26

Demi didn't die. Which was comforting. She had landed on something that, on the one hand, felt soft and fluffy and, after a fashion, soothing. On the other hand, she felt something gooey, warm, distressingly viscous that, after another fashion, felt more than a little dead. That hand squelched free from that slightly vomit-inducing thing and she found herself tumbling a further distance until she landed upon ground that was both featureless and glowing. A soft glow that allowed her to see where she had landed and she really wished it didn't do that.

She sat in the midst of a slaughter. Another slaughter and she had the distinct feeling that, perhaps, she had angered a god, or something, because this whole Finding-herself-among-dead-things thing had started to become something of a regular occurrence. She didn't like that. At all. She preferred things and people not being dead around her. She also preferred continuing to wear an EVA suit that had its own, personal, force field, but the fall appeared to gave dislodged it and now she stood on a planet populated by carnivorous flora and fauna with only a Gal-Navy sweatshirt and jogging bottoms for protection.

Rabbits. Several of them. They lay upon the ground in pools of their own blood, entrails flopping from bodies ripped open by methods that Demi could imagine, but tried not to. To the side, she saw Lap patting the flopping ear of one of the dead, enormous rabbits like a cat batting at something dangling from a piece of string. To the other side, Briyun picked at her teeth with one of her long claws upon her stubby fingers. They made it look like a nice day out at a fairground, though one with the most grisly attractions imaginable. There were other creatures, too, but none that looked like anything Demi wanted to even begin to think about describing.

Looking further afield, she could see that she had landed in a clearing among a series of plants that looked absolutely furious with her. If they had eyes, she didn't doubt she would see murder in them and, if the plants could walk (and she prayed to every god she could think of, even those gods that no-one even made churches for (which made those gods very angry indeed, she could imagine), that those plants could not, in fact, walk and remained rooted to their spots, far, far away from her), they would certainly enact those murderous thoughts.

"What ..." Demi couldn't finish the question, as something hit her on the head, curled onto her shoulder and made her scream like her life depended on it. On this planet, it probably did.

She scrambled away, flapping her arms, saying 'no' and 'nope' and 'I don't think so' every inch of the way until she managed to wrap her arms around Briyun's leg, hoping that, if she couldn't protect Demi, she could, at least, be the first thing anything hungry would see. Briyun patted Demi's head. That gave Demi no comfort whatsoever until she peered out from behind Briyun's leg to see what had attacked her.

It was a rope.

Three ropes, to be exact. All dangling through the canopy of the fog, the ends bouncing as they came to rest, knots made at regular intervals along their lengths. That was fine. It was good, but Demi wished Friss had given her the opportunity to actually use one of those ropes to reach the surface, rather than sending her flying into who-knew-what awaited her on the surface. A Schtem Bolt fell to the ground, tried to bolt something, failed and grumbled to itself, sealing nothing.

A second or so later, something else dropped through the fog bank and bounced several times before starting to swing and turn. Something attached to string with a piece of Repli-paper attached. Demi, deciding that hiding behind Briyun's legs wasn't helping her to look like the kind of strong, capable, iron-willed female protagonists she enjoyed watching in movies, rose to her feet, stopped the thing with the paper from spinning and read the message.

"Keep string tort. Put cup to ear." Assuming Friss meant to keep the string taut, rather than identifying it as an infringement of someone's rights, Demi removed the Repli-paper to see a plastic cup.

A hastily created hole in the bottom of the cup had a knot that tied the string to it. Demi held the cup, pulled the string tighter and then refused to put the cup against her ear. It seemed like a trick. Before she put that thing anywhere near her ear, she needed to examine it. For creatures that could crawl into her head and make her compliant, or for dried coffee, or, worse, cocoa. It looked clean enough, and no creatures looked to have made their home in there, so she, tentatively, held the cup against her ear.

"... me know if you can hear me, over." It sounded feint, but it was definitely Friss' voice. This was, Demi had to admit, though she really didn't want to, genius. "Hello, hello! It's me. Strictly speaking, this isn't technology, just a little physics, so it should work. Let me know if you can hear me, over."

"I can hear you." After a second, Demi realised she had to speak into the cup, rather than continue holding it against her ear. She waited for Friss to finish talking again before moving the cup to her mouth. "I'm here. I can hear you. Oh, over and under, or something."

"Is that Friss? Say 'hi' from me? Oh, and tell him the weather's great down here? Oh, and ..." A crackling sound came from Lap, who appeared to have stopped playing with the dead rabbit's ear. Briyun scowled, looking as though she concentrated on what Lap said. "Lap says 'hi', too?  Just, you know, general greetings? You get the idea?"

