This memory of Harvel slid Selby off of his shoulder and onto the concave wall of the pipe. The man groaned as his legs slid into the ankle deep muck. The Harvel from the past slammed his hand across Selby's mouth and frantically looked down each end of the pipe. He relaxed a bit and pulled his hand away slowly.

“You do that again and I’ll break your damn teeth.” Harvel whispered, the memory quickly echoing the words. YIddek looked at his brother again. The blank expression had shifted into bitter sadness. The memory of Harvel began rooting through the pockets of the jacket Selby was wearing.

The T joint they were sitting in began to glow orange from all ends, the light bouncing around the moist walls. Past Harvel finished pulling a few extra shotgun shells from what was actually his jacket and pulled out a pistol. He grabbed Selby's hand and wrapped his fingers around the handle.

“For if they get past me, yeah? Don’t get my jacket dirty. It’s got a patch on it from my mum just like my sisters. I’m gonna go get help. Or die, or something else horrible, but I’ll probably be back.” Past Harvel whispered, loading a couple of the shells into his shotgun. Selby nodded a bit, still dazed from a seven foot drop onto his head.

“Why’s he wearing your jacket?” Yiddek asked, leaning in to read the name plate. The suit Harvel was wearing said “Klagbender” instead of Gillis.

“Selby and I were bunk mates at the time and got them mixed up that morning. It’s a shame we’re the same size or we might have noticed sooner. Turned out alright though.” Harvel answered, flinching a bit as his memory loaded the last shell.

The frequency of the screams and gunshots grew rapidly, creating a constant wave of sound around them. Yiddek couldn’t tell when they ended or began. It was like they had formed a wall between himself and the air. The pressure felt unbearable.

Past Harvel turned and walked past them towards the end of the pipe. Yiddek watched as he stood at the mouth of the pipe, ripples emanating from around his ankles. A sound like a train derailing shook the ground as a flaming mass of steel and insects flew by only feet from him. He stood there for another moment, still save for the ripples. He shook his head back and forth a few times.

“C’mon, c’mon! Get your shit together! Fucking! Get! Your! Shit! Together!” He screamed quietly to himself. He slammed his fist into the side of his thigh a few times and shook his head again. There was another moment of slight hesitation before Harvel darted beyond the mouth of the pipe and into the fray.

Yiddek, guided by the present version of his brother, walked out after him. Yiddek had never liked violence. He’d always assumed that Harvel did, not always in a good natured way. The way the current Harvel stood in the mayhem, eyes fixated on his own back as he cleared a path towards the fallen cart, Yiddek understood.

His brother had enjoyed a fist fight, or a back alley brawl, not this. Not this tapestry of clawing, screaming nightmares. Only a few meters away Harvel stopped to pull a screaming waste-walker out from under two ants he’d just shot. They must have done enough already, as the bottom half of the man's abdomen gave way, causing Harvel to stumble into the blood and muck. He continued to pull the now inert body with him for a few seconds before he noticed the screams had stopped.

“W-Why? Why would you run out into this? You’re gonna die fucking running out into something like this!” YIddek yelled, reaching out to grab his brother, now frantically pulling the corpse between himself and a charging warrior ant. His claw passed right through. For a moment Yiddek had forgotten that this was a memory.

The ant gnashed its mandibles on the dead man’s torso, warping bone and flesh like clay. Harvel struggled under the weight of the massive insect as he tried to unpin his gun from between himself and the corpse. The ant tore the body away from its prey and loomed over the scout, now readying his gun.

Before either could move a hail of assault rifle fire tore the warrior ant to shreds. Harvel bolted out from under the carcass before it could pin him to the pipe. He scanned the rubble of the cart, spotting the few surviving scouts and tank-bearers that had saved his skin. He waited for them to lay down a bit of fire behind him before he climbed up towards them.

“How many you got left? All we got are the eight of us.” One of the scouts said between bursts of fire. They had each grabbed an extra assault rifle from the bodies in the cart. Better off in the hands of someone who could pull the trigger.

“Me, and another guy, he’s out of it though! He’s in that outflow just over there! Rest of us went down with the second barricade!” Harvel yelled as he reloaded his shotgun. One of the other scouts handed him an assault rifle and a spare magazine.

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“Fuck, well… We gotta get off this pile and away from the cart! We were hauling berg charges and still had a case left. No doubt the damn thing’s gonna blow soon. We’ll be lucky if the solvent doesn’t fill the pipe and finish off the rest of us. How big is that outflow, uh, Kl-ag-ben-der? “ The leading scout said, struggling to read Selby’s name plate hooked on phonics style. Harvels brain buffered for a moment before the data flowed again.

