“Mattis, you don’t seem well,” Lorica said, sounding less angry. “You’re covered in filth, you’re sweating—”
“It’s warm in here. On this planet.”
“You’re all flushed.” She placed a few fingers on his forehead, and he jerked away. “I’m afraid you’re sick, Mattis.”
“I’m not sick,” Mattis spat.
“You’ve been rolling around in the mud.”
“I haven’t—why won’t it shut up?” He shook his head, but the angry scraping wouldn’t go away. He pressed his palms to his ears.
“Did you just tell me to shut up?” Lorica fumed.
Mattis couldn’t hear her. He just shook his head, repeating softly, “No, no, no.”
“Mattis, what is happening to you?”
“I found something,” he said, as if he hadn’t heard her. “I found something that could help.” Mattis started digging in his bedding for the metal rod to show Lorica.
She grabbed his wrist hard to stop him. “Mattis,” she said, locking eyes. “What’s happening?”
The scratching in the walls or in his head or in his ears ebbed, and Mattis was able to focus on Lorica and only Lorica for a moment. “I found something that can help,” he said.
“Help with what?”
“Escape.”
“Mattis, I’m working on that. I talk to Ingo all day, every day. He’s actually…” she trailed off, knowing, perhaps, that this wasn’t something that Mattis wanted to hear but nonetheless finding it too important to let it go unsaid. “Ingo isn’t a bad person.”
“He’s our jailer,” Mattis scoffed.
She nodded. “Yes, but his involvement with the First Order is just…it’s a matter of birth.”
Mattis shook his head. He didn’t understand or care to.
“He could be our way out. He’s looking around at what’s happening here and how Wanten is treating the prisoners, and he doesn’t like it. He didn’t realize what the First Order was really like. I think—Mattis, look at me.” He did. She continued, “Mattis, I think I can convince him to join the Resistance. He’s already open to it. He likes the things I tell him about what the Resistance is doing.”
“He likes you,” Mattis whined. “He’s a First Order soldier, just like Jo, just like Aygee is now, and he doesn’t care about the Resistance. He’s falling in love with you.”
They both let that sit there, unsure what else to say.
Then Lorica sighed, “He’s not.”
“Of course he is!” Mattis shouted. “Why wouldn’t he be?” He wouldn’t speak any further than that. He didn’t like how much he’d said already. It felt too revealing somehow, too honest. Mattis turned away in his mind, and he ran down another avenue of thought. Something more aggressive and sulky. “You’re probably falling in love with him, too!” Mattis shouted.
“Please stop yelling,” Lorica said.
That only made Mattis angrier. He felt his face flush red and hot. He breathed in and out sharply through his nose like a tauntaun. “Tell me I’m wrong,” he seethed.
“Of course you’re wrong. We’re just talking. He’s listening to me tell him about the Resistance, and I’m listening to what he says about the First Order.”
“Great.” Mattis bristled. “Next thing, you’ll probably get married, and then you’ll be my new guard, since you love Ingo and the First Order so much.”
“You’re acting like a child.”
“I’m fifteen!” Mattis yelled. “I’m not a child! I know things. I know how people are. I know how you are, because we used to be friends, remember?”
“We’re still friends.”
Mattis snorted, unable to come up with a response. He knew he was being childish, but he couldn’t get his head straight between his exhaustion, his thirst, and the constant noise in the walls around him. Plus, the mud in his nose had dried. It felt gross.
“Mattis, I’m doing this to help us escape. If I have to join the First Order for us to escape, I’ll do it.”
Did she really just say that? Was Mattis now imagining conversations as well as the endless rasping? What had Cost called it? Scritching-scratching? Yes. That was what it was. Whatever was in there, it wanted to emerge into the world.
Mattis pressed himself against the wall and yanked his rough blanket up to his chin. He clenched his eyes closed so he wouldn’t have to look at Lorica when he said, “Join the First Order then. Be with Ingo. I don’t care. I don’t care anymore. I don’t care.”
