed at her head again. “I wouldn’t lift a finger to help him either.” She sighed.
“…Was it expensive? To get me out?”
“They caught you with three pounds of hamburger down your pants.” She leaned back in her seat. “No, and I don’t think they’re going to throw the book at you.”
They sat in silence a few more minutes, watching the road.
“Alex, you know I love you, right?” His mother looked at him. “Don’t get me wrong, you’re a huge pain in the ass sometimes.” She chided.
“I know.”
She reached over, squeezing his shoulder.
“But I’ll always be cheering you on, even if I’m not here.” She smiled. “Because I love you. When I’m gone, promise you’ll remember that, okay?”
“…I love you too, mom.”
They talked a lot after that, and Summers thought a lot. He kept his eyes forward, looking at the road in front of him.
----------------------------------------
“Port ahead!” One of the deckhands yelled, waking Summers from his sleep.
Summers stared at the man in a daze before he understood what was happening.
“Shit.”
He started looking for his journal. It wasn’t in his lap anymore. He’d fallen asleep on the deck and it must have rolled off.
“Don’t forget.” He muttered to himself. “Don’t forget, don’t forget...”
He spent another moment searching frantically before he saw Asle a few feet away from him, his journal still in her hands. She held it to him.
“…You talk in your sleep.” Asle explained.
He took the journal, looking at the small, neat handwriting on the pages. It looked like a conversation, parts he could still remember, parts that were fading.
“…Thank you.” Summers breathed a small sigh of relief. It wasn’t everything, but it was more than he’d have been able to do. He wrote for a moment longer before he was satisfied.
“…There’s not a lot in there.” Asle looked at him, still tense.
“Yeah.” He agreed. “I know.”
That was the most worrying part for him, not knowing what else he could write. It could be the panic, the pressure of having to record everything in his head overwhelming him. Or those memories could already be gone.
How much could he lose before he wasn’t himself anymore.
Summers looked at the city in the distance, sailors hustling to get the ship ready to dock.
Synel was standing on the bow, she must have heard him as she looked back. He saw the corner of her mouth twitch ever so slightly as she approached.
“Good, you’re awake.” She sat down beside him, wincing as she did. “I was speaking with your friends, and I think we might have found a solution to your problem.”
“…What?” Summers blinked once, still half asleep before the words registered.
She handed him a small sheet of paper, words in Nos scribbled onto it.
“What’s this?”
“A shopping list.” She pressed a finger to her lips in thought. “No, actually, more like a menu.”