Hadrian's Colony: Chapter Eleven, Part Two

 Notes: It's almost the new year, darlins! Let's go into it more kindly than Kieron is, shall we?

Title: Hadrian's Colony: Chapter Eleven, Part Two

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Chapter Eleven, Part Two

 

Half an hour into his reluctant stay in Carlisle’s room, Kieron was forced to admit that she was right. There was no easy escape from this place. He’d need more supplies than he had to make a real go of it, not to mention retrieving Blobby. Given that he didn’t know the layout of the compound, it was just as likely that he’d free himself from her room only to emerge into someone else’s instead of outside, where he might be able to do something about it.

But that wasn’t unexpected. He’d come along knowing that he was going to have to be patient when it came to planning his escape. His odds got way better once he was outside; it might be the stormy season on Hadrian’s Colony, but that only meant he’d have decent cover when he decided to make his move. Perhaps they thought the storms would dissuade him, make him less likely to do something they considered rash.

Ha. He’d lived on Cloverleaf Station for years, one rogue asteroid away from being nothing but a smear of frozen DNA floating through the cosmos. Rain, thunder, lightning, giant lizards—nothing was going to stop him from getting back to Elanus and Catie. Nothing.

Kieron’s hands were trembling. He grimaced, but he knew a sign when he saw one. He forced himself to relax enough to think about his family. It was dangerous, opening his emotional walls up and realizing the depth of the emotions he was having about his loved ones, but bottling it up for too long would only result in it exploding at probably just the wrong time. Right now he could afford to be strategic, so he sat on the couch, leaned his head back, closed his eyes, and—

Shots echoing in the air. Catie’s door closing rapidly, clunkily, Elanus shouting inside of her as she screams in pain and fear, trying to escape from a whole new form of confrontation. Elanus split between his fear for his daughter and his desperate worry for Kieron and Blobby, alone out there on the plains, maybe already being hunted down,  maybe shot, maybe hurt, maybe dead.

But Catie, he’s got to help his girl, and he struggles to the pilot’s chair and does his best to steady her wild ride and make sure they’re not being followed. Sees what she’s lost—communications, maybe fuel, maybe worse. Maybe her core program is damaged, her beautiful, intricate brain, the thing that makes their girl an individual with feelings. Maybe she’ll never be the same again. Maybe she’s permanently altered by this fuckery, maybe her landing gear isn’t working, maybe she’s about to crash.

She falls out of the sky and it’s all Elanus can do not to break another leg as they hit the ground hard enough to knock him out.

Everything is dark, hopeless. Kieron is alone.

The sound of the door opening knocked Kieron out of his painful reverie. He shot to his feet and immediately walked into the bathroom before Carlisle could see the wetness on his face. He heard her enter the main room, but luckily she didn’t call out to him. He wasn’t sure he could answer in the moment.

Fuck, that had been brutal. That was the point, of course—imagining the worst-case scenario took the sting out of it, made it so that a part of your psyche had already confronted the ultimate loss which then allowed you to move through the world with a sense of grim determination. This was one of the earliest mindset tricks Kieron had learned here on the Colony, but he’d been terrible at it as a child. He’d already been in so much pain, deliberately imagining himself in more of it had been next to impossible.

Funny that he should end up so good at it now.

He ran the water in the sink, which came out a rusty yellowish-gray, and made the sounds of washing up while he actually cleaned his teary face off and made sure his eyes weren’t too red or swollen. The last thing he wanted to do was let these fuckers know he’d been crying.

It was going to be okay. The worst-case scenario hadn’t happened—Elanus was way too sharp for that, Catie far too vibrant and in love with life. They were fighters, both of them, and they had each other. Kieron trusted in Elanus to keep Catie safe, and he knew that Elanus trusted him with Blobby. They respected each other’s abilities—it was the only way they were able to live together. Otherwise Elanus became too controlling and Kieron became too recalcitrant. They had to acknowledge each other’s expertise to make their love, their family, work.

“Desfontaines?”

“What?” he called out, pleased that his voice sounded normal.

“You need to come with me.”

Well, that sounded pleasant. “What for?” he asked, taking one last look at himself before opening the bathroom door. Carlisle was standing just outside it, a frown on her elegant face. “I was under the impression it was nighttime. Aren’t all of your people supposed to be asleep?”

“Good effort at getting our guard roster out of me,” she replied, and he shrugged because, yeah, of course he had to try. “Our leader wants to meet you.”

Oh good. It was Big Boss time. “Who’s your leader?”

“Not someone to be kept waiting.” She stepped aside and gestured impatiently to him. “Come on. It’s time to go.”

Kieron wished he had a few more minutes to lock down the painful emotions he’d let rage just minutes ago, but the barriers he’d hastily constructed would have to do. He’d get through this meeting, undoubtedly another cavalcade of threats and insinuation with maybe some physical punishment thrown in as well, and then he’d get back to figuring out how to get out of here.

Having a solid goal helped short up his psyche, and he was confident in his poker face as Carlisle led the way out of the room and down the hall, turning left instead of right as they’d gone before.

Kieron memorized his steps and surroundings, and by the time they got to the room with double doors—a singular feature he hadn’t seen anywhere else in this heap yet, he’d remember that—he was confident he’d be able to retrace his steps if he needed to. It was fine. Everything was fine. He was calm, he was in control, he had the situation handled.

Carlisle, her lips compressed into a tight line, pressed her palm to the reader outside the doors. They swished open with a bit of a rattle, and then she led Kieron into a dark room—yet another dark room, were these people afraid of light or something?—and over to a broad chair that was turned away from them. On the other side of it was a holographic tactical table, the sort of thing military commanders sometimes used to show the positions of troops on the battlefield. Kieron barely got to glance at the terrain shown there before it blanked out, leaving a flat blue field behind.

“Sir,” Carlisle said respectfully, her hands crossed behind her back. Kieron crossed his over his chest instead, his hands uncommonly fluttery. The chair turned, slowly, and—

“Took you long enough,” rumbled from the twisted mouth of Eleazar Hadrian, and Kieron—

Kieron lost—

All sense—

Of himself, as the present turned into the painful past, too close to veer away from or push aside for later. He saw the hateful, broken body of his grandfather and decades worth of pent-up anger burst out of him like a tsunami.

He lunged, one hand rearing back to punch even as the other went for the old man’s throat—

And the world dissolved into agony.