“Small, should funnel them in maybe two at a time at most. I don’t even know if a warrior would fit. If they haven’t found S- um, Gillis, we should have another set of hands by the time we set up. What happened to the barricades on your end?” Harvel asked, unloading into a warrior that had made its way around the debris pile. Even with half of its skull plate gone he could see the malice in its horrid, multi-colored eyes.

“We don’t know! I think the charges blew on the other side before we could even set ours properly. Caused a fucking stampede! We must have caught nearly the whole nest trying to escape!” The scout yelled, hoisting another case of ammunition out of the wreckage.

“There’ll be more soon then! They said the sensors were reading nearly three thousand of ‘em! This can’t be all of ‘em!” Harvel said between bursts of rifle fire. The tunnel where Selby was finding his marbles was the only place safer for them. They would need to work quickly.

“Where’s Bukky during all of this? Is she alright?” Yiddek asked, watching Harvel hold off a score of ants alongside the other survivors.

“Oh, she’s fine. She’s in the second layer of barricades on the other side of the nest. Barely fired her gun. The plan was to blow holes in the outer layer all at the same time then pump in aerosolized pesticide. Box them in at all sides, let the chemicals do their work, then clean up the rest.” Harvel answered, gesturing towards the end of the pipe teeming with ants.

“That’s good, I guess. I suppose she’s seen her own share of this type of thing.” Yiddek commented, prompting a nod from current Harvel. In the past he was chucking green flares beyond the light created by the flaming cart. He fastened a gas mask over his face as two other walkers began lobbing pesticide grenades down the pipe.

“Hey, we should get moving, right? Those charges are gonna blow soon, and that outflow is the only place I can think of right now! I think we should grab a few steel plates from the cart and hole up for as long as we can. It’ll be an hour before anyone makes it this way!” Harvel suggested, pointing out a few relatively undamaged plates near the bottom of the debris pile.

The scout looked at the rest of what was left of his team, exchanging shrugs and desperate expressions. Two tank bearers slid down the pile of bodies and rubble, and began digging out a few of the plates. The leading scout handed Harvel a case of ammo and he joined a group bringing what they could salvage back to the outflow.

“Why did you go along with being called Klagbender? I know you have his jacket on and all but why lie?” Yiddek asked as the group emerged from the hole again. Harvel shook his head a bit in disappointment.

“I was afraid, I think. Selby and I were next up to join Teams 5 and 6. I wanted to be on Team 5, where Bukky was going, you know? If I made it through this while Selby was half asleep there’s no way Lier would have let me stick with 5. I would have had to go on TV too. I couldn’t do that.” Harvel answered, sounding a little more like himself than he had lately.

“I mean, I get you wanting to be near Bukky, and not exactly wanting to be on TV, but I don’t understand what you mean by " couldn't ". It’s not like it would have been the end of the world. I could’ve told people my brother was famous.” Yiddek said, attempting to lighten the mood. Harvel looked up at him, a warm smile spread across his face.

“I was afraid you weren’t the brother you are. I was wrong. I’m sorry. I let my assumptions get the better of me.” He answered, nodding. He had assumed of course that YIddek wouldn’t want his colleagues to know he had a wastewalker for a brother, or why he was one in the first place. That sort of thing could have cost Yiddek opportunities the world over.

“Harvel I was never ashamed of you, or Bukky for that matter. I know I didn’t believe you about what Pellerton was doing, but after the trial I started looking into things. Meadows has a case we’re building to bring to the lower executive board. We think select clinics are being used as fronts to move massive amounts of pharmaceuticals through multiple townships.” Yiddek said, a proud grin painted across his face.

“But I was. Ashamed, I mean. For a long time, I was. I was ashamed of how I dragged Bukky into this. Of how I could have ruined your career. I couldn’t even fathom that you might be proud of us. Proud of me. The old me. The human me.” Harvel answered, gesturing towards his memory, now pulling extra magazines off the dead waste-walker he’d previously tried to save. He paused to salvage a spare gas mask, and shut the man’s mouth before moving on to the next corpse.

Yiddek thought he might say something at first, but his words failed him. Harvel hadn’t shown much in the way of regret when they were younger. He’d admired the way Harvel could say he didn’t care about things like that. Harvel was all heart and no regrets. At this moment it seemed like his brother wished he didn’t have either.

“Do you hate humans, Harvel?” Yiddek asked, finally coming up with something to break the silence. Harvel smiled the same knowing smile he had been using lately.

“I don’t know. Probably not, but I was human, and I certainly hated myself.” He answered, watching the memory version of himself drag a broken tank of pesticide into the outflow.