Day 12

Time: 5:48 AM

Location: ...

Primary Goal(s): Find the Others [6/15], Find the Truth of The World

Secondary Objective(s): Find Nightlight City, Find W's Notes

Darius yawned, startled awake from a sleep that had only lasted... Darius checked his watched. Yep, it was just was it felt like: twenty minutes. He yawned, not feeling rested in the slightest. But after the third attempt at sleep, maybe that was the universe telling him to give up.

So Darius did, leaning against the cold, bumpy wall with a sigh. The ship was completely silent and still, other than he and Greg, the only two awake, who acknowledged each other with a wave. Everyone else was sleeping, mostly near the back of the ship, as no one wanted to go anywhere near the corpse that hung beneath the control panel. None of them had the stomach to move it, so their they stayed, far, far away.

But beyond that was earth, and even more beyond that were the stars, still glittering beautifully, but Darius could only focus on the planet. It was so familiar, with it's whites, greens, and blues, but also, completely foreign. Darius already knew that this wasn't the planet he grew up on and knew, but it was still jarring to see something he should know out of the corner of his eye, and then look at it fully and not recognize any of it.

In the back of his mind, Darius worried about where they were headed. Luca, the most qualified person on this ship, had no idea, because apparently, this was only a row boat, or an escape pod, and it was impossible to drive. As soon as it left the port, it would go to one of the other Oraple colonies, set by a random generator. Yet another way Luya, and by extension this company, was keeping them trapped. There was no way to tell if it was going nearer or farther from Nightlight City, but by his luck, Darius would hazard to guess 'further'.

Shaking his head in despair, Darius raised his radio and began tapping away at it, for lack of anything better to do. He could put on the radio, but as he didn't have any earphones or headphones, he didn't bother, lest he accidentally wake up everyone else who was have better luck than he was.

To his surprise, he had a message waiting for him. That was a bit of a surprise, he hadn't even realized that someone had called him. Maybe that meant he was out more than he had thought.

Without thinking, he clicked it.

"Hey, kid! What's going on up there, we-!"

Darius jumped, jerking his head back to the hard metal behind him with a cry of pain. As fast as he could, he threw his hand over his radio, ineffectively muffling the sound, before he finally found the button to turn it off.

He let out a sigh of relief, and then winced as he took stock of the other people on the ship, some either lying down on the ground, or leaning against the walls, like he was. Most of them stayed unmoving, with only Greg looking up, and Darius gave him an apologetic look.

None of the other ones twitched, thankfully, except Ai, who shuddered, and then stretched out, looking at Darius with bleary eyes.

"Darius.... What...?"

"It was nothing," Darius told her quickly. "Just a call. Go back to sleep."

Ai blinked tiredly, and then did as he said, curling back into her little ball without any more questions. But Darius had to wonder if she was really asleep, as she wasn't breathing as deeply as before. He couldn't help but feel a little guilty about that.

Darius paused for a second, waiting in panicked vain to see if anyone else would wake up, but to his relief, they didn't. Darius breathed a sigh of relief, and then got back to his Red Box, this time ignoring the call for later. He started tapping around at some other things, digging deeper into the files that usually, he was too busy to look at.

He was a bit surprised at what he found. He would have thought that this watch, being brand new, would be empty. It was not. A large group of text files waited for him in what was basically plain sight, just waiting for him.

Darius was just about to click on them when a small shuffling sound caught his attention. He looked up, and was surprised to find Greg awkwardly coming closer, hugging Frog to his chest, as usually. Frog was still, and looked almost like a doll, but in a way that made it's entire look even more creepy. Darius shuddered.

He shuddered even more when Greg set the thing beside him, and then looked at Darius was a worried expression as he himself settled down. He had was on Frog, petting it comfortably, and the creature... purred. Darius cringed when the creature's terrible mouth unhinged, opening up it's belly, neck and jaw as it panted, a tongue the size of Darius' forearm lolling out.

"Darius," Greg whispered, his eyes not leaving Frog's prone form. "I think Frog is hurt."

