**Please note that I am not looking for beta readers/editors at this time.** I'm Thomas, independent author and scrap-metal enthusiast based in Western Canada. Website: storiesbythomas.neocities.org Substack: https://d00md4ys.substack.com/ Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/d00m_d4ys Ao3: https://archiveofourown.org/users/d00m_d4ys this is a sideblog, my main is chubbygaysunite!
POINT A TO PROXIMA CENTAURI B is a sci-fi speculative story posted as a web-serial on my website storiesbythomas.neocities.org, on my blog @d00m-d4ys, on my Substack page, and on my AO3.
PATPCB follows Mal, a young mother who plans to leave all her earthly problems behind and start a new life on an alien planet, far away from the guilt she carries for her best friend's death. Obstacles range from price of admission to the raging war standing between her and the shuttle, but chief among them is the responsibility of finding Tai-Song, another friend that has mysteriously vanished in the chaos. To find him before they're left behind for good, Mal must journey into the heart of the enemy, where her oldest wounds are reopened and she is forced to confront her true reasons for fleeing Earth.
I update my Neocities, Tumblr, and Substack on Mondays, and I update AO3 on Tuesdays. All chapters are available for free and I have no intention of paywalling this story, but I'd love it if you checked out my Patreon anyway! You can become a member for free, or for as little as $5 a month.
Even at night, a sudden lack of noise in Delany was as good as a gunshot. Mal jolted awake from her doze with a thumping heart, once again utterly certain that she had never left the MEC, once again deathly sure that someone was waiting for their chance to slit her throat while she lay defenceless.
Once the terror passed and her ribs were no longer in danger of snapping outward from the force of her beating heart, she found herself exactly where she had accidentally fallen asleep: slumped in a rocking chair, safe in Goose's warehouse, with her glasses pressing painful spots into the bridge of her nose, her neck aching from the awkward angle of her chin against her chest.
Clover was asleep in the bassinet next to her knee, snoring softly and showing no signs of distress. Across the room, one of the bedside lamps had been left on, showing Goose in a rare moment of stillness as they sprawled across Kaia’s snoring back, two of every limb tangled together in the dim light. Further on in the darkness, Zed was a soft, shapeless blur draped across Ibiza’s front seats, an orange glow creeping from the seams of her body like candlelight.
Kaia and Goose had already been sharing a bed when she arrived, barely rousing to welcome her in before going back to sleep, and she was struck by how peaceful they looked together. Kaia never quite lost their furrowed brow nor the tensely-wound nature of their body, not even in sleep, but when pinned down by a steady weight they were blissfully limp, face slack. As for Goose, Mal had never seen them rest so quietly: whenever they managed to doze, they often muttered in their sleep, and usually woke up from a nightmare before they could fully fall asleep. The only noise they made while sprawled on top of Kaia was through their faintly-whistling nose.
She shook her head at the quiet in-between, like the silence was a buzzing insect in her ears. Up north, the nights weren't silent: bugs and animals made sure that the darkness had a presence, a kind of reassuring hum that made her feel at ease. Here, the uninterrupted silence was like a held breath, unnerving her too much to even consider going back to sleep. She wanted to get up and check outside, to see if the rest of the city had fallen away while she was sleeping, but she gritted her teeth and steeled herself against the urge: it was quiet because of the late hour, nothing more.
Still, she couldn't sleep. She pushed herself onto her aching feet and headed for the kitchenette, the rough hole a previous tenant had chipped out of the foundation for food storage. She shifted the lid off of the cool depths and found a covered plate that Goose had sleepily told her to eat if she got hungry: beans, cubed puffball mushrooms, and some kind of grain that had soaked up most of the sauce. After polishing off the plate, she carried it back to the kitchenette to be washed, and puttered over to peer at Goose’s larger workbench, occupied by some new project she would have them explain to her tomorrow, conspicuously empty of any drone or drone-shaped parcels. She glanced over at Zed, sprawled like a teenager with too much personal space; the idea that Goose had gotten rid of it to make her feel more comfortable was so painfully adorable that she would entertain no other explanation.
