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“Sir! I need you to calm down!”
When Virgil raised his voice, people listened. Even his brothers. But this man seemed oblivious to everything, including Virgil’s instructions and the need to move before another aftershock completely crumbled the frail remains of the underground cave system. Scott and Gordon had managed to fish out all of the tour group except for this guy who had foolishly wandered away from the others. It had taken Virgil extra minutes they didn’t have to reach him.
“May I ask your name, sir?” he gritted, managing to keep his tone polite.
“None of your goddamn business! Just do your job and get me the fuck out of here!”
Okay, Virgil told himself, this might be the most annoying rescuee on the face of the planet but he deserved a break. He was probably scared witless, perhaps dealing with sudden onset claustrophobia.
“If you need assistance getting into the pod, I …”
“Don’t touch me!”
Virgil withdrew his hand in slow motion. “No worries. If you would just climb into the rear seat and fasten the harness, I’ll have us out of here in a jiffy.”
“Too small,” the man muttered, “too close.”
“His name’s Earl,” John offered in his ear.
“There’s plenty of room for both of us in the pod, Earl,” Virgil coaxed reasonably. “It’s a bit cramped but we’ll only be inside for a couple of minutes.” He was seriously considering one of the mild sedatives he carried to calm a panicked victim when the man suddenly scrambled into the pod on his own. Gaunt and long-limbed, he reminded Virgil of nothing more than a giant, spindly spider. Pale, blue eyes darted frantically but Earl managed to fumble the user-friendly safety harness around himself. Magnetic core connectors snapped into place, securing him in the rear seat.
With a sigh of relief, Virgil climbed into the pilot’s seat, quickly securing the glass plate canopy before Earl decided to escape. For absolutely no reason whatsoever, a quiver of dread dripped down his spine one vertebrae at a time. He shook it off, fastened his own restraints and set the pod in motion. Claws grabbed rock and they were moving toward safety.
“Make it quick, Virgil,” John cautioned. “I don’t like the looks of the seismic activity I’m tracking.”
“I can be there in two, Virg,” Scott offered quickly, “if you need an assist.”
“Stay put, Scott, I’m on my way,” Virgil responded, tucking as much reassurance into his voice as he could muster. The pod was too cramped for him to turn around fully in his seat, and having Earl out of sight behind him was oddly unnerving. He knew it was stupid but for whatever reason the guy just gave him the creeps.
“Virgil, I need you to listen.” John’s voice was deadly calm. “Earl might be a problem. He’s recently been released from …”
A millisecond of silence ended with a shout.
“Aftershock!”
Virgil awoke to a cracked visor, a fragmented canopy, an excruciating stab of pain in his shoulder and three brothers screaming in his ear. He blinked slowly, brain fumbling to catch up with reality.
There was an unmistakably feral growl behind him and whatever had pierced his shoulder kept moving, digging through the flesh above his collar bone before abruptly slicing upward and away. Virgil screamed agony as the frigid air of the underground cave seared raw flesh like acid.
Earl’s face leaned over him, ice blue eyes and a bloody, serrated blade glinting in the pod’s emergency lighting. A bony hand appeared, fingers grasping something red and blue Virgil couldn’t immediately identify. He shuddered, instinct telling him that the blood running in rivulets down the other man’s forearm was his.
“I had it under control!’ Earl screamed, droplets of spit and blood splattering across Vigil’s visor. “Then you came along and everything went to hell.”
Virgil’s breath rasped, faltering in his throat. He was so icily cold that the slick of warm blood seeping down between his skin and his uniform was oddly comforting. Scott was yelling in his ear loud enough to fry more than a few comm circuits but there weren’t enough neurons firing in Virgil’s brain to deal with more than one thing at a time.
Earl. The whack job. The guy he was here to rescue.
“Hey, man,” gushed out on an exhale, “I can help you.”
“Like shit you can help me,” Earl sneered. A knee appeared in Virgil’s uncertain peripheral vision, followed by a sneakered foot, kicking. The cracked canopy shattered in a shower of clear-plate fragments. Earl sighed with relief and lifted one leg over the edge of the pod, his running shoe scrabbling for a foothold on the side.
“Virgil,” John’s soft voice infiltrated, “be very careful what you say. He’s mentally unstable.”
“N … no shit,” Virgil stuttered as he grabbed Earl’s wrist with both hands. The blade found him again, burying itself into his arm just above the wrist. His hand went numb and he lost his grip. Earl’s weight pulled the knife out of his arm and blood dripped from the tips of Virgil’s fingers, following Earl down into a bottomless pit.
