"No Life 'Til Leather"

Dread and the Fugitive Mind Pt. 2

The ride home was peaceful.

There, that's that. No drawn-out metaphors for how Andrew felt his entire body floating further and further away from Terra with each soft breath W took, drawing him closer and closer to his destination. No paragraphs teeming with comparisons and contrasts, or epithets and analogies. Andy didn't posses the kind of vocabulary required to construct such a beautiful world for himself.

Instead, he had patience.

Andy was patient when Newmaker slammed on the brakes a little too hard while parking inside the landship's cargo cove.

He was patient when he scooped up W from her seat and back-breakingly carried her heavy body and soul to the medical wing for life-saving check ups.

He was patient when Anton threw him a half-assed goodbye and carried off behind Doctor Kalt'tsit's robotically stiff march through the halls.

He was patient when the labcoats from medical took his W in and prematurely told him that he wasn't allowed into the operating hall.

He was patient when Ace and Scout were called to stop him from bringing down the mechanized doors and blasting his way inside.

He was patient, when he sat outside like a wet hound, dripping with worry and blankly gazing through the shapeless distortions of surgical panes.

He was patient when a nice lady came and asked him to let a syringe suck away a great deal of blood from his guts-caked arm.

He was patient when the red kept dripping, and when he stared through the window at W's closed eyes.

He was patient when they stabbed her with needles and syringes all over. When they took notice of his mastermind merc-medical intervention, and glanced around each other with incredulous, albeit surprised and slightly off-put looks.

He was even more patient when they had finally pumped the girl full of fresh and worthless Sarkaz blood, then let her out to fall into his arms. W held onto his shoulders for balance, then vomited all over his sweater.

Andrew thanked the good labcoats from medical for their undivided attention and also the reluctant unwillingness to let her stay the night in a properly professional, medical environment. He thanked them for kicking her ass out of the resting hall to bum around their room instead.

And so, they were off. Late at night, at this ungodly hour, the hallways of Rhodes Island were mostly quiet. Here and there, a softening tumult of hushed voices would come and mingle with the nightly silence, but never overstay its welcome. Ace and Scout walked them a decent way of the road home, before disappearing in some communal kitchen or behind some other locked and unavailable door. Andy wordlessly thanked them for being there, when that clown Newmaker couldn't. He hated the guy, and for a good reason.

A reason that currently found herself slung over the boy's blood-soaked shoulder.

She reeked. Spread a putrid stench of sweat and death, and vomit, but it was fine because Andy had a somewhat similar fragrance to him. Two minuses zero-d each other out, and so they couldn't even really smell the toe-curling concoction of mind-numbing odors. All that mattered to him was that W was fine and somewhat conscious, and somewhat eager to keep tumbling forward through the hall. The hall. Their endless march, by now a little less uneasy and veiled in a smidge of uncertainty, not a whole deluge. Only three days remained, Andy reminded himself. Just three, grueling days. What was a man able to do in three days? Seventy two hours, four thousand three hundred and twenty minutes, two hundred fifty nine thousand and two hundred seconds. About a good six or maybe seven more suicide-tier tasks from Newmaker and whoever else was there to guide his judgmental wisdom. Or the lack of it, rather.