Original Fic: Red Haven (PG-13)
The rain patters against the ground, a delicate, trembling rhythm that Derek Rayne can almost inhale, breathe in right with the oxygen into his lungs. He closes his eyes against the lightning; lets the thunder roll through him, thrumming in muscle and bone.
“Christ,” one of the prison guards mutters, beside him.
Rayne doesn’t want to open his eyes, doesn’t want to see the cold stone and metal compound, made only darker with the shadows and water under the overcast sky. He would inch forward, would reach out palms to catch the water that drips from the overhang, but when he moves, he hears the clink of the handcuffs, the chains, the anklets, and he doesn’t try.
The gates at the front clang shut; it resonates, louder than Rayne is expecting. The thunder’s crash doesn’t drown it out.
The uniform draws tight across Rayne’s shoulders, across his waist. A good fit - structured clothing. It feels like a second skin, by now.
He hears the vehicle creak to a stop before he smells it, a backwash of exhaust like a slap in the face. An older one, then, a hybrid. It still runs partially on gasoline, though probably the artificially manufactured gasoline rather than real fossil fuels. Rayne lets his eyes flicker open, and he examines the car, cold and clinical.
A military grade reinforced car - one driver, with a second navigator or a guard in the front seat, plus space for four passengers, facing one other - built like a limo but more compact, the size of a slightly lengthened jeep or a larger civilian-grade farm truck.
Rayne shivers. The cool of the breeze cuts straight through him, and he wishes he were out in the rain, water soaking through the cloth of the uniform, straight to his skin. He wishes he could turn, right now, and tell these guards why he kept fighting. What he was fighting for. But maybe it’s too late for that.
So soon, so soon -
“General Angilo,” greets the guard to his right, and Rayne snaps his head up.
Recognition, immediate and permanent, the connection seared into his mind. The General is watching him too, a carefully blank appraisal that stiffens Rayne’s spine. Here, the uniform feels like a cloak. Hide behind grey and red. Hide behind your planet, your cause, your people.
Rayne doesn’t know how long it’s been since he’s seen Angilo last. He remembers it clearly, huddled in the corner of a cell, in the brig on Angilo’s flagship.
“Sign here, sir.”
The other Martian officers in the prison left in groups of five or six. The choices were easy to predict, after a while. Those best in behavior. Those who didn’t know one another. Those who already had the hopelessness of defeat hammered iron-solid behind their eyes. But Rayne…Rayne is alone, none of the others by his side, just two flanking guards and a hard-eyed General and a driver, watching through his rearview mirror.
The swirl of the pen on paper draws Rayne’s glance. Signed for, as though he’s property, to be traded, bought and sold. Though, maybe he is. It’s a new world. He doesn’t know the rules yet.
“Take off the chains,” says Angilo.
Rayne has a brief flare of surprise, but not enough, not enough to penetrate the listlessness of his muscles. Angilo can’t see anything, any of his thoughts, on his face; that’s because there are no thoughts to see.
“Sir?” the guard questions.
“Corporal.” Angilo’s voice doesn’t leave any room for argument, and Rayne feels a hand around his wrist, then one cuff - the other cuff -
He steps out of the remnants of the chains, and he touches the inside of his wrist, sensitive skin chafed at the feel of the metal. It’s an unexpected gift, but he can feel the stare of the guard to his right. Try to escape, it says, make a run for it, and Rayne imagines the bite of a bullet piercing into his back.
Not today.
“Get in the car.”
Directed at Rayne, so Rayne steps past Angilo, and pulls himself up into the car, not too quickly, not too slowly. A deliberated, cautious movement.
He still hears it, though.
“Be careful with him, General. He’s one of the dangerous ones.”
“I’m well aware, Corporal.”
Angilo would be. He would know exactly how dangerous Rayne could be, even though Rayne had only seen Angilo’s face twice. Three times, now. Any doubts he’d had, though, about the identity of the General in front of him were erased by the sound of that voice. They may have only met briefly, but the voice, yes, the voice is familiar indeed.
The door whuffs closed, the sound of the rain paradoxically louder within the car. The thunder is softer, though, and Rayne barely feels the noise move through him.
“Back to the base,” Angilo tells the driver, and he turns his gaze back to Rayne, on the seat across from him. Rayne is already turned away, his eyes fastened to a place out the window, a horizon in the distance that only he can see.
“Why am I wearing the uniform?” Rayne asks, his voice raspy. He feels as though he hasn’t spoken in years.
“The terms of surrender,” Angilo tells him. “The highest ranking Martian officers are deported to Earth, required to wear the uniform, and given employment by the international government.”
Rayne had half-expected Angilo to avoid the question, sidestep and give an oblique answer. The directness seems to focus the world back into sharp detail. “Or?” Rayne asks.
“High-security prison,” says Angilo, with a nod to the stone-grey scar of a facility rapidly receding in the background. “Or you could sign a loyalty pledge and renounce the Martian rebellion.”
Cruel, is the first thing Rayne thinks, clever the second. Never let us forget what we fought for, what we would have died for. Never let those around us forget that we were their enemies. And now he’ll have to live with it - suspicion and hatred, from the Terrans all around him. “You just aren’t satisfied with beating us, are you?” The bitterness poisons the words, poisons the air.
Angilo leans forward. “Colonel, this is all in an attempt to stop the war from restarting.”
“It won’t work,” Rayne states, hoping that a small show of defiance will start his heart beating again.
“We’ll see,” says Angilo.
Rayne can’t remember if anything like this has ever been tried before. Not that there’s ever been a culture quite like Mars to try it against. He won’t sign, though. He’ll never sign.
The view outside the window gives way to landscape, long stretches of green trees under the grey-white sky. Rayne sees a strike of lightning, in the distance.
“Why you?” Rayne asks, finally. He can see the necessity of using Earth officers to keep guardianship over the Martians. Trained fighter against trained fighter. The war was always more about the armed forces than the civilians, anyhow, but in this case - the Terrans have all the power, and Rayne can’t imagine the excesses they might inflict against the Martians in their ‘care’.
“Well,” and the word drifts across the air, slow and uncertain. “Most of us have to take someone,” Angilo explains, “and yours was the only name I could recognize.”
That doesn’t seem entirely true.
Rayne lets the landscape blur in his vision. Far away, the clouds crack open and the sun shines through.
~*~
“There’ll be a security detail following you most of the time,” Angilo tells him.
Rayne slides his hand, palm-flat, on the blanket. Military issue. At least he has his own private room; but it’s on the far side of the base from any of the other Martians currently working in Chicago. Angilo’s choice again, Rayne assumes. Isolation is the order of the day, then.