Darius thankfully tore his eyes from the abomination and looked at Greg. "What? How so?"

"He's walking weird," Greg replied. He pointed to one of the creatures legs. "I think his foot his hurt."

Mentally preparing himself, Darius looked down at where Greg was motioning. When he looked at only part of the creature, the not cursed part, Darius could happily imagine that this was a regular human he was looking at, and not a creature from his nightmares. A strange, naked human, sure, but a regular human all the same.

"Oh... I see," Darius hummed, because Greg was right: it did look like Frog had did something to it's leg. Briefly. Darius remembered seeing something similar on the Moon Quarter, before he shook out those thoughts. "Yeah, your right. It seems it-his leg might be twisted."

That did not seem to inspire confidence in Greg, who, if anything, seemed even more anxious. "Is he going to be okay?"

"Well, it's probably not going to get infected, and he has you to take care of and feed his, so yeah, probably," Darius replied, staring intently at the leg as to not look at the rest of the creature. He completely missed Greg's growing smile and blush at the compliment (that was more of an observation than a complement, but whatever). "Still, we should probably dress up that wound."

Reaching past Greg towards the front of the front, Darius took a deep breath, and, carefully not looking down at the crumpled form beneath him, Darius grasped the handle of a drawer marked with the symbol of a red cross and pulled, finding, just as he expected: medical supplies.

He drew back quickly, getting away from that place as fast as he could, and then took a deep breath, steadying himself. When his hands weren't shaking anymore, or at least not as much, he opened the kit, finding bandages, medication, and other little bits and bobs Darius wasn't sure what to do with. He gazed at all of them, overwhelmed for a second, before he refocused, grabbing at a long spool of soft bandages and some medical tape. Or what was probably medical tape.

Setting the kit aside, Darius reached for Frog's leg, carefully unravelling the spool, and then wrapping it back up around the leg, gradually hiding the awful black and blue and the slight twist of the ankle from view. Frog whimpered lowly as Greg watched with baited breath.

Finally, Greg coughed, looking away. In a low voice, he asked. "Um... Darius...?"

"Yeah?"

"What... What do you think happened to Miko and Robyn?"

Darius paused. He had to remind himself of his task before he could start again. Darius felt he knew the answer to that but... he couldn't find himself voicing it.

"I... they could have gotten out," Darius eventually answered, awkwardly. Greg looked at him.

"Really?"

Darius shrugged. "It's possible," he said. It was mostly a lie. He didn't really think that. "I don't know. We didn't see them... get eaten. Anything's possible."

Greg hugged himself. "That's good. I'm glad."

Darius gulped. "Yeah."

Suddenly, just as Darius bit off a bit of tape and applied it to the end of the bandage (he hadn't found scissors, so he regrettably had to use the whole thing), a sudden siren went off, and Greg, Darius and Frog jumped.

Everyone else on the ship, other than Luya, were violently ripped from sleep, jarring forced to consciousness with panicked expressions on their faces. It took a couple seconds for all of them to figure out and understand the words in the loud, blaring sounds echoing around the small shuttle.

"WARNING: LANDING IMMINENT. ATMOSTPHERE BREACH IN TWELVE SECONDS. ACTIONS TO INCEASE SECURITY ARE ADVISED. WARNING: LANDING IMMINENT. ATMOSTPHERE BREACH IN NINE SECONDS. ACTIONS TO INCEASE SECURITY ARE ADVISED. WARNING-."

It was Luca who understood these words long before the rest of them did, and he hurled himself towards the side of the ship, latching onto a small handle on the section of the wall.

"Hang on!" he shouted to the others in warning, his voice cracking in an effort to be heard over the horrible noise the ship was making. "Hang on to something!"

Darius blinked, literally feeling the gears in his mind squeak together in an effort to understand what Luca was saying. At the last possible moment, it finally clicked as Darius reached beside himself, his fingers closing around the cold metal just in time.

