Out in the Black Ch. 14

This is a book-length work, so not every chapter will involve sex. If you're just looking for a quick wank, this may not be your story.

Thanks for reading!

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After an uncomfortable night spent on the floor of yet another storeroom, we were on our third deck in two days. Having planned to keep watch rather than sleep anyway, I found plenty of time to work on my little project. As I'd hoped, my friends showed up once again while Cap was prepping for his interviews; I couldn't help but notice he had lots more volunteers that day.

The kids stayed put when I turned towards them and squatted down. Must admit I was kind of surprised they actually came over when I beckoned. The expressions on their faces looked friendly enough, but I was familiar with the way the children down here wore that mask as armor. Hell, I'd done it often enough myself. These guys tried, but since I was looking for it, I could see the suspicion written in every line of their bodies. I was a stranger running around with folks who obviously had credits to spare, so I might be an easy mark. Then again, I was a big motherfucker, which rightly made them rather nervous.

"You guys like tech, do you?" I asked. The short one smirked and said something to his friend in a language that tickled my memory. My brain kicked into gear and hauled my knowledge of the slang used by those known as "strays" out of cold storage. Things had changed in the cycles since I was one of them, but I could still understand that the kid had called me a "stupid giant with muscles for brains."

"That shit what you thinking, yeah?" I responded in the same language, automatically falling into the sing-song speech patterns. Biting back a grin at their obvious surprise, I continued: "What you say, you and you then? Your brains find the tech tasty or no?"

"Who you thinking you are then?" the taller boy demanded.

"An old stray got lucky, yeah? Looking to maybe share the fortune, unless you and you too proud and then begone." The boys turned their backs and stood shoulder to shoulder, walling me out of their short, whispered discussion. I had already unpacked what I made for them when they turned back to ask what I had to offer. It only took a few minutes to explain how to use the controls for the camera drones I spent the night reprogramming. The deal was they could go anywhere and record anything they wanted, but I got a copy of their footage, and what I wanted from them was the real Bottoms. The one hidden from outsiders.

"Do it shiny, you and you, yeah? And the pretties come back to me in two days, I give you better tasty. My brain thinking you fucking with me, understand you, the tech be no more." I mimed an explosion over one of the drones. The strays squinted at me, obviously trying to figure out if I was for real.

"You thinking it too much, then, you and you?" Keeping my face blank, I shrugged and moved to take the cameras back. Clutching the tech close, the boys shook their heads and stumbled over themselves to agree to my terms, though I'm sure they thought they were plenty clever enough to outsmart an old starcatcher like me. Barely waiting for my nod, they turned away and once again disappeared into the maze of corridors and compartments that made up the lower decks.

I stood and looked over to find the captain watching me curiously. Realizing I might have badly overstepped, I tried to quickly explain why I had just handed thousands of credits of tech to a couple of strange kids without getting my boss's okay first. Cap held up a hand and I lurched to a halt, mid-word.

"That is fucking brilliant, Rusty. I knew I brought you along for a reason." He grinned and gave me a wink before turning back to those he had decided to interview, getting everyone in place so we could begin recording. I breathed a sigh of relief and set to adjusting my camera patterns to compensate for the loss of two of my drones. Fuck, maybe I was a just a starcatcher, being so concerned about my captain telling me off. Talking to those strays made me feel worlds away from the kid who grew up here.

That day's interviews included a few parents whose children were suffering from the illness that had brought us there. Listening to them talk about the symptoms their kids were dealing with was hard. Hearing them tell how their petitions for help had been ignored pissed me off. Those few hours felt like they stretched out longer than a tenday and the whole team was exhausted and quiet as we made our way to the place we were planning to stay the night.

Over a dinner of nutrient bars, the captain filled them in on what I'd done with the kids. The PA, Callaway, already knew since she'd asked about the partition she found in the main drive when she was uploading the interviews to the ship. I didn't want to censor the boys, but I also wasn't all about their stuff being dumped to the Marzi without having a chance to review it first.

