Stardust

     Aston was woken by the train slowing to a stop.

     “Fuck,” he said.

     At the sound of his voice, Sage stirred awake, looked at him blankly for a moment, and jumped to her feet to go wake the humans.

     Aston scrambled up, hoisting his backpack over his shoulders; he crouched by the train door for a moment, his ear to the crack, and hearing nothing, hastily yanked the door open. A rush of chilly air hit his face, bringing with it a burst of birdsong and the dusty gray-orange glow of sunlight.

     “Oh, fuck,” he said, and promptly launched himself over the balcony railing into the nearby underbrush. Branches and rough edges of leaves scraped his bare face and hands; ignoring them, he crawled into the forest a few yards before dropping to his belly. He lay there silently for a moment.

     The scuffles of the other three weren’t far behind him. Teiddan stumbled into his field of vision still strapping his mask to his face. Axel’s already-messy hair was standing upright in a jumble of gravity-defying conflicting angles.

     “We’re moving,” Teiddan said. “Keep going.”

     Aston groaned out loud as he clambered to his feet. His nose throbbed and his knees were full of sand, achy and stiff and grating inside the joints as he moved. Restraining himself from making further complaints (even he could see that was pointless under the current circumstances), he moved in the direction Teiddan gestured toward (further into the woods, away from the train and the station) and did his best to not draw attention to himself.

     Which did not work. “How’d we sleep through the night?” Axel said. It could have been Aston’s imagination, but he was pretty certain he could feel the human’s eyes boring balefully into his back. A quick glance over his shoulder confirmed that Axel was, in fact, glaring at him with a degree of venom that was, in Aston’s opinion, entirely disproportionate.

     Axel’s eyes narrowed further on eye contact. “You said we’d be in Philly in less than an hour. The sun’s coming up.”

     Aston involuntarily scrunched up his entire face. His guts churned with acid as if he’d eaten several whole lemons, but there was no reason for the roiling and burning—he hadn’t even eaten breakfast. Or dinner.

     “Our information was old,” Sage spoke up from the rear of the party. “I didn’t think they would change the train schedules that much in the last few years, but… this one seems to have been rerouted.”

     “To where?” Axel's tone was like a trap.

     “I don’t know,” she said. It seemed like she was about to elaborate, but—

     “It’s your job to know. Why are we trusting these—“

     “Ax,” Teiddan said sharply. “Leave it.”

     Unfortunately, he seemed to be on a roll.

     “Fuck off! They ruined the bloody mission. They’re strangers, they’re aliens, and they led us—“

     “We’re not discussing this until we’re somewhere safer,” Teiddan snapped, louder than was probably advisable at the moment.

     Axel didn’t respond verbally, but he sped up and shoulder-checked Aston on his way past, so violently it made Aston stumble mid-step. The teen shoved past Teiddan as well and began power-walking several yards ahead of the group.

     “Very mature,” Aston called after him.

     Teiddan glanced over his shoulder at Aston with a withering glare; his voice was rough around the edges as he said “That did not give you the moral high ground.”

     Bitterness swelled in Aston’s chest, overflowing into his mouth, but as he took a breath to let it spill into the air, he caught Sage’s large frame falling in lockstep with him out of the corner of his eye. She reached out to brush her knuckles gently along the side of his shoulder. He deflated instantly.

     As Teiddan and Axel silently continued through the woods ahead, she grabbed his hand, forcing him to walk parallel with her. Her voice was low—low enough the humans couldn’t hear even if they tried, but she still discarded English in favor of Chorn again. “We shouldn’t have done this.”

     “You’ve said,” Aston said tiredly. “Too late, though. We’re already deep in it.”

     “We should stop.” Sage’s eyes were fixed on the backs of the humans, unwavering. She squeezed his hand just a tad too tight, sending a twinge of pain up his arm. “We can leave—we can’t be off-grid anymore, but we could settle, I could get a job—“

     “We can’t stop,” Aston hissed. “They could shoot us, or—or imprison us, or worse. This is our best chance off this planet.”

     Sage made a low, keening noise in the back of her throat. He squeezed her hand, aiming for reassuring, but she continued to avoid his eyes. Her reactions made no sense. Aston was doing his best, and she knew that.