Lorica stared at him, disbelieving, not understanding. Something was happening to Mattis, and he couldn’t explain it himself. From the look on Lorica’s face, she couldn’t help him or understand what was happening, either. He rocked rapidly back and forth, back and forth, whispering something under his breath. He was acting like Cost, but he was angry, too, unable to fully explain his feelings or thoughts, finding no difference between those two swarming storms spinning around in his head.
“I want to help you, Mattis,” Lorica said. Her voice had a pillowy quality he’d never before heard from her. He wanted her to help him, so he nodded minutely. Lorica turned back to the cell door and called out, “Ingo!”
“No!” Mattis barked, then buried his head again in his blanket.
Lorica turned back toward the corridor and whisper-yelled for Ingo again.
“What is it?” Ingo asked. Lorica motioned with her head to Mattis on his bed, rocking and murmuring.
“Something’s wrong with him,” she said.
Ingo nodded. “Why don’t you come with me,” he said, punching on the cell’s keypad.
“Should I leave him?” Lorica asked, worried.
Mattis was shaking now, pressing his head against the wall behind him. “You should leave him,” Ingo said.
Mattis watched, mostly hidden under his lump of blankets, as Ingo took Lorica by the hand. Were they really holding hands while his brain melted in his skull? Would they skip through the hallways, laughing in a jolly way about how Mattis had no friends left?
Mattis heard Ingo say, “I’ll put you and Cost in another cell tonight,” as he slid the barred door closed again behind Lorica. “Let Mattis get his sleep. Let him think his thoughts in peace.”
Mattis let out a hoarse, humorless laugh under his blanket. He wouldn’t find any peace with his thoughts. The best he hoped for was sleep.
He didn’t sleep, of course. Instead, he listened to the dogged scritching-scratching, losing himself in its urgency and the swirl of his own thoughts. Watching Lorica go away with Ingo felt like a dagger through his chest, and he had no way to extract it. Lorica was probably being fitted for a First Order officer’s uniform already. She would do well there, with her adoration of rules (and Ingo) and bossing people around (and Ingo), and with her slippery moral center.
The thoughts and images were a tornado in his head, only touching down to do damage. He again saw himself growing old and remaining stranded there, in a detention center on a swamp planet. His old friends had turned into enemies—Jo and Lorica and AG—and only the reprogrammed droid, ageless, forever ticking, would remain to watch him turn gray and bent. Jo and Lorica would find their victories in the First Order. They were good soldiers and would make better officers.
He thought of Dec and Sari, lost in space, floating out there somewhere, dead. It was the deepest and most difficult concept for him to fathom; he swam around in its murky waters until the scratching took on a muted tone and then, finally, turned to laughter.
Mattis’s eyes snapped open. The laughter ceased. The scratching was gone. There was silence in his cell. The gray day had faded to a darker night. Mattis wasn’t shaking anymore, and he wasn’t warm. He felt as if he’d sweated out toxins. He wiped the beaded perspiration from his face. He was alone.
Good.
He needed to be alone to do what he was going to do.
He’d hidden the scrap metal in Lorica’s bunk. He remembered that now that his head was clear. He retrieved it and knocked it a couple
of times against the bed frame to shake some of the dirt loose. Even in the growing dark, he was glad to be alone with the tool, and he could finally give it a closer look. It was a short, hollowed-out metal tube, probably used for shipping. It was locked, though; Mattis couldn’t figure out how to open the chamber, but it might do to start busting through the cell wall. It was definitely sturdy enough to chip away at the already crumbling cement.
He figured a corner—the one where Cost had spent so much time—was a good place to begin. By chipping away there, he might create a hole where the cell walls met, but it was also easily concealed, should the guards arrive. He crouched down at the head of Lorica and Cost’s bunk and started making small hits at the wall. The cement broke off more easily than he’d anticipated. It wasn’t long before he had a mound of rubble and chalky dust around him. He looked around the cell for a way to cover it up. There was no drain in there; the bathrooms were down the corridor. He gathered some up in his cupped hands and deposited it in the bunk above his. He hoped they wouldn’t be given another cellmate, for that prisoner would find his or her bedding filled with rocks and dust.