Whether they were taking my warnings seriously or just wanted to make the most of someone actually giving a shit for once, the two proved as capable as I'd trusted they would. Here was the Bottoms as I'd known it: makeshift shelters full of children the station pretended didn't exist. A number of kids were missing hands or had crooked limbs, either from breaks that had healed poorly or from malnutrition. Or, more likely, both.

Still, the affection in the little group was clear and they joked with each other as they shared out what they had managed to scrounge for food that day. My team couldn't understand the words, but some things are bigger than language. There were tears and laughter as they watched the kids clown around for the cameras. The blond stray's footage ended right after the meal, but there was one more bit at the end of the other kid's recording.

He held the camera in his hands, close to his face, so only his nose and mouth were showing. "See them, giant, yeah?" he hissed, twisting the camera's view in a nauseating pan across sleeping bodies before returning it to his face. This time it got mostly forehead. His eyes, visible at the very bottom, stared intently into the lens. "That them my family, understand you. Don't think you might be fucking with them, with us, and it be all okay because you mayhap live here once upon a time. Old stray or no, you be a stranger. You hurt them and you find me killing you, yeah?" The room was hushed after the display went to black.

"I wish I knew what he was saying there," the sound engineer who had come down with us piped up. "It sounded serious. Did any of you understand that?" She looked around, scanning faces that were clearly as confused as she was. I ducked down and fiddled with the drive. "How did you know to give them the cameras in the first place, Rusty? That they wouldn't just sell them right off?" she asked. I knew the tips of my ears were burning and I just hoped it wasn't visible in the uneven lighting.

"Let's all just try to get some sleep, okay?" The captain smoothly inserted himself between me and my curious crewmate. "Hopefully the creative team on the ship can use some of what our little friends provided along with the interviews from today and tomorrow." There was a chorus of "okay" and "goodnight, Cap" and the sounds of bodies trying in vain to get comfortable on the hard floor.

I moved toward the door, watching as the indicator on my drive changed from "sending" to "received." The raw footage was out of my hands now.

Quiet footsteps approached and I knew who it was without looking up. "Thanks," I mumbled. I was usually damn good at hiding what was going on inside my head but being back on the Ring had me all fucked up. I was pissed Cap knew that even as it made something inside go all smooshy.

"You understood him." It wasn't a question, but I nodded anyway. "He was talking to you, specifically." Again, not a question. He was a smart man, that captain of mine. "Will you tell me what he said?"

"Not now." I tilted my head toward the others, as if not wanting them to overhear was my concern. Really, I wasn't ready to talk about it at all.

"When you're ready." His hand gripped my shoulder and then he was gone, off to find his own bedroll. Again, I sat in the doorway. Again, I didn't sleep. Knowing how I reacted to my episodes, and considering how I was during - from the little I had let the captain tell me - I'd decided to prevent the dreams the most efficient way possible. Snagging a few stims from the med bay on my way off the ship was a moment's work; if I didn't sleep, I didn't dream.

Using my body as cover against the eyes of the rest of the team, I pressed the hypo against my thigh. I was sure I'd kept my face straight, but when I oh-so-casually glanced across the crew, I caught the captain watching me. Pretending I hadn't noticed, I turned my face toward the corridor and leaned my head back against the doorframe, letting my mind dig at the splinter the boy's vid had shoved in there.

The word the kid used - mężczykän - had hit me like a punch to the gut. It held a very specific meaning among those of us from the Bottoms. The term translated as "stranger," but more specifically it meant a person who no longer belonged. Depending on the tone of voice, it could be an insult - which it clearly was in this instance - or a term of admiration. It wasn't the intent that got to me, though; it was the word itself.

That boy had looked at me and had not seen the broken, bloody body of the child who had been forcibly ejected from the only home he'd ever known. No, he had observed a skilled, possibly dangerous adult whose time in this hellhole was long behind him. The kid had detected in me something I had yet to realize about myself: I no longer belonged here. The things that had happened to me, the torments I'd endured, they were in the past. They'd left their scars but, other than in my dreams, even the pain was only a vague memory.