     “It’s our best chance,” he repeated, desperately pouring earnestness into his words like he could drown her in it.

     She didn’t respond. Then, with a waver in her voice: “We’ll talk about this later.”

     Aston decided it was not in his best interest to point out it was, in fact, currently the “later” she had referred to last time.

###

     After the humans busied themselves arguing over the best course of action, then spent several hours hiking parallel to the interstate through the woods, the group finally happened across mile markers indicating a rest stop. Teiddan had them hang back while he hiked up to the stop, which resulted in about an hour of Aston trying not to make eye contact with Axel while drawing idle shapes in the dirt with a stick to occupy himself.

     Teiddan returned bearing gas station food and drinks, a map, and the news they were just outside of Detroit. This went over as well as could be expected.

     The plan they finally settled on—the exhausting, miserable, idiotic plan, which Aston bore no responsibility for whatsoever—was to hike until they got to the outskirts of Detroit, which was approximately six more hours of walking. This was the worst news Aston had gotten all day; his knees still throbbed, his throat was dry and sticky, and his heels were threatening to develop blisters.

     It was a miserable trek. Axel’s music player ran out of battery by the third hour, and as the day progressed, he became more and more of a raging asshole without his earbuds. He body-checked Aston no less than three times, each time making Aston just a little less charitable toward his behavior, but Aston managed to hang onto the last scraps of his cool by reminding himself he did not want to lose the moral high ground in front of Sage. Even dedicating the vast majority of his brainpower to the issue over the course of their hike, he couldn’t figure out what her problem was right then, and he didn’t want to risk making it worse.

     While they attempted to stay out of the roads’ sight-lines, they hiked close enough to hear the miserable roar every time an eighteen-wheeler came barreling down the interstate. Aston idly fantasized about every truck driver on the planet dropping dead simultaneously. As they got closer to civilization, the obnoxious cacophony of car sounds only grew in frequency and volume, as did the stink of exhaust.

     His heels made good on their threat and developed excruciating, fat blisters that rubbed directly against the seams of both his boots. The stiff edges of his vest chafed agonizingly against his soaked armpits. The hems of his ill-fitting jeans began to develop a muddy cast. Eventually, the stardust became so thick Aston was forced to don his mask, which enveloped his face in a veritable swamp. It also did nothing to help with the exhaust smell.

     When they finally, finally came to a mile marker indicating the existence of a Motel 6, Aston was barely dragging his feet through the underbrush, his shins and thigh muscles screaming at him to cut it the fuck out. He ignored their message, but he wasn't happy about it.

     Aston never thought he would feel relieved to see the capitalist dystopia of massive, empty four-lane highways sectioned off with unnaturally barren strips of plain grass, all overlaid with a pale orange tint; even more insanely, he saw the golden arches of a McDonald's sign and felt tension leave his shoulders. Quite frankly, he would take any food that wasn’t a power bar or a mini-bag of pretzels.

     Teiddan looked fairly disheveled by the end of things, himself. His formerly clean pants were covered in a thin layer of dirt and dust, and his sharp woolen coat was sporting a few burrs. Aston was actually rather worried when the captain told them to wait in the Motel 6 parking lot while he went inside to navigate the rental—his appearance didn’t seem to cause a stir, though, as he walked back out with a key and without comment.

     Their room, upon entry, was a paltry and crumbling facade of luxury pasted over an extremely subpar set of accommodations. There were two beds—flimsy plywood affairs with visibly cheap mattresses, decorated with white-and-orange bedspreads that matched the bright orange of the accent wall behind them. The other walls were probably once white, but now were marred by seemingly endless nicotine stains and spots of ash. The carpet was a laughably thin, rough attempt at softening the floor that would have honestly been better off not trying at all. A musty, slightly damp odor hung over the entire affair.

     Aston shrugged his backpack off, dropped everything he was carrying on the floor, and fell face-first onto the nearest bed with panache.

     His theatrics went unrewarded. There was some shuffling and rustling and a weight pressed into the mattress next to him, then the sounds of zippers being pulled. From across the room, Sage said “I’m going to take a shower,” followed immediately by the sound of a door closing.

     More rustling ensued, then Teiddan broke the silence. “Checkout is at noon tomorrow. I would like to leave before the sun comes up, though, so please get some rest.”