Mattis bent again to his work. Once he was through the first layer, the task became both more difficult and tedious. He tried not to think too much about how little progress he was making, how alone he was, how dark it was, and how desperate this work was. He stopped for a moment to clean out the dust that was accumulating in the tube.
The noise he’d been making continued.
Mattis looked at the tool then let his eyes roam the cell. How could the scratching continue when he’d stopped…? Oh. He understood now. It was the scratching from before. The scratching that Cost had warned him about and that he’d heard when he lost all hope. But with this tool, hadn’t he regained hope? Shouldn’t the noise disappear?
Scritch-scratch-scritch.
It didn’t disappear. And it wasn’t just scratching. Now the laughter began again, too. High-pitched giggling and low-end chortling, echoing and trailing off so it sounded as if it were coming from all around him. Mattis put down his tool and dropped to his knees in the corner of the cell, as he’d seen Cost do so often before. The laughing continued. Unable to help himself, feeling the madness and despair and mistrust of what was real anymore erupting from deep within him, Mattis laughed, too. At first it was just a bubbly, hesitant giggle, but that seemed to make the cell laugh even more, and as it grew louder, so, too, did Mattis, until he was bursting out with bellowing guffaws. He was crying, too, fat tears running down his face even as he howled with laughter.
What could Mattis do but laugh? And the walls laughed with him. So he laughed some more. And soon both he and the walls had a rollicking good time, laughing and crying, and Mattis was wondering when he would start hallucinating right about the time the cell door rattled open.
Okay, he thought. Now, I guess. Now is when I start hallucinating.
This wasn’t any cheerful hallucination made of talking space candy or bantha balladeers; instead, Ingo appeared in the doorway. Backlit and foreboding, Ingo stared at Mattis, slumped against the wall. He nodded his head then walked away, leaving the cell door open. Was he allowing Mattis to escape? Was this more madness or could this really be happening?
Mattis rose, unblinking, not allowing himself to look away from the faint light of the open cell door. He was barely standing when a figure appeared in that light. At first he thought it was just his own shadow, but that was impossible. It was tall. It was hairy. It was Ymmoss.
The Gigoran stepped into his cell. She growled in a low, dangerous way he hadn’t heard before. Without Lorica to protect him, Mattis knew he was doomed. Ymmoss would squash him beneath her enormous feet or rend him to pieces.
Mattis discovered that the metal rod was still in his hands. It occurred to him, as if the thought belonged to someone else, that this might be used as a weapon. It was sturdy and hard enough. Mattis was still confused from his bout of laughing and crying. Should he just hit her with the cylinder? That would be a good offensive strategy, his brain decided.
His thoughts were sluggish. They trudged through his mind like a Hutt playing offensive scooper in grav-ball. His pause stymied Ymmoss long enough that she stopped, too, to study him, and only when he raised the cylinder to strike her did she snap out of her own confusion and give him a sharp shove.
Mattis pitched back against the wall and his weapon slipped from his hand. He heard it clatter against the cement floor, and it disappeared into the darkness. The Gigoran approached him again. Mattis closed his eyes and waited for the fatal strike.
Instead of receiving it, he heard Ymmoss let out an abrupt noise somewhere between a whimper and a howl. He opened his eyes to find her bent at the waist and clutching the back of her head, mewling again with that pained noise. What had happened? Had Mattis finally unwittingly used the Force to battle his opponent?
From out of the dark a tiny figure leaped from Cost’s bunk to Mattis’s, swiping a glinting claw across Ymmoss’s head as it flew through the air. Ymmoss yowled and thrashed at the air where the figure had been, but it was gone again. It disappeared into the shadows.
So, Mattis had failed to use the Force. Again. He did have some sort of savior in his cell, though, and for that he was grateful. While the Gigoran thrashed around, he took the opportunity to slide back into the dark corner in which he’d been digging his hole. A voice came from nearby: “Need more help, friend?”
Mattis, startled, leaped to his feet. Ymmoss turned to him, fuming. She displayed her claws.
“Yes!” Mattis called. “Need more help, yes, now!”