Exhaustion had begun to creep back into her body. She was on her way back to her bed — debating whether Clover would wake up if she tried to move the bassinet, or if she'd take the slight relocation with grace — when the entry-door opened with a compensating hiss of the atmosphere. The change in differential made the translucent sheet flap noisily before settling down; behind the plastic, a dark silhouette stood in the doorway, glowing around the edges with hazy, pale light. Heavy with food and sluggish from lack of sleep, Mal didn't react right away as the figure moved closer, leaving the door wide open and sweeping the plastic sheets aside. She didn’t recognize the slickly manicured face as the man squinted around the room, holding something in his hand, but she could tell by the teeth that glinted bone-white in the gloom that he was of Midtown.
Ten feet away away from Mal and oblivious, Clover began to fuss in her sleep. The stranger’s head turned sharply to the noise, eyes skimming over Mal's frozen figure before doubling back, eyes darting between her and what he held in his hand. A photograph, her brain supplied.
His mouth opened to speak, but Clover whined again, and all thoughts fled Mal's mind as the adrenaline surged through her body, spring-loading her muscles to launch herself at the bassinet and snatch her child out of harm's way. She pivoted on the balls of her feet like a dancer, aiming for a cluttered corner of the warehouse to disappear into, but it would be no use: she wasn't particularly fast or agile at the moment, and there was no outrunning a bullet. Instead of running, her body locked up, falling to her knees and curling protectively around her daughter; if she was shot running and fell, the inertia of her body might crush Clover beneath its weight. This way, there was a chance of her daughter emerging unscathed—
There was a nauseating thump, a loud, dull noise that bodies made when struck. She flinched at the sound, not realizing that she hadn't borne the blow until she registered that someone else was groaning in pain. She unfurled her spine with aching slowness, lifting her head to peer over the edge of the bassinet at the broad figure shuffling around his quarry: Etienne had the intruder by the ankles and was dragging him out the open door, leaving a thin, smearing trail of blood from the man's clubbed head.
Soon enough they were out of sight, Etienne's blurry figure dragging the intruder around the corner of the building with care and efficiency. Mal pressed Clover to her chest and covered her ears, moments before a single gunshot rang out in the eerie silence. It made no difference: Clover was already awake and crying in bewilderment, distress pitching higher and higher the longer she went unacknowledged. Zed’s motor kicked into high gear like a gasp; Kaia bolted upright and rolled half out of bed with a groggy shout; Goose didn’t react at all, except to lock their arms around Kaia's waist and curl into their lap.
"What's happening?"
“What was that?”
Lights flickered on overhead, flooding the vicinity with warm, amber light. Mal watched the door with a jaw locked tightly shut, only relaxing once Etienne's figure stepped through and pulled it shut, taking a deep breath before stepping through the hanging sheets. “Everything's fine,” he called, chipper voice at odds with the way his mouth was pinched in a grim frown, brow furrowed in deep, angry lines. Half his face was caked in drying blood from a cut in his hairline, a messy gash wreathed with bruising from blunt-force trauma. “Just showing our friend where he can cash his chips."
"Ah, shit—" Kaia crawled out from under Goose and climbed out of bed, snatching up their first aid kit. “How hard did they hit you?”
Etienne blinked in surprise and hurriedly stowed away his gun as they approached, hands shaking as he habitually adjusted his jacket to hide the holster. “It’s just a scratch, honest,” he said, even as Kaia bullied him into a chair to have a look for themself. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a pair of 4x6 photographs, the gloss new but already crumpled. “Some dickheads came around Pa’s place, looking for Munch and the baby. I had to set them straight.”
Kaia took the photos, face draining of colour. Mal crept closer, taking the photos from their hand as she bounced in place and absently hushed her daughter. The first was an image of her own face, pulled from one of the security cameras in the gardens, looking much braver than she had felt in the moment. The second struck a white-hot mark straight into her chest: the water damage had blurred out Goose’s identity, but Clover’s face was perfectly untouched, and there was no hiding that Mal was her mother.
“Gwenh is hurt.” The words fell unintentionally from her mouth, barely audible and scared to death: that was the only way she would have surrendered the photo Mal had entrusted in her care. The question of how badly swiftly followed: Gwenh had to be drugged and coerced into committing the murder of someone she wasn't fond of; to sell out a friend — of course not intentionally, never intentionally, but Mal could not afford to wish for something as simple as bad luck, it was poor form to prepare for anything but the worst-case scenario — the bar had to be twice as high. “I need to go and get her.”