“I … I lost him,” Virgil gasped, blinking slowly as the rough, fractured walls of the cave slid into each other in the edges of his vision.
“Good,” John responded with feeling.
Good? He’d lost a victim, let him fall into the abyss, and John was telling him it was good?
“Gordon’s almost there,” Scott’s voice assured. “Just hang in, Virg.”
Virgil sagged over the side of the pod, losing himself in a wild kaleidoscope of shifting rock. He had no conception of time, no idea how many seconds or minutes passed until a pair of familiar hands gripped him, hard.
“Gords?” punched out of his throat, cut off and guttural.
“M’here, Virg. Relax, big guy, I gotcha.” He was eased back with infinite care into his seat, slumping as fear and tension flowed out of him. Gordon would take care of everything, he could rest. Virgil closed his eyes but the world wasn’t ready to let go of him yet. Dizzying waves of sound faded away and roared back, echoing …
“Fuck!”
… velcro hastily torn apart …
“Hey, eyes open!”
… frantic yanking on zippers …
“Scott, I need you down here now!”
… pressure on his shoulder …
Sobs bubbled up Virgil’s throat. He felt his head tip sideways. A gloved hand braced his chin and cheek, keeping his neck at a reasonable angle.
“Don’t you dare pass out on me!” His younger brother sounded positively vicious. Fingers closed around his uninjured wrist, relentlessly drawing his hand up towards his shoulder. “Hold that!”
There was just enough of the medic clinging onto consciousness to realize it was essential to keep pressure on the injury. Virgil pushed down with his palm, felt a stack of solid gauze pads sink into a void where the top of his shoulder should have been. He’d had stabbing injuries in the past but this was different – almost like a hunk of flesh was missing. The agony was …
… doubled when Gordon grasped his arm just under the elbow to keep it from moving and began winding gauze tightly around his forearm and wrist.
“Virg, stay with me, yeah? Can you feel your fingers?”
“N … no … hand’s n … numb …”
“What about your head?”
“Wha’bou’it?”
“Your visor’s cracked. Does your head hurt?”
“S’fine.”
Still winding gauze, Gordon mumbled something under his breath.
“Heads up,” Scott broke in on comms, voice calm and steady.
Both brothers looked upward – Gordon sharply, Virgil blearily. They could see the IR logos on the bottoms of Scott’s boots as he slowly descended, his harness secured to a cable. One hand guided a tethered, hover stretcher through an irregular passage in the rock.
“John, how stable is the pod?”
“It’ll take your weight, Scott,” the space monitor assured, “but there’s still some seismic activity, so everybody’s in a harness and clipped in to a cable ASAP.”
“Thanks, John.” Landing lightly in the rear of the damaged pod, IR’s field commander allowed several meters of cable to coil up in the seat before stopping its motion.
“Virg!?” Scott was leaning over him at a precarious angle but not touching him in any way. The medic blinked rapidly in an attempt to clear his vision. Those cobalt eyes looked like they were about to explode, taking Scott’s head and helmet with them.
“Sc … Scotty. M’here.” Virgil reached out to his older brother with the hand that was supposed to be putting pressure on his shoulder.
Gordon yelped. Scott gasped. Blood immediately streamed down Virgil’s arm and side. He didn’t notice, his entire focus on reaching Scott’s fingers with his own. One of Scott’s hands closed around his while the other clamped down on the damaged shoulder.
“Ease up for a second,” Gordon hissed, “just lemme get more pads underneath. Virgil, don’t pass out on me, you know better.”
“D’n worry. M’fine.”
Scott scrunched his face together as hard as he could. “Yes, you are,” he reassured his brother through stiff lips as he applied pressure.
Gordon bandaged the shoulder wound securely and finally had a hand free to grope for a med scanner. “No spinal injury, let’s get him secured and on that stretcher, now!” he insisted after a quick look at the readings. Dropping the scanner back in the kit, he maneuvered Virgil’s legs awkwardly out of the confined space underneath the pod’s control panel while Scott lifted him into a semi-sitting position on the side of the stretcher. Gordon began fitting a harness around his upper body.
“Gonna move your arm, just for a sec, okay, Virg? Take a breath.”
Harness in place, they got him flat and lifted him onto the hovering stretcher, both of them clamping their back teeth together as stifled whimpering echoed in their helmets.
“Did’ya bring enough restraints, Scotty?” Gordon teased, bringing his humour-to-hide-the-tension tactic into play.
“I hope so.” Scott’s face was grim as he helped Gordon fasten them, securing their injured brother to the stretcher. “That aftershock did significant damage, some of the trip’s gonna be vertical.”