Suddenly, the dark, starry night outside the window was replaced by white hot blazing light that made Darius cry out in pain and attempt to close his eyes, but he found that he couldn't. For a second, he panicked, wondering if his eyes had some how been broken, before he realized that it didn't matter is his eyes were open or closed: the light was too bright anyway.

It felt like hours, but in actuality was most likely a couple seconds, where the entire world was on fire. Everything was a horrible, hot white, and Darius almost thought he could hear the terrifying sound of tearing metal all around him. When he looked to the side, he couldn't see any of his friends, not even Frog or Greg, who he was certain had just been beside him. Could Darius just not see them? Or were they...

Was something burning?

Then, just as suddenly as it appeared, the white light was gone, leaving Darius with a headache and a nauseous feeling. He blinked, trying desperately to get the spots out of his vision. It felt like a useless endeavour.

When Darius had finally almost recovered from that, he glanced at the window, trying to see where they were going, but to his surprise and horror, the white had been replaced with... white?

Then the space ship suddenly stopped, and Darius was violently thrown forward, his head catching on something hard before everything went dark.

"Hey... Brooklyn... How's it... going?"

"...Um... good... why are you talking like that? Darius, is something wrong?"

At his own name, Darius' head snapped up, and he found himself, once again, in his old bedroom, though at a much different spot that an was before. This time, he was standing in a corner, fully inside the room. This dream had happened many times before, Darius now remembered, but this time... this time he didn't feel the comfort and homesickness like the last few times. This time, he felt like an intruder.

He easily spotted the fake Darius, sitting at his familiar computer as if he owned it. Darius could see the tension in his own, or whoever that was, shoulders, and his shuddered, suddenly feeling creeped out, and that, whatever happened, he should definitely not be found out.

"I'm... well..." the other Darius struggled for a minute, trying to find the right words. "Brooklyn, do you promise you won't laugh at me? That you'll believe me?"

Brooklyn (Brooklyn?) answered quickly and immediately. "Of course I will. Darius, you're scaring me. What's going on?"

"I..." Again, the fake Darius hesitated, but finally, he seemed to gather some sort of courage, and said, quickly: "I think I'm being haunted. By... myself? Or someone who looks like me?"

"..." For a while, the Brooklyn that the fake Darius was talking to was silent. Darius couldn't imagine she was judging him (or the him that Brooklyn thought was Darius), but still, his stomach dropped.

Apparently, fake Darius grew nervous with the silence, too, because he was quick to say: "Kenji's seen it, too, you know! He can confirm it, he's just... not here right now. I..."

Suddenly, the fake Darius cut himself off with a sigh, sinking down to lay his head in his arms in despair. He said, in a hopeless voice: "You don't believe me, do you?"

Again, it took Brooklyn a couple minutes to respond, though this time, as Darius, the real one, could see her face, he say that it was less that she was judging him, and more like she was deep in thought, trying to get her words in order.

"No, Darius, no, it's not like that," Brooklyn finally reassured him. "Look, as soon as I can, I'll come over to your house, and we can try to solve this together. We've delt with worse, right?"

"Debatable," the fake Darius mumbled. He didn't get up from where his head was pressed into his hands. "I feel like I'm going crazy. It appears randomly, glares at me, and then disappears! What does it want? What is it here for? Why does it look like ME?! I don't understand this at all..."

Brooklyn smiled softly at him. "Well, you won't have to wonder for long. As long as there are questions, there are answers. And I'll admit, I've done a few ghost hunting sessions before."

"Successful ones?" Fake Darius asked, and even though his head was still down and his back was towards the real Darius, Darius could hear the amusement in his own voice.

"Well..."

Both Brooklyn and the fake Darius laughed.

"There we go, I made you laugh!" Brooklyn exclaimed joyfully. "Nice! But seriously, Darius, you don't have to worry. I believe you, and I'll help all I can to-."

As she talked, Brooklyn made a mistake of looking up from the fake Darius to the real one. Suddenly, she froze, cutting herself off as her jovial and determined expression turned to one of horror. She gasped.