“Absolutely not,” Kaia said, trying to look authoritative despite being in their underpants, undermined further by the panic lacing their tone. “You're walking right into an ambush, are you crazy?”
She found herself looking at Zed, finding in the line of her shoulders and the set of her fingers around the seat of the car that she had come to the same conclusion as Mal — but also that she agreed with Kaia. Mal begrudgingly felt the same, only sticking on the word 'ambush': Render had made his intentions clear, which was antithetical to the concept. The question was why now, why wait until this moment to retrieve an asset—
A worrisome idea struck her, and she hurriedly passed a tentatively-soothed Clover into Etienne’s arms on her way to grab her satchel from beside the bed. She didn't know how she had missed it before, but it was marginally lighter than it should have been: maybe because her camera's weight had always hung around her neck, not in her bag. She rifled through the contents blindly, knowing it all by touch: flashlight, matches, batteries, Gwenh's glasses, a handful of stolen film canisters, cans of soup and a jar of honey — but no camera.
She dumped her things onto the floor, just to be certain, and sat back on her knees to drag her fingernails down her cheeks. Render must have taken the camera from her bag as ransom to ensure her swift return, but he hadn’t counted on her feeling ill at the thought of using it, of going days without realizing that she was missing a vital appendage. His patience had run out, and she hadn't even realized that it was on a timer. Every second she wasted would be taken from Gwenh's body until there was nothing left.
“I need to go, right now.” She took one last look at the photos before tearing them into eighths and stuffing the pieces into her pocket. As she rolled her blanket into an infant-sized loaf and stuffed it into the cradleboard, running the numbers on where Clover could be taken and how fast it would take to get there, she spoke to the room: "I don't expect anyone to follow, but don't try to stop me. Etienne, can you keep Clover safe?"
"Mal—"
“I’m going with you,” Kaia said sharply, turning back to the bed to retrieve their clothes. “Don’t you dare suggest otherwise.”
“Me too,” Zed called, cutting herself off with a yawn as she slithered out of the car. "Where are my shoes?"
"If everyone could just slow down for a minute—"
“Someone wake up Goose,” Mal said, ignoring Etienne as she pulled on her moccasins and swept the bare necessities back into her bag. She glanced over as Kaia lightly shook Goose's shoulder, and impatiently pushed past them to lean on the bed and pinch their nose. “Goose, we need to take the car to Midtown. If you're okay with that, say nothing.”
They sleepily swatted at her hand. “Piss off.”
“Gwenh’s hurt.” She peeled back one of their eyelids. “If you don’t get up, I’m letting Zed drive the car.”
They pushed her off with a groan, dragging themself out of bed and into their wheelchair. Kaia was struggling into a pair of pants, strapping on their snorkel like they had two left hands; Zed was still half-asleep, moving even slower than Goose. She wanted to shout at everyone to move faster, to care just a little bit about saving Gwenh—
“Mal.” Etienne had taken her by the shoulder and was drawing her away from the group, nervously bouncing Clover in one arm. “Mal, we need to talk about this.”
“We’ll talk later.” She slung the stuffed cradleboard over her shoulders and followed with her satchel. “You'll keep Clover safe until I get back?”
“I will, but—“ He stepped into her path as she tried to move past him, expression wracked with worry. “Mal, I'm scared — what if you don’t come back?”
She looked away, her fingers curling tightly around the straps of the cradleboard. “I trust you to keep her safe, however you can — even if it means bringing her back north without me.”
"Munch, will you just listen to me?" They stepped into her path once more. "Please — I can't lose another sibling. Let me find someone else to handle it."
She shook her head, mouth pulling sadly. "No one else can handle it," she told him, rock-steady in the face of his fear. She reached out and squeezed his arm, trying to project calm and comfort. "No one else knows the MEC like I do, no one else can walk in without being shot on sight. Okay?"
"Not okay — what about the others? You think they won't be shot down around you?"
"The alternative is that she goes in alone, Cousin," Kaia reminded.
"The alternative is that none of you go!" Etienne snapped. Clover began to cry again, and he swore softly as he turned his attention to calming her down. "Please, Mal, just draw a map, let someone else do it — for Clover's sake."
"Etienne." There was a current of warning in her voice, barely a trace of the roaring anger she held back for the sake of keeping things calm. "I'm going. Kaia is going. It's not fair to you, or to Clover, or to anyone we have to leave behind, but it needs to be done. I need to do this, for my own sake."
