04 - Minds against Matter.

Hundreds of thousands of the dark and winding, sand-like shadow specks had returned, shaking as they emanated from Rhöt's frail frame like a cloud that devoured light. He knew now that they were real, and no mere manifestation of his imagination. He had also come to suspect that she'd once been a prisoner of the staserian. Her wounds seemed not of war, but of torture.

To flout slightly nagging inner cries that made his brain continue demanding to return to human company, Alreno downed a mouthful of much-untouted dried ration bread, then looked to Rhöt.

No sound, he thought, focusing only on the pain he now knew her to be suffering. Do horrors have nisus for silence, or were they dealt to quell it?

Lying down across from him with her talons spaced apart and her body heavily wrapped in bandages, Rhöt was almost motionless, as if asleep, and yet her eyes shone as bright as ever, meeting his stare once he begun to vocalize his curiosity.

“Do victims without screams make sadists of interrogators?”

As he'd suspected, the lizard neither moved nor replied.

Alreno then tried to grab a handful of the motes as they floated close to him, but they rolled across his gauntlets and out of his grip like water droplets across oiled plastic. Minutes later he had managed to catch a slightly larger mote between his fingers for a moment, squeezing to see how it would react. To his surprise, it split into ever smaller motes to slip and glide away before they all joined back together, continuing to float on in the original size. Rhöt either did not see the phenomenon, or she simply did not care for it. His drone, on the other hand, couldn't detect a thing about them. Alreno's suspicions mounted as he pondered the black specks. They did not move like dust, as he had tried to blow a few off course to no avail. If it was a field being generated by some machine, he'd have seen the alien technology when dressing Rhöt's wounds. Without a more nuanced form to communicate, he couldn't ask, but he could guess. Whatever the little things were, their source was the alien herself. Hazarding to guess further, the motes had to be keeping them undetectable, unreadable, and invisible to scanning. Or perhaps they were just a byproduct of the phenomenon?

Curious, he thought, slowly shutting his eyes.

“Hģräk!”

Immediately he looked back up with a slight jump, startled by the noise. He didn't see when she'd moved – and couldn't imagine the speed required – but Rhöt had stood and leaned through the wall's opening to spit and vomit up the blood she'd drank earlier. When the puking ceased, she climbed out. Alreno leapt to his feet and peered through the hole to see the gleaming rubies of her eyes and her body's dark silhouette moving from corpse to corpse, poking and prodding at them and their belongings, salvaging the trash and gore, wading into immense pools of carnage. He silently waited and watched her fill her arms 'till she could carry no more, ultimately returning to the building. Slinking out of her way he stepped aside and she threw it all onto the floor, sending the dust and ashes spiraling through the room and speckling the lights that his drone cast with tiny particles; though far more natural ones.

And I'd nerve enough to think myself desperate... He looked at the alien and the junk she'd pulled from the dead, amazed and saddened both by how she lacked the simplest things. She was crouched by the pile inspecting shirts, skirts, pants, belts, real robes, purse-like bags, bottles, canteens and the like. She tossed nearly all of it back out onto the streets, leaving herself covered more in bandages than in clothes.

She settled on a belt, a satchel, a bottle – the only one she'd found without a hole in it – and a pair of pants. Having short legs and a large tail, and no buttocks comparable to a human – or staserian – she could not wear the pants, so she tore the leggings off and wrap them around her forelimbs, padding her hands and feet while leaving her talons exposed and unhindered. She tied the satchel to her belt and took the bottle in hand, crawling out of the window again. When Alreno saw what she was doing with it, he could not keep watching her. Rhöt went meandering from corpse to corpse, piercing them with a single talon and twisting it clockwise, bleeding the bodies for enough blood to fill her little bottle. Once done, she lie down again upon the blanket in the darkest corner of the room, slipping the sealed canteen of blood behind her belt. With a slow deliberation and a head seething with painful incursions, Rhöt pensively begun to whisper in her rough and brooding voice. She did not speak in her intrinsic language, however. No one could speak like her, so it was her burden to speak as others did. Though sharp and steered to the crux, the one word she said came as blunt as it was extemporaneous. “Ălrėno,” she said. “Ălrėno. Ălrėno.” Practice with sounds unnatural to her voices. Even Alreno could hear her suppressing one of the two voices she'd spoken with before. It had been far too long since anybody had bothered to speak to her. It was a chore to even try. So long a time had passed, in fact, that she'd a gravid need to make the effort. But not for very long. Something else sought to draw her attention.