Gordon’s head snapped up, amber eyes locked on the commander’s blue.
“Ver’cal?”
How the hell was Virgil even conscious let alone able to comprehend what was being said? Gordon rested a hand on his uninjured shoulder. “We’re gonna do all the work, Virg, you get to relax those muscles for a change. Just stay awake and rest your eyes jealously on my GQ silhouette.”
The choked chuckle made Gordon feel just a tiny bit better as he snugged up multiple, redundant restraints, including a couple across Virgil’s helmet. Scott secured the hover stretcher to both cables. They checked each other’s work and nodded.
“Cable speed synchronized,” John confirmed, voice strung tight.
Dangling from their individual lines, Scott held one end of the stretcher while Gordon supported the other. They were concentrating on keeping it level between them as they began the journey upward when their space brother’s voice whispered “how is he?” in their helmets.
“John.” Scott switched channels to a private link. “I’m sorry, I … fuck.”
“Take a breath, Scotty, I have telemetry, but I need to know if ...” The astronaut cleared his throat. “Earl was recently released from a mental facility, but there’s more to it than that. He’s an An …” John’s swallow was audible over comms as he stumbled uncharacteristically over the word. “An Anthro …”
“He’s a cannibal,” Scott stated flatly, then corrected himself. “Was a cannibal.” IR’s commander allowed the satisfaction in his voice to escape before switching to professional mode.
“Virgil has a sizable slice of his shoulder missing, scraped down to the collar bone, as well as a stab injury just above his wrist. Major blood loss and no feeling in his hand but he’s conscious.”
Gordon’s tense voice cut in. “Scott, it’s getting tight.”
“You’ll need to go vertical on the stretcher for the next six and a half metres,” John informed calmly as space-monitor-mode rebooted within its required millisecond.
The cables quit moving. “Hey, Virg?” Scott’s fingers splayed out across the sides of his brother’s helmet. More than anything he wanted to run comforting fingers through Virgil’s raven hair but a collapsing underground cave was hardly the place to remove a helmet.
“Sc … Scott? M’here.” Their eyes met.
“You sure are,” Scott encouraged. “You’re all strapped in and we’re gonna go vertical for a bit. You good with that?”
“Tr … trust you, bro. If y’r good with’t I’m too.”
Scott tightened his fingers around Virgil’s uninjured arm. “Okay, nothing to it. Here we go.” He nodded at Gordon and the aquanaut’s cable moved smoothly upward until the stretcher was vertical and Scott, holding stationary, found himself face to face with a bloody and extremely pale brother.
“D’n sweat it, Scotty. M’fine.”
Scott glanced upward, gauging the width of the space above them. “Gords’ll be right above you and I’ll be just below. I’ll make sure there’s enough light so you can see at all times. It’s gonna be a bit tight.”
“N … not a victim, Scotty.” Dark-chocolate eyes found his, perfectly lucid, although Virgil’s tongue was still tangled. “B … b’n … th …”
“What he’s trying to spit out is that he’s been there, done that, needs the tshirt,” Gordon supplied. “I’ll get’cha one, Virg, I promise. But right now, we gotta go.” The aquanaut reached up, gloved hand grasping a crack in the rock face as his cable moved him upward. Scott followed, boots braced against the sides of the small passage, doing his best to guide the stretcher above him in such a way that it didn’t touch the cave walls.
“Almost through the narrow bit,” John encouraged. “One more metre and it gets a bit … no! Aftershock!”
Rock shuddered, sheer walls shifted, jagged fragments fell, and when the rumbling finally subsided John’s shout was a mere whisper in comparison.
“Gordon!?”
No response.
“Gords! Answer me! Are you okay?” Scott demanded.
In the silence that followed, Virgil could literally feel his oldest brother’s helpless frustration seeping up the crevice from underneath him. He eased in a slow, steadying breath. The light from Scott’s helmet illuminated the rough, rock surface in front of his face but he didn’t have enough wiggle room to see anything else. Claustrophobia clawed up his throat and he rammed it back down before it spewed out into something beyond his control.
When it came to restraints, his older brother was more than thorough. Virgil sucked in his gut and worked his functioning hand towards the centre of his chest. Fingers stretched, groping, until they found the edge of his baldric, crept up to the pouch that held his laser cutter. A fingertip slid it to the setting he needed and Virgil directed it in a precise arc.
“Virgil! What the hell are you doing?”
“Gonna check on Gords.” Virgil’s mind, now that it was centred on a single, significant thing – the condition of his brother – was crystal clear. “You all right down there, Scotty?”