For the first time in cycles, I intentionally walked myself through what I remembered from my life as a Bottoms stray. I could still smell my skin charring as the man burned me over and over with his cigarette, but the pain and the face of the one who had done it were lost to time. That the slash across my back had hurt like a bitch I was sure, but what I recalled most clearly about that encounter was the satisfaction I'd felt after driving the knife into the sick bastard's eye, knowing he would hurt no one else.

For so long, I had resisted examining my past, fearing to trigger another of the episodes. But now that I was shining a light into the dark corners, I realized they were empty. A few insubstantial bits remained here and there, sure, but most of that part of my life was covered in dust.

With an almost audible noise, something broke. I took a breath and felt my chest expand, until then not understanding that I'd been hunched in on myself, holding my shoulders tight, my back stiff, since the moment we'd stepped off the ship. Even as I regretted the stim that kept me awake after this release, I recognized that the weird clarity from stimming on too little sleep was what got me to this point in the first place. Soon, though, I would rest. And I was optimistic I could face that without the fear that had plagued me my whole adult life.

I wanted to shout and dance and fuck, but instead forced myself to keep still. There would be time for all that when my team wasn't sleeping right next to me. Though maybe - I glanced over and saw that the captain was passed out like the rest. Shit. I vowed the next time we found ourselves alone, I was going to fuck him until he couldn't see straight. Right then, however, I had a very long night ahead of me.

Morning brought gritty eyes and grumpiness. I jabbed myself with another stim to avoid biting the heads off my irritatingly cheerful crewmates. "I know what you're doing," Cap said, coming to stand next to me. Today's suit was a slightly darker gray with pale yellow. "It's dangerous, Rusty."

"I know. Just have to get through today and I'm done."

"Promise?" I nodded and he watched my face for a minute before walking away, tossing one more glance at me over his shoulder. I needed to tell him about, well, everything, but there wasn't time.

"Soon," I promised both of us under my breath as I shuffled over to ready my equipment. We were set to move out and seek new interview subjects when the blonde kid I'd recruited came running up to tell me there was something we really needed to see up on Deck 184. He was bouncing on his toes and talking so fast I could barely understand him. Once I assured him we would check it out, he darted away.

"Hey!" I called after him. He looked back impatiently. "What you called by?" I asked, switching back to the language he preferred. The boy stared at me without moving for a long moment.

"Scrap," he finally shouted and disappeared before I could say anything else.

"Change of plans," I announced as I walked into the room where the others were shouldering their packs. "We need to go back to 184, up by where we started."

"That's a horrible idea!" the art director protested. I ignored him, keeping my eyes on the captain. He looked at me thoughtfully for a few seconds before nodding.

"I trust Rusty knows what he's doing," Cap said. "If he's taking us back there, I'm sure it's for a good reason." There was no open disagreement, but I could hear the grumbles at my back as I led the team, using the most direct route I could think of. I didn't want to risk missing whatever it was Scrap thought we should see, and it wasn't like word of us hadn't spread throughout the whole place by then anyway.

When we emerged into the corridor that had provided the setting for our initial broadcast, my heart sank. It was empty and there was no sign anything remarkable had ever occurred where we were standing. We had been too slow. Or the kid was fucking with me. Either way, my credibility with the team was shot.

I started to apologize but the captain held up his hand and began walking down an adjoining hall. Scanning the walls and ceiling warily, I followed the crew. My attention was so focused on keeping an eye out for potential danger, I was the last of our group to hear what had drawn the captain this way in the first place. There was a low roar coming from somewhere up ahead, like a large number of people all talking at once. As it turned out, that's exactly what it was.

"Holy shit," someone muttered.

"Start recording. Get as much as you can," Cap said urgently, eyes on the scene unfolding in front of us. We had stumbled into a large open space from one of the many corridors that dotted the walls. A medium-sized temporary structure was being erected in the far half of the area; the rest was filling up with people. As individuals or small parties trickled in, they joined one of the larger clusters that had already formed. Occasionally, a sizable group entered and claimed its own space to begin attracting others.

