+ Reid +

The alien's arm was light, and fragile. It shivered as Reid held it against the front of the cage, and raised a four-fingered hand in a placating gesture. Reid's first two words had barely rumbled out of his mouth. He was still dehydrated - and spent.

Reid tried to clear his throat. “Open up the cage now or I'll kill you, your buddy with the knock-out stick, and every other alien on this ship.”

The thing grimaced, and looked - almost dejected. It shook its head at Reid and spoke.

"I have a name. It's Lycra. What's yours?"

Reid tightened his grip on the alien's arm. Lycra winced.

"I am not your enemy! There are three people on this ship. You, me, and Thad. Thad wants to kill both of us - or he will soon. I'm just as much a prisoner here as you."

"Then. Let. Me. Out. Of. Here." Reid felt his energy failing him. He was still only barely awake. He had no idea how he'd fight anyone or anything in his current state. But he was ready to fight for freedom.

Lycra nodded vigorously. "That's the plan, but you have to promise me something. I have to go tell Thad you're fine - and he'll have some liquids and nutrients you can consume. If I let you out, you have to let me go do that while you stay here or we're both going to die, alright?"

Reid tightened his grip. "You're lying."

The alien let out an exasperated hiss. “Were you awake when the door opened – when all those stor-cubes, the shiny boxes wooshed out into space?”

Reid nodded.

“That was Thad’s cargo. He doesn’t know it’s gone. If he knows you're free, he’ll knock you out again. If he finds out I accidentally made him dump all the goods, he’s going to kill me. Painfully. We… Are… On… The… Same… Side.”

Reid loosened his grip a bit.

“Good. Good. I'll go tell Thad we're fine. That will stop him from checking in on us, and we can both escape when we land. So you just need to let go of me, and I’ll let you out.”

Reid cocked an eyebrow. "And you'll come back with food?"

The alien nodded vigorously again and bared a vampiric smile. "Yes, yes yes!

Reid let go of Lycra's arm, and the alien's deft fingers seemed to curl and bend at odd angles as it opened the front door, then unhooked Reid from the shock collar.

Reid crawled out into the cargo bay, and took in his surroundings. The smell wasn't nearly as bad once he was outside the cage. Old, stained and scraped metal on every surface told a story of cargo in prior hauls that tumbled around the area, loose. A worn ladder led up to a balcony, and three closed doors.

The alien before him was small. Less than five feet tall, it had oversized bat-like ears on the sides of a smooth, hairless, round head covered in grey-green skin. It watched him closely with two large, bright yellow eyes. Its nostrils were flat like a gorilla's, and a set of pointed, vampiric teeth lined its mouth. Standing there, smiling - it actually looked... cute? Like a puppy, or a teddy bear... maybe a goblin teddy bear.

"Wow. You are LARGE. Tough to sneak. Maybe fight? No, not with a broken arm." Lycra was scratching the back of its neck. "Stay here, or we both die. Don't touch anything. I'll be back soon. Oh - or do touch! There are lockers there. Open them all, they have flight suits. Better than frocks. You can pee in a flight suit."

Reid wasn't sure if he was overexerted or overtired, but he felt himself starting to warm up to the little alien. Not a lot - but the thing seemed to actually be considerate. If he was right, and this thing wasn't an enemy - Reid didn't want to completely start out on the wrong foot. Just like with Danny, he'd lashed out first and asked questions later. He called out as Lycra crested the ladder.

"Reid."

"What?"

"My name is Reid. Nice to meet you."

The alien looked confused for a moment, nodded, and stepped through the leftmost door.

#

Reid was sleeping, leaned up against the wall in a less-gross 'flight suit' - really a jumpsuit with a pee pouch and cuffs that compressed themselves around his ankles and wrists - when the alien returned.

Lycra scrambled down the ladder carrying a small metal box, thankfully alone. When he reached the cargo bay floor, he nodded twice at Reid and sat down across from him. Inside the metal box were two plastic bottles and a pile of thin, green-brown rectangles that had a series of ridges reminiscent of chocolate bars. The alien gestured at it.

“I told Thad I'd feed you. He gave me this container - told me to 'make sure he sells high'.” Lycra's eyes went distant for a moment before he shook his head. “No one should be sold. It is not right." His eyes widened and regained the sparkle of excitement they seemed to carry. "I also brought water – clean water, yes. Not even recycled. Ah, the nutribars are a processed food. Protein and vitamins. These are very good. They even have antiviral and antifungal medicines mixed in. High quality replete rations.”

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It took only moments for Reid’s starvation to overwhelm his caution and he tore into one of the bars. It was chewy, crunchy, and a bit tart - but honestly tasted quite good. Much better than most of the protein bars he'd been forcing down in Sanctuary. He grabbed a second bar and wolfed that one down, too before chugging half of his bottle of water. There were another three bars in the container, but he didn't want to be rude by eating more than half the meal.

Lycra’s yellow eyes were wide in shock. Reid stopped poking at bits of the bar still stuck in his teeth and gave the alien a worried look. He was in an odd space with an odd fellow, and he had no idea what he'd done wrong.

“Are... are you not supposed to eat them with your hands?”

The alien shook his head. “A nutribar is a high quality, replete ration.”

Reid still didn't know what the alien was getting at. Was he supposed to say thank you? Or some kind of 'grace' before eating? “Yeah, thank you for sharing them. They taste pretty good, too... Are you going to eat yours?”

Lycra ran a hand over his face.

“I am not explaining right. Replete rations are..." The alien looked like it was exasperatedly trying to come up with the words to explain, then huffed. The huff made its ears wriggle. "Reid, you just ate two week’s worth of food.”