“Yes! Quit moving and let me …”
“Let you what, bro?”
The silence was all Virgil needed to hear. There was no way his older brother could get past him and the stretcher in the narrow passage, so if anyone was going to help Gordon it had to be him.
“John, do you have telemetry?” he asked calmly as he continued to laser through the last of the restraints anchoring him to the stretcher.
“He’s unconscious, helmet’s compromised.”
“FAB,” Virgil acknowledged. He reached up, found Gordon’s boot, and worked himself up the crevice until he could grasp his brother’s leg. Virgil squeezed tight.
“Gords! I’m here! You talk to me right now or I swear I’ll tell Scott about …”
“Virg?” A whisper.
“There you are, partner. Do you know where we are?”
“Uh … middle ‘v a rock?”
“Very astute,” Virgil congratulated. “Tell me about your spine and neck.” He winced as he heard shifting and grunting above him.
“S’good,” Gordon assured him.
Virgil trusted him totally. When it came to Gordon’s back they had an understanding that neither one of them ever messed with.
“Okay. Stop moving. Just look up and tell me what you see.”
“Shit!”
Virgil’s stomach sank. If the crevice had closed or narrowed above Gordon, their chances of escape were dwindling.
“Shit,” Gordon repeated, “s’clear!”
“Awesome, Fish. I’m climbing up past your legs …”
“Virgil, don’t!” Scott’s shout mingled with John’s.
“… can you cram yourself back just a bit more?”
“Uh …” It took longer than Virgil would have liked for his brother to respond. “Y … yeah but you …”
“Good job.” The medic gritted his teeth. Blood loss was taking a toll and, in spite of his best efforts to keep his injured arm tucked against his side, the excruciatingly painful void in his shoulder was stirring up visions of a spindly spider named Earl that he’d really rather not dwell on.
But his brother needed him and Virgil had more muscles in one arm than most people had in two. Stubbornly he pulled, pushed and wriggled his way up the crevice until his visor was level with Gordon’s. Immediately concerned that his brother’s eyes weren’t focusing properly, it suddenly dawned on him that it might just be his own vision that was blurry.
“Hey, our cracks match,” Virgil chuckled, tapping his visor lightly against his brother’s.
“More muscles than brains,” Gordon returned with a small, fond grin.
“Don’t mean to interrupt, but if you two are done with the brotherly banter, is it possible to get a sitrep?” Scott’s voice inquired.
“It widens out into a c … a cavern?” Virgil reported. Oh, yeah, his vision was definitely blurry.
“I c’n see daylight!” Gordon contributed.
“John, are we clear to use the cables?” Scott hissed. Although he was trapped in a claustrophobic chasm of rock, the desperation in his voice was entirely due to Virgil’s blood dripping from above and trickling in streams down his visor.
“Yes. Just watch the first few metres. Once you’re out of that narrow crevice, Scott, you should all be good to go for a clear lift to Two.”
Virgil and Gordon reached for the cable control in the same instant. Virgil missed, Gordon didn’t. Ever so slowly, the three of them began to ascend.
“You’re lookin’ a bit pale, there, Virg.” If it hadn’t been for Virgil’s injuries, the aquanaut would have closed his arms around his big brother and held him tight until they reached Two’s belly.
“Gords? I c … can’t feel m … my hand …” Virgil stuttered. Now that he knew his brother was okay he couldn’t seem to tamp down the panic stirring his gut. “I need my hand ... need it t … t …”
“I know. Virg, I know,” Gordon soothed. “Just slow it down, we’re almost up to your bird which means help is close.”
“Wh … what if … if …”
“It’ll be okay,” the aquanaut assured him, nudging up the cable speed. He didn’t need a med scanner to tell him that his big brother’s heartrate was soaring and blood loss was approaching critical.
Scott, finally finding open space around him, also increased his speed until he was level with his brothers. Cobalt eyes widened as Virgil sagged, limp in his harness.
Gordon moved his hand into view so the syringe could be seen.
“Let’s move it, Scott. He’s out.”
Virgil poised his hands above the piano keys, letting the emotions of the piece he was about to play seep through him. It began with a powerful crescendo of notes, and his splayed fingers dropped onto the keyboard with considerable force.
A jarring squawk of sound ensued as his right hand connected and the left failed, crumpling flat against the keys.
Virgil shoved the piano bench back with a screech across the polished wooden floor and bolted. The path to his studio was engraved in his brain cells as was the spontaneous reach towards the treasured, clay pot where dozens of paint-stained brushes awaited.
