Stardust

     In their nigh-uncountable years of subterranean escapism, perforating the bowels of New York with ideological skewers such as “resisting invasion” and “fighting for their country,” blatantly casting one’s eyes from the more obvious sewer rat comparison, it would be inaccurate and perhaps even disingenuous to refer to morning as “dawning.”

     Cass, ever the stickler for accuracy, was in the process of dissociating her temporal vocabulary from references to the position of the sun. She found it surprisingly difficult.

     Morning did not dawn so much as morning broke itself over her temples in the form of her wristwatch beeping directly against her eardrum at 5 AM sharp. Groaning audibly, Cass stabbed the button on the offending implement with a finger and dragged her sleep-heavy body into an upright position. In the top bunk, it was difficult to sit up without bashing her skull on the metallic roof of what used to be a subway car, but she managed a sort of bedraggled slouch that served just as well to jostle her lethargic head into wakefulness.

     Her groggy stupor was cut somewhat short by the sound of bedclothes rustling beneath her; Cass peered down at the floor and was greeted by a short blonde head cast resolutely downwards, presumably to avoid any eye contact with her whatsoever, as her (alleged) best friend slumped her way out of bed and over to the locker by their bunk.

     “July Wright,” she said, delighting somewhat in the girl’s immediate, instinctive about-face to meet Cass’s eyes. “I am going to kick your ass. I am going to give you such an ass-kicking, they will sing ballads of your ignominious defeat on the day the Sun goes cold.”

     “I wish you wouldn’t,” July said. She turned back around, busying herself with whatever nonsense she was using as a distraction in her half of the locker.

     Cass was not done. “Your ass will be, as the greatest poets of our generation have prophesied, grass. You are going to be my bitch.”

     “Can you please just tell me what the fuck your problem is?” She slammed the locker shut with a discordant clang that could, most likely, be heard from several cars over. Cass found this rather fractious.

     “You went aboveground.” Cass watched July’s face for a flicker of recognition that never came. “After last time—“

     “Oh, fuck off.” The recognition hit. It was frankly admirable how peevishly righteous July could make a simple hair-flounce, particularly with the amount of bedhead she sported at the moment. “Code red! I got dragged!” Her jaw jutted out firmly as she crossed her arms, leaning against the locker to stare at Cass. “Axel wasn’t gonna—“

     “This is the tenth time,” Cass said, unwilling to cede ground to Axel on damn near anything.

     “It wasn’t exactly a fucking party,” July spat. At that moment, Cass realized that her friend was perhaps a bit angrier than could be expected from some justified ribbing—a conclusion which was immediately supported by July yanking her sweatpants to her ankles, revealing a large bandage taped to her right-hand shin. The skin around her bandage was an irritated shade of red, the leg hair around it visibly singed and patchy. “Caut bullet. There were Dusties.”

     That would certainly explain why she was being so irritable.

     “You still said--” Cass began, rather petulantly, and with that came the realization that she was being rather petulant, and with that realization came a brilliant and immediate display of how well she could shut her mouth.

     July peered up at Cass’s bunk, one eyebrow arched in a perfect parabola that made Cass briefly but vividly fantasize about holding her down and shaving the offending appendage off.

     “I realize I am being obnoxiously juvenile,” Cass began, voice strangled, only to be interrupted by a short, sharp shriek of laughter.

     “Yeah, you’re a cunt. Don’t you wanna know what happened?” July asked.

     The right angles of Cass’s shoulders listed ever-so-slightly to either side. She sighed. “Yes. I do.”

###

     It was, in Cass’s opinion, frankly awe-inspiring how little July comprehended the implications of information she was privy to, and the regularity with which this occurred. The Resistance was currently in custody of Aston Martin—the alleged Dusty colluder who plunged their country into alien rule to begin with, under circumstances so shadowed with intrigue and mystery that Cass had personally discussed with fellow subterranean-dwelling soldiers no less than five separate conspiracy theories wherein his role was naught but a convenient scapegoat. His presence could preclude the demystification of puzzles that haunted the human population since the start of its subjugation.