Finally, Angilo inhales. “I’ll come and get you tomorrow morning. I already have a job lined up.”
“It had to be you,” Rayne murmurs.
“Excuse me?” asks Angilo.
“Out of every soldier on Earth.”
Angilo raises his chin. “Would you rather be in prison?”
No. “I’d rather be dead,” and the half-honesty makes something go very quiet inside Rayne’s chest.
Angilo doesn’t respond, and Rayne doesn’t look up. “I’ll come and get you tomorrow morning,” Angilo repeats, after a long silence.
The door slides shut and locks behind him.
Rayne leans back on the bed - thin mattress, thin pillow, thin blanket. The room is too small, but it’s larger than a prison cell, and the bathroom is actually a separate room, through a crack of a too-thin door. Lots of places in the ceiling, in the walls to hide surreptitious security cameras. Rayne would lay odds that he’s being monitored. Probably one display in a room of displays, but it’s enough to make him cautious.
The first duty of any prisoner is to escape, but what is it when the prisoner’s war is over?
Rayne curls, his back against the wall, and he stares at the blank concrete with matching blank eyes.
~*~
The glass of the door sends a shine across the store as it slides closed. Rayne’s eyes adjust to the dim quickly; a counter, a small waiting area, and a hallway leading into the back. He turns back to Angilo, a question in his glance. This place isn’t a typical store, and yet it’s shoved in with restaurants and hardware specialty stores and electronic supply stores in a shopping mall that seems depressingly typical of Earth.
The girl behind the counter touches an intercom. “Lauretta,” she says, “they’re here,” her eyes lingering on the grey and red of Rayne’s uniform.
Rayne hears a door slam, near the back of the facility, and hurrying footsteps.
“Lauretta,” Angilo greets, over Rayne’s shoulder, extending a hand.
Lauretta, if that’s her name, has pale skin and bold dark curls; lips too red and a smile forced too wide for comfort. “General,” she says.
“Colonel Rayne, this is Lauretta. Lauretta, Derek Rayne.”
Lauretta extends her hand, expecting a handshake like Angilo’s. Rayne doesn’t, and she leaves her hand there, awkwardly, for a moment or two, before dropping it. “Nice to meet you,” but her eyes belie the expression.
“How about we skip the pleasantries and go to what we’re doing here?” Rayne cuts through the silence.
“I guess the General hasn’t told you what your job will be,” Lauretta says, cautiously.
“No,” says Rayne. “He hasn’t.”
“He requested it personally, you know,” she continues.
“How about we go ahead and enlighten me?”
“Well,” Lauretta begins, “the gist of it is this: we’re having a big influx of Martian refugees, and a lot of them are children. Orphaned by the war.” Rayne grits his jaw. “We need to find good homes for these kids, but we don’t want them to go to places where they’re not wanted. That’ll be where you come in. You evaluate the families that the kids are entering, decide where they go.” Once on the topic, her voice warms, and she waxes enthusiastic. She must love her work.
“I’m a soldier, not a social worker,” says Rayne.
“You…weren’t always a soldier, were you?” Lauretta asks, and it feels like a punch in the stomach.
Ice spreads underneath Rayne’s skin, and he fights the urge to close his eyes, give up, give in. It must be Angilo - Angilo has to have seen his records. No, Rayne hasn’t always been a soldier, but everything before the war is so long ago, it’s grey and distorted and hard to remember, somehow.
But Angilo senses an answer in Rayne, anyhow, because there’s a brief, warm touch on Rayne’s soldier, and Angilo says, “I’ll be back in the afternoon.” He turns to Lauretta. “The security team is around, but I doubt you’ll spot them.”
Rayne shakes off the odd feeling of abandonment as Angilo slips away - it doesn’t make sense - and turns his attention to Lauretta.
“Your office is this way,” she tells him.
The office is clean, carpeted, and it has a kind of elegance about it. A spaciousness, an attitude that Rayne has never seen in the crowded enclaves of Mars. He steps inside, feels his shoes sink just a little into the soft floor. Lauretta lingers by the door, waiting for a reaction.
“You certainly went out of your way,” he remarks, quietly.
“Not really,” she says. “Well, you have to assess a load of orphaned children this morning. They’ll be kept at the social centers until tomorrow; this afternoon you’ll be interviewing parents. We’re short-staffed, so you have to get to work right away.”
“Isn’t there usually a training period for this sort of thing?” he asks.
She pauses, flushing. “Certain previous occupations,” she says, delicately, “make the training unnecessary.”
Rayne nods.
“I’ll send in the first child,” Lauretta tells him, and she closes the door behind her.
The desk is wood - real wood, glossed and shined, but still. He trails a finger along the corner, wondering if there are cameras here, too. Probably. He should get used to it - Earth is playing at being kind, treating their captured POWs in a fair and just manner. Their prison isn’t in bars and metal and stone; it’s in their own uniform, their honor.
Rayne touches the papers on the top of the desk - forms, standard enough. To help him assess.
The noise of the door opening almost startles Rayne. He catches a bare glimpse of dark hair vanishing before the door shuts again, and his eyes drop to a little girl, maybe six or seven years old, chewing on her fingernails.
Abruptly, with a little cry of expelled air, she runs at him and wraps her arms around his waist. It’s so unexpected that Rayne physically freezes for a moment, while her hands interlink behind his back, and she squeezes. He blinks, “hey there,” and gently untangles her arms, moving to crouch next to her.
“Mommy says when I’m in trouble go to the grey and red uniforms,” the girl chants, in a rush. “Grey and red.”
“What’s your name?” Rayne asks.
“Erin.”
“Well, Erin,” and he’s surprised at how fast the instincts return, “your mommy was a very smart woman.”
Erin smiles, soft and sweet. “I know!” she chimes.
“Where is she now?” Rayne asks. “Do you know that?”
“Home,” she announces.
“And what brings you here?”
“Mommy says,” Erin chirps, like she has no idea what she’s really saying, “Mommy says that it’s not safe at home anymore.”
She might not understand. She might have just blocked the knowledge away from her brain where she couldn’t find it anymore, and the sheer cheerfulness breaks Rayne’s heart.
“Makes me wonder if it ever was,” says Rayne, softly, but he shakes it away. “Have a seat up there,” he tells the girl, gesturing to the couch, and he makes a mental note to ask Lauretta for some candy.
~*~
When Angilo picks him up, he doesn’t make conversation. There’s just a questioned “Are you ready?” and an acknowledging nod.
They drive, in silence, back to the base, through the gate, and pull up next to the secondary compound. Rayne leans his cheek against the headrest of the seat during the drive, his mind far away and blissfully blank, the same as the clouds overhead.