His expression warred with itself for a moment, before he took a deep breath, gritted his teeth, and nodded. "Promise you'll be safe?"
"I'll make sure of it," Kaia said, coming to stand by Mal. "I'll carry her home, if I have to."
She ducked in to kiss Clover's forehead. "I love you, my girl. Uncle Etienne will take good care of you." She lifted her head, looking him in the eye. "Give me your gun."
His face flipped through so many emotions that she lost count, finally landing on grim acceptance — she would have expected some excitement, now that she was finally over her fear of guns. Moving slowly, he put Clover down in her bassinet and hesitantly shrugged out of his jacket, as though he expected her to panic and walk it back at any moment. “I'm out of bullets,” he warned, holding out the gun and holster for her to take.
“I have a spare.” She hesitated for just a moment, cataloguing every detail available to her in the dim light: how the nickle glittered menacingly under a layer of oil, freshly applied, how the redwood in the handle looked like a bloodstain against the burlap. Her fingers closed carefully around it, staying off the trigger as she slung the holster over her shoulder. Its weight settled heavily on her left side, throwing off her balance; she adjusted its weight against her ribs once and then once more, and forced her hands to drop down to her sides.
Etienne pulled her into a tight hug. "Please come back, Munch."
"Always."
He sniffed and cleared his throat, letting her free and stepping away. “Take the back door — out front is a little messy at the moment.”
***
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"hey toast you stayed up past midnight because you were working on the fic and not because you were procrastinating by making a hideous pattern for a joke cross stitch" have you never met a writer before
Point A To Proxima Centauri B (92642 words) by d00m_d4ys
Chapters: 37/39
Fandom: Original Work
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Characters: Original Characters
Additional Tags: Original Fiction, Science Fiction, Semi-Dystopian, Imprisonment, Poverty, class warfare, War, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Gun Violence, Physical Abuse, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Emotional Manipulation, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Minor Character Death, Parenthood, Mild Gore, Blood and Injury, Explicit Language, References to Miscarriage, references to pregnancy/childbirth, Cross-Post, and now for the themes!, the reasons people might leave earth vs the reasons people might stay, Class Differences, the ways that resources will be hoarded in a space-travel setting, how flaws and agency are often denied to the dead thus denying them their humanity, how we romanticize the idea of 'the one' or 'soulmates' and let these concepts obscure and diminish the genuine connections we have with other people, now with original character portraits drawn by the author
Series: Part 1 of Point A To Proxima Centauri B, et al.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Even at night, a sudden lack of noise in Delany was as good as a gunshot. Mal jolted awake from her doze with a thumping heart, once again utterly certain that she had never left the MEC, once again deathly sure that someone was waiting for their chance to slit her throat while she lay defenceless.
Once the terror passed and her ribs were no longer in danger of snapping outward from the force of her beating heart, she found herself exactly where she had accidentally fallen asleep: slumped in a rocking chair, safe in Goose's warehouse, with her glasses pressing painful spots into the bridge of her nose, her neck aching from the awkward angle of her chin against her chest.
Clover was asleep in the bassinet next to her knee, snoring softly and showing no signs of distress. Across the room, one of the bedside lamps had been left on, showing Goose in a rare moment of stillness as they sprawled across Kaia’s snoring back, two of every limb tangled together in the dim light. Further on in the darkness, Zed was a soft, shapeless blur draped across Ibiza’s front seats, an orange glow creeping from the seams of her body like candlelight.
Kaia and Goose had already been sharing a bed when she arrived, barely rousing to welcome her in before going back to sleep, and she was struck by how peaceful they looked together. Kaia never quite lost their furrowed brow nor the tensely-wound nature of their body, not even in sleep, but when pinned down by a steady weight they were blissfully limp, face slack. As for Goose, Mal had never seen them rest so quietly: whenever they managed to doze, they often muttered in their sleep, and usually woke up from a nightmare before they could fully fall asleep. The only noise they made while sprawled on top of Kaia was through their faintly-whistling nose.
She shook her head at the quiet in-between, like the silence was a buzzing insect in her ears. Up north, the nights weren't silent: bugs and animals made sure that the darkness had a presence, a kind of reassuring hum that made her feel at ease. Here, the uninterrupted silence was like a held breath, unnerving her too much to even consider going back to sleep. She wanted to get up and check outside, to see if the rest of the city had fallen away while she was sleeping, but she gritted her teeth and steeled herself against the urge: it was quiet because of the late hour, nothing more.
