by Lia Nox
I almost asked her about it, about her past, but I held my tongue.
If she was to share, then that would be a choice she’d have to make on her own—I couldn’t be the one to tease it out of her, it would be unfair to manipulate her like that.
Our pain was our own, our property to either lock away or air out and deal with the heartache it caused.
But Erin had yet to decide what she needed to do with her demons.
Erin
Being able to use weapons to protect myself felt good.
It had been nice to have three buff companions to shield me from the horrors of this planet, but it was even better knowing I could be of more use to the group.
To myself. There was no doubt in my mind that I’d need all of their help again before too long. After all, I hadn’t ever been trained to fight for prolonged periods, not really.
In my old gang, we’d been taught to rely on stealth above all else, and only if that failed, to fall back on combat.
I was a mouse, after all.
I was capable of warding off an attacker, but I didn’t want to unless my hand was forced.
As I contemplated the device in my left hand, the barbed prongs at its head looking as menacing as the electric current it’d discharge when activated, I fell into more memories of my old life.
I’d always been one for unique gadgets and weaponry—why use a standard gun when you could surprise your enemy with a tasered attack from within the shadows? It made no sense to me to select the most obvious route.
For beautiful things. For the unique.
And that had been my downfall.
My weakness.
I thought I’d kept it from my old gang, but that hadn’t worked out so well in the end.
Or maybe it had, maybe everything I’d done until now was preordained, step by step leading me here.
But I didn’t want to make the same mistakes again.
“Guys?”
They froze, the synchronicity of their movements, the intensity of their focus still shocking to me, and I’d been with them long enough now to grow accustomed to it.
I couldn’t quite place why it still gripped me so, but I guessed it was because of how effortless they were—they captured my attention like a mesmerized child with one smooth, unified action.
“I want to tell you more. . .” I sucked in my breath so hard that it burned at the back of my throat. “You asked about my past. I should tell you. It might matter.”
I wasn’t sure how much this really mattered to them, though none of them scoffed at what I’d said. If they didn’t want to hear me out, they weren’t making it obvious, yet I still sought their approval.
“Can I?” I asked, my speech so quiet I questioned whether I’d even spoke at all.
“Erin,” Kern started, his eyes soft, and for once serious. “You can talk to us about anything.” I looked to Roth and Talos to see if they shared this opinion; two reassuring smiles informed me that they did.
Now came the question of how well the translator would work, could it hold up to such a torrent of details—we’d been fine in the past, but this would be a lot more information to bombard them with.
I gripped my weapon of choice in an attempt to keep the memories of my past alive, encouraging myself not to falter in front of this hurdle any longer. The sigh I released as I did so was a long, quaking breath, the stress visible in the way I dispelled the air.
“Okay,” I mumbled to myself before addressing them with a louder, more clear voice. “So, I’m an orphan. I don’t know if you have a similar word for this in your language, but it means I don’t have parents. I don’t have a family.”
“Esiti ale Edodo?” Talos asked, though what he was asking me remained unclear. This was what I’d been concerned about, that the translator would fall short and we’d all try to grapple with words we didn’t comprehend. I exasperatedly shrugged back at him, my movements a little frantic due to frustration.
“I. . .guess? I’m sorry, but I don’t know what you mean. It doesn’t really matter though; the point is I was alone.” I pointed to myself then held up my index finger. “Alone. One. Just me.” I added, hoping that something, even if it was just one word, would scrape through. Come on Delia, I mentally begged, let your magic tech skills have done the trick…!
“Growing up alone, a lot of the world you’re not meant to see is the one you see all the time—theft, rape, murder, it all becomes a part of what you come to expect. I was never hurt personally, but I knew a lot who were. I was lucky.”
The sensation of not being inside my body came to me then, as if I was out of myself and watching this scene from a stranger’s viewpoint. It was an unnerving feeling.
“Eventually I was too old for the government to look after me—not that they ever did—and so I had to find a way to get by. I started lifting objects from abandoned buildings around the local neighborhood, trading them for food in the underground market. Always moving, making sure I didn’t sleep in the same place twice.” I swallowed hard, remembering the fear. The loneliness.
“I thought no one knew who I was, no one noticed. But before long, I’d caught the eye of one of the scavenger gangs, and they approached me.” I could still see them sitting me down in front of them as if it was still happening, their expressions ones of quiet interest at my natural ability to remain undetected as I scavenged.
I hadn’t known it at the time, but I’d been headhunted.
“The group who turned on you?” Kern interjected, the image that had been dancing in front of my eyes having evaporated away like steam.
It was replaced with a more painful echo of my past: the look of disbelief on my face when the authorities had snagged me, their file on me brimming with too much information for them to have collected it by themselves.
My chest tightened. That’s when I’d known my association with those I’d called friends, albeit very loosely, had come to a violent end.
And it was my own doing.