Oh, shit.

“oh.”

Lycra made a wiggle-wave motion with one hand as he lifted it towards the ceiling. "Dust is dust. We will find more rations after we escape. I hear there is good work on Denduram."

A chill crept over Reid. The cargo bay doors had been open to hard vacuum. In space. Space meant not Earth. And Lycra had said on Denduram, not in Denduram.

"Lycra, how far is Denduram from Earth?"

The alien's eyes fell to the floor. "Far. Do you have family to go back to?"

A long pause stretched between them. Reid was tempted to storm the cockpit of this ship and turn them around - but in his current state, Thad could just knock him out with the concussion stick again. It would probably be easier to steal the ship and fly it home once they reached their destination; after all, Reid would have recovered at least a bit by then. Or maybe they could charter another ship. Or contact that Blasdej company he'd seen on the obelisk. Best option - Reid could just find the police and tell them who he was, then get a phone call home. "Yes. Maybe? A wife and a daughter - I think."

The alien tilted its head. Like a puppy.

"You do not know?"

"It's... complicated. What about you, any family to go home to?"

Lycra gave a sad, tooth-filled smile. "I am alone, and home is no place. I live where I live, and go where I go."

The thought of having nothing and no one honestly, truly terrified Reid. It sounded so very lonely. But like usual, Reid wasn't exactly a fountain of reassuring conversation.

"I'm sorry."

Lycra wiggle-waved his hand up into the air. "Dust is dust. I..." He swallowed, then blinked at Reid a few times. "You... really meant that."

"Well, yeah? I'm sorry you had to go through that. Whatever it was."

Lycra scratched the back of his neck for a few moments. "Reid, will you share a life-trust with me?"

"... I have absolutely no idea what that is."

"I believe you are good. Good like I try to be. A life-trust is a promise to help and share with one another. It means we will work together when we land, to get free. And it means we will tell each other of our lives."

"You want to do all that because I said I was sorry for you?"

Lycra shook his head. "Not because you said it. Because it was true."

#

#

Making a pact with the second alien he'd ever met may not have been the wisest choice, but Reid felt certain in his gut that Lycra was, indeed, a good 'person'. And if he was wrong - it wasn't some contract enforced agreement, just a promise between... friends. Had Reid made an alien friend?

As the two of them spoke, the rations Reid had eaten were slowly digested and absorbed into his system - and they were doing wonderful work. He felt more energized, with less of the soreness and fatigue he'd been dealing with the entire time since he'd woken up. If the rations were meant to last two weeks, and Reid wasn't even topped up right now, he must've been half-dead before.

Half-dead, and I still put up a good fight against Thad.

He'd learned that Lycra's earliest memories were of living on the street, being used by older orphans to panhandle around a smog-covered city. Lycra didn’t know if his parents were actually dead, but he’d never known his last name - and apparently things like DNA testing didn't work too well at a multi-planetary or solar-system level. Even if one could afford to try.

Lycra had also shared the stories of how he'd scarred an ear when he tried to make a reactor fire up using a fractured crystal. He spoke at length about his experience wearing a shock collar like Reid had, where the device administered the electricity directly into the back of your neck. It was apparently the same spot the alien often scratched. He had another two scars on the top of his head from a time a rival at a scrapyard found out Lycra was first in line for an upcoming job, and kicked him over a railing.

His eyes lit up whenever he talked about reactors and ships. He rubbed his neck whenever the topics steered into uncomfortable territories. The more Lycra shared, the more Reid grew to feel a kindred spirit for the alien. He'd been dealt bad hands by fate - just like Reid. And he was still trying to make good choices and pursue the things he wanted. In a way, Lycra felt like a younger version of himself that he needed to take care of.

Reid realized he hadn't shared much about his own past. He spent a while describing life - and attempted to keep things just a bit vague. Lycra learned about how he'd met his wife young, and how their parents had helped raise Sara. He shared how he'd had his life upended by an irresponsible person, and that he had a part to play in the issue as well.

The alien's eyes practically glowed with excitement. "You are a fighter. You fought the man who killed your parents, and you fought Thad. How strong are you? What else have you fought?"

"I'm... pretty strong, I guess. I've fought Coyotes, and an Elk - and, AND. I had to fight a bunch of lizards." Lycra had his head tilted, so Reid explained. "Coyotes are canids - four legs, fur, big teeth. Elk are large - taller than me, with bone growing out their heads. And the stupid lizards - they were annoying. They had red backs and crystal claws. You had to kill them by hitting them in the head, or they'd always regenerate."

Lycra wore a pout-like frown. "You break the life-trust? I... cannot tell. Reid, please do not lie."

"No! I swear. Coyotes and Elk are common animals, and the Lizards - well, the Salamanders I guess - were, too. We had to kill a bunch of little ones, plus a great big one that had a claw attack skill, and a roar that paralyzed people."

Lycra's eyes narrowed, and his gaze scanned through invisible text. Reid tried to speak with him, but he held his hand up flat in a gesture that seemed to mean 'wait'.

"You... came from Earth... fought salamanders... What was your daughter's name again... Please."

It was an odd request, but Reid decided to oblige. "Sara." The alien kept staring at him, waiting. "Calderwall? Sara Calderwall."

Lycra shifted his focus to Reid's arm - the one that had been in a cast, before Reid ripped it off. His eyes slowly went wide, and he walked over to Reid and placed a hand where the bone had been broken. His eyes shifted up, full of admiration.

"Reid... Calderwall. Father of the Pathfinder Progenitor."