Above

Chapter Two: Roots & Weeds

Author's Note

What I imagine Fenris to look like, although he has much longer hair. (Photo may not be up to scale, since, y'know, he's like 6'4".) 

"Piper, put it down," Rose's voice spit out words on its own, not allowing the teenager to form her own thoughts.

Rose knew she was in trapped in a dream state, but it was a reality that felt too crisp and abnormally lifelike. It unsettled her skin as she stepped closer to Piper, not out of her own choice, who hid beneath a metal frame of a car, a relic from a time before the Republic of Elysium.

Piper's long, dark hair is stuffed inside of her helmet, but the bulletproof glass that acted as her mask had been pulled off, revealing her almond-shaped eyes, which were stuck on the thing she carried in her arms.

"Piper," Rose glanced around them, automatically knowing that, even in this strange state of reality, everything they were doing was against protocol. She found nothing but wasteland covered in red clay, a calm, crimson sky above painted with hints of pink, and the shells of wooden houses around them; although the last mission in this sector had been twenty years ago, the rot of burned-up lives curled up into her nostrils. "You have to put it down."

"Overrun the cameras, Rose," Piper's gaze still didn't stray. The sixteen year-old tucked her finger, which had once been covered by the maroon metal of the body-armor, into the bundle she carried. Suddenly, a sound, breathy and mocking joy, came from Piper's arms.

"Piper," Rose's voice came out rushed; she fumbled back out of surprise, the sound of the dry surface cracking beneath her scurrying feet.  "Protocol--" she tried to begin.

"Overrun the cameras," Piper repeated, giving her Elysian partner a deadly stare. "Or I'll break both of ours."

Rose swallowed before she clicked on the silver button fixed on her left forearm. At her touch, a holograph of both of their video feeds came up in blue. In their Elysian unit, Piper is the soldier; Rose is the intelligence. 

Rose kept Piper informed, and Piper kept Rose alive. But, by cutting the feeds, Rose would have nothing to give back to her Elysian. 

She gave another glance at the other soldier before she hacked into the system with a few strokes of her hand. The feed turned into nothing but a black hologram with a red, flashing 'ERROR' stamped across. A heavy lump settled in her throat knowing that there would be sizable reprimands for their actions.

"It's done," Rose turned her attention to Piper, worry evident at the bundle she still held. "We have five minutes at most before they notice, another ten for them to find someone with enough skill to override my program, and at minimum, three minutes if they find someone as good as me."

"Good thing no one is as good as you, Posie," Piper spoke. For the first time since she had picked up the thing, her voice wasn't frantic or harsh-- she wasn't pushing drill sergeant on Rose.

"We can't keep it, you know," Rose clicked off of the video feed and walked across the short distance between them, leaving footprints in the dry, red dirt. "We're not even suppose to touch things like that."

"Shh," Piper's bare finger presses into the thing's nose, the gesture making it release another strange sound that mocked happy. "Look at it, Pose," Piper moves her arm until Rose can see it, and what she sees is strange.

It's a baby. It's big, brown eyes are blinking up at her with carelessness, as if it had not known the country it had the misfortune of being born into. Hair as black as Piper's clung in shorts curls around its dark, round face. It gives them a gummy smile every other second.