In high-pitched beeps, the drone had started making sounds outside of Alreno's hearing range, and although the lights were pointed to the walls and floor, its cameras were aimed towards her ears. She pegged the motive right away. It was a test. One beep, then another and another, every time monitoring the twitchings of her ears. Rhöt regarded it as a challenge, but who from, she did not know. Tauntingly, she exaggerated the movements of her ears with every sound, reacting to every change in pitch. There was no confusion. Rhöt was sure to let whoever truly controlled that little construct know she was aware.

For Alreno, there was only silence. For the operator of the drone, there came an opportunity. A fragmented signal in radio waves began to transmit from the machine, the same it had made just a few hours ago. She stared into radio color, allowing her pupils to dilate. Rainbows were hardly half the story her eyes made of the electromagnetic spectrum. She knew that it was doing something, though all she saw were emissions of color. For a moment, however brief, both Rhöt and the drone's operator both understood the exact same thing.

One of us needs to die.

Outside was still mostly a pitch black haze, with nearly all of the fires that had dimly lit the streets having burnt out or fallen to cinders. Alreno soon fell asleep against the wall. Unwanting to awaken the snow-skinned, silver-haired man – as animals were often unpredictable when unexpectedly roused from slumber – she too lay still.

Instead of trying to come up with another test, the drone's operator simply waited for Rhöt to fall asleep. And so it waited, and waited, and waited a stretch of time that seemed to not end. Rhöt's condition didn't change. She was clearly exhausted and in a morbid state of health, but she did not rest anything more than her limbs. Tenaciously, she watched the drone, studying it, looking for any faults in its making or clues to how it functioned. There were none that she could see, but still she continued to look.

The night inched away devoid of any occurrence, the atmosphere similar of derelict gravestone, and with the dark dawn, the operator of the drone required action and action alone. If not, nothing would change. The break of day would mean that the sun would shine for six hours before falling into another thirty-nine hour cycle of sunlessness, but for them and their place in the city, daybreak meant next to nothing. It was raining, storming even. So the sun still had thick black clouds of the tempests to blot out light. But for the three of them, they were too far below the crest tiers to see the sky. All they knew of the storms was moisture in the wild winds. Not a drop of rain nor a ray of skylight touched them.

The drone floated towards the sleeping albino and nudged him in his sides several times, making his dreadlocks fall over his face. Waking slowly, his gaze lay upon the first sight of the morning, which was the last sight of last night. Rhöt hadn't moved, and her eyes were still open. Alreno scrambled up to his feet and threw the bag that he was using as a pillow back over his shoulder, almost immediately on alert.

“Sit-check?” he asked.

The drone floated in front of him and explained, “You have been asleep for five hours, twenty-two minutes. No significant events occurred.”

“Good...” Alreno looked down at Rhöt, his eyes heavy with waning sleep. There was still a bit of blood around her mouth, which suited her appearance: Half dead and mummified.

“Raat..?” he asked. Alreno took a nervous step closer to her, dragging his boots so not to trip or stumble. In her typical whispering hiss of a croak she answered, “...Ălrėno. Grh...” in a melancholic growl. However, on top of that, she unintentionally retched and drooled out a bit of red blood after she'd spoken his name. It was cold, but still liquid, flooding the bottom of her reptilian mouth and leaking between her massive, jagged teeth. Alreno stepped closer, and quicker, too.