***
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the worst writing crime you can ever commit in my opinion is watering down the dirty talk because you’re self-conscious that it sounds like it’s from a bad porno…..i cannot stress this enough……leave it alone. the moment you tell yourself he would not fucking say that you’re doomed. people will say almost anything if their dick is hard enough
Stop showing me pictures of hudson williams in a silk shirt with a plunging neckline and a glass of whiskey held fastidiously at crotch-height, you're making me want to get on my knees and [extremely long censorship bleep]
Even at night, a sudden lack of noise in Delany was as good as a gunshot. Mal jolted awake from her doze with a thumping heart, once again utterly certain that she had never left the MEC, once again deathly sure that someone was waiting for their chance to slit her throat while she lay defenceless.
Once the terror passed and her ribs were no longer in danger of snapping outward from the force of her beating heart, she found herself exactly where she had accidentally fallen asleep: slumped in a rocking chair, safe in Goose's warehouse, with her glasses pressing painful spots into the bridge of her nose, her neck aching from the awkward angle of her chin against her chest.
Clover was asleep in the bassinet next to her knee, snoring softly and showing no signs of distress. Across the room, one of the bedside lamps had been left on, showing Goose in a rare moment of stillness as they sprawled across Kaia’s snoring back, two of every limb tangled together in the dim light. Further on in the darkness, Zed was a soft, shapeless blur draped across Ibiza’s front seats, an orange glow creeping from the seams of her body like candlelight.
Kaia and Goose had already been sharing a bed when she arrived, barely rousing to welcome her in before going back to sleep, and she was struck by how peaceful they looked together. Kaia never quite lost their furrowed brow nor the tensely-wound nature of their body, not even in sleep, but when pinned down by a steady weight they were blissfully limp, face slack. As for Goose, Mal had never seen them rest so quietly: whenever they managed to doze, they often muttered in their sleep, and usually woke up from a nightmare before they could fully fall asleep. The only noise they made while sprawled on top of Kaia was through their faintly-whistling nose.
She shook her head at the quiet in-between, like the silence was a buzzing insect in her ears. Up north, the nights weren't silent: bugs and animals made sure that the darkness had a presence, a kind of reassuring hum that made her feel at ease. Here, the uninterrupted silence was like a held breath, unnerving her too much to even consider going back to sleep. She wanted to get up and check outside, to see if the rest of the city had fallen away while she was sleeping, but she gritted her teeth and steeled herself against the urge: it was quiet because of the late hour, nothing more.
***
Find the rest of Point A To Proxima Centauri B on my Substack! If you want to help an independent author get some traction and grow their audience, please consider reblogging this post and subscribing on Substack.
Even at night, a sudden lack of noise in Delany was as good as a gunshot. Mal jolted awake from her doze with a thumping heart, once again utterly certain that she had never left the MEC, once again deathly sure that someone was waiting for their chance to slit her throat while she lay defenceless.
Once the terror passed and her ribs were no longer in danger of snapping outward from the force of her beating heart, she found herself exactly where she had accidentally fallen asleep: slumped in a rocking chair, safe in Goose's warehouse, with her glasses pressing painful spots into the bridge of her nose, her neck aching from the awkward angle of her chin against her chest.
Clover was asleep in the bassinet next to her knee, snoring softly and showing no signs of distress. Across the room, one of the bedside lamps had been left on, showing Goose in a rare moment of stillness as they sprawled across Kaia’s snoring back, two of every limb tangled together in the dim light. Further on in the darkness, Zed was a soft, shapeless blur draped across Ibiza’s front seats, an orange glow creeping from the seams of her body like candlelight.
Kaia and Goose had already been sharing a bed when she arrived, barely rousing to welcome her in before going back to sleep, and she was struck by how peaceful they looked together. Kaia never quite lost their furrowed brow nor the tensely-wound nature of their body, not even in sleep, but when pinned down by a steady weight they were blissfully limp, face slack. As for Goose, Mal had never seen them rest so quietly: whenever they managed to doze, they often muttered in their sleep, and usually woke up from a nightmare before they could fully fall asleep. The only noise they made while sprawled on top of Kaia was through their faintly-whistling nose.