"Darius," she said in a low, panicked, voice. "Darius, behind you-!"

As soon as she said it, fake Darius straightened up quickly, whirling around. The real Darius saw a camera in his hand.

Darius was ripped from sleep by someone frantically shaking his shoulder. He groaned, not yet ready to wake up, despite the urgency and panicked motions of whoever was trying to force him awake.

He heard whoever was above him grumbled something in an annoyed voice. Well, at least they were both miserable. Darius tried to roll over, and go back to sleep. In the back of his mind, he realized that this was the best sleep he had had since getting onto the boat, and he was reluctant to change that.

Then, something unpleasant was forced under his nose, and Darius got up in a hurry.

"Oh, good," Ai said, sounding relieved. "We were worried."

Darius blinked, glaring up at her in anger before finally shaking his head, sitting up. All his joints creaked and protested in pain that usually would not be more than annoying aches if not for the multitude of bruises along his body that only made the pain more palpable and increased. Darius felt like one giant angry nerve.

"W-What happened?" Darius groaned, feeling lighted headed and sick. He shuddered, hugging his arms around himself. There was a terrible chill to the air, one that made Darius feel like invisible knives were all around him, stabbing at his covered arms. He could clearly see his breath in between him and Ai. "Where are we?"

Ai blinked, and then shook her head. "Honestly, we're... not completely sure. The crash knocked some wires or some thing, and now the navigational equipment is all broken and can't tell us anything. We were hoping you could help with that."

Darius blinked. It was difficult opening and closing his eyes.

Ai leaned closer. "Darius?"

He jumped, suddenly shocked to awareness after... wait, what just happened? Darius shook himself. "I... Am I the last one up?"

Ai drew away, frowning, but lucky, she was still kind enough the answer him. "No... Greg and Molly are still asleep, Luca's trying to get them up."

Darius hummed blearily. "Right. And where-oh, right, you didn't know."

Ai drew back, giving him a look Darius couldn't decipher before saying: "We were hoping you could help with that."

"I..." Suddenly, Darius remembered what she'd said about the navigational equipment. He looked at the machines on the console and frowned. "How am I supposed to help? I don't know anything about fixing machines-."

"You're watch, Darius," Ai blurted out, a bit impatiently, and Darius jumped. But, no, she had a good point. Darius quickly brought up his watch, tapping at it.

Thankfully, the screen hummed to life almost immediately and Darius quickly set to work finding the map, opening it up to find the marker that showed where he was, the line that led to Nightlight City and then... nothing.

Darius frowned, taking his finger and trying to move the screen along the map for a little bit, but this yielded no results. Apparently, they were in the middle of nowhere, with no landmarks, no labelling, nothing. And every time Darius would move the screen in one direction, trying to find something, he'd always try and come back, taking the exact same path he'd gone before, and every time, the marker showing him and his friends would seemingly have disappeared. Darius would have to leave the map and then load it up again to find them again.

After a couple tries of this, Darius suddenly gave up, throwing his hand to the side. "It's no use!" he cried, and then gave Ai a sheepish look. "Sorry... I can tell you that Nightlight is that way, but I can't tell you where we are, or anything that's around us. Maybe it's broken..."

Ai looked worried at his proclamation, but also thoughtful. She reached out a hand. "May I see?"

Darius brought up the map and held his wrist out to her without complaint. Ai took his wrist gently, and then studied the map with an intense expression. Darius saw her take her finger and move the map along the screen, just as he had done.

Darius didn't have much hope. He turned away from her, instead choosing to look at Molly and Greg, peacefully sleeping on the floor while Luca desperately shaking their shoulders and telling them to wake up. It would have almost looked comical, except that soon Luca had escalated to pouring water on them, using the same smelling salts that were used on him, and eventually holding them up in the air and dropping them. None of them worked. Slowly, Darius felt the gravity of the situation.

"They... they aren't waking up, huh?" he asked Ai quietly, a slight tremor in his voice. Ai looked up at him for a moment, her expression unreadable, before slowly lowering his arm.