“So, I hear you’ve been brainwashing children,” Angilo says, as they climb the stairs to the third floor.
“Just telling them the truth,” returns Rayne, without thinking about it.
“One version of the truth.” Angilo unlocks the door, gestures for Rayne to proceed him into the room.
Rayne half-expects Angilo to leave, the same way he did the day before, but instead he pulls the chair out from behind the desk, turns it backward, and sits on it, his arms resting on what should have been the chair’s back.
Rayne curls his knees partway to his chest, and stays silent. If Angilo wants conversation, he’s going to have to make it himself.
But, the longer the silence stretches, the less Angilo seems uncomfortable. Eventually, he huffs in amusement and shifts. “You know,” says Angilo, “I can wait you out.”
“You can try,” says Rayne.
Almost like a staring contest, only they aren’t looking at one another. Just silence, spreading through the room, and the unspoken challenge - the first one to speak is the one who gives in.
Rayne briefly considers going to sleep, but the idea is disconcerting. He doesn’t want to sleep, not while an enemy like Angilo is in the room. Because, as much as Angilo might pretend that they’re on the same side, or that at least they’re not actively seeking one another’s death, they’re not friends. Not allies. And they never will be. And this? This is just another way for Angilo to try and break him down.
The more he thinks about it, though, the more it makes him curious. The rest of the officers left in fives and sixes. Maybe they were separated after leaving the prison…but that didn’t make any sense. How could it possibly be feasible to have a security team attached to every Martian veteran? To have cameras installed in every room where they work, surveillance so that they couldn’t try to sabotage or escape? It would be a huge waste of manpower and resources, and Rayne doesn’t understand it. They would have to consolidate the Martians into groups. In that case, why is Rayne, himself, alone?
When he looks up, Angilo is watching him.
“Why me?” Rayne asks, breaking the quiet into a million pieces.
Angilo’s expression flickers, and Rayne feels a quiet stir of triumph. Of everything Rayne could have said, this Angilo wasn’t expecting. “I told you already,” says Angilo.
“No.” Rayne shakes his head. “You didn’t.”
Angilo settles back a little. “You know I think what I did was right.”
Rayne fights the urge to hurt Angilo, hit him, attack him -
“I prevented bloodshed,” says Angilo, firmly. “I stopped the battle. I stopped the entire war.”
“You slaughtered every man in my base,” Rayne forces out, though a tightening throat.
“I had a reason.” His voice is intent, strong, and it cuts Rayne so deep. “Whatever you admit, you have to know that I had a reason.”
Rayne doesn’t shut his eyes; he’s afraid, if he does, he’ll see what it looked like. Remember the smell, the sparks, the chaos. The quiet twinge of a needle, sliding into his arm. He nods, tight and aborted. A reason. Yes, Angilo had a reason. But it’s not enough.
“And on top of that, my reasons, my justifications. Rayne.”
Rayne looks up.
“I’m sorry,” says Angilo.
“Get out,” snaps Rayne, immediately.
Angilo moves to his feet, deliberately. “Rayne-”
“Don’t you dare apologize to me.” Rayne almost didn’t recognize his own voice; so cold, so angry-
“It was a decision that had to be made.” Angilo’s eyes flash. “Some of the consequences weren’t ideal. In fact, they really, really sucked for a lot of people, and one of them is you -”
“Get out.” Rayne’s muscles are so tense he thinks he might snap completely, and he remembers, he remembers it all - sharp, acrid, and the cloud of gas, building from the corner. The radio operator, eyes wide - the first to fall -
“I’m sorry,” Angilo repeats.
Rayne realizes his fingernails have actually drawn blood from the palm of his hand, and as the door slides shut behind Angilo, he unclenches his fingers, rubs the muscles mechanically.
He doesn’t sleep that night.
~*~
The couple is still holding hands when they sit on the couch, a sideways glance at one another.
“Are you…the social worker?” the woman asks, trying to be delicate.
“Excuse me?” Rayne asks.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” the woman says, but then she pauses, awkwardly, like she isn’t really sure what she’s sorry for. Her eyes slide over his uniform, though, lingering on the rank patch, lingering at the intersection of red and gray on his collar.
Rayne hates her, immediately. “Do you have a problem with working with a Martian officer?”
“Oh, no,” the woman denies.
“No, of course not,” the man says, at the same time.
Rayne rejects their application for adoption.
Later, the sunlight feels too bright, a pale blue through the sheen of the window. Rayne takes a bite from the sandwich, provided for lunch, and he lets his eyes trace the line of the shadow along his arm. “Why do I have this job?” he asks.
Lauretta settles back into her chair. “He’s Angilo,” she tells him, as though that explains everything.
“What does that mean?”
“He won the battle of Toridia,” Lauretta blurts. Rayne flinches - it’s a reflex, at the sound of the name. “What he wants, he gets,” she mumbles, remembering belatedly.
Rayne takes a breath, slow and even.
“I would think it’d be better this way,” she continues. “I mean, at least you’re not at hard labor, right?”
Rayne clenches his jaw. “I suppose,” he forces out, ignoring the simmering feeling in his gut. He doesn’t want to be grateful for anything that Angilo has done for him - this job, his life. Prison would have been better, maybe hard labor too, because this way, Rayne is alone. Completely alone. And he has to think, involve his mind and work on his feet, every single day. He can’t forget about himself or what’s happened or what he’s doing - he focuses, focuses hard.
And he misses Mars.
“How was your day?” Angilo asks Rayne, when he pulls the car up outside the adoption agency.
“What, before you came along?” Rayne returns, but it’s just rote. He’s not sure he really means it, anymore.
Angilo drives them to a different part of the base compound, a part Rayne has never seen before, and shuts off the car, unclipping his seat belt. Rayne follows suit, more cautiously.
“Where are we?” Rayne asks, after he steps out of the car.
“My apartment,” Angilo says, shortly, hopping up onto the curb.
Rayne is hesitant, awkward, in ways he doesn’t entirely understand, and he hesitates, hand lightly resting on the frame of the car door.
“Are you coming?” Angilo tosses back, over his shoulder.
No, Rayne wants to say, but he brushes past the shine of green, sculpted bushes to the shadowed doorway. Angilo keys the door open; a flick of his wrist, and a soft ‘beep’ later, Rayne follows him into the entrance hall of the apartment.
Not very spacious, Rayne thinks, as his eyes adjust to the lower light, but, in the military, what is spacious? It’s large enough, that’s what matters.
Angilo leads him down the hall, past a few closed doorways, and into the main room, a little more spacious. Rayne scans over it, lets the observations trickle in.