She shook her head at the quiet in-between, like the silence was a buzzing insect in her ears. Up north, the nights weren't silent: bugs and animals made sure that the darkness had a presence, a kind of reassuring hum that made her feel at ease. Here, the uninterrupted silence was like a held breath, unnerving her too much to even consider going back to sleep. She wanted to get up and check outside, to see if the rest of the city had fallen away while she was sleeping, but she gritted her teeth and steeled herself against the urge: it was quiet because of the late hour, nothing more.
Still, she couldn't sleep. She pushed herself onto her aching feet and headed for the kitchenette, the rough hole a previous tenant had chipped out of the foundation for food storage. She shifted the lid off of the cool depths and found a covered plate that Goose had sleepily told her to eat if she got hungry: beans, cubed puffball mushrooms, and some kind of grain that had soaked up most of the sauce. After polishing off the plate, she carried it back to the kitchenette to be washed, and puttered over to peer at Goose’s larger workbench, occupied by some new project she would have them explain to her tomorrow, conspicuously empty of any drone or drone-shaped parcels. She glanced over at Zed, sprawled like a teenager with too much personal space; the idea that Goose had gotten rid of it to make her feel more comfortable was so painfully adorable that she would entertain no other explanation.
Exhaustion had begun to creep back into her body. She was on her way back to her bed — debating whether Clover would wake up if she tried to move the bassinet, or if she'd take the slight relocation with grace — when the entry-door opened with a compensating hiss of the atmosphere. The change in differential made the translucent sheet flap noisily before settling down; behind the plastic, a dark silhouette stood in the doorway, glowing around the edges with hazy, pale light. Heavy with food and sluggish from lack of sleep, Mal didn't react right away as the figure moved closer, leaving the door wide open and sweeping the plastic sheets aside. She didn’t recognize the slickly manicured face as the man squinted around the room, holding something in his hand, but she could tell by the teeth that glinted bone-white in the gloom that he was of Midtown.
Ten feet away away from Mal and oblivious, Clover began to fuss in her sleep. The stranger’s head turned sharply to the noise, eyes skimming over Mal's frozen figure before doubling back, eyes darting between her and what he held in his hand. A photograph, her brain supplied.
His mouth opened to speak, but Clover whined again, and all thoughts fled Mal's mind as the adrenaline surged through her body, spring-loading her muscles to launch herself at the bassinet and snatch her child out of harm's way. She pivoted on the balls of her feet like a dancer, aiming for a cluttered corner of the warehouse to disappear into, but it would be no use: she wasn't particularly fast or agile at the moment, and there was no outrunning a bullet. Instead of running, her body locked up, falling to her knees and curling protectively around her daughter; if she was shot running and fell, the inertia of her body might crush Clover beneath its weight. This way, there was a chance of her daughter emerging unscathed—
There was a nauseating thump, a loud, dull noise that bodies made when struck. She flinched at the sound, not realizing that she hadn't borne the blow until she registered that someone else was groaning in pain. She unfurled her spine with aching slowness, lifting her head to peer over the edge of the bassinet at the broad figure shuffling around his quarry: Etienne had the intruder by the ankles and was dragging him out the open door, leaving a thin, smearing trail of blood from the man's clubbed head.
Soon enough they were out of sight, Etienne's blurry figure dragging the intruder around the corner of the building with care and efficiency. Mal pressed Clover to her chest and covered her ears, moments before a single gunshot rang out in the eerie silence. It made no difference: Clover was already awake and crying in bewilderment, distress pitching higher and higher the longer she went unacknowledged. Zed’s motor kicked into high gear like a gasp; Kaia bolted upright and rolled half out of bed with a groggy shout; Goose didn’t react at all, except to lock their arms around Kaia's waist and curl into their lap.
"What's happening?"
“What was that?”
Lights flickered on overhead, flooding the vicinity with warm, amber light. Mal watched the door with a jaw locked tightly shut, only relaxing once Etienne's figure stepped through and pulled it shut, taking a deep breath before stepping through the hanging sheets. “Everything's fine,” he called, chipper voice at odds with the way his mouth was pinched in a grim frown, brow furrowed in deep, angry lines. Half his face was caked in drying blood from a cut in his hairline, a messy gash wreathed with bruising from blunt-force trauma. “Just showing our friend where he can cash his chips."
