Year E3029

Ocea

The two moons lit the night sky above us as Stopper tried to start the fire. His green flame wasn't catching with the wet branches. Little sparks of emerald flew around, trying to ignite on the surrounding ground.

"Dude, calm down," Wyatt said, stepping on an ember and extinguishing the small green flame that almost caught.

The fallen tree Thomas and I were sitting on soaked up my already wet pants. My breath clouded around my lips as I fidgeted my legs, bouncing them from the cold.

"The stupid thing won't catch!" Stop yelled while throwing the branch at Wyatt's face.

Wyatt moved just in time for the stick to come flying at me. With zero reflexes, I let the branch smack me in the face. I knew the glare I gave Stopper could kill a male colossus.

He smiled at me, then pointed at the flame he finally lit. "Look, fire," Stopper said in an amazed voice, trying to get out of trouble while moving his arms around like a magician at the circus.

The green flame caught fast, bringing heat to everyone. Stopper stood up from his crouched position, bowing to everyone, the solo performance playing in his head. As much pain in my ass as these guys were, they are all I have in this shit world. Wyatt laughed at Stopper as they joked with one another.

The stump beneath me rocked forward as Dylan sat beside Thomas, sandwiching him between us. "So, Thomas, what was Ocea like as a kid?"

"Stop, Dylan. He doesn't know," I replied instead of Thomas.

Dylan put his hands in the air with a smirk, knowing what he did but trying to get a reaction from Thomas. "What? I'm trying to help him."

"It's not helping," I responded.

Thomas tilted his head. "Well," he said, then looked at me. "He's helping because I knew you knew more, but you won't tell me."

Dylan laughed. "Oh, yes, she knows." He wiggled his eyebrows with a side smirk.

I widened my expression. "Yes, we knew each other, but—" I said, being interrupted.

"Yes, I knew it," Thomas responded, clapping his hands together.

"But I feel you should discover your memories by yourself, not me telling you what you want. I want you to remember without my help." I glanced into his brown eyes.

"And who decided that?" Stopper added his input.

"I did," I said back with attitude. "I'm the head of this, so I decide."

Stopper shrugged his shoulders, then looked at Thomas. "Sorry, dude, you are on your own."

Dylan leaned over Thomas with a wide smile. "I say kiss him," he said with his hands flowering his face. "Maybe that will spark something."

I glanced at Thomas at the same time he looked at me. We both paused for a minute before my cheeks burned from embarrassment. I rubbed my neck, averting my eyes away from him. I'd love to kiss Thomas, but with an audience. Yeah, no.

"This isn't some fairy tale, Dylan," I said, carrying out his name.

Dylan patted his palms on his knees. "Well, I tried." He placed his hand on Thomas's back. "Sorry, dude. No kiss for you."

I palmed my face, shaking my head. These three are like annoying older brothers.

Dylan kept talking. "I mean, you chased her into the forbidden forest. Who knows what the stiffs will do with you when you return to the City of Rise?"

I glared over at Dylan while Stopper pointed a stick at Thomas. "I'm sure they are tracking him right now." He walked up on his tiptoes, acting like someone all high and mighty, pretending to be a MOS. "We will punish him with—" Stopper said in a deep voice, then looked over at Thomas. "A bride!" he yelled in excitement.

Dylan stood up from the stump, grabbing Stop's hand. "Oh no, good sir," he said girly. "Don't make me marry someone as generic as Becca."

"The blonde bombshell will be yours," Stopper added as Dylan palmed his chest like he was brokenhearted.

"Becca," Wyatt said in a mean girl voice behind us, mocking preppy girls.

"But she has a resting bitch face, and I want to live with the purple-haired freak forever," Dylan added, falling to the ground as if to be stabbed in the heart.

Thomas glanced at me. "What are they talking about?" he asked.

Wyatt placed his arms between Thomas and me, pushing us over so he could sit between us. His large boots bumped my legs before squeezing into a spot too small for him.

"They are talking about your file. You know, being assigned to a 'bride' when you turn twenty-five." Wyatt air quoted when saying the word bride.

"Yeah, that," Thomas said in an upset voice, side-eyeing me.

Dylan rolled over on the wet purple dirt, crawling with a smile. He crisscrossed his legs, picking the dead leaves from his hair. Stopper strolled closer to us, leaning against a citrine rock.

Wyatt put his arm around Thomas. "Now, onto the more important part," he said, then stood up. "You can't come back to the bunker with that tracker in you, so we will need to stage a scene so you can return to living in the city."

Stopper got down on his knee in front of me. "I hear the wedding bells now," he said as I shoved him, causing him to stumble. "I now pronounce Mr. and Mrs. Thomas and Becca—" Stop tried to say, but Dylan pushed his head into the ground.

"What if I don't want to go back?" Thomas asked, ignoring the two on the ground.

I jumped up from the stump. "Sorry, you have to. Until we figure out how to get the chip out of your arm." I jumped over Stop, spinning around to face Thomas and putting a foot on Stopper.

"We wi—" I said as something reflecting on the forest floor caught my attention.

I watched it, thinking an insect would fly out of a hole, but nothing moved. Kicking Stopper with my foot, I stepped over him and jumped over the log. The wind blew into my face as my hair whipped around, smacking me.

"What are you doing?" Wyatt asked, as I kept walking.

Being sidetracked from the statement I was about to say, the crunching of my footsteps on the purple dirt made everything around me silent. I stopped next to the mystery object, tilting my head. With my palm out, I crouched, brushing the gingerbread dirt off.