     Axel grunted in assertion. Aston gave a weary thumbs-up, his face still pressed into the scratchy bedspread (which stank like cigarettes). With great effort, he cantilevered himself up onto his elbows and looked at Teiddan sitting on the bed beside him.

     “Does this place have a pool? I’m told hotels have pools.”

     “It’s outdoor,” Teiddan said.

     “Lovely.” In a sudden burst of mania, Aston sprung from the bed and gave the front of his clothes an ostentatious brush-off, which did nothing to improve their appearance. “I’ll be checking that out, then.”

     Axel glanced over from the other bed—the teen was in the middle of rifling through his backpack, various paraphernalia spread out on the bed around him in a staggeringly disorganized manner. “It’s the middle of winter. In Michigan.”

     Aston literally waved this off, flapping his hand just in front of his face and blowing a short burst of air through his lips dismissively. “It’s only, what, thirty out? I’ll be fine. I’m not as sensitive as you spoiled sunlight-dwellers.”

     “It’s your funeral.” Axel returned to dumping the contents of his bag out willy-nilly.

     Teiddan, meanwhile, was watching Aston with a great deal more interest than was comfortable. “I’ll come with you. Ax—don’t do anything that would piss me off while I’m gone, will you?”

     He gave a thumbs-up without even looking at Teiddan. That kid was an enigma.

###

     The pool—a sunken blue pit in the middle of the square created by the motel buildings—was filthy. It was choked with floating cigarette butts, dead bugs, and leaf debris; the junk created a thin layer coating the surface of the water, a membrane of garbage. Aston stood in his boxers (bright yellow-and-green striped, the only clothing of his own he managed to retain from the swamp disaster) with toes gripping the damp, chilly plastic edge of the pool, centimeters away from the water’s surface. The air felt pleasantly brisk against his bare skin; he was delighted to finally be free from layers of clothing trapping gallons of sweat against his body.

     For a couple of minutes, he stood there, head tipped back and eyes closed, arms held up to either side slightly, enjoying the rush of cold air over his body. Then he swung his arms up over his head and dove.

     Instantly, a shock went through his entire body; the cold embraced him like an excited lover, gripped him, shook him, plunged through his skin down into his bones. There was a soundless rushing in his ears as he floated, suspended timelessly, reacquainting himself with the comforting feeling of ice beneath his skin.

     When he finally broke the surface of the water, shaking his head violently to clear it from his eyes, he found Teiddan sitting at the edge of the pool, knees drawn up to his chest, watching Aston intently. The captain wasn’t wearing a mask, despite his frankly anal insistence on doing so every time he was outdoors. It was an improvement, in Aston’s opinion—his face was interesting to look at, filled with craggy angles and sharp corners. His mouth was particularly fascinating, a thin, bi-color line that quirked up at the corners when Aston met his eyes.

     Aston paddled to the side of the pool and draped his arms over the edge next to Teiddan.

     “You called us ‘sunlight-dwellers,’ back there,” Teiddan said. The man didn’t waste time, conversationally speaking. “Do you not have sunlight where you come from?”

     “No,” Aston said casually. Unable to help himself, he added “We’re subterranean—like you are in the sewers, I guess.”

     “Subway tunnels. Not sewers.”

     “Whatever.” Aston let the bottom half of his body float up for a moment, then kicked off to float on his back in front of Teiddan. He gazed at the hazy cloud cover above them, eyes drifting idly without focus. “The surface of our planet is… uninhabitable. It’s been that way for a long time. Almost no atmosphere, no sun, none of that. My city’s built in a… hm…” In his failure to reach the right words, Aston gestured and grasped lazily at the sky above him. “I don’t know how to describe it in English. A… bubble, with artificial heat, light. Recycled air. Plants we have to tend.”

     “It’s terraformed,” Teiddan said, oddly excited. “Underground terraforming.”

     “Sure, you could call it that.” Aston suddenly twisted around and dove under the water again, reveling in the crisp roaring silence under the filth. He contorted himself about buoyantly for a minute before resurfacing by the pool’s edge again and shaking water onto Teiddan’s coat. The human didn’t so much as flinch. “Point is—it’s freezing there, even with the artificial heat. There’s only so much you can do when the atmosphere was irradiated out of existence.”