     It was with this in mind that Cass reported to Captain Testa that morning, prepared to extricate every last scrap of relevant information out of him she possibly could before moving on to her post for the day.

     “Morning.” Testa raised one hand in greeting before he hopped out of the train car that served as his barracks, located at the very tail of a rusty, creaking old model which hadn’t been in top condition even prior to the collapse of the subway system. Its designation—LEX21—was spraypainted on its side in a hasty, loose scrawl, the paint now chipped and flaking onto the rails below. She made a note to ask about repaints at some point soon. The captain himself was looking slightly disheveled, sporting the beginnings of an uncharacteristically scruffy goatee and raisin-hued circles spreading around the already-dark skin by his eyes.

     “I was actually hoping to catch you,” he said, which threw Cass off her rhythm somewhat. “I’d like you to interview one of our new detainees today.”

     Cass cocked her head to one side, sternly quelling the excited leap of her heart in response to this development. It wouldn’t do to get too invested in this—she wouldn’t be given any serious responsibilities, certainly. “Isn’t that a bit above my clearance level, sir?”

     Captain Testa shook his head dismissively, waving for her to follow him down the dilapidated tunnel. “You don’t need to give me that shit, Trehan, I know you better than that. I think you’ll be good at this, and I’d like you to get the experience in. You won’t be questioning Martin—you know who we brought in, right?”

     “Aston Martin,” Cass replied automatically, tailing a single step behind him in near-perfect synchronicity with his gait. Their footsteps echoed through the nearly-empty passages—Cass knew he preferred to keep rations in his barrack and eat alone, so she’d made a not-particularly-burdensome sacrifice in the form of skipping breakfast and scrambled to catch him before the majority of the Resistance would even be done eating. As a result, they were the only figures moving through the tunnels.

     “You won’t be speaking with him.” Testa stopped at a juncture and cast a brief glance down each tunnel before hanging a left. “We took in two other people—civilians, no relation, it seems they met by chance and didn’t spend much time getting to know one another before the crash.”

     Ah. That was significantly more within expectations. Stick Cass with the unimportant job, as “practice,” most likely to groom her for future promotions. Cass had the sneaking suspicion Testa wanted her to replace him one day—not that his job was particularly coherent, besides “whatever high-level top-secret bullshit General Flynn wanted him to do that day.” Not that any of their jobs were particularly coherent, beyond that.

     “You’ll just be getting their names, affiliations, whether they have connections to the government, that sort of thing,” the captain was saying. She nodded along studiously. “I’ll be listening right outside and taking notes—the room is already wired up and your interviewee should be waiting for you. He seems fairly young, I think he’ll respond well to a peer. Try to determine if he’d be useful to the cause.”

     That last one was said dismissively, almost as an afterthought. Cass had the distinct impression that Captain Testa did not particularly care about military recruitment, as a general rule. It had been difficult enough to get him to take herself and July seriously as recruits several years ago (them being freshly traumatized middle-schoolers did not particularly help their case, admittedly).

     He led her up a set of maintenance steps and onto a platform, where the night shift was in the process of changing over. The barricade over the subway entrance was standard fare at that point; an ugly heap of scrap, welded and twisted together to form a barrier, with holes for bored privates to peer through during their shifts, not that anyone bothered to keep a close watch on the streets anymore unless a commanding officer was in the vicinity. The hum of macgyvered air filters thrummed throughout the scene; their boxy forms were dotted through the station, making it rather difficult to hear oneself over the echoing hum. Cass gave a cursory nod to aforementioned privates as she strode across the platform. They did not nod back.

     Captain Testa brought her down a hallway off the side of the station, where the loud buzz of the air filters thankfully faded somewhat into the background. He stopped in front of a metal door covered in faded, peeling stickers and scuffed graffiti; there was a plastic folding chair set up just outside.

     “Feel free to take notes if you’d like, but as I said, I’ll be listening.” His voice was much lower now, almost a murmur. He jerked his head toward the chair; looking down, Cass saw a radio-like contraption resting next to it, a pair of bulky headphones lying atop the device, and a cord running underneath the doorway stuck to the floor with an overzealous amount of duct tape. “Do you need a moment to prepare? Any questions?”

