exsiliumlogs | slip of the tongue

Entry tags:

slip of the tongue

Date & Time: 2/28 dayish
Location: miles north of the hold and such
Characters: Bariyan and Marty
Summary: PATERNAL INSTINCTS?? PLAIN OL' GUILT? whatever it is it's making this dead dude sniff out this kiddo
Warnings: Fightytimes and scarytimes

The tempering stones sparked uselessly for their second appearance in a row, but Martin had less time to reflect and be disappointed than before. No time, actually, not with those...things hot on his tail. Whatever they were, monster or not, they were strong. Not the sort of thing Martin would suspect any of his cousins to take on their own...hardly the sort he'd stand up to alone, either. That was for sure.

I said I'd come and kill them all, he thought despairingly, ducking behind another sickly, thick-bodied tree and dropping to a crouch, head down and panting. If I can't kill even one, then...Then what good was he, really? Maybe that'd be proof enough he was really not cut out for...for whatever it was this place wanted him for. Maybe this is all a big test.

The further away from the crumbled and ruined cities Martin ran, the fewer encounters he had. All the better. He ought to conserve his energy for returning straight to the Hold, where Martin (big Martin), Bariyan, Eliot, Nik and all the others were. Keeping the scourge burning in the palm of his hand from getting out of control was important – the blacker it got, the less he could conjure. So if I don't have to conjure anything for another three hours...

After waiting for the sound of...of anything and hearing little and less, Martin slid to sit at the roots, letting himself catch his breath. He winced before he could sit all the way, having to sit up and pull the netbook out of the back of his pants (a satchel would really have helped...) before plopping on the ground.

He took a few steadying breaths. Skirting away from the towns and broken cities, yes...He could do that. Veer a little, but always have eyes for the south. He might be a little late, but...but it was better than being a lot dead.

I have to at least try...

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Martin nodded without a word – yes, sir. He shuffled to a stop next to the front of the car, setting the basket down next to Bariyan. Shoving the knives to one side, he pulled out one of the wrapped sticks of jerky.

He fiddled with it for a minute or so to no real result, mouth tugging in a frown. He eventually just tore the wrapper apart with his teeth, snapping off a bite thoughtlessly. It reminded him how hungry he was, and that stick was no more for the world.

"You don't eat?" he asked, one hand back in the basket, fishing for more.

Bariyan smiled when Martin figured out how to get past the packaging. It felt like the first time he'd seen the boy look anything but miserable -- which was sad, in and of itself. Of course he always looked unhappy. Martin didn't belong here.

But in all honesty, Bariyan did not think that Martin's homeworld sounded like a much better place.

He shook his head in response to the question. "No. That's one of the perks of being dead. Or one of the losses, depending." He frowned off into the distance. Definitely a loss, for Bariyan.

Oh.

Martin stopped tearing at the second wrapper, starting to color again. Why did I even ask? Of course he wouldn't eat if he--

"Sorry," he mumbled, slurred by the plastic in his mouth. He tore it, shaking the remains back into the basket (it seemed better than just letting it drop on the ground). He kept his gaze low, watching his distorted reflection in the weathered paint, squinting against the glare from occasional sunlight as clouds rolled past. Small flakes of jerky sprinkled down now and then as he bit down and pulled another piece free. It wasn't very appetizing anymore.

Bariyan took notice of the sudden embarrassment and hastily said, "No, it's fine-- don't worry about it."

He paused before adding, "You can accomplish so much more when you don't have to stop to eat or sleep. It's mostly convenient. Useful." He left out the part where it was also a horror: endless days and nights where all he had to occupy himself were his inner demons, eating away at him from the inside out.

Maybe that was why he almost liked it here. New frets, new worries, new things to keep him occupied. And all of them external to himself.

Bariyan shrugged and moved away from those thoughts. "You have any undead lore where you come from?"

Martin's gaze slowly lifted, blinking at the pros. It didn't...seem all that good overall, but then, he was mostly going by his nose. Maybe it was alright, horrible stench aside.

He licked at crumbs at the corner of his mouth and stared for a moment. Undead? He had to think about it, glancing upward as he did.

"Um..." He squinted, looking away from the sky. "I don't really know. Adam would. I didn't study a lot of it. Maybe, maybe kind of like...parasites, but..." He swallowed, starting to grimace and grow uneasy with his words. "But I don't know. Sorry."

"That's all right. I was just curious." That was probably to be expected: didn't seem like zombies were a common thing in either of their worlds. "But what's a parasite?"

Bariyan knew, in general, what a parasite is. However, his definition of one had them falling under 'things that doctors take care of'. Yet this was the second or third time he'd heard Martin bring them up.

Besides, he was fairly certain that there was very little common ground between him and, say, a tapeworm. Bariyan made a face. Gods. He sure hoped not, anyway.

The worst thing, Martin thought, his mood starting to decline again. Guilt, rawer than what he'd felt asking mindless, simple questions, knotted into his chest and tightened. How he could even forget for a second? It was...despicable.

He wasn't hungry anymore; the last half of jerky was set back in the basket.

"It's, uh," he exhaled, swallowing. "One that uses other things to do what it wants. People or...animals, or whatever's around." Regina. His gaze flickered toward Bariyan for only a second before starting to move away from the van. "They're not dead, but...But I guess it's no different. Since they're gonna..." Be killed. "Be killed."

He blinked until his vision stopped blurring, taking a heavy breath. "Or I guess it's a lot different. They're not really dead." Three months.

The concept sounded very vaguely familiar.

"Be killed?" Bariyan repeated. He'd pulled a leg up and was resting his elbow on it, jaw propped up by a fist, watching Martin intently. "By what, the parasite?" He tapped the fingers of his free hand against the car. "Or by you folks?"

His questions were detached, as if he were just making small talk. But beneath that detachment lay something worse. Something almost like hunger, clear in the way that Bariyan had gone completely still. All his attention on Martin.

Three months.

Martin felt cold, nauseous, and in way over his head. He was wasting so much time out there in...in whereverland while something terrible was hurting his sister.

"Uhm."

He took in another pair of stabilizing breaths before turning around to face Bariyan, mouth twitching the failed suggestion of a smile.

"How long...are we going to stay here? I mean, before we go back."

Bariyan was slightly surprised by the sudden change in subject, but didn't press it.

"Out here?" He looked back to the sky. "I'm not sure. Until the soldiers leave."

And when would that be? Bariyan had no idea. It didn't seem like anyone else had, either -- when he'd left, the place looked like chaos. An occupation prompted by a haphazard warning over the network, no immediate input from any higher authority, no organized resistance or defense of any sort. From here, the outlook didn't look hopeful.

Bariyan finally slid off the hood of the car to go check the process of the siphon. The tank had emptied out. He gathered his things up again and looked back to Martin.

"You have your netbook with you, right?" Bariyan started to walk away to the next car. "Then keep an eye on the network, see if anything new comes up."

"Yes, sir."

Old habits. He was slow to realize he was doing it again, the wince only in his eyes when he did. He was a lot less afraid to admit, that time around –

"Sorry," he looked down. "I forgot your name."

Bariyan stopped walking. When he looked back at Martin, he was grinning.

"Don't tell me that's why you've been 'sir'ing me all this time," he said. "It's Bariyan."

Hey, it was a hard name for some people to remember. He had never