Her head slowly tilted and rose towards him, and he froze.

The motion reminded Alreno of what he knew of reptiles, and in his heart could see a rising cobra, or a crocodile gaining interest. Blood ran down her neck and chest, falling like a clogged gargoyle spilling across her bandages.

“Easy... easy,” said Alreno.

An armored hand and an open palm reached down to grab her, but slowly, calmly; unassumingly. Rhöt agnized the intent, but looked at him with an unshown apprehensiveness. Kindness had always been met with an instinct of suspicion, but she took his hand with one set of talons; while she readied all the others. Each claw tapped against the gauntlet, and his grip softly closed around the thin bones of her spidery fingers as he gently helped stand. Once she was on her freakish feet she slouched and staggered, still without a change in her expression.

Her figure resembled a bare skeleton's, or perhaps a twisted hourglass with a distinct lack of sand. As unfamiliar with Rhöt's species as he was, even he could tell she was too underweight to be called 'scrawny.' Sustained sight of her made his eyes water, but he shook it off. Tears added nothing, emotions were ablative and down-right destructive. He went through the rations he'd found from dead soldiers, scouring it for any bit of food he could deem safe to give to her.

One who eats the dead, he thought, will doubtless not be picky. He found an oat bar containing raisins, honey and strawberries. Normally he wouldn't recommend Earth-grown crops to anyone unless it'd been turned to a true bread, but it was better than nothing. His grip nearly broke it when he ripped off the wrapper.

“Raat...” he said, displaying the small bit of food to her, “Take this... eat it.” Alreno's paler than pale face went steady, but his voice went cold with the sorrow he felt for her... and Rhöt hadn't a clue. She stood in place, scratching and licking her face of the blood she'd retched, as well as that which had crusted and dried during the night. Alreno stepped closer, and the corners of his mouth twitched as he again said, “Raat...” Keeping his face straight wasn't easy, not as she picked and licked at red clots with talons and a forked tongue.

It was obvious to her that he wanted attention for some reason, but by the look of the poorly-hidden watering of his eyes she assumed that ash had gotten into them.

“Take this,” he said again slowly. Alreno pointed at the fruit bar and then to one of Rhöt's hands. And then he stepped closer, reaching out with it in hand. Easy enough. She looked him eye-to-eye to be sure she understood his gesture, then her devilish talons scraped the processed oatcake from his palm before promptly stepping away from him.

As Alreno might have expected, she inspected it closely. Mucilaginous... densened, the creature thought. She gave the sweet-smelling clump of 'something' a long whiff and a quick jab of the tongue before concluding its unimpressiveness as a feat of alien design. Whatever it was it was not a machine or a tool. With that, Rhöt gave it back to him and turned around, picked up her rifle and crawled out of the hole in the wall. Alreno followed her back onto the tier's corpse-strewn streets. However, he neglected to retrieve his helmet from the floor of the room. The drone operator noticed immediately, but saw it as a boon from nowhere – a blessing meant to be unmentioned. And on they went. After an hour of walking the warzone, two odd voices came from just slightly behind him. “Ălrėno...”

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He turned immediately when he heard Rhöt speak his name, and saw the barrel of a gun pointed only just slightly lower than his feet. In her boney, outstretched arms, Rhöt incorrectly held a Sol rifle by nothing but the buttstock; clearly aware and overly cautious of the trigger. Off all the things she could have found, it was a Fous 54. Long-range, semi-automatic, sensor-guided, high-velocity, scoped and designed for reduced kick. The ammunition receiver was wider than what came standard to such rifles, meaning it could only take explosive capsules. It was practically a small grenade-launcher. Rhöt mimicked Alreno's pointing gestures, indicating to him that he was to take it. She felt it was best to remind him of where they were.