     Stifling the instinct to forge ahead recklessly, Cass considered this for a moment. She could take time to pre-write questions, but she felt fairly confident in her ability to conversationally improvise, and it wasn’t as though this person would be privy to any particularly important information. Besides, despite her attempts to stamp down on her jitters, she was still buzzing with adrenaline. She shook her head and gave the captain a ramrod-straight salute, to which he only rolled his eyes before handing her a notebook.

     “I told you not to give me that shit, Trehan,” he said as he unlocked the door.

     She ignored his comment and stepped through; as he closed the door behind her, she took stock of the room. It was essentially a concrete box, albeit remnants of its former use as an office remained in the form of an old, beat-up metal filing cabinet and a mess of wires off in the corner of the room. It was fairly plain otherwise; a nasty carpet that was more abrasive than the concrete floor alone would have been, a single plastic table set up in the middle of the room, and a few folding chairs.

     Her interviewee sat at the table, eyeing her with an expression caught somewhere between interest and caution. His skin was a few shades darker than Cass’s own—hickory instead of teakwood—and his hair was buzzed down near his scalp. The captain was right, he did look to be about Cass’s age, perhaps a few years older but certainly no younger. His clothes were nondescript (simple dark jeans and a hoodie), his face quickly reconfigured into a carefully neutral expression as she entered, and apart from the fact that he obviously worked out, she did not find anything noteworthy about him.

     “Private Trehan,” Cass said stiffly, sticking her hand out for a shake. Her interviewee did not oblige. She shrugged that off and sat down. “First class private in the Resistance, squadron 13B. I’ll be doing your entry interview.”

     “Trehan,” he repeated, eyeing her carefully, his eyebrows ever-so-slightly pulling in toward the broad bridge of his nose. His voice was a true bass, low and deep and pleasant on the ears. “Is that a guy’s name?”

     “I—“ For some reason, this shook her briefly, to the point that it took her a moment to even process what he had said. Her cheeks suddenly felt rather heated. “It’s my last name.”

     He nodded, seemingly pleased. “If you’re going to be interviewing me, I’d like to know your first name, thanks.”

     “Cassidy. Cass.” She slid a pen from the spiral spine of her notebook and opened it. The pen was nicer than she was used to; slim, black, and satisfying to click the butt of. She did so a few times before looking back up at him. “Your name, please.”

     “Micah.” There was a beat of silence where interminable expressions flit across his face in quick succession. “Last name Bowen.”

     Noting this down was more for appearances and to have something to do with her hands than anything else, but Cass committed to the performance vehemently, already feeling surprisingly lost at the sea of this conversation. “Thank you. What is your association with Aston Martin?”

     “I don’t have one.” He glanced toward the door behind her, shifting in his seat slightly. Cass tensed infinitesimally.

     “You were traveling with--”

     “Look,” he snapped, suddenly loud, “I don’t want to be an asshole, but why do you expect me to answer this shit? I don’t know who you are. I don’t know what you people are doing here. I don’t even know where here is.”

     Cass considered this for a moment, tilting her head at him thoughtfully. Her initial approach clearly would not work. Captain Testa had thrust her into this position with barely a lick of warning nor clear guidelines, and if she said something which she was not supposed to say, it was, at the end of the day, his responsibility for improperly briefing his inferior officer.

     Micah began to squirm under her cool gaze, eyes flitting back-and-forth between her and the door. “I shouldn’t have yelled.”

     “It wasn’t the cleverest move, no.” She closed her notebook. “The Resistance is an underground paramilitary organization which is located in the subway tunnels of New York City. We have made it our business to offer a life secluded from the American government following its takeover by… alien elements. We attempt to make military advances against Dusty forces whenever possible, hence attempting to scout the crash site we found you at before Dusty forces reclaimed said site. Does this suffice?”

