Fic: Found and Lost

[jeriendhal]

Stashashin jogged down the prison's hallway, rifle held forward at her hip, the rest of her ad-hoc squad of Vulpine commandos following her lead. The air was thick with smoke and the ozone residue of plasma fire, obscuring her view. She stepped over the body of a Creo guard and peeked around the corner, quickly ducking back as a four man squad charge down the cross-corridor, not towards her squad and the shuttle on the pad, but back in the direction of the prison block itself.

“Arlo, we've secured the landing pad and are moving forward,” she reported into her headset com. “What's your status?”

Her husband's voice came over the headset, from high orbit over the planet's surface, sounding strained. Myself and the girls are a bit busy at the moment. What this base's defense squadron lacks in skill they more than make up for in persistence and numbers. Kindly don't dawdle, Luv.

“Ten minutes, that's all we need,” she told him. “Be safe. I love you.”

Just get our boy and get out of there. Arlonis out.

She motioned the squad forward, taking point as they continued towards the prison block, where Marturari waited. Holy Den Mother, please let us not be too late, she prayed.

The sound of rifle fire made her prick up her ears. The squad ahead of them was shooting at something yet unseen. “No!” she shouted. “They're executing the prisoners!” She and the rest of the squad ran pell-mell forward towards the gunfire, their worst case scenario realized. She rounded the corner, firing from the hip to drop another guard, who fell to the ground inside the doorway of what had to be the main housing pod, if the plans she had found held true. Dim figures moved through blinding riot smoke, coughing and choking, as she pulled her breather mask down over her face. Someone was weeping, a female, and she headed towards the sound.

A figure, large, humanoid and carrying a rifle came towards her out of the darkness. Before she fire it was close enough to smash her rifle out of her hands. But she was not quite weaponless. Sasha let out a snarl and rushed forward, slamming into the figure before it could fire its own weapon and shoving it to the ground.

“You animal!” she shouted, grabbing the figure by the throat and pressing her claws into its skin. “If my son is dead I'll wash my grief in your blood!”

Her opponent suddenly bucked underneath her, and she let out a grunt of pain as his knee connected with her stomach. He threw her off and grabbed her wrists with one large hand, his rifle in the other as he straddled and pinned her down with his superior weight.

“Who are you?” the human, for it was a human now she could see, with pale, hairless skin, wearing an orange prisoner's jumpsuit, demanded.

“Lady Stashashin Greycoat!” she choked out. She caught her breath and asked, “Who are you? Where is my son?”

Just as suddenly as he had attacked, the human rolled off her, pulling her back up to her feet as the rest of her squad joined them. “Jake Walls, ma'am,” he said gruffly. “You Marty's mother, I take it?”

“Yes,” she replied. “What's happening?”

“Looks like the revolution has started,” Jake said, smiling in what seemed like grim satisfaction. “We'd been planning a prison break for months, but never had quite the right opportunity. Then all the commotion started at the landing pad, I guess from your little group, and we decided we weren't going to get a better chance.” The smile dropped from his face, as a pair of small grey figures lying on the floor in a pool of blood, tended by a weeping Galen medic in a guard's uniform, became visible as the smoke began to clear. “We took casualties though.”

“We'll get all of the survivor's out of here, I promise you, but I must find my son,” she said. “Please, is he still alive?!”

“Ma'am, I don't know.” Jake shouted towards the medic. “Minetta, forget them! We're heading toward the labs!”

“I can't leave them!” the Galen woman shouted back.

The human stepped forward and yanked her to her feet. “Your job is to save the living, not weep over the dead. Now come on!”

Stasha found herself jogging through the corridors of the prison corridors, following Jake and the woman's wake as he dragged the medic along. “Labs? What have they been doing to him?”

“We had an incident, practically the first day we got here,” Jake explained as they moved. “The chief rockhead had us pearl diving in the caverns below the prison. They had your son drugged to the gills after he freaked out on the lift that took us down, but then he got separated from us during the dive after a big damned fish brushed against him and sent him sinking towards the bottom.”

“He was swimming underwater, in the darkness?” she asked. “That's insane! He can't even handle zero-g!”

“I figured that one out when the guards brought him back to the prison block a few hours later. He spent most of next day curled up in his cell, just shivering, not able to talk. After that... well, they were testing all of us in one way or another, but for some reason the head Varn took an interest in your boy.”

She felt her stomach knot up. “What they do to him?”

“They'd take him away for a few hours, then bring him back, curled up into a ball and shaking. After a while...” the human grimaced. “Well, he wouldn't stop makin' these noises, so the guards stuck him in an isolation cell where they wouldn't have to listen to him.”

“No,” she said, feeling her paws tighten around the rifle's grip. “Please, is he still alive?”

“I... I think he is,” Minetta said. They had come up to a door marked SENSORY LAB – NO ADMITTACE. She started entering codes into the door lock. “I've brought Vulpine medical supplies here to the lab, but they wouldn't let me see him to treat him.”

“What kind of medical supplies?” Stasha asked.

“Sedatives mostly,” Minetta answered. “Blood plasma and bandages also, at least twice.”

“They took him out of the main prison block over three weeks ago,” Jake added. “We haven't seen him since.”

She took a deep breath and tried to focus. Pointing to her squad, she ordered, “Cover the corridor going both ways. Vaz and Tylor, you come with me and Mr. Walls.”

The door finally opened. Jake stepped through first and Stasha followed. It was a small antechamber, with an unmanned guard station. The door leading towards the interior was half open.

“What the hell?” the human muttered.

“I'm not sure what's beyond, I never was permitted any further than this,” Minetta said. “But it was always guarded before.”