Alreno wiped his watery eyes and, though he knew not why, accepted the weapon from her. It didn't seem like she could have held on to it for much longer, either way. Her arms were shaking from its weight, so he took it and watched Rhöt pick her little staserian gun back up. Establishing a method of exchanging objects, or expressing a willingness to fight? Probably both, he thought. With a loud snap he forced the targeting system off of it. Having her around made the scanner obsolete. Again – in vain – he tried to give Rhöt the snack of grain and fruit in exchange for the rifle. She took it, but only held onto it for a moment before handing it back to him, less fond of whatever it was than the first time he tried. Alreno then got another idea. The one he should have had the first time. That was beyond moronic, he told himself.

He shouldered the weapon, stuffed the fruit bar in his mouth and then rummaged through his packs and belt-bags until he came upon a packet of dried meat.He broke the seal and knew at once that Rhöt would eat it, though how well it matched a sanguisugent taste remained to be seen. He even spotted the moment when she caught the sent of saliferous flesh, one of the few smells she assigned to edibility. Alreno made his elaborate pointing gestures again, and was overjoyed to see her accept it. She reached into the plastic packet and dug out handfuls at a time. Rhöt didn't even chew. She wolfed it down with a hellhound's hunger.

The taste was more enjoyable to her than Alreno knew. But knowing would have only made his sadness more saturnine. She had to have lived on almost nothing to even begin to reach her cadaverous condition, and thinking for how long that may have been made him dizzy with dysphoria. He stood still and silent, statuesque, watching her eat. Up and down her body his eyes wandered, and every second he looked at her he felt a stronger and more infelicitous pull on the inside of his chest. Each bone rippled beneath her scales and bandages, and each glimpse haunted him. Alreno felt as though he'd fed a starving animal too emaciated to comport herself sensibly.

Something else still eluded him, though. How did she find means to release herself... from... whatever had her? he wondered.

The Sol military forces had only been on the surface of the planet for just over three weeks. And three weeks was not enough time for famine to severely strike, not for an industrialized race. With supplies available – which their enemies proved they were – it was not enough time for a healthy being to become so starved. He hated to even think it, but doubting whether or not Rhöt had been imprisoned, tortured and deprived didn't matter. The evidence was all one way.

But where was she being kept? Why? And how did she get out...?

He was sure that her captors wouldn't be so desperate as to set her free on purpose in some panic of the war as a chance at redemption; or a practical joke. She wasn't exactly something to just let loose on the populace - not in his experience. Then, in a mental flash of horror, Alreno found the answer to his most burning question.

Why save me from the collapsed tunnel? Why, in such a ragged state, would you bother to help free an alien... after we tried to kill each other?

A few good hours of sleep made it all too clear.

She knows, he thought. Slow death by entrapment... suffocation, starvation... She knows.

It hurt him to the core. He was so afraid of connecting dots to circles that he hadn't connected all of the dots. Her teeth were all fangs, her talons were razor sharp, the only substances she had eaten – and vomited – was the flesh and blood of others far unlike herself. Ah, Certes, of course the staserians would do this to her. What thinking creature would show mercy to their own devourer? She's either a criminal here, or a pariah to these people. In front of him, Rhöt had ravened down all of the jerky and held out the small bag it came in, waiting for him to take it back. She didn't know that such things were discarded and recycled when collected later, but there wasn't really anything she knew about humans; other than what they were called, thanks to him.

Alreno was caught a little off guard by it, but he instinctively accepted the empty plastic bag, not wanting her to see him throw it away for fear of seeming rude. It was a foolish notion, but nevertheless he placed it in the smaller pouch of his main equipment sack where he kept military field-repair documents, lists of the rules of engagement and a cultural sensitivity booklet with tips for getting along with corilu and khamosa soldiers. It somehow fit in seamlessly with all of the other useless shit he'd been carrying.

He was happy that she ate something that wasn't freshly, or even worse unfreshly, shot to death, but Rhöt didn't seem any better for it. Her red eyes looked just as dead as before, and her sickly stick of a figure was made no better a sight to behold.