Simple furnishings. A little shabby - the edges of the sofa worn soft - but the television screen embedded in the wall is clearly new, state-of-the-art. Almost definitely has easy videoconferencing capability, which means a camera. There’s some extravagance in the floor, too - it’s hardwood. Rayne lets his eyes flick over the television without pausing, and instead, he lingers on the doorway - just a glimpse of a hallway, the edge of a door frame; beyond, presumably, is the rest of the apartment.
Angilo moves to a kitchen unit, coating one wall of the room. “Have a seat,” he says, nodding to the sofa. “Do you want something to drink?”
Rayne fights the sensation of the world spinning out of control, all around him. “Ah,” he says.
“I’ll warn you,” Angilo continues, “I don’t have anything alcoholic.”
“Bad idea, as a General?” Rayne asks.
“As anyone,” Angilo corrects.
Interesting, Rayne thinks, and he gingerly settles back against the sofa. He is so out of his depth here. It’s not his ground, not his territory - it’s even more acute in the space of Angilo’s apartment, personal space, molded by Angilo’s habits and his aura and his quirks. Technically, he’s a prisoner of war - invited into someone’s home? - and he has no idea how to act.
“Why are we here?” Rayne asks finally, turning his head to the kitchen corner.
Angilo shrugs, topping off a second glass of a cloudy magenta liquid. “There’s no surveillance.” He slides the juice back into the refrigerator, and, taking the glasses in hand, moves over to Rayne.
When Angilo hands it to him, the glass slips in Rayne’s fingers, moisture already beading along the smooth surface. “No surveillance?” Rayne questions.
“You’re tired of being under official scrutiny, aren’t you?” The question isn’t accusing, but mild.
Rayne bridles all the same, though he’s not entirely sure why. Everything about Angilo, it seems, just serves to put Rayne more on edge. Not surprising - it’s Angilo’s fault that they’re here.
…no, that’s irrational. No matter what Angilo did, Mars would have had to surrender. It wasn’t Angilo’s fault, but that doesn’t help.
“Are you the commander of the base?” Rayne asks, changing the subject. He doesn’t know enough about Angilo - nothing, except that Angilo’s only visible weakness seems to be Rayne himself. Angilo is too emotional. And if Rayne learns a little more, maybe he can exploit it. Enough to escape.
Rayne straightens his spine a little, at that thought.
“No,” Angilo tells him, with a shake of his head. “No, this base isn’t high enough on the list to have a general in command.”
Rayne shifts in his seat. “Why are you here, then?”
“I’m on a leave of absence,” Angilo says, shortly.
Rayne takes a sip of the drink - fruit, some kind of tang. He can’t identify it, though. Possibly artificial. “Then what is it you do all day?”
Angilo takes a short breath. “Is there something you want to ask me?”
Rayne goes tight-lipped, takes another swallow of the drink. He ducks his head, a little. “You’re not afraid that I’ll attack you?” Rayne asks, softly.
A twist of Angilo’s eyebrow, and “You don’t think I could take you, in a fight?”
It feels too much like banter, friendly banter, and Rayne closes his eyes, rests his back more firmly against the cushions of the couch. He doesn’t know if Angilo could take him in a fight - the two of them seem very evenly matched.
“Anyhow,” says Angilo, “the security team would find you, even if you did get out.”
Rayne flinches.
“I’m sorry,” says Angilo, “do you want me to lie to you?”
“Why are you doing this?” Rayne asks, so softly. Because, honestly, he’d prefer hard labor, torture, to this part-gentleness, part-kindness, part-imprisonment. And yet, he’s not entirely sure that, given the choice, that’s what he would take.
Angilo stands, abruptly. “I’ve already told you,” he says.
The tightness in Rayne’s chest grows to unbearable proportions. He just barely resists the urge to pull his knees up, but his hands clench so hard on the glass that the gentle angles dig into his hand, that they hurt. He’s not - he won’t, he won’t, he won’t show Angilo how weak he is -
He touches at the corner of his eye.
“Are you all right?” comes the question.
“No,” is all Rayne can say.
Angilo’s mouth twists, in an acknowledgment of the honesty. “Yeah,” he mutters, half to himself, “what is, these days?”
Earth, thinks Rayne, and he bites his tongue.
“Anyhow.” Angilo drops a rolled-up group of papers next to Rayne. “The biggest Chicago newspaper has been delivering in newsprint again,” he says. “Some kind of post-war resurgence, but I’d expect you probably want some news about what’s happening on Mars.”
Rayne tries to resist reaching for it.
“I’ll be in the next room over,” says Angilo. “Take your time. When we have to go, I’ll come back out; if you want to leave earlier, just say.”
Angilo moves off, to one of the rooms from the entranceway. Probably positioning himself just so that he could see if Rayne tried to make a break for it. Rayne closes his eyes, and tips his head back against the couch. He’s trapped here, but he is alone, and most likely, he’s not on camera. It’s strange, undoubtedly, but at the same time, almost comforting.
The newspaper crinkles under his fingertips, very tactile, very immediate. He can smell the ink, and a little of it rubs off on his fingertips. An odd concept, paper that’s simply disposable. The headlines are much like he expects - mostly a focus on the positive, with enough implications to the negative so that the journalists can pretend to be impartial. But the news of Earth isn’t what he wants to see.
His hands only shake a little when he finds the Sol Section, for interplanetary news. The first picture hits so hard - in the foreground, a shrieking woman, a child clutched to her waist. In the background, a crowd with faces twisted in anger. Food riots, Rayne catches from the caption. Food riots. There are shortages enough for riots…there must be starvation -
He has to breathe, deeply, before he can go on.
Martian Quorum has closed; the UN is now in direct control of government on Mars, says one of the articles. Rayne frowns - unlikely, at best. At worst, completely impossible. Most of the government on Mars is by the Havens, of course. The Quorum was never really much more than a general debate forum... The UN can claim control over Mars all they want; the population, Rayne thinks, doesn’t tend to pay much attention to proclamations and laws and empty words.
And then he finds it. The list of the dead and missing, from Mars Prime. Right away he sees one, two, three names with an echo of familiarity, and then another -
Rayne wants to be there. He wants to be there, with his fellow Martians, with his community so badly he thinks his chest could collapse.
He manages to close the newspaper, drop it by the side of the couch. Angilo finds him, hours later, arms clasped around his legs, staring into the blankness of the wall next to the television set. Rayne only snaps out of the trance when Angilo touches his shoulder, with a warm hand.
“We should get you back,” is all Angilo says.
Rayne nods, and gets unsteadily to his feet.
~*~
I’m the last one.
It’s not true, but it’s all he can think. The last one. The only island of Mars, of humanity, left in the universe. I’m the last one. The bare light from the window - maybe from a streetlight outside? - only makes the darkness that much worse.