His numb, left hand knocked the pot over and it cracked into shards when it hit the hardwood, brushes skittering in every direction. Bending over, he reached out, trembling, with his right hand.
It didn’t feel quite right when his fingers closed around a brush, but the virgin canvas propped on his easel was begging for a splay of colour. The artist chose a vibrant green similar to his bird, worked in hints of saffron yellow and sapphire blue, made an initial, bold sweep across the white.
It was wrong … so grotesquely wrong. Striking out in sudden anger, Virgil tipped the easel and canvas onto the floor, flinging his paints and palette violently against the nearest wall. A scream of pure frustration escaped …
… and a voice whispered “wake up, Virg,” as comforting fingers combed through his hair.
His studio vanished into grey fog and there was nothing left except the feeling of familiar fingertips grazing his scalp.
For an instant his brain stopped moving. “Scotty.”
“I’m here. Whatever dream you’re having, bro, please wake up.”
“I … my hand … I c … can’t … wh …” Virgil blinked rapidly as various versions of Scott’s face and an unfamiliar ceiling mingled, fading in and out.
“Slow down, there, big guy,” Gordon coaxed from somewhere beside him. “Take your time.”
“T … time? How long hv’I been … been out?”
“A few hours, that’s all.” A small but strong hand squeezed his. “Sorry, bro, but you’re in hospital.”
“Hopefully headed home tomorrow, though,” Scott encouraged on his other side.
“Okay,” Virgil stammered, strictly to reassure his brothers. It took a moment and a deep breath to shake off the remnants of the recent, horrific dream and assess himself. The pain in his shoulder still throbbed in time with his heartbeat but it was muted. Medication, he decided. His left hand was completely numb, and experience told him that had nothing whatsoever to do with medication.
He decided to push it aside for now, start with something a bit less terrifying.
“How’s the head, Fish?” he asked, wincing as he shifted in an attempt to get more comfortable on the unforgiving, hospital mattress. Gordon was right there, fiddling with the controls until he found the perfect angle.
“Good as new,” the aquanaut announced with a wink. There was a square of gauze taped to his forehead, too small to even qualify as a proper bandage, at least by IR standards.
“Glad to hear it. So, um … Earl?”
“Released five days ago from a mental institution.” The real, unpixellated John emerged from somewhere behind Scott and rested his hand gently on Virgil’s arm.
“No, I mean … he’s gone, right? I lost him?”
Scott’s eyes closed as his breath sighed out of him. “You did your best, Virg. He lost himself.”
Chocolate eyes blinked, aware and also wary, but Virgil’s voice was steady. “He was a cannibal.”
“Yes.” John confirmed immediately.
“You lost a hunk of flesh bro,” Gordon supplied, “and there’s a bit of a painful scrape along the top of your collar bone, but …”
“My hand.”
Scott’s eyes narrowed. “Do you need more pain meds, Virg? I’ll ring for …”
“No!” Virgil sucked in a calming breath. “I can’t feel it.”
John’s nimble fingers tightened on his arm. “This whole thing has been a horror movie gone sideways, Virg, and if …”
“No, you guys don’t get it!” Virgil jerked away from his ginger haired brother. “Sure, Earl gave me the creeps – even before I figured out he was a cannibal. He took a slice of my shoulder for a souvenir. Totally freaky, hurts like shit, gotta lot of cannibalistic spider nightmares coming my way. But I’ll heal, it’ll make a great tattoo, and someday I’ll barely remember. But my hand, I … I need it to pl … to play and to p … paint and …”
Vaguely it registered in the medic’s brain that he was hyperventilating, but losing feeling in his left hand was …
“Slow it down, Virg.” Gordon’s voice could be extremely calming when he put his mind to it but this time he wasn’t quite getting through.
“Virgil!” Scott summoned up the commanding glare he’d been honing to perfection throughout a few hundred rescues. “Calm down and listen to me!”
Virgil shrank back into the pillows and nodded, brown eyes wide but dry.
“The doctors are telling us that the numbness is temporary.” A small, tentative smile broke out on Scott’s face.
Virgil snapped his head towards John. “Yep. It’s all coming back,” the astronaut nodded.
Virgil believed them, he honestly did, but still he looked to Gordon, trusting his younger brother’s judgement more than anyone else’s.
“Let the bells ring out and the banners fly!” Gordon swooned, theatrically draping his arm across his forehead. “It’s too good to be true, but he lives to play and paint again!”
There was a mild stirring of annoyance amongst his other brothers over the flippancy of the words, but Virgil ignored them. He knew his co-pilot and sea brother possibly better than he knew himself.
In perfect unison they reached out, one arm each, and hugged each other.