"Here, come with me," she told him. "There's something you should definitely see."

Without waiting for question, or to even check if Darius was following, Ai stood up, moving towards the back of the ship. After a second, Darius did the same.

"Here," Ai said, pointing to the wall. "See these handles? Use them like a ladder to get up there."

Ai's hand followed the ladder up, to the ceiling of the ship and Darius was unnerved and surprised to find that the little window above them , showing ugly and depressing grey clouds and giving them some small light like a spotlight, was actually the door to the boat.

Darius felt dizzy as the ship suddenly reoriented itself in his mind. If the door was up there, then the glass to the front window and the console must be...

Darius looked down, easy finding the dark glass, now that he was looking for it, and the console beside him, jutting out of the floor like a barricade. Had that... had that been there the whole time?! Maybe Darius really was out of it because he had been certain that just a little bit before this...

"Um, Darius?" Ai asked him, and once again, Darius snapped to attention, feeling a little embarrassed it had happened again. However, Ai only looked at him with concern, not irritation. "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine," Darius told her quickly, trying his best to sound that way, but he had a feeling he voice sounded squeaky a weird. It definitely sounded squeaky and weird when Ai concerned look only increased.

Before she could say anything else on the matter, Darius gripped a rung of the ladder, using it to pull himself up to the next one. The metal was hard and cold under his hands, and Darius didn't thing he exactly imagined it pulling at his skin as he went up. Slowly, in the span of what felt like years (though was hopefully only seconds) Darius reached the top and pushed open the door, sticking his head out.

...Well.

No wonder it felt so cold.

Outside the ship was, well, nothing. It was the only way to describe. On the outside of the ship was nothing but white rolling hills in every direction with nothing, not even a stick or a dead tree to mark anything. The vast whiteness outside was absolute in it's reaches, making Darius feel more isolated and m ore alone than if he had been in the middle of the ocean. The white was swallowing them up, the white was drowning them, the white was everywhere and everything.

Suddenly, Darius spotted something on the horizon, and he suddenly froze, squinting at it to make out what it was. It was like a curtain, or a glittery white wall, or...

Apparently, the entire time, it had been getting closer, and Darius suddenly discovered when it hit him. At that point, he actually found out what it was: wind. And with that wind, thousand upon thousands of tiny shards tearing his skin to threads, forcing itself into his eyes and into him. Darius thought he felt ice force itself into his brain.

He dropped to the floor in a hurry, landing with a painful bang as the door swung shut behind him. Darius gasped for breath as Luca and Ai crowded around him.

"There's nothing," Darius gasped at them, felling it deathly important for them to know what he saw. "There's nothing, just nothing."

"Darius," Ai said, her voice thick with worry. "Darius..."

"There is nothing," Luca informed him. "The ship is designed to go to other Oraple colonies around. Someone has to be close by. We should go find them."

"No!" Darius and Ai both cried at the same time. Darius was ignored as Ai continued.

"It's death out there," Ai explained calmly. "We'd freeze in two minutes with our clothes. None of us are dressed to survive that. And going out to look when we don't know where we are or how to find anything? We'd die."

Luca looked confused. "What do we do instead, then?"

"We must have gotten someone's attention on the way in," Ai pointed out. "We wait for them. And we DON'T fall asleep. If we fall asleep we'll never wake up."

"Are we sure that isn't a rumour?" Darius asked from his place on the floor. Sleeping sounded nice right about now.

"We don't sleep," Ai said firmly. "We wait. And we HAVE to get the other two up, right now!"

Somehow, it didn't take very long. Sooner after Ai had made that ultimatum, they had set about trying to force Greg and Molly awake. It took some work, but soon after, they had gotten her awake with a mix of smelling salts, snow, and yelling. Still, it was terrifying that it took all that just to wake them up. What if three people weren't awake to wake the rest of them up? What if they fell asleep one night, and NONE of them could get up the next day?