Demi scowled, too, but she scowled because Briyun had pulled a piece of meat from the dead rabbit that she leaned upon and popped it into her mouth, chewing with her mouth open and trying to grin at the same time. Demi liked Briyun, but her table manners, if there had been a table, were atrocious. It only took several seconds for Demi to realise she still held the cup to her mouth, instead of her ear, and hastily moved it.

"... ever you do, just don't do that. Okay? Over." A silence fell over the string-based communications array and Demi wondered whether she should just bluff her way through and pretend she hadn't missed everything Friss had said. "You didn't hear a word I said, did you? You have to move the cup to your ear every time you say 'over'. I thought that was obvious. Never mind. Toddle off and get in that facility. Pronto! ... Over."

"Fine! I missed what you said. So ..." Demi stopped, looked toward Briyun and Lap to see if they had noticed and then moved the cup from her ear to her mouth. "Okay, so, what shouldn't I do? Over. Friss? Over. Hello? Over."

If she thought she had looked stupid before, she really did now as she whipped the cup from ear to mouth and back again several times, but Friss had gone. Or he had continued listening and thought it was oh-so abso-bloody-lutely hilarious to pretend he couldn't hear her. Still, he had said not to do something and that sounded important. If it turned out that important something had something to do with staying alive, it stopped being 'important' information and moved up to 'essential' information. Possibly 'critical' information.

She gave the string a yank, trying to catch Friss' attention, but that didn't appear to work and, as the plastic cup from the other end fell at her feet, closely followed by the string curling on the ground, Demi, in retrospect, considered the string yanking as a possible mistake. Not a huge error in judgement, she saved those for nights out and strong alcohol, but, on a scale, it would probably fall into the top ten of 'Things She Probably Should Not Have Done'.

While she picked up the other cup and tried tossing it back, up through the fog bank, Lap had disappeared and Briyun started to look a little nervous. Demi didn't like that look. In the short time she had known Briyun, Demi hadn't even been sure the stoat-like woman had any other look than blissfully-unaware-cheerfulness. A nervous Briyun made for a terrified Demi. She dropped the cups and string. She doubted she could throw high enough anyway.

"Look, Demo, these things are starting to stir out there? I reckon they've caught our scents, or something?" Briyun hooked a thumb over her shoulder at the massive rabbit she had killed and partially eaten. "There's, like, a bunker type thing behind my tucker, here? Reckon that's the facility? Me and Lapo'll watch your back? No worries?"

At any other time, Briyun's method of talking, ending every sentence as though she were asking a question, was, at best, amusing and, at worst, mildly annoying. Now, with unnamed somethings converging upon this spot, somethings specifically chosen for their enhanced abilities to murder everything, the way Briyun had ended 'No worries' as a question made Demi very, very worried. There were, in fact, a lot of worries and they were all vying for Demi's attention. The 'please don't let me die' worries had taken precedence and had firmly planted their flag in Demi's mind. She let them. Right now, she had better things to do than argue with her own mind, let alone defend it from invading worries that had a point. Not dying was pretty much her priority at the moment.

With little beady eyes watching every little movement coming from the carnivorous plants that ringed the clearing, Briyun ushered Demi around the dead rabbit. She covered her mouth as they passed the exposed intestines, stepped over bits of flesh that she didn't recognise, the kinds of flesh that you could wave nervously at in the street and then wrack your brains for hours afterward trying to remember who, exactly, they were and where, exactly, you had seen them, before realising they had waved at someone behind you and forcing you to cringe in embarrassment every time you thought about it. For the rest of your life. That kind of lack of recognition.

Noises began to emerge from the flesh-eating plants and their fury turned to rage, as though the growls, roars, snorts and occasional sneezes and chuckles had lit a fire beneath them, reminding them that they couldn't chase after this succulent prey, but had to watch those fancy creatures with legs get all the good stuff. Again. Things were coming. Terrible things that may, or may not, resemble creatures other than debatably cute thirty-foot tall killer rabbits.

And there, on the other side of a deceased debatably cute rabbit, Demi saw what they had come all this way for. The thing that Briyun and Lap had taken their lives into their hands for and what Friss had sat comfortably and safely on Zapasnoy for. The facility. Despite the urgency of the current situation, Demi simply had to take the time to take a second look, just to confirm that her eyes were not, in fact, playing tricks with her. They did that, sometimes, and not always due to alcohol poisoning. The facility wasn't what she had expected.

It was a shipping container. A rusty shipping container with a sign on the doors saying 'Keep Out! Nothing to see here!'. Demi had to agree.