“Yeah, the very same. They turned on me for good reason though. Anyways,” I rambled, my words spewing out of me as I tried to get back to my original story. “Before everything went to shit, they helped me learn how to survive in a way that gave me a comfortable-ish life. I wasn’t rich but I wasn’t poor either. The little orphan, unwanted and lost, wasn’t helpless anymore.”
Wasn’t she?
I questioned myself, not certain of how strong that belief was anymore. I could tell the guys that I was strong, unaffected by my past, but the truth wasn’t so brave or impressive. A lot of the time, I still felt just as lost, only now I was a grown woman struggling through rather than a child.
“But the reason they handed me over. . .” I really didn’t want to admit this. Not to my guys. Not to three men to whom the team was everything. Survival.
It was against everything they stood for. But, they deserved the truth, didn’t they?
“We were sent on a job, looting a collapsed building. Our leader said the client had old records showing that area had once housed wealthy residents. It sure didn’t look like it anymore.”
The scene in front of me changed, a wreck of cracked concrete, half fallen in on itself, destroyed in one of the coastal quakes of the last century.
“The parts of the wreck that were easy to access had been picked over, probably years ago. But I could wiggle through, down what I suspected was an old air shaft. And it lead to a cave of wonders.”
It’d been treasure. Not the usual scrap metal and old components, but beautiful, priceless treasure.
Paintings, statues, lovely things I could barely imagine glittered in the light of my flash.
Most of them were too large to be pulled out of the narrow shaft I’d climbed through. And only shards remained to tell me where objects of delicate colored glass had once sat.
But there were enough small paintings and sculptures to make us rich.
Or, make the client rich, and the gang’s percentage enough to let us rel
ax for a while.
Calling for a rope to be lowered, one by one, I’d sent the fabulous things up to the surface, searching and scrounging through the debris.
And then I’d found it. Lovely, carved and polished stone. So smooth I couldn’t help but run my fingers over the lines. A mother and child, no bigger than the palm of my hand.
Exquisite. Unique.
The fire of greed ran through my veins.
I had to possess it. Keep it.
Who knew why, what madness made me break the one strict rule of the gang: Everything pooled, shared, sold.
And then the credits divided out.
It was the only way it could work.
And I didn’t care anymore.
I slipped the lovely figurine inside my coat, secured it in an inside pocket, and returned back to the job.
No one should have known any different.
We’d had a legendary haul. Exceeded the expectations of the client.
Except. . .the client had a list of what that room had contained, ancient security vid.
Had expected that figurine.
And months later, in a moment of carelessness, another member of the gang had seen me holding it, running my fingers over the stone with the same obsession I’d had since I first saw it.
And the next day, I’d been arrested.
“I betrayed my team,” I forced out. “I wanted something so much, that I didn’t do the right thing. And that’s why. . .” I looked around the half-circle, their stony faces giving me no indication of what they thought of this strange story.
“I won’t betray you. I know I won’t. But you should know.”
It was Roth who broke the silence.
“Steyuu, Erin.”
I cocked my head; this goddamn translator was starting to really grind my gears. Roth noted how irked I looked however, much to my delight, as he tried again, waiting for the translator to work. “You were strong before and you’re strong now. You stumbled once. Just stay on that path. All warriors walk through fire to prove themselves.”
My eyes caught Talos nodding in agreement as I stood and considered what Roth had said.
Everyone stumbles. Just stay on the path.
Could it be that easy?
I couldn’t be sure without asking them, and now didn’t feel like the right time, but I didn’t think that sort of sentiment was something they’d picked up from their Masters.
Instead, I got the impression that it was a lifestyle, a culture the warriors of this world had for themselves. Whatever the reason, I was glad that they had, as those small verses of wisdom were soothing me.
We stood in silence, the proverb Roth had voiced hanging in the air between us all. It had been difficult to explain what my life had been before all of this, and I’d left out a lot of details which I’d known would send the translator spiraling out of control, but the end result was positive nonetheless.
In my ability to reveal more of myself, I’d become closer to them and, as a result, they were now emotionally closer to me. Never in my life had I understood more how important the spiritual connection of a relationship was than I did at this very moment. There was a simple splendor in being connected on multiple levels rather than just the physical one.
Adults had always harped on about the wonders of relationships able to surpass the physical, but I’d always rolled my eyes and ignored them. I’d told myself that I knew better, and all those other rubbish lies a teenager soon-to-be young adult likes to cling to with devoted cynicism.
And then there was the other side of my lies: that if these adults were correct in what they were saying, I’d never be somebody who would experience it anyway.
I’d be a lone wolf until my dying breath, surrounded by no one but imagined loved ones rather than real, corporeal ones.
And then something happened that turned everything on its head, defied fate itself.
I’d come here. Met them.
“Do you want to stay here or move on?” Roth questioned, all of them stood waiting for me so patiently. They never stopped making me feel grateful for meeting them.
I laughed by way of response, though I could tell they didn’t understand why; to be asked that question at that exact moment was so poetically fitting though. It was an inquiry that held hidden meaning; it felt like I was being asked whether I was ready to move on past all that had held me back, my demons finally having been exorcised. Was I ready, could I say goodbye to the devil I knew?