“Let it be a start of better times,” he said, making a wasted toast to her health. Rhöt was going to set off again, but had to wait as the human checked his new weapon. He dug around the corpses for more ammo, looked for any problems with it, then adjusted the sight.

Alreno then took a single grenade capsule and disarmed it, pulling out the center and making it a dud. He still loaded it though, and took aim at a window across the road. His breathing lessened, his eyes focused and his finger squeezed the trigger. It launched far and fast, slamming into the crystal, ricocheting.

He checked the weapon's condition once more to be sure that it was without fault. After all, he didn't want to suffer whatever fate befell the previous owner. The rifle seemed to be alright, so he set it to its safety mode and slung it over his shoulder. They both were armed and ready to move, but to where, he did not know.

Rhöt, on the other hand, was perfectly aware of where she was going. She also knew that if the Banneret was still alive, then she was expected. And that was no good. A counter-attack to the invasion was inevitable, and if she did not reach her goal in time, well... she didn't want to think of what the reaction would be.

Alreno stepped towards her and nodded in the same direction that they had been walking last night. She eyed him for a moment, then turned her back on him, reluctantly continuing down the street with the tall, snow-skinned alien man following behind her. For Alreno there was an air of mistrust around Rhöt, one that he couldn't ignore. But the 'staserian' were his people's enemies, not her. At the very least she no longer seemed to suspect there was a need to kill him yet; especially since he abandoned his helmet and left his head so nicely exposed for ease of gray matter extraction. More than that, of course, he had cleaned her wounds, bandaged the wretchedness she called a 'body' and then fed her the first bit of cooked food she'd tasted in years.

Her guard had not been let down though. Rhöt was still highly suspicious, even if Alreno seemed passive and almost friendly. The problem was that Alreno was alone, and his robot was doing something that involved radio. Rhöt couldn't help wondering whether or not he would turn as hostile as before should they encounter any more of his kind. Humans, as she'd experienced them, weren't very pleasant in groups. Alreno was making every effort to be her friend, but in Rhöt's recent memory there was no such thing as a kindness towards her. There had never been a friend to have. With or without him, she would reach her destination, and she would see the right blood on her talons. She made a promise – one her very soul would seek to fulfill.

“...Halt," said the drone.

“Specify,” commanded Alreno, reaching for his rifle, eyeing rooftops and windows. There was a long, almost defiant pause.

"Specify," he again commanded.

“Private Voleavonvernoski, you are a deserter." The drone responded as though it required time to think, rather than process data. "By my estimations, your odds of survival are dropping by the hour. You should kill the alien and turn yourself in.”

Alreno looked at the machine at once, and aimed his rifle towards it. “Sys-check?” he commanded.

“My systems are fine. So... let's both agree that we have passed that point,” replied the drone. "Consider this an out. Kill it and rendezvous with the nearest friendlies."

“State your name, your rank, your purpose and method of gaining remote access to my drone,” he demanded, taking aim and stepping closer. “How are you getting a signal through?”

“I do not answer to deserters. Kill the creature. It doesn't understand us. Come back to the Sol's forces,” said the drone.

Like a tightly stretched rubber band, Alreno snapped. "I believe people when they tell me who they are. You refused. That makes you no one."

“Open your eyes. This will be the Sol's first foothold and largest victory over the staserian,” the drone rambled. “You appear to be depressed, but you are a part of history. This is glory in the making. Be grateful that you, of all else who could have been, are fighting in this conflict... and still could.”

“Yeah,” Alreno said, “us glorious sacks of Solian shit must have killed two million children by now.” He took a deep, sarcastic breath of freshly filtered air. “I'm reveling in the felicity.”

“A child is indeed innocent,” the drone replied, making great efforts to manipulate him. “But this alien is not innocent. You should kill it, instead of children.”

“She is a child, yo-”

“You don't even know that. You don't know what 'she' even is. You are delirious,” the drone argued. “You are alone, cut-off and you need to reestablish contact with friendly forces.”