Rayne wraps his knees to his chest, and stares to the opposite wall. He doesn’t move, until morning comes.
“Christ,” one of the prison guards mutters, beside him.
Rayne doesn’t want to open his eyes, doesn’t want to see the cold stone and metal compound, made only darker with the shadows and water under the overcast sky. He would inch forward, would reach out palms to catch the water that drips from the overhang, but when he moves, he hears the clink of the handcuffs, the chains, the anklets, and he doesn’t try.
The gates at the front clang shut; it resonates, louder than Rayne is expecting. The thunder’s crash doesn’t drown it out.
The uniform draws tight across Rayne’s shoulders, across his waist. A good fit - structured clothing. It feels like a second skin, by now.
He hears the vehicle creak to a stop before he smells it, a backwash of exhaust like a slap in the face. An older one, then, a hybrid. It still runs partially on gasoline, though probably the artificially manufactured gasoline rather than real fossil fuels. Rayne lets his eyes flicker open, and he examines the car, cold and clinical.
A military grade reinforced car - one driver, with a second navigator or a guard in the front seat, plus space for four passengers, facing one other - built like a limo but more compact, the size of a slightly lengthened jeep or a larger civilian-grade farm truck.
Rayne shivers. The cool of the breeze cuts straight through him, and he wishes he were out in the rain, water soaking through the cloth of the uniform, straight to his skin. He wishes he could turn, right now, and tell these guards why he kept fighting. What he was fighting for. But maybe it’s too late for that.
So soon, so soon -
“General Angilo,” greets the guard to his right, and Rayne snaps his head up.
Recognition, immediate and permanent, the connection seared into his mind. The General is watching him too, a carefully blank appraisal that stiffens Rayne’s spine. Here, the uniform feels like a cloak. Hide behind grey and red. Hide behind your planet, your cause, your people.
Rayne doesn’t know how long it’s been since he’s seen Angilo last. He remembers it clearly, huddled in the corner of a cell, in the brig on Angilo’s flagship.
“Sign here, sir.”
The other Martian officers in the prison left in groups of five or six. The choices were easy to predict, after a while. Those best in behavior. Those who didn’t know one another. Those who already had the hopelessness of defeat hammered iron-solid behind their eyes. But Rayne…Rayne is alone, none of the others by his side, just two flanking guards and a hard-eyed General and a driver, watching through his rearview mirror.
The swirl of the pen on paper draws Rayne’s glance. Signed for, as though he’s property, to be traded, bought and sold. Though, maybe he is. It’s a new world. He doesn’t know the rules yet.
“Take off the chains,” says Angilo.
Rayne has a brief flare of surprise, but not enough, not enough to penetrate the listlessness of his muscles. Angilo can’t see anything, any of his thoughts, on his face; that’s because there are no thoughts to see.
“Sir?” the guard questions.
“Corporal.” Angilo’s voice doesn’t leave any room for argument, and Rayne feels a hand around his wrist, then one cuff - the other cuff -
He steps out of the remnants of the chains, and he touches the inside of his wrist, sensitive skin chafed at the feel of the metal. It’s an unexpected gift, but he can feel the stare of the guard to his right. Try to escape, it says, make a run for it, and Rayne imagines the bite of a bullet piercing into his back.
Not today.
“Get in the car.”
Directed at Rayne, so Rayne steps past Angilo, and pulls himself up into the car, not too quickly, not too slowly. A deliberated, cautious movement.
He still hears it, though.
“Be careful with him, General. He’s one of the dangerous ones.”
“I’m well aware, Corporal.”
Angilo would be. He would know exactly how dangerous Rayne could be, even though Rayne had only seen Angilo’s face twice. Three times, now. Any doubts he’d had, though, about the identity of the General in front of him were erased by the sound of that voice. They may have only met briefly, but the voice, yes, the voice is familiar indeed.
The door whuffs closed, the sound of the rain paradoxically louder within the car. The thunder is softer, though, and Rayne barely feels the noise move through him.
“Back to the base,” Angilo tells the driver, and he turns his gaze back to Rayne, on the seat across from him. Rayne is already turned away, his eyes fastened to a place out the window, a horizon in the distance that only he can see.
“Why am I wearing the uniform?” Rayne asks, his voice raspy. He feels as though he hasn’t spoken in years.
“The terms of surrender,” Angilo tells him. “The highest ranking Martian officers are deported to Earth, required to wear the uniform, and given employment by the international government.”
Rayne had half-expected Angilo to avoid the question, sidestep and give an oblique answer. The directness seems to focus the world back into sharp detail. “Or?” Rayne asks.
“High-security prison,” says Angilo, with a nod to the stone-grey scar of a facility rapidly receding in the background. “Or you could sign a loyalty pledge and renounce the Martian rebellion.”
Cruel, is the first thing Rayne thinks, clever the second. Never let us forget what we fought for, what we would have died for. Never let those around us forget that we were their enemies. And now he’ll have to live with it - suspicion and hatred, from the Terrans all around him. “You just aren’t satisfied with beating us, are you?” The bitterness poisons the words, poisons the air.
Angilo leans forward. “Colonel, this is all in an attempt to stop the war from restarting.”
“It won’t work,” Rayne states, hoping that a small show of defiance will start his heart beating again.
“We’ll see,” says Angilo.
Rayne can’t remember if anything like this has ever been tried before. Not that there’s ever been a culture quite like Mars to try it against. He won’t sign, though. He’ll never sign.
The view outside the window gives way to landscape, long stretches of green trees under the grey-white sky. Rayne sees a strike of lightning, in the distance.
“Why you?” Rayne asks, finally. He can see the necessity of using Earth officers to keep guardianship over the Martians. Trained fighter against trained fighter. The war was always more about the armed forces than the civilians, anyhow, but in this case - the Terrans have all the power, and Rayne can’t imagine the excesses they might inflict against the Martians in their ‘care’.
“Well,” and the word drifts across the air, slow and uncertain. “Most of us have to take someone,” Angilo explains, “and yours was the only name I could recognize.”
That doesn’t seem entirely true.
Rayne lets the landscape blur in his vision. Far away, the clouds crack open and the sun shines through.
~*~
“There’ll be a security detail following you most of the time,” Angilo tells him.
Rayne slides his hand, palm-flat, on the blanket. Military issue. At least he has his own private room; but it’s on the far side of the base from any of the other Martians currently working in Chicago. Angilo’s choice again, Rayne assumes. Isolation is the order of the day, then.
Finally, Angilo inhales. “I’ll come and get you tomorrow morning. I already have a job lined up.”
“It had to be you,” Rayne murmurs.