Yes. It was time.
I would try.
Roth
We had been walking for three hours when the first clouds started shaping up in the sky. The dark blue shaded to grey right before our eyes, the clouds forming an angry blanket that blotted out the sun.
Just like I had feared, a storm was coming.
While usually the storms on this planet were fierce but quickly vanished, this one had me more worried than usual. If Talos was right and there was water at the bottom of the canyon, then that meant it was likely another storm had already been raging somewhere far upstream, and it had been violent enough to push water down the canyon.
“Do you know of any shelter nearby?” I asked Talos, who always kept a mental inventory of useful places inside his head. This time, though, he looked back at me with a concerned expression on his face.
He didn’t need to say a word for me to know that we were in trouble. The woods we were in before had given way to an increasingly arid place, and I knew that without the protection of closely packed trees we’d be at the mercy of the winds. Not that the woods would be much better anyway. If the wind started uprooting trees, then what would we do when they were all around us?
“Maybe if we head back,” Talos said, but he quickly shook his head and dismissed that thought. “We won’t have the time for it, will we?”
Falling silent for a couple of moments, I looked up at the sky and watched as the clouds darkened, the air growing heavier and oppressive around us. “No, we won’t,” I finally said. “We’ll have to find shelter somewhere close by.”
“Understood,” Talos said, but that worried expression didn’t leave his face. If we didn’t know where we were heading, or where a safe place was, we were in grave danger. The storms that ravaged this region of the planet were violent and brutal, and many teams had perished as they tried to brave the elements head-on. Not to mention that some creatures only ventured out when the elements were violent enough to hide their footsteps. . .and these were some of the most blood crazed creatures the planet had to offer.
“Are we in trouble?” I heard Erin ask. Looking back over my shoulder, I watched as she left Kern’s side hurried up toward me. She didn’t look exactly worried, only mildly curious. She trusted me to lead the team to safety, and I couldn’t stop myself from feeling the weight of her expectations. “Kern told me there’s a storm coming our way.”
“Kern’s right,” I told her with a nod, trying to hide just how concerned I was about the whole situation. “But we’ll find some shelter to brave it out. It’ll be fine.”
“You don’t sound that convinced,” she said, and I felt both my eyebrows shoot up in surprise. According to almost everyone, I was one of the hardest men to read, so how exactly could she read me this easily?
“Storms are dangerous in this place,” I admitted, unsure exactly how much I should share with her. I didn’t want her to worry. “If we don’t find shelter soon, we’re in a little trouble.”
“I see,” she muttered softly, and then she fell back to rejoin Kern. With a small smile, I glanced at her only to see her looking around more attentively, her eyes peeled as she tried to look for someplace safe.
When we first met, I thought that we would have to carry her all the way, that we’d have to protect her every second of every day. . .but now I knew that I had been mistaken. Erin was a valuable member of our team and, even though she wasn’t as built as we were, she could carry her own weight.
Still, when the rain drops started
hitting us as viciously as bullets, that thought was of little comfort. In just a matter of seconds we were drenched, but that wasn’t what worried me. As fierce as the rain was, I worried most over the wind. It was strong enough to uproot the largest of trees, and I could already feel the slight breeze that danced around us turning into a furious beast.
“Stick together!” I cried out over the howling winds.
Kern and Erin hurried their pace to draw closer to me. Talos, who always walked a few yards ahead of us to detect any incoming foe or trap, also fell back. The four of us trudged ahead, much slower now as the wind slapped us with all its might, and we remained huddled together as if we hoped that would offer us some protection against the elements. It didn’t.
“Watch out!” Talos suddenly cried out, taking one step back as a large tree fell right in front of us, its thick roots jutting out from the arid ground like tendrils of death. Pushing the rest of us back, he offered his back as a sacrifice as a large branch swooped down and struck him across the shoulders. Grabbing him by the arm, I pulled him toward safety before he could suffer any more damage.
“Are you hurt?”
“No, it hit the chest plate,” he said with a dismissive gesture. Any other time and I would’ve insisted for him to remove the armor so that we could check for wounds, but there wasn’t time.
“Let’s try and steer clear of any trees,” I said, uncertain he could hear me. The wind drowned out my voice, my words nothing but grains of sand to be carried away into oblivion. To make matters worse, the arid ground on which we walked was quickly turning into slippery mud, and each step we took was starting to feel more and more like an ordeal.
I held one arm up in front of my face to try and see where I was going, but the curtain of rain had now become impenetrable. Even worse, I could already feel sand in the wind. We were close to the shore now, and the wind’s fury would soon turn into a sandstorm.
Gritting my teeth, I tried to up my pace. We were walking blindly but, as idiotic of an option as it was, it sure beat standing in the middle of the storm at the mercy of the elements. No matter what, we had to keep on marching forward and pray that luck would be on our side. All we needed was to find some shelter and things would be fine.