     It looked as though he was very seriously considering the question, his eyebrows scrunching up again. When he did that, his nose wrinkled slightly in a way that she would have referred to as “cute,” if he were a child or a pet. “Who are you? You, Cass, not… everyone here.”

     “I am…” She tapped her fingers against the cover of her notebook in one long, fluid motion. “I am a low-ranking officer in the Resistance, tasked with interviewing you by my superior officer as of—” a glance at her watch “—thirty-eight minutes ago.”

     “They sprung this on you, huh?” Some of the tension drained out of the room as he grinned. Perhaps she shouldn’t have revealed her situational vulnerability.

     Cass cleared her throat. “Back to the topic of Aston--”

     “I already told you, I don’t know the guy.” Micah huffed a single, heavy breath, leaning back in his chair. “We’ve been in the medical facility for ages. Lake sensed a non-Dusty ship coming by, got us onto it without bothering to check who it actually was. Turns out it was those incompetent asses.” His tone was oddly pleasant and forthright—while he was obviously tense, he did not hesitate or stumble over the information he conveyed.

     She opened her notebook back up hastily. “And Lake is your companion?”

     “We are… acquainted.” Discomfort started to creep back into his voice.

     Another topic change, then. “And the medical facility? What is that?”

     “Oh. You don’t know?” He drew a hand slowly over the length of his face, letting the silence draw out for several moments.

     Cass made a low, neutral noise in the back of her throat. Her pencil hovered impatiently the barest centimeter from the surface of the paper, trembling infinitesimally as she waited for him to continue.

     He sighed again, loudly, and repositioned his hand to press his fingers against his temples, staring down at the surface of the table. “I thought… well, I’ve been there for a few years. I thought maybe you people down below would know about it… It’s a ship, or part of a ship? It’s hard to explain. They have humans in it, they do different tests on us… medical tests, I guess. I don’t know much about the ‘why’ of it all, we were just… there.”

     Little flutters of electricity were soaring around Cass’s body, just underneath her skin. She hadn’t heard of anything of the sort—this was new, this could be important. “What sort of tests?”

     “Scans, blood tests… psychological assessments… I don’t know exactly, I never paid much attention.”

     “Did you ever speak to any Dusties performing—“

     “Can we stop?” His voice was loud and sharp again; it jolted her physically out of her pen-wielding reverie. “Sorry. I just… I swear, I don’t know much. We lived there for a while, that was all.”

     Cass, for the first time so far in this conversation, met his gaze and held it. He looked fatigued and haggard; she noted with some surprise that his eyes were puffy, as if he’d been crying recently.

     “I’m sorry,” she finally said, quietly.

     He shrugged, looking away again.

     “We can—” she started, but was immediately interrupted by the sound of the door opening behind her.

     “Thank you, private, that will be all,” Captain Testa said, jerking his thumb over his shoulder as he gave her a meaningful look. Cass looked back-and-forth between the captain and Micah a couple of times, one hand possessively on her notebook, but finally stood up and saluted.

     “Yes, sir.” She cast a glance back at Micah and, in a fit of impulsivity tinged with pique toward Testa, mouthed Thank you. The corners of Micah’s mouth turned up ever-so-slightly in response.

     The door shut behind Cass and her captain with a conclusive sort of clang. She turned to Captain Testa and raised her eyebrows at him.

     “He was lying at the beginning, but not at the end, sir,” she said.

     “I got that much.” Testa leaned back against the wall and heaved a put-upon sigh. “I think I’ll have to handle the other one—Lake, was it? Axel’s been covering your watch shift, go on and relieve him of his duties. I’m sure he’ll be happy to goof off for the rest of the day.”

     Cass saluted and ran off to oblige.

     As she jogged through the base, she turned over the strange events of the last hour in her mind. She wished she could sit in on Micah’s companion’s interview, at the very least for comparison’s sake; unfortunately, even given the affection Captain Testa clearly had for her, it wouldn’t do to push her luck. She would have to wait and observe, gathering information via other channels.

     Regardless, she had quite an abundance of new theories to go over with July; whether her friend would be interested or not was irrelevant. She would be hearing it either way.