TIL THE SUNRISE - CHANLIX.

ONE

I'VE BEEN AWAY A LITTLE WHILE, AND IT DON'T MAKE SENSE TO ME.

     "File in. Watch your six, I'll see you on the other side" Ten military soldiers teemed past branches and through the undergrowth, spreading out from their single file line. Dressed in camouflage, military issued rifles lifted at their shoulder, they separated into pairs.

     Dead leaves crunched under Chan's boots as he and his partner Changbin separated themselves from the group. They'd been flown in with special orders, in an attempt to find a missing child that may have been spotted amidst the trees.

       "Do you honestly think we'll find him here?" Changbin asked, rolling his shoulders back at the joint. They'd been trekking for quite a while, and their shoulders were aching with use. Chan shrugged his shoulders.

     "Maybe. The source seemed pretty reliable but it's been hours since the call-in, and he could be anywhere by now" Chan was surprised it had turned into this big of a case, if he was honest. Plenty of children go missing every day. If they were lucky enough, they ended up with their faces printed on the sides of milk cartons, or taped to trees in the local park. Usually they slipped under the radar until remains were identified. Occasionally there were kids who became the center of news stories.

    Like this kid. Lee Felix. From the information packet they'd received he'd gone missing when he was six years old, and the math would put him at about nineteen now. So not so much a kid anymore. As Chan had read through the packet he'd felt his heart sink. Missing since six years old, he'd never experienced a childhood. Chan hadn't thought he'd still be alive, until a caller had rung and said he'd been spotted. He was still unsure.

    Both soldiers froze when they heard the sound of a twig snapping to their right. They whirled around to face the sound, rifle held high on their shoulders, and stopped short when they saw the figure of a skinny boy emerge from the undergrowth. They heard the boy give a sharp exhale of breath, freezing like a deer in the headlights.

    "Chan. Left hand. He has a weapon" Changbin muttered from beside him, and Chan focused his attention to the boy. He was dressed in a dirty white bathrobe and nothing else, hastily tied around his waist. The breeze fluttered the fabric, exposing leg and more that Chan didn't want to see. In his left hand he clutched a serrated kitchen knife, blade rusted and wet. His right hand was a mangled mess, black and swollen and dripping with blood, hanging limply at his side.

    Chan pressed the button down on his radio receiver. "All units be advised. This is officer Bang with officer Seo. Kid has been spotted. Does not seem dangerous but he is armed, be careful. Out"

    The kid took a few rushed steps backwards, scrambling away from them. He tripped, over what Chan could only assume was a fallen branch, and landed on his ass in the grass. Chan put his rifle down, taking a few steps towards the kid. He didn't know what his plan was, to help him up maybe. Take him back to an English speaking country. Probably back to Australia with the rest of the military.

    The kid opened his mouth and let out a growl. A proper growl, just like a dog. It made Chan stop in his tracks and while he was frozen, the kid scrambled to his feet and ran off back into the jungle. "Shit!" Chan yelled, "Get after him!"

     The two soldiers took to running, brushing tree branches away from their face as they darted around the trees. They ran for what felt like ages, until the trees thinned out and they came to a smal, squat shack. "He's gotta be in there" Changbin noted. Chan nodded and they filed into the house, quietly, so as not to disturb the kid.

     It was dim, but most of the windows didn't have any glass in them, letting the natural light into the rooms. The inside was grungy, dirt and leaves strewn across the floors and they progressed through the house. The kitchen was in disarray; cupboard doors hanging half off their hinges and a wooden dining table laying in a heap on the floor.

     There was only one bedroom and that was where they found the kid, crouching in a heap in the corner of the room. He sat, knees to chest, rocking back and forth, that mangled mess of a hand laying limp.

      He was emaciated and malnourished, thighs practically the size of Chan's pinky finger and he trembled violently. Changbin blocked the doorway with his body as Chan moved further into the room. "Hey kid." His head snapped up almost violently upon hearing Chan's voice. "We're not here to hurt you, okay? We want to help. We're going to take you home"

     The kid tilted his head at the word home, but still said nothing. "We're going to take you back to our camp and we'll get you some fresh clothes. Let you take a shower. We'll fix up that hand for you" He recognised the word fix, and extended his right hand slowly out with a sad whimper.

    "That's right, we'll fix that for you. It must be painful. Does it hurt?" The kid furrowed his eyebrows, pausing for a moment as if processing Chan's words. Then he nodded. It looked as though it had been broken by force, possibly from being stepped or jumped on. While he was distracted, he took the liberty to kick the knife away. It went clattering on the linoleum. He took a seat in front of the kid and motioned for Changbin to do the same.

      "I'm going to call my supervisor, okay? He's a nice man. He's gonna bring a helicopter down here to collect us. It's going to make a lot of noise but you don't have to be scared okay?" The boy didn't answer, but Chan could see in his eyes that he understood. Maybe he couldn't speak. Maybe he spoke Spanish instead. He had been here for a long time.

      "All units advised. This if officer Bang with officer Seo. The subject has been found in an abandoned shack. Bring the helicopter but do not approach. We're working on getting him out. Over" The kid looked at Chan curiously, extending his good hand towards the comms pack on his vest.

     "That's my radio. It lets us talk to each other when we're far away." He touched his fingers to his lips. "Yeah, talk. Can you do that? Can you talk?" The boy nodded, but when he opened his mouth to speak, nothing came out. The noise of the helicopter overhead made him flinch.

     "Hey kid. We're going to get you fixed up but we have to get you to the chopper first. It's cool, you'll love it. I'm going to have to carry you, is it okay if I touch you?" He nodded, and Chan carried him bridal style out to the chopper.

     On the way back over to the camp, he kept his nose pressed to the window the whole time.

        "Can I touch you?" Nobody had asked him that before. Everyone always took took took exactly what they wanted and left him afterwards. He could never take take take what he wanted. Nobody cared about what he wanted.

     Nobody cared about where he was and nobody cared about what he did and there was nobody here to save him. He had no energy at all, fed table scraps like a dog, just enough to keep him alive but make him feel so useless he wished they would end it for him. He wished he had ended it thirteen years ago when it first started.

     He was tired and he was cold. Shivering to the bone. If he could feel hunger he would feel that too but he was so used to being hungry that it no longer gnawed away at his insides like it did to normal human beings.

    He wasn't a normal human being he was a dog. That was what Ricardo had called him. Ricardo who'd been fed to the worms and the pigs and the things that travelled beneath the earth. He'd fed them. He had barely the energy to pick up the knife but he had done what he could.

    The unforgiving Earth had done the rest.

    He wasn't used to peace. He wasn't used to calm. He wasn't used to people like those men that had found him cold and shivering and naked. Inside his  brain was an ever present noise that drove him crazy crazy crazy. He couldn't hear anything over it.

    Except the man with the kind voice. He could hear that.