Stasha sniffed the air. The coppery taint of blood permeated it, but there was another scent, achingly familiar... “Marty!” she cried out. Heedless of the danger she pushed the door open and ran in, skidding to a halt as she took in the horrific scene. Behind her she heard Jake say something rough and surprised in his human tongue, while Vaz muttered softly, “Goddess bless us all...”

In the center of the high ceilinged chamber was a large tank, the walls made of what looked like smart glass, capable of being polarized from clear to pitch dark. There was a wide crack running down the center of the tank and the viscous fluid it had contained was spilled out over the floor. It mixed with the blood of the four creo guards and two Galen technicians that lay on the floor, their throats cut, slashed open roughly by some sharp object. And in the center of the carnage was Marty...

He looked... fey and strange was the phrase that came to Stasha's mind, from one of the forbidden books she been permitted to read by the other rebels she had found during their long journey to this previously unthinkable rebellion. Her son was quite naked, his fur soaked with the same viscous fluid from the tank. There were IV lines hanging off of him, inserted into his arms and chest. In his right hand was a shard of smartglass. His palm was covered in blood, as was his muzzle. And though his eyes were dilated wide from either fear or shock, he was also smiling, a quiet, beautific smile of utter contentment.

“Marty...” Stasha repeated softly. She caught her breath. “Marty, are you... are you all right?”

“Oh, hello, Mother. It's so good to see you,” he said, his voice cheerful and calm. “We knew you were going to come, the Holy Den Mother promised us you would.” He turned to Jake. “Hello, Mr. Walls. The Holy Den Mother's blessings upon you.”

“Thanks, Marty,” Jake replied evenly. The human would have looked relaxed to Stasha, if she couldn't smell the tension sweat coming off of him, or notice that while he held his rifle casually in his hand, his finger was on the trigger and the barrel was pointed directly at Marty's chest.

“Marty, you've hurt your hand,” she said, in the calm tone every mother was capable of when she did not want their child to hear the panic they felt. “Could you put that glass down and let Minetta take a look at it?”

“Oh?” Her son looked down, as if seeing the shard for the first time. He dropped it to the floor and Minetta moved forward to clean and bandage his wounded palm, while Jake allowed the muzzle of his rifle to point towards the ceiling once more.

“What happened here, son?” Jake asked.

Marty made a gesture with his head towards the tank. “They placed us there, to make us float. The false god who put us in wanted to walk in our mind while we were within, to taste our fear.” His smile grew broader, “but the Holy Den Mother made a safe place in our mind, one that the false goddess could not touch. And when the Mother told us that it was time, we left the tank and waited for you to come for us.”

“That was very nice of you, Marty,” she said, because there was nothing else to say, at least nothing that she wanted her child to hear. I will kill you someday, Mindstrider. I will kill all the Varn, at least the ones that come within reach of my teeth and claws.

Marty looked down at Minetta, who finishing spraying his palm with a liquid bandage. “Why are you crying, dear?”

“I... Aori and Eylyn are dead. The guards shot them when they started using their Bion to help us escape,” she said.

“Oh, there's no need to grieve,” he said gently. “They're both sitting beside my father now, at the Holy Den Mother's fire. She'll watch over them.”

“Marty,” Stasha said carefully, “your father is alive. He's up above the planet right now keeping the enemy's fighters at bay, with your sisters.”

“No, Mother, I'm sorry, but he died just a few moments ago.”

“That's not true, Marty. Here, I'll show you.” She touched her headset com and said, “Arlo, I've found Marty. We're getting out of here. What's your status?”

Dead silence.

She felt her stomach twist into a knot. “Arlo, what is your status?”

A female voice came over the com, high pitched and frightened, Mother, this is Jess. Father's fighter took a hit and blew up. We didn't see him eject and he isn't answering our calls!

“I... I understand,” Stasha said, feeling her heart freeze up in her chest. “You and your sister get down into the atmosphere. We're going to board the shuttle in less than five minutes and we'll need you to escort us.”

But what about...

Her commander's voice gave her the strength she did not yet feel in her heart. “Arlo is gone, but we have Marty and we are not going to lose him again. Watch your tails and get down here. That's an order, Jessiver!”

Understood, Jess replied, her voice despairing.

“Come on, son,” Jake said, resting his hand on Marty's shoulder, “it's time to go.”

Marty looked at him, with the same calm expression he had worn the entire time. “We're sorry, Jake, but we can't leave yet.”

“Marty, that's nonsense,” Stasha told him. “We have to go now, the others are waiting.”

“No, Mother, not yet.” His smile grew wider and his voice was filled with joy. “I bring you the Holy Den Mother's Word. She says to us, that the Time of Subjugation is at an end. All the of the so called Wise Masters and false gods are to be driven from the Den, for Her children have stayed true in their faith to Her and will stand free on their home soil once again. The cleansing starts now, and the first to fall will be the Varn Mindstrider.” He bowed to them all. “Come, let us kill a god.” Then he strode past his mother, past a stunned Vaz and Tylor, out into the antechamber and to the hall beyond.

“Ain't nothing scarier than a guy who's found religion. Come on, ma'am,” Jake said, and trotted after Marty.

Stasha followed in her son's wake.

The first of many who would follow him, in the years to come.

The End

Author's Note: And so ends the saga of poor Marturari Greycoat. It goes without saying that this is definitely non-canon. While it was always intended for Marty to become the Mindstrider's toy at one point or another in the RPG that inspired this story, I think it's safe to say this was not the original intended outcome for his character arc. If for no other reason that I'm pretty sure that the Vulpine aren't the sort who ever follow divinely inspired lunatics.