"Ah, shit—" Kaia crawled out from under Goose and climbed out of bed, snatching up their first aid kit. “How hard did they hit you?”
Etienne blinked in surprise and hurriedly stowed away his gun as they approached, hands shaking as he habitually adjusted his jacket to hide the holster. “It’s just a scratch, honest,” he said, even as Kaia bullied him into a chair to have a look for themself. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a pair of 4x6 photographs, the gloss new but already crumpled. “Some dickheads came around Pa’s place, looking for Munch and the baby. I had to set them straight.”
Kaia took the photos, face draining of colour. Mal crept closer, taking the photos from their hand as she bounced in place and absently hushed her daughter. The first was an image of her own face, pulled from one of the security cameras in the gardens, looking much braver than she had felt in the moment. The second struck a white-hot mark straight into her chest: the water damage had blurred out Goose’s identity, but Clover’s face was perfectly untouched, and there was no hiding that Mal was her mother.
“Gwenh is hurt.” The words fell unintentionally from her mouth, barely audible and scared to death: that was the only way she would have surrendered the photo Mal had entrusted in her care. The question of how badly swiftly followed: Gwenh had to be drugged and coerced into committing the murder of someone she wasn't fond of; to sell out a friend — of course not intentionally, never intentionally, but Mal could not afford to wish for something as simple as bad luck, it was poor form to prepare for anything but the worst-case scenario — the bar had to be twice as high. “I need to go and get her.”
“Absolutely not,” Kaia said, trying to look authoritative despite being in their underpants, undermined further by the panic lacing their tone. “You're walking right into an ambush, are you crazy?”
She found herself looking at Zed, finding in the line of her shoulders and the set of her fingers around the seat of the car that she had come to the same conclusion as Mal — but also that she agreed with Kaia. Mal begrudgingly felt the same, only sticking on the word 'ambush': Render had made his intentions clear, which was antithetical to the concept. The question was why now, why wait until this moment to retrieve an asset—
A worrisome idea struck her, and she hurriedly passed a tentatively-soothed Clover into Etienne’s arms on her way to grab her satchel from beside the bed. She didn't know how she had missed it before, but it was marginally lighter than it should have been: maybe because her camera's weight had always hung around her neck, not in her bag. She rifled through the contents blindly, knowing it all by touch: flashlight, matches, batteries, Gwenh's glasses, a handful of stolen film canisters, cans of soup and a jar of honey — but no camera.
She dumped her things onto the floor, just to be certain, and sat back on her knees to drag her fingernails down her cheeks. Render must have taken the camera from her bag as ransom to ensure her swift return, but he hadn’t counted on her feeling ill at the thought of using it, of going days without realizing that she was missing a vital appendage. His patience had run out, and she hadn't even realized that it was on a timer. Every second she wasted would be taken from Gwenh's body until there was nothing left.
“I need to go, right now.” She took one last look at the photos before tearing them into eighths and stuffing the pieces into her pocket. As she rolled her blanket into an infant-sized loaf and stuffed it into the cradleboard, running the numbers on where Clover could be taken and how fast it would take to get there, she spoke to the room: "I don't expect anyone to follow, but don't try to stop me. Etienne, can you keep Clover safe?"
"Mal—"
“I’m going with you,” Kaia said sharply, turning back to the bed to retrieve their clothes. “Don’t you dare suggest otherwise.”
“Me too,” Zed called, cutting herself off with a yawn as she slithered out of the car. "Where are my shoes?"
"If everyone could just slow down for a minute—"
“Someone wake up Goose,” Mal said, ignoring Etienne as she pulled on her moccasins and swept the bare necessities back into her bag. She glanced over as Kaia lightly shook Goose's shoulder, and impatiently pushed past them to lean on the bed and pinch their nose. “Goose, we need to take the car to Midtown. If you're okay with that, say nothing.”
They sleepily swatted at her hand. “Piss off.”
“Gwenh’s hurt.” She peeled back one of their eyelids. “If you don’t get up, I’m letting Zed drive the car.”
They pushed her off with a groan, dragging themself out of bed and into their wheelchair. Kaia was struggling into a pair of pants, strapping on their snorkel like they had two left hands; Zed was still half-asleep, moving even slower than Goose. She wanted to shout at everyone to move faster, to care just a little bit about saving Gwenh—
“Mal.” Etienne had taken her by the shoulder and was drawing her away from the group, nervously bouncing Clover in one arm. “Mal, we need to talk about this.”
