Sirens, lights, movement on the inside of the brig cells. A blur of knee-high motion—Tin, gone to find his wife, Fray’s certain—and when he turns back toward the Vlad pilot’s prison he sees the first glimmers of the fog beginning to crystalize into solid state.
Barking on the comms, Akraya to Patrick, Daniels requesting status. The background noise of Winter Sun speaking in the clipped tone of a professional into their radio. The muffled thud as the Vlad’s pilot kicks off and slams into the door, banging with their fist, frantic glances thrown over their shoulder at the swiftly materializing mech. When they look back, the lenses embedded in the sharp lines of the helmet draw his eyes like a compass needle. Hellhound presses their palm against the glass in a silent plea.
He’s never going to hear the end of this, Fray thinks, as his body all but acts without him. He siezes the wide bar that operates the cell door, waiting impatiently for the top light to indicate his authorization, and when it does he yanks with all his power. The locks unbolt, the door flies open, and Hellhound tears through like a frightened rabbit. Fray digs his fingers into their battered cloak and yanks them further into the clear, and they nearly bounce off the opposite wall with the force. Fray only just manages to push the bar the other way to send the cell door shut again before the momentum drags him away.
He catches another rail as he passes, something Hellhound tries to copy and fails. No wonder; he can see the tremor in their hands. And there, past them—the fog beginning to seep into the main cell block through the vents on the far wall. “With me,” he says, as brisk and commanding as he can muster—this is not very much at all, as it turns out, so he shores it up by grabbing one of those shaking hands. He need not have worried, he finds as he pushes off the rail with his hand firm around their wrist: Hellhound heels.
Their sea legs seem to return to them quickly. Hellhound’s able to keep pace with Fray as he rounds the corner that Winter Sun and Dreamer linger by, instead of overshooting it and crashing as he feared they might. And probably a good thing he took hold of them, after all, for who meets him hurrying down the hall than—
“Daniels,” Fray calls aloud, slowing only enough to not shoot past them. “Calendula signature ahead. It’s after the mercs.”
“So I see,” Daniels replies, but they are not looking at Fray. He twists to see what’s got their eye, mere moments before Cazimir is shredded into a bloody suggestion of a body by kinetics meant to bore holes into shielded frame hulls. Blood spatters the window like a bursting water balloon. It’s stomach-turning, but Fray doesn’t have time for that. “The others?”
“En route.”
Daniels nods. Their eyes swing over Hellhound as they pass, expression the same careful neutral Fray usually sees on their face. Then they’re gone.
The escape pods, Fray decides, at last letting go of Hellhound’s wrist to better brake where they’ll need to turn again. No vents, and too small for a frame of any kind to fit anyway.
There is, of course, the small matter of letting them get away. Escape pods are, in fact, meant to do this.
His thoughts derail from the future and back into the present when a voice splits through them. It takes him a moment to recognize it, now less of a gravelly hiss than it was through the tinny speakers of the cell blocks. “Why me?” says Hellhound.
Now at the crossroads of halls, Fray has to pull himself to a halt as he tries to think of the fastest path to the hangar from here. He’s no good at juggling two lines of thought at once, though, and quickly gives it up. The question at last sinks into his brain, and the answer is so obvious that for a moment he’s not sure if they’re ribbing him. He turns enough to look at them, a half-smile hesitating over his mouth. “Said you want to join us. Be an Albatross.”
Nothing in that intimidating mask suggests a reaction, not until Hellhound shakes themself like they’ve been asleep. “Surely it’s not that easy,” they return, a hairline fracture in their voice letting their disbelief and suspicion ebb through.
“No,” says Fray, turning. The center hall toward the mess, then drop through the transfer tunnel and you’re nearly on top of the hangar. That’s how they’ll get there. “But you can’t do it if you’re dead.”
He gets no answer.
They pass Tin and a mech that Fray recognizes with a start as Lorelei’s never-quite-decommissioned Sagarmatha. “The fuck you running around naked down there for, kid?” Tin says through the comms, sounding more on edge than usual. “Where’s your stupid bee?”
“Getting it,” says Fray, and for good measure adds, “We let you run around naked all the time. Why can’t I?”
“Cuz you’re so fuckin’ pale you’d blind everybody. That the one I was talking to?” A miniaturized version of Hellhound appears in the corner of Fray’s vision, his dataplate picking up the bodymap of the target Tin indicates. “Let me guess, playing hero again?”
“Whatever,” Fray replies with flippancy he’s learned he needs to handle Tin with. Winter Sun and Dreamer are still back there, he relays, and by the way, Daniels beat you here on foot. Tin snorts at him, and his frame stomps past. Lorelei follows, and once more Fray is in motion, skimming down the railing as fast as he dares toward their destination.
And now they’re there, and Fray hits a half-dozen buttons on the core terminal that have the pods humming and hissing exhaust. Hellhound wordlessly obeys his every direction, something he notes with no small surprise. His inability to ignore a cry for help does not make him stupid, and he well expected Hellhound to make a bid for freedom. He’s giving it to them, wrapped in a bow, even, and he may live to regret it.
But at least they’ll be alive.
The escape pod vibrates softly under his hand as he checks the systems over. When there is nothing left to check, he tries not to believe himself a fool. Unfortunately, he knows better. He’s too much a fool to even consider a lie to keep them here. Such a fool, in fact, that he even stops just before he closes the pod’s door and looks at them. Again his eyes go at once to the lenses of the mask, drawn there, like a lodestone drawn to point north: inevitable, inexorable. He’s never seen a mask quite like it. They look back, or so it seems. He cannot tell with the glass. The very air pulses with tension, and it’s creeping into Fray’s bones. He tries to steady himself.
“If you meant what you said,” Fray tells them, “we’ll take care of you.”
The empty glass eyes of the mask seem to pin him against the pod door. Hellhound acknowledges him with one jerky nod.
Fray lets the door fall closed, and watches as it seals itself up, a perfect cocoon. He turns his back on it, shooting off toward the hangar, and he wonders if he’ll ever see them again.