"Number thirty-one," Thomas said from over my shoulder.

"Is that one of those old spacecraft?" Dylan added. He crouched down next to me, pulling at the metal piece.

Dylan tried to yank it up, but the sheet wouldn't budge. "Here, help me," he said to the guys as they forcefully pulled a spacecraft door from the soil.

"Yes, it is," Wyatt answered Dylan's question. "Just the door, but pretty cool."

"Weren't those burned when the humans landed from Nus?" Thomas asked, not truly believing it was a human spacecraft from generations ago.

Stop grunted out as he tried to keep the door upright but failed without the help of the others. "Well, whatever it is, it's heavy." He dropped it to the ground as purple dirt clouded up from the soil surrounding us.

I walked over, cleaning off the numbers around the door. The three shined a bright blue, reflecting almost mirror-like. Number one faded and peeled off a little. The characters didn't seem finished. It was missing something.

"Do you have any water?" I asked the guys.

"Yeah," Dylan ran off, grabbing his backpack. He quickly returned with pink city water in an old plastic bottle.

"Thank you," I said, grabbing the liquid from him.

I poured the bottle out onto the door over the numbers. The dirt washed off as a sticky residue was visible with the water running over it. All three numbers were now in view, but the last one was gone. The numbers read three, one, and zero.

"Three hundred and ten," I whispered, thinking this looked too familiar. I scrunched my eyebrows together, then looked over at Dylan. "What did the numbers stand for on the ships?"

Dylan shrugged his shoulders. "I think it was just a way to organize them."

I hummed to myself. This number had to mean something. It was at the tip of my tongue. I know I have seen this number before. "Nothing else, you think?"

"Nope," Dylan said. "Not that I remember."

"Why?" Stop asked, crouching with me, brushing his hand over the numbers.

"I—" I stood up, looking over at Thomas. "Never mind."

I didn't notice Wyatt had walked away as he jogged back up to us with a rope. He bent over, tying up the spaceship door. Wyatt tried picking it up, leveraging it on his back, but his knees buckled out, sending him to the ground. Dumbass thought he could carry this heavy door on his own. The metal sheet compressed him as he grunted out.

"We aren't helping you, dipshit," I said.

"Yeah, who do you think you are?" Dylan added. "One of the rock elves that can lift anything?"

Wyatt squeezed his way out from under the door, glaring at us all. "I thought the Saviors could use it."

"Well, you thought wrong," Stopper said, patting Wyatt on the back. "Okay, I think it's time to take Dreamy Eyes back to the city." He smiled over at Thomas. "We have some cleaning up to do."

I knew what Stop meant. Thomas chased me into the woods, and the stiffs will probably check their city cameras soon. We will have to hack into their system and erase everything from today.

We walked back to the river, following it up the stream to the city. The buildings were bright, giving off illumination. But the lorna plants were the ones that guided us back to our destination. Wyatt and Thomas walked in front of Stopper and me. I could hear Dylan singing a quiet tune behind us, making the birds whistle. A loud click from a beetle bicycle in the tree above us caused the bird to stop singing with Dylan and fly away from the threat.

"Ocea," Stopper whispered as his arm rubbed against mine.

"Yeah," I said back as Thomas looked over his shoulder at me quickly, then kept walking within his couple of yards' distance.

"I saw your face when you discovered the spaceship door." Stop leaned in closer to me. "What do you know?"

"Nothing," I replied. I wasn't lying because I didn't know what the spaceship number meant. "I just know it looked familiar," I thought out loud.

"Familiar?" he questioned back. "How?"

"I don't know," I said, looking over at his green eyes.

They were glowing as the moons shined down on his face. Stopper paused our walking, grabbing my shoulders. He leaned in closer to make sure the others weren't listening.

"It looked familiar to me, too," he whispered with his mouth near my ear.

"Ah, ah, no secrets." Dylan smiled at us, wiggling his finger with disapproval.

"We aren't keeping any secrets," I replied.

Dylan's eyes widened as he tilted his head. "Not from what I see."

I glanced back at Stopper. He was still holding my shoulders with his face stupidly close to mine. I could smell the sunflower gum he was chewing. His skin was perfect, with zero blemishes. His lips slowly formed a devilish smirk as he winked at me.

My palms shoved Stopper away from me. "No secrets. The numbers on the door looked familiar to both of us." I glared over at Stopper. "I don't know why he was whispering."

Wyatt's laughing caught our attention, glancing up to see him and Thomas already up the hillside. They were close to the lorna plants. Stopper climbed the rock side, making it harder on himself as Dylan and I walked nicely up to where the others were waiting.

In the dark corners of the City of Rise, I crouched in front of Thomas while he sat in an alleyway with his back against the org wall building. Wyatt removed the rope from his backpack, tying Thomas's arms against his back. He wiggled Thomas's arms and slightly lifted him.

"Feel fine?" he asked.

"Yeah," Thomas responded while watching Stopper and Dylan play fake sword fighting behind me.

I scraped insect glue off the org wall, placing the orange liquid over his lips. "Tell the Men Of Suits I threatened you, and then we realized we took the wrong person, so we threw you on the streets," I said while he nodded.

"Okay, here we go," Wyatt huffed, prompting Stopper to pick Thomas up from his armpits while Wyatt took his legs.

They swung him back and forth before throwing his body into the busy street. He rolled to a stop as bystanders rushed over to help. Thomas must live his chipped life until we think of a solution.

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