Parasite║LGBT+ Romance 🏳️‍🌈

17: Kiss

My arm aches. Shy drags me along dark corridors. Cations push sluggishly though my neurons like treacle, and I manage to slur, "Shiro." Shy pays me no heed.

Waves of unconsciousness lap at my grey matter. Four sols without feeding and I'm sipping the final dregs of my energy reserves. I expect Shy to lead me back through endless labs into the bowels of the building, but she ingeniously gestures to me to hunker down onto a lab trolley. Dizziness almost sends me toppling as I crouch. Shy stacks boxes and pipette trays over me before trundling the loaded trolley towards a lift.

Through the gaps between stalagmites of glassware and trays I spy automata milling to and fro around us. A guard passes, and I hold my breath. The trolley speeds up almost imperceptibly as Shy steers us away from the open lab spaces patrolled by azalea-uniformed guards. The lift arrives with a shrill ping, and Shy wheels me inside.

Close air and darkness enclose me. My guts drop with inertia as the lift ascends, then the grind of wheels resumes as my trolley moves out into light and air. Shy peels boxes and trays off me and I stagger against a steel-pannelled corridor. Through my creeping starvation I can make out that we're somewhere on the ground floor of the Kida building, close to the elegant living room where Shiro and I had met Meg. Only a maze of corridors separates us from Eris-1's market.

Shy signs a brisk "OK?" but I can't reply. My vision slips. I'm close to blacking out. I need to feed.

Shy hovers before each iris scanner as we stalk towards the curved glass atrium. Each activation of the iris scanner must be recording Shy's movements across the building; we have precious minutes before Meg realises that Shy is trying to get me out. My mind reels in panic but my limbs are too leaden to sign to her.

I feel Shy's shoulder slipping under my arm, taking enough of my weight for us to limp through labyrinthine corridors. Blackness flits at the edges of my vision, but I somehow keep conscious by focussing on the bright singularity at the centre of the pressing darkness: Shiro. He's the sun shining on Eris. He may be the cognitive phantom of his former self, but he's everything. I can't leave him here with Meg.

As his presence on the 'porter gave me hope in the storm, so the thought of getting him to safety galvanises me. If I can take Shiro and Shy to Pluto with me we could claim refugee status. With time perhaps Shy could devise a method to get nematodes out of Shiro's head. Out of my head. Out of the heads of everyone on Eris. At the end of the winding corridor is the foyer, and beyond that the vends and shops of Eris-1's market. Hope drives me. Shiro and Shy need me.

The corridor seems interminable. Dread for Shy's unborn baby grips me; I need to get her out of this coffin of brick and glass. Black wisps dance in my eyes, the single bright spot at the centre of my vision flickering against the eternal night of Eris. The spot of light winks out for a moment before winking alight again. 

My energy reserves sputter. It's not much further. I must keep going, for Shiro. For Shy. For Daiyu.

A figure glides towards us from the other end of the corridor. I blink in horror. At first I think I've fainted from hunger and that I'm trapped in a nightmare. The willowy figure advances, her head tilted with that 'keep warm' look of sisterly concern. Meg.

Shy shrinks against the corridor, her arms flailing to sign apologies and pleas that my lenses can't translate, but Meg only has eyes for me. She doubles her pace, a shield of azalea-pink guards around her.

I curl against the wall. My flat-lining energy reserves send black ribbons racing in, obscuring a sudden movement in the corner of my vision. A dark opening appears in the pannelled wall of the corridor opposite us. A hidden door.

An apparition in soft pink stretches a long leg out of the opening. Locks of hair with a slight wave obscure the beautiful creature's eyes. A ruined ankle trails behind.