It was a terrifying thought, and one that made Darius resolve not to fall asleep so easily again.

Luckily, he didn't have to dwell on it long. Almost immediately after they had all gotten up, exchanged information, and sat together, huddled for warmth in a circle, there had been banging at the hatch.

All five of them jumped, and together, five faces looked up towards the ceiling. Most of their light had disappeared, taken up by the shape of a human head and shoulders. Darius squinted, but there was no way to make out any of the persons features, covered as they were with cloth and protective gear. Darius couldn't even see their eyes, as they had covered them up with goggles.

As the five stared, the person waved slowly, and then knocked on the door with three loud and sharp bangs.

"Is... that help?" Ai asked hesitantly. Luca frowned, and slowly stood up, moving towards the ladder as he made his way up. When he reached the door, the strange newcomer moved aside so he could open the hatch.

As soon as he did, the person started shouting at him, in order to be heard over the wind. "I recognize this ship from a Moon Quarter!" he yelled into Luca's face, who was physically taken aback. "Which one?!"

Luca said something Darius didn't quite catch.

"WHAT?! Speak up, kid!"

"F-Fourth!"

The person paused, and Darius heard them say something that he, again, didn't hear. This time though, he didn't think he was supposed to.

"Are there any others round here?!" the newcomer asked, loud again. "Any others who escape in these pods."

It took Luca a second to respond. Darius could see his stricken face. "I... Maybe!"

The person seemed displeased with this. "I need a yes or a no, kid! I'm not wasting supplied on a maybe!"

Again, Luca hesitated. But finally, he steeled himself and shouted: "No! I didn't see any other escape pods before the Fourth Moon Quarter was... was destroyed!"

The person thought that over, peering closely at Luca, and then the rest of them. Darius tried meeting their eyes, but in the goggles, it was impossible.

Their gaze seemed to rest beside Greg, on the console.

"This ship here, does it still work?"

For this, everyone looked to Luca, who flushed as he was put on the spot. He stammered for a minute, giving a couple different and conflicting answers, before he finally settled on: "It's a bit banged up, but with some tuning I think it could! It won't fly, though."

The person gazed at him. "Can you do it?"

"Fly?"

The person made a certain motion with their head that let Darius know they were rolling their eyes. "Fix this," they corrected, banging on the ship.

"Oh, that," Luca hesitated. "S-Some parts. I can't make it work like it used to, but I can like... maybe get the radio working."

The person thought that over. After a minute, they finally nodded.

"I won't lie to you," the person shouted, and this time, they seemed to be addressing everyone in the ship, not just Luca. "Our Rime was cut off from the main company weeks again. We have little warmth, little feed, and little shelter. And with the five of you, it'll be even less. Still, we'll take you in and give you what you need for two things: if you agree to work, and if you let us disassemble this thing for parts. Okay?"

It only took Luca a second of a glance down to find the consensus. Turning back to the person, he nodded quickly and firmly.

"Good," the person said. They nodded to the ground. "Sit down and hold on to something. We're not too far away, but we'll want to get there fast."

With that, the person turned away, and Darius heard it as their boots hit the snow outside. Luca shut the door with a clang and jumped down to the floor. Just like the person said, he, and everyone else, started clinging on.

It wasn't long before they felt the shift under their butts, the vertigo that suddenly told them that the thing they were on was moving. Darius was startled at first, but in hindsight, it was obviously this was how it was going to go when the person told them to 'hang on'.

As they moved, Darius relaxed, and he looked up at the sky through the little, cracked window on the door. There wasn't much to look at, only clouds after clouds after closers. A bit disappointing, especially after the last few days, and Darius found himself hurting.

It was just like before he went to the Moon Quarter. Just clouds after clouds after clouds, though back then, Darius thought that was just the weather.

Now, he feared he lost the sky forever.

Footnotes:

Level up. You've gained a new mysterious ally. Good or bad, her help is vital for getting through this nuclear winterland. Good luck.

You have upgraded the skill Shipman to Shipman 1.