“We’ll talk later.” She slung the stuffed cradleboard over her shoulders and followed with her satchel. “You'll keep Clover safe until I get back?”
“I will, but—“ He stepped into her path as she tried to move past him, expression wracked with worry. “Mal, I'm scared — what if you don’t come back?”
She looked away, her fingers curling tightly around the straps of the cradleboard. “I trust you to keep her safe, however you can — even if it means bringing her back north without me.”
"Munch, will you just listen to me?" They stepped into her path once more. "Please — I can't lose another sibling. Let me find someone else to handle it."
She shook her head, mouth pulling sadly. "No one else can handle it," she told him, rock-steady in the face of his fear. She reached out and squeezed his arm, trying to project calm and comfort. "No one else knows the MEC like I do, no one else can walk in without being shot on sight. Okay?"
"Not okay — what about the others? You think they won't be shot down around you?"
"The alternative is that she goes in alone, Cousin," Kaia reminded.
"The alternative is that none of you go!" Etienne snapped. Clover began to cry again, and he swore softly as he turned his attention to calming her down. "Please, Mal, just draw a map, let someone else do it — for Clover's sake."
"Etienne." There was a current of warning in her voice, barely a trace of the roaring anger she held back for the sake of keeping things calm. "I'm going. Kaia is going. It's not fair to you, or to Clover, or to anyone we have to leave behind, but it needs to be done. I need to do this, for my own sake."
His expression warred with itself for a moment, before he took a deep breath, gritted his teeth, and nodded. "Promise you'll be safe?"
"I'll make sure of it," Kaia said, coming to stand by Mal. "I'll carry her home, if I have to."
She ducked in to kiss Clover's forehead. "I love you, my girl. Uncle Etienne will take good care of you." She lifted her head, looking him in the eye. "Give me your gun."
His face flipped through so many emotions that she lost count, finally landing on grim acceptance — she would have expected some excitement, now that she was finally over her fear of guns. Moving slowly, he put Clover down in her bassinet and hesitantly shrugged out of his jacket, as though he expected her to panic and walk it back at any moment. “I'm out of bullets,” he warned, holding out the gun and holster for her to take.
“I have a spare.” She hesitated for just a moment, cataloguing every detail available to her in the dim light: how the nickle glittered menacingly under a layer of oil, freshly applied, how the redwood in the handle looked like a bloodstain against the burlap. Her fingers closed carefully around it, staying off the trigger as she slung the holster over her shoulder. Its weight settled heavily on her left side, throwing off her balance; she adjusted its weight against her ribs once and then once more, and forced her hands to drop down to her sides.
Etienne pulled her into a tight hug. "Please come back, Munch."
"Always."
He sniffed and cleared his throat, letting her free and stepping away. “Take the back door — out front is a little messy at the moment.”
***
Thank you very much for reading this latest chapter! You find the rest on storiesbythomas.neocities.org, AO3, or Substack, and if you want to do me solid, reblog this post and help me grow my audience!
Having a crush as an adult that has to pay taxes is the dumbest shit. ooh dear diary today i offered hand sanitizer to the grown man i want to seduce AND he said hi while i was putting gas in my car, it must be meant to be, girl fuck you
Inspired by chapter thirty-four of Point A To Proxima Centauri B, available storiesbythomas.neocities.org.
My recommended listening for Chapter Thirty-Four of Point A To Proxima Centauri B, which can be found on Tumblr, Substack, and Neocities! Please consider liking and reblogging if you enjoyed this playlist, and help me grow my audience!
Wake Up (Choir Version), Llunr
Blue Moon Drive, Lee Harvey Osmond
Arnaq, Elisapie
Severed, The Decemberists
Abstract (Psychopomp), Hozier
One Day Soon, Llunr
The Virus, The Halluci Nation + Saul Williams + Chippewa Travellers
Sur le dos d'une tortue, Samian + Florent Vollant
Some Dreams You Never Wake Up From, Valerie Broussard
The Fault Line, Valerie Broussard
Turtle Island, Renee Christine
Turn And Run, Marianas Trench
We Pray, Coldplay + Little Simz
Pull Off Your Arms and Let's Play in Your Blood, Fight Like Apes