     “No wonder you wanted to leave.”

     “What?” Aston snorted. “No, I love the cold. I hate the summers here. Disgusting, sticky affairs. I would move to one of the poles if I could.”

     Teiddan tilted his head to one side, his dark eyes flicking up-and-down over Aston in a way that made him feel like he was being studied in a lab. “Why did you leave?”

     Aston found himself unable to break eye contact with the human. The thick angles of Teiddan’s eyebrows were drawn together in the middle, his expression questing, curious, even concerned. As he stared into Teiddan’s eyes, he found himself counting flecks of gold mixed in with the dark brown of his irises; they caught stray beams of light filtering through the drab cloud cover and set his eyes sparkling.

     The black holes of his pupils set off a roaring in Aston’s head, an instinctual, physical response that left him reeling. He kicked off the side of the pool and dove under again, clenched his eyes shut, gripped his hands into painfully tight fists. The void clawed at the back of his head—sucking, pulling, grasping at him, roaring until his head was filled with a torturous scream, taunting him, telling him to come back, let himself be carried into its gaping maw—

     Aston stayed underwater until his lungs burned, until his muscles ached with a fury that he couldn’t ignore anymore, and only then did he burst upward inelegantly, gasping in the freezing air. Light assaulted his eyes; he squinted painfully, rubbing ineffectually at them with his fists as he coughed.

     When he finally wiped the chlorinated water from his eyes, he found Teiddan was lying down peaceably, staring at the sky. “I’m sorry,” he said. “That was a personal question.”

     “It’s—” Aston started, but couldn’t figure out how to finish, dumbly staring at the human while treading water.

     A few moments of silence passed, broken only by the gentle lapping of water and ever-present low hum of machinery in the background, until he finally couldn’t stand it anymore. “What’s your plan for getting to DC?”

     Teiddan looked back over at him. “I’ll rent a car tomorrow. It’ll be a long drive, and we’ll have to hope no-one clocks our IDs at tolls, but I think we can make it.”

     The pulling at the back of Aston’s head was insistent and heavy and made his heart race uncontrollably. On top of that, a heavy pit was forming in his stomach, which grew and ached a little more with every word that fell from Teiddan’s mouth. Something about the casual way he said it—the way he carelessly tossed out Aston’s fuckups, without even acknowledging them—

     “Drive us back to the station,” Aston found himself saying.

     Teiddan’s eyebrows shot up. He propped himself up on one elbow, leaning in toward the pool slightly.

     Aston swam back over. His heart was stuttering in seven-four time. He felt like throwing up. “I can fix this. I can sneak into the offices during a night shift changeover, while they’re unloading a car—I can get the schedule. Maps. We can know where we’re going, this time.”

     He was directly in front of Teiddan, gripping the pool edge just in front of where he lay. Their faces were only a few inches apart. Aston stared wildly at the captain, wracked with nausea and fixation in equal measure.

     “It’s risky,” Teiddan finally said.

     “I know. I know. I—“ He took a breath, shakily. “We can’t get picked up at a toll. We’ll be arrested. There’s four states in between us and DC—the chances we get through every checkpoint are—Look. I can do this.”

     Teiddan stared at him, face unreadable. Aston’s breath kept hitching in his throat. Let me do this.

     “Alright.” Suddenly, one of Teiddan’s hands was over Aston’s on the chilly white plastic, firm and warm and unexpectedly soft. “I’m coming in with you. I won’t have a soldier risking their life unsupervised.”

     The air suddenly felt too chilly in contrast to the way Aston’s hand burned where it met Teiddan’s. Everything was loud and bright and crisp, but even with the sudden barrage of sensory input, the pit in Aston’s stomach slowly started to fall away. He breathed in through his nose, long and slow, and out through his mouth in one heavy huff.

     “I need to go inside,” Aston announced and hauled himself out of the pool abruptly, shedding water and cigarette butts everywhere. Teiddan rolled away hastily.

     As Aston rubbed himself ineffectually with a scratchy, thin towel, abrading the scrapes on his knees, he continued to feel rather sick. This time, though, it was a more manageable sort of nausea—he realized as he dried himself off that when Sage heard about this plan, she was going to be more pissed at him than she had been in a long time. Maybe even in five or six years.