I sent my first drone up to the ceiling and set it to rotate slowly, getting an aerial view of the entire scene. The second cruised the perimeter about a meter above the heads of the crowd. My remaining two were set to a 3/4 profile view of the captain from each side so he could easily talk to people standing to his right or left without worrying about camera angles. It was a struggle to advance at first, but then news of who we were began to spread and people turned to watch us, making a lane in the process.

"Excuse me," Cap said to a stocky man with tattoos crawling up and down both arms. "Can you tell us what's happening here?" The man crossed his arms and smiled, crinkling the scar that cut across one cheek and revealing a number of missing teeth.

"I'd love to clue you in, yeah," he responded in a gravelly voice, his Common muddled and nearly indecipherable, "but I don't know me own self and those dirt eaters ain't talking." He sniffed and jerked his head contemptuously at the uniformed people working around the structure.

"Thank you. We'll see what we can find out." The captain nodded and we started to move on.

"Luck to you, starcatcher. Good or bad, you brought this down on us," the man called. I saw Cap stiffen, but he didn't stop walking or turn back.

As we approached the front of the crowd, a barricade came into view. Armed Ring Enforcers were evenly spaced along the line and the residents of the Bottoms kept their distance. Even I hesitated for a half second when the captain moved to cross the no man's land in between. As he neared the closest Enforcer, a tall woman in a lab coat squeezed through the barricade and walked briskly up to Cap.

"Matthison Carolinas," she said, her voice matching her general no-nonsense demeanor. "Good to finally meet you." The woman held out a hand and the captain shook it politely.

"I don't believe I've had the pleasure - "

"Paris," she supplied. "Doctor Natalia Paris of the Ring's genetic research labs and head of the Lower Deck Research Initiative."

"I'm sorry, Dr. Paris," Cap said, smoothly slipping into his interview persona, "I don't think I've heard of that organization before."

"Ah, yes. We are an inter-disciplinary task force whose mission is to preserve and protect the lives and well-being of those who reside on the Ring's lower decks, colloquially called the 'Bottoms.'" Her lips twisted slightly on the last word. I figured she didn't even realize it had happened.

"I see. And what work is the Lower Deck Research Initiative engaging in here on Deck 184?"

"What you see before you is the LowDRI mobile lab. It acts as part hospital, part research facility that can be taken to where it is most needed."

"And that is Deck 184?"

"Currently, yes." Paris seemed slightly off balance, as if this was not the type of questioning she had been expecting.

Having seen how Cap was with his prior celeb employers and how gentle he had been with the people of the Bottoms, I could understand why she might have expected some sort of star treatment. But only because I was fully aware of how delusional those of the mid and upper decks on every station were when it came to how they interacted with those they considered lower than themselves. Anyone with an ounce of self-awareness would not have been expecting a warm welcome from the man who sent a big "fuck you" to the social hierarchy just tendays before.

"Indeed," the captain said dryly. "I presume your plan is to treat the children."

"It is. The facility should be fully operational within the next two hours, at which time we will begin patient intake."

"And you are confident you can help these people?"

"I am." I gritted my teeth at her smug tone. "We have a cross section of the best and brightest the Ring has to offer, and we are completely devoted to this project."

"Thank you for your time, Dr. Paris. Please do keep us informed of any developments." They shook hands again and the doctor stepped toward her soldiers. "One more question, Doctor," the captain said, as if he just remembered something. Paris turned and raised her eyebrows. "Why now?"

There was a beat where I was sure she was either going to come out with it or simply leave without answering. Instead, she swallowed her anger and passed the buck. "That's a question you'll have to ask the government of the station, Mr. Carolinas. We simply go where ordered." With that, she retreated back behind the barricade and disappeared into the shelter.

After some discussion, it was decided our best course of action would be to make ourselves available and allow those who wished to come to us. Cap found a spot where the lab was clearly visible in the background and he began speaking directly into the camera, describing what the scene was like and recapping what we knew of the disease so far, including suspected causes and the home remedies that had, unfortunately, been unsuccessful in treating the illness.