He heard a familiar scratching, but this time he saw its source. The tiny figure squirrelled out of the narrow gap Mattis had made in the wall and sprung fearlessly at the Gigoran. It grasped her chest and slashed at her with shining claws. Ymmoss swung around and around, trying to free herself of her miniature shrouded assailant, succeeding only in pounding herself about the torso, yelping all the while.
The small figure dropped from the Gigoran’s body and scurried under Lorica’s bed. Ymmoss saw where it went and snatched the bunk, lifting it into the air and shaking it. The only items to come loose were blankets and pillows. Mattis pressed himself against the farthest wall, trying to make himself invisible. Ymmoss shook the bunk, but her attacker was gone. She smashed the bunk across the small room, and it went to pieces. The Gigoran, frustrated and injured, stalked out of the cell.
Mattis let out a throaty, thankful sigh. He looked around in the dark for his savior, but he couldn’t see anything. Just shadows and the overturned, busted bunk bed. He pushed it against the wall where it had been, as well as he could, and returned to his own bunk. Dropping his head into his hands, he whispered, “Are you still here?”
He was answered with faint laughter. This time he didn’t laugh in return.
“The door is open,” Mattis said. “I could—we could just leave here.”
But Mattis was paralyzed with fear. Ymmoss or Ingo or something worse might be right outside his cell, hidden from view, waiting to attack him.
The laughter rang out again, closer now.
“Don’t you want to go?” Mattis asked. He’d feel better leaving if he had that tough little creature with him. Its claws had been enough to counter a Gigoran.
“Go where?” asked a voice that was equal parts broken glass and phlegm.
“Out. Away. Not here.”
The creature revealed itself, crawling onto the foot of Mattis’s bunk. It was rounder than Mattis had initially perceived, though it was still only as high as Mattis’s thigh. It patted its stomach, squashing down the filthy wool that covered its whole body. It had triangular ears that flopped around when it shook its head, and a pointed snout full of yellow teeth. The creature’s mouth never seemed to close completely. It sat cross-legged opposite Mattis, as Cost had done only a few nights previous.
“Where to go?” the creature asked. “Run away? To get eaten by another of Mistress Harra’s p
ets? Mistress Harra won’t like Gherd getting et by the other pets. That’s why Mistress Harra keeps Gherd in her lap.”
“Are—are you Gherd?”
“Who else would be Gherd?” The creature laughed again. Outside of the echoing walls, his laugh wasn’t so eerie.
“What are you?” Mattis asked. It was an indelicate question, but they were in coarse circumstances.
“Gherd is Gherd,” Gherd replied.
Mattis shook his head. “No,” he said. “I know you’re Gherd.”
“Gherd, yes.”
“But what are you, Gherd?”
“Gherd still Gherd. What is Mattis?”
“You know my name?”
“And you know Gherd’s!”
“Yes. No. I mean, how do you know my name?”
“Angry lady says it.”
Mattis laughed, and Gherd copied him. “You mean Lorica,” Mattis said.
“So angry,” Gherd confirmed.
“You heard Lorica say my name, so you know my name.”
“You heard Gherd say Gherd’s name, so now you know Gherd’s name.” Gherd opened his muzzle in a panting smile. “Now you go.”
“Go what?” Mattis asked. Gherd was infuriatingly confusing to talk to.
“Talk!” Gherd stood, his long arms hanging limply by his knobby knees.
“I was asking,” Mattis began again, “what you are.”
Gherd bopped himself in the head. “Gherd is still Gherd!”
“Okay, okay. Are you a rancor?”
Gherd’s big eyes narrowed into slits. “What that means?”
“You aren’t a rancor, are you?” Mattis said in the friendliest way he could. “And you’re not a kinrath or a tawd, right?”
Gherd pulled his lips back over his teeth in revulsion. “Tawd disgusting,” he snarled.
Mattis nodded in agreement. Tawds were disgusting. “Gherd isn’t a tawd,” he said. “So, what are you?”
“Gherd is—” The creature paused. Mattis could tell Gherd was about to repeat himself again, but then Gherd appeared to catch on. “Gherd is nanak!” he cried, and fell onto his back, laughing as if the entire frustrating exchange had been a long joke.
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