Alreno knew what he had to do, and so did the machine. Traveling with the little alien would end in tragedy - he understood that - and there was no point on prolonging the suffering of two on account of only one. The choice was made, but not the choice that Alreno thought he was making. Rhöt simply stood in place, watching his body language change as he conversed with the robot; intrigued as he became more and more threatening.

“...Who are you?” He asked.“Just kill it,” urged the drone.

He squinted. "No more appropriate time has ever permitted me to utter the phrase 'Fuck you.' So, with that said, fuck you."

In an instant, the drone's propulsion system kicked into full speed, and it rushed towards Alreno's head. He couldn't use the Fous 54 – it was too close – so with a desperate burst of adrenaline Alreno threw himself to the ground and grabbed the nearest firearm from the hands of the nearest corpse. A single shot echoed between the towering buildings, and then faded away into the dark of the morning. Afterwords, there came a screech.

“You mis...mis... misaligned bastard.” The drone's engine burned out in a loud flare that fell to the ground in a ball of electric fire.

He turned as fast as he was able and began to sprint away, trying to catch up with Rhöt. He ran and ran nearly half a block, but she wasn't there.

She was gone.

Alreno stood there like a deer in headlights.

“Raat?” Alreno called out in confusion.

There was no answer.

“Raat? Oh... shit! ...Where!? Raat!” Alreno quickly dissolved down into a panicked state of mind. I shot it. What could she conclude?

“Raat!?” he yelled. “Raaat!?” There was still no answer. He thought that perhaps she hadn't seen it make a dash for him, and believed him to be a dangerously vagarious person; which was only half right. Were that the case, random violence was all it could have seemed, and enough dismay to rouse suspicions that she may be next. Suddenly, however, Alreno's loose thoughts collected and he got a mixed surge of emotions. He first felt regret, then self-loathing anger, but then came the fear. Hairs on the back of his neck stood on end as if something was wrong, and everything got darker. He turned slowly. And there she was, standing behind him with her hands resting on her rifle. That alone was fine, but being forced within her shadows felt like nothing should. He hadn't stepped or reached into the anomalous dark like this before. The dark reached into him. They locked eyes, and like Rhöt, he did a quick analysis. She obviously hadn't gone anywhere, she'd only lifted her toes – to keep her talons from clicking against the ground – and she stayed directly behind him, just outside of his field of vision. A little gray skeleton standing quietly would have scared anyone, but the darkening... Everything in his primate brain told him to run away. All he did was make a cough-like scream, though. “Shit,” he said, momentarily covering his face and springing in place. When he looked back at her everything seemed immediately brighter, less obscured and more normalized. The feeling was gone, as was the dimming of light.

Little did he know, scaring him was exactly what Rhöt wanted to do. Alreno and his machine's sudden conflict had put her on edge, but she wasn't going to miss the same machine that she herself had decided to dispose of. What she wanted was to test him. When Alreno's body tensed up in the shock of suddenly seeing her, she was watching his hands, looking for whether or not he would raise his weapon at the sight of her. When no such thing occurred her mind was put at ease. He wouldn't just shoot her for nothing. He was no enemy. The machine, however, still was.

“Raat?” Alreno asked, panting slightly. “Why'd you do that?”

“Ălrėno,” she replied, rendered clueless by every word.

“I've got to either learn more, or teach more.” As he expected, she didn't answer him verbally. She pointed down the street to another tier where smoke was rising in many thin, constant clouds. He listened for a moment, hearing the drone's engine burning, but faintly, off in the distance, he could hear explosions. Someone was fighting nearby. Maybe four miles, or five.

“Is that where we're going, Raat? Is that why you gave me this?”

She didn't even acknowledge him. All she did was silently walk towards the sounds, looking for a way off of the tier. Alreno felt uneasy, but he followed her with an eye more interested in the speckled shadows. She took one more glance back to the burning robot. There were no radio waves emitting from it anymore.

Just as it had planned.

The drone won, and savored the thought.

Little victories – constant gain. Finality.