“Excuse me?” asks Angilo.
“Out of every soldier on Earth.”
Angilo raises his chin. “Would you rather be in prison?”
No. “I’d rather be dead,” and the half-honesty makes something go very quiet inside Rayne’s chest.
Angilo doesn’t respond, and Rayne doesn’t look up. “I’ll come and get you tomorrow morning,” Angilo repeats, after a long silence.
The door slides shut and locks behind him.
Rayne leans back on the bed - thin mattress, thin pillow, thin blanket. The room is too small, but it’s larger than a prison cell, and the bathroom is actually a separate room, through a crack of a too-thin door. Lots of places in the ceiling, in the walls to hide surreptitious security cameras. Rayne would lay odds that he’s being monitored. Probably one display in a room of displays, but it’s enough to make him cautious.
The first duty of any prisoner is to escape, but what is it when the prisoner’s war is over?
Rayne curls, his back against the wall, and he stares at the blank concrete with matching blank eyes.
~*~
The glass of the door sends a shine across the store as it slides closed. Rayne’s eyes adjust to the dim quickly; a counter, a small waiting area, and a hallway leading into the back. He turns back to Angilo, a question in his glance. This place isn’t a typical store, and yet it’s shoved in with restaurants and hardware specialty stores and electronic supply stores in a shopping mall that seems depressingly typical of Earth.
The girl behind the counter touches an intercom. “Lauretta,” she says, “they’re here,” her eyes lingering on the grey and red of Rayne’s uniform.
Rayne hears a door slam, near the back of the facility, and hurrying footsteps.
“Lauretta,” Angilo greets, over Rayne’s shoulder, extending a hand.
Lauretta, if that’s her name, has pale skin and bold dark curls; lips too red and a smile forced too wide for comfort. “General,” she says.
“Colonel Rayne, this is Lauretta. Lauretta, Derek Rayne.”
Lauretta extends her hand, expecting a handshake like Angilo’s. Rayne doesn’t, and she leaves her hand there, awkwardly, for a moment or two, before dropping it. “Nice to meet you,” but her eyes belie the expression.
“How about we skip the pleasantries and go to what we’re doing here?” Rayne cuts through the silence.
“I guess the General hasn’t told you what your job will be,” Lauretta says, cautiously.
“No,” says Rayne. “He hasn’t.”
“He requested it personally, you know,” she continues.
“How about we go ahead and enlighten me?”
“Well,” Lauretta begins, “the gist of it is this: we’re having a big influx of Martian refugees, and a lot of them are children. Orphaned by the war.” Rayne grits his jaw. “We need to find good homes for these kids, but we don’t want them to go to places where they’re not wanted. That’ll be where you come in. You evaluate the families that the kids are entering, decide where they go.” Once on the topic, her voice warms, and she waxes enthusiastic. She must love her work.
“I’m a soldier, not a social worker,” says Rayne.
“You…weren’t always a soldier, were you?” Lauretta asks, and it feels like a punch in the stomach.
Ice spreads underneath Rayne’s skin, and he fights the urge to close his eyes, give up, give in. It must be Angilo - Angilo has to have seen his records. No, Rayne hasn’t always been a soldier, but everything before the war is so long ago, it’s grey and distorted and hard to remember, somehow.
But Angilo senses an answer in Rayne, anyhow, because there’s a brief, warm touch on Rayne’s soldier, and Angilo says, “I’ll be back in the afternoon.” He turns to Lauretta. “The security team is around, but I doubt you’ll spot them.”
Rayne shakes off the odd feeling of abandonment as Angilo slips away - it doesn’t make sense - and turns his attention to Lauretta.
“Your office is this way,” she tells him.
The office is clean, carpeted, and it has a kind of elegance about it. A spaciousness, an attitude that Rayne has never seen in the crowded enclaves of Mars. He steps inside, feels his shoes sink just a little into the soft floor. Lauretta lingers by the door, waiting for a reaction.
“You certainly went out of your way,” he remarks, quietly.
“Not really,” she says. “Well, you have to assess a load of orphaned children this morning. They’ll be kept at the social centers until tomorrow; this afternoon you’ll be interviewing parents. We’re short-staffed, so you have to get to work right away.”
“Isn’t there usually a training period for this sort of thing?” he asks.
She pauses, flushing. “Certain previous occupations,” she says, delicately, “make the training unnecessary.”
Rayne nods.
“I’ll send in the first child,” Lauretta tells him, and she closes the door behind her.
The desk is wood - real wood, glossed and shined, but still. He trails a finger along the corner, wondering if there are cameras here, too. Probably. He should get used to it - Earth is playing at being kind, treating their captured POWs in a fair and just manner. Their prison isn’t in bars and metal and stone; it’s in their own uniform, their honor.
Rayne touches the papers on the top of the desk - forms, standard enough. To help him assess.
The noise of the door opening almost startles Rayne. He catches a bare glimpse of dark hair vanishing before the door shuts again, and his eyes drop to a little girl, maybe six or seven years old, chewing on her fingernails.
Abruptly, with a little cry of expelled air, she runs at him and wraps her arms around his waist. It’s so unexpected that Rayne physically freezes for a moment, while her hands interlink behind his back, and she squeezes. He blinks, “hey there,” and gently untangles her arms, moving to crouch next to her.
“Mommy says when I’m in trouble go to the grey and red uniforms,” the girl chants, in a rush. “Grey and red.”
“What’s your name?” Rayne asks.
“Erin.”
“Well, Erin,” and he’s surprised at how fast the instincts return, “your mommy was a very smart woman.”
Erin smiles, soft and sweet. “I know!” she chimes.
“Where is she now?” Rayne asks. “Do you know that?”
“Home,” she announces.
“And what brings you here?”
“Mommy says,” Erin chirps, like she has no idea what she’s really saying, “Mommy says that it’s not safe at home anymore.”
She might not understand. She might have just blocked the knowledge away from her brain where she couldn’t find it anymore, and the sheer cheerfulness breaks Rayne’s heart.
“Makes me wonder if it ever was,” says Rayne, softly, but he shakes it away. “Have a seat up there,” he tells the girl, gesturing to the couch, and he makes a mental note to ask Lauretta for some candy.
~*~
When Angilo picks him up, he doesn’t make conversation. There’s just a questioned “Are you ready?” and an acknowledging nod.
They drive, in silence, back to the base, through the gate, and pull up next to the secondary compound. Rayne leans his cheek against the headrest of the seat during the drive, his mind far away and blissfully blank, the same as the clouds overhead.
“So, I hear you’ve been brainwashing children,” Angilo says, as they climb the stairs to the third floor.
“Just telling them the truth,” returns Rayne, without thinking about it.
“One version of the truth.” Angilo unlocks the door, gestures for Rayne to proceed him into the room.
Rayne half-expects Angilo to leave, the same way he did the day before, but instead he pulls the chair out from behind the desk, turns it backward, and sits on it, his arms resting on what should have been the chair’s back.
Rayne curls his knees partway to his chest, and stays silent. If Angilo wants conversation, he’s going to have to make it himself.
But, the longer the silence stretches, the less Angilo seems uncomfortable. Eventually, he huffs in amusement and shifts. “You know,” says Angilo, “I can wait you out.”
“You can try,” says Rayne.
Almost like a staring contest, only they aren’t looking at one another. Just silence, spreading through the room, and the unspoken challenge - the first one to speak is the one who gives in.
Rayne briefly considers going to sleep, but the idea is disconcerting. He doesn’t want to sleep, not while an enemy like Angilo is in the room. Because, as much as Angilo might pretend that they’re on the same side, or that at least they’re not actively seeking one another’s death, they’re not friends. Not allies. And they never will be. And this? This is just another way for Angilo to try and break him down.
The more he thinks about it, though, the more it makes him curious. The rest of the officers left in fives and sixes. Maybe they were separated after leaving the prison…but that didn’t make any sense. How could it possibly be feasible to have a security team attached to every Martian veteran? To have cameras installed in every room where they work, surveillance so that they couldn’t try to sabotage or escape? It would be a huge waste of manpower and resources, and Rayne doesn’t understand it. They would have to consolidate the Martians into groups. In that case, why is Rayne, himself, alone?
When he looks up, Angilo is watching him.
“Why me?” Rayne asks, breaking the quiet into a million pieces.
Angilo’s expression flickers, and Rayne feels a quiet stir of triumph. Of everything Rayne could have said, this Angilo wasn’t expecting. “I told you already,” says Angilo.
“No.” Rayne shakes his head. “You didn’t.”
Angilo settles back a little. “You know I think what I did was right.”
Rayne fights the urge to hurt Angilo, hit him, attack him -
“I prevented bloodshed,” says Angilo, firmly. “I stopped the battle. I stopped the entire war.”
“You slaughtered every man in my base,” Rayne forces out, though a tightening throat.
“I had a reason.” His voice is intent, strong, and it cuts Rayne so deep. “Whatever you admit, you have to know that I had a reason.”
Rayne doesn’t shut his eyes; he’s afraid, if he does, he’ll see what it looked like. Remember the smell, the sparks, the chaos. The quiet twinge of a needle, sliding into his arm. He nods, tight and aborted. A reason. Yes, Angilo had a reason. But it’s not enough.
“And on top of that, my reasons, my justifications. Rayne.”
Rayne looks up.
“I’m sorry,” says Angilo.
“Get out,” snaps Rayne, immediately.
Angilo moves to his feet, deliberately. “Rayne-”
“Don’t you dare apologize to me.” Rayne almost didn’t recognize his own voice; so cold, so angry-
“It was a decision that had to be made.” Angilo’s eyes flash. “Some of the consequences weren’t ideal. In fact, they really, really sucked for a lot of people, and one of them is you -”
“Get out.” Rayne’s muscles are so tense he thinks he might snap completely, and he remembers, he remembers it all - sharp, acrid, and the cloud of gas, building from the corner. The radio operator, eyes wide - the first to fall -
“I’m sorry,” Angilo repeats.
Rayne realizes his fingernails have actually drawn blood from the palm of his hand, and as the door slides shut behind Angilo, he unclenches his fingers, rubs the muscles mechanically.
He doesn’t sleep that night.
~*~
The couple is still holding hands when they sit on the couch, a sideways glance at one another.
“Are you…the social worker?” the woman asks, trying to be delicate.
“Excuse me?” Rayne asks.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” the woman says, but then she pauses, awkwardly, like she isn’t really sure what she’s sorry for. Her eyes slide over his uniform, though, lingering on the rank patch, lingering at the intersection of red and gray on his collar.
Rayne hates her, immediately. “Do you have a problem with working with a Martian officer?”
“Oh, no,” the woman denies.
“No, of course not,” the man says, at the same time.
Rayne rejects their application for adoption.
Later, the sunlight feels too bright, a pale blue through the sheen of the window. Rayne takes a bite from the sandwich, provided for lunch, and he lets his eyes trace the line of the shadow along his arm. “Why do I have this job?” he asks.
Lauretta settles back into her chair. “He’s Angilo,” she tells him, as though that explains everything.
“What does that mean?”
“He won the battle of Toridia,” Lauretta blurts. Rayne flinches - it’s a reflex, at the sound of the name. “What he wants, he gets,” she mumbles, remembering belatedly.
Rayne takes a breath, slow and even.
“I would think it’d be better this way,” she continues. “I mean, at least you’re not at hard labor, right?”
Rayne clenches his jaw. “I suppose,” he forces out, ignoring the simmering feeling in his gut. He doesn’t want to be grateful for anything that Angilo has done for him - this job, his life. Prison would have been better, maybe hard labor too, because this way, Rayne is alone. Completely alone. And he has to think, involve his mind and work on his feet, every single day. He can’t forget about himself or what’s happened or what he’s doing - he focuses, focuses hard.
And he misses Mars.
“How was your day?” Angilo asks Rayne, when he pulls the car up outside the adoption agency.
“What, before you came along?” Rayne returns, but it’s just rote. He’s not sure he really means it, anymore.
Angilo drives them to a different part of the base compound, a part Rayne has never seen before, and shuts off the car, unclipping his seat belt. Rayne follows suit, more cautiously.
“Where are we?” Rayne asks, after he steps out of the car.
“My apartment,” Angilo says, shortly, hopping up onto the curb.
Rayne is hesitant, awkward, in ways he doesn’t entirely understand, and he hesitates, hand lightly resting on the frame of the car door.
“Are you coming?” Angilo tosses back, over his shoulder.
No, Rayne wants to say, but he brushes past the shine of green, sculpted bushes to the shadowed doorway. Angilo keys the door open; a flick of his wrist, and a soft ‘beep’ later, Rayne follows him into the entrance hall of the apartment.
Not very spacious, Rayne thinks, as his eyes adjust to the lower light, but, in the military, what is spacious? It’s large enough, that’s what matters.
Angilo leads him down the hall, past a few closed doorways, and into the main room, a little more spacious. Rayne scans over it, lets the observations trickle in.
Simple furnishings. A little shabby - the edges of the sofa worn soft - but the television screen embedded in the wall is clearly new, state-of-the-art. Almost definitely has easy videoconferencing capability, which means a camera. There’s some extravagance in the floor, too - it’s hardwood. Rayne lets his eyes flick over the television without pausing, and instead, he lingers on the doorway - just a glimpse of a hallway, the edge of a door frame; beyond, presumably, is the rest of the apartment.
Angilo moves to a kitchen unit, coating one wall of the room. “Have a seat,” he says, nodding to the sofa. “Do you want something to drink?”
Rayne fights the sensation of the world spinning out of control, all around him. “Ah,” he says.
“I’ll warn you,” Angilo continues, “I don’t have anything alcoholic.”
“Bad idea, as a General?” Rayne asks.
“As anyone,” Angilo corrects.
Interesting, Rayne thinks, and he gingerly settles back against the sofa. He is so out of his depth here. It’s not his ground, not his territory - it’s even more acute in the space of Angilo’s apartment, personal space, molded by Angilo’s habits and his aura and his quirks. Technically, he’s a prisoner of war - invited into someone’s home? - and he has no idea how to act.
“Why are we here?” Rayne asks finally, turning his head to the kitchen corner.
Angilo shrugs, topping off a second glass of a cloudy magenta liquid. “There’s no surveillance.” He slides the juice back into the refrigerator, and, taking the glasses in hand, moves over to Rayne.
When Angilo hands it to him, the glass slips in Rayne’s fingers, moisture already beading along the smooth surface. “No surveillance?” Rayne questions.
“You’re tired of being under official scrutiny, aren’t you?” The question isn’t accusing, but mild.
Rayne bridles all the same, though he’s not entirely sure why. Everything about Angilo, it seems, just serves to put Rayne more on edge. Not surprising - it’s Angilo’s fault that they’re here.
…no, that’s irrational. No matter what Angilo did, Mars would have had to surrender. It wasn’t Angilo’s fault, but that doesn’t help.
“Are you the commander of the base?” Rayne asks, changing the subject. He doesn’t know enough about Angilo - nothing, except that Angilo’s only visible weakness seems to be Rayne himself. Angilo is too emotional. And if Rayne learns a little more, maybe he can exploit it. Enough to escape.
Rayne straightens his spine a little, at that thought.
“No,” Angilo tells him, with a shake of his head. “No, this base isn’t high enough on the list to have a general in command.”
Rayne shifts in his seat. “Why are you here, then?”
“I’m on a leave of absence,” Angilo says, shortly.
Rayne takes a sip of the drink - fruit, some kind of tang. He can’t identify it, though. Possibly artificial. “Then what is it you do all day?”
Angilo takes a short breath. “Is there something you want to ask me?”
Rayne goes tight-lipped, takes another swallow of the drink. He ducks his head, a little. “You’re not afraid that I’ll attack you?” Rayne asks, softly.
A twist of Angilo’s eyebrow, and “You don’t think I could take you, in a fight?”
It feels too much like banter, friendly banter, and Rayne closes his eyes, rests his back more firmly against the cushions of the couch. He doesn’t know if Angilo could take him in a fight - the two of them seem very evenly matched.
“Anyhow,” says Angilo, “the security team would find you, even if you did get out.”
Rayne flinches.
“I’m sorry,” says Angilo, “do you want me to lie to you?”
“Why are you doing this?” Rayne asks, so softly. Because, honestly, he’d prefer hard labor, torture, to this part-gentleness, part-kindness, part-imprisonment. And yet, he’s not entirely sure that, given the choice, that’s what he would take.
Angilo stands, abruptly. “I’ve already told you,” he says.
The tightness in Rayne’s chest grows to unbearable proportions. He just barely resists the urge to pull his knees up, but his hands clench so hard on the glass that the gentle angles dig into his hand, that they hurt. He’s not - he won’t, he won’t, he won’t show Angilo how weak he is -
He touches at the corner of his eye.
“Are you all right?” comes the question.
“No,” is all Rayne can say.
Angilo’s mouth twists, in an acknowledgment of the honesty. “Yeah,” he mutters, half to himself, “what is, these days?”
Earth, thinks Rayne, and he bites his tongue.
“Anyhow.” Angilo drops a rolled-up group of papers next to Rayne. “The biggest Chicago newspaper has been delivering in newsprint again,” he says. “Some kind of post-war resurgence, but I’d expect you probably want some news about what’s happening on Mars.”
Rayne tries to resist reaching for it.
“I’ll be in the next room over,” says Angilo. “Take your time. When we have to go, I’ll come back out; if you want to leave earlier, just say.”
Angilo moves off, to one of the rooms from the entranceway. Probably positioning himself just so that he could see if Rayne tried to make a break for it. Rayne closes his eyes, and tips his head back against the couch. He’s trapped here, but he is alone, and most likely, he’s not on camera. It’s strange, undoubtedly, but at the same time, almost comforting.
The newspaper crinkles under his fingertips, very tactile, very immediate. He can smell the ink, and a little of it rubs off on his fingertips. An odd concept, paper that’s simply disposable. The headlines are much like he expects - mostly a focus on the positive, with enough implications to the negative so that the journalists can pretend to be impartial. But the news of Earth isn’t what he wants to see.
His hands only shake a little when he finds the Sol Section, for interplanetary news. The first picture hits so hard - in the foreground, a shrieking woman, a child clutched to her waist. In the background, a crowd with faces twisted in anger. Food riots, Rayne catches from the caption. Food riots. There are shortages enough for riots…there must be starvation -
He has to breathe, deeply, before he can go on.
Martian Quorum has closed; the UN is now in direct control of government on Mars, says one of the articles. Rayne frowns - unlikely, at best. At worst, completely impossible. Most of the government on Mars is by the Havens, of course. The Quorum was never really much more than a general debate forum... The UN can claim control over Mars all they want; the population, Rayne thinks, doesn’t tend to pay much attention to proclamations and laws and empty words.
And then he finds it. The list of the dead and missing, from Mars Prime. Right away he sees one, two, three names with an echo of familiarity, and then another -
Rayne wants to be there. He wants to be there, with his fellow Martians, with his community so badly he thinks his chest could collapse.
He manages to close the newspaper, drop it by the side of the couch. Angilo finds him, hours later, arms clasped around his legs, staring into the blankness of the wall next to the television set. Rayne only snaps out of the trance when Angilo touches his shoulder, with a warm hand.
“We should get you back,” is all Angilo says.
Rayne nods, and gets unsteadily to his feet.
~*~
I’m the last one.
It’s not true, but it’s all he can think. The last one. The only island of Mars, of humanity, left in the universe. I’m the last one. The bare light from the window - maybe from a streetlight outside? - only makes the darkness that much worse.
Rayne wraps his knees to his chest, and stares to the opposite wall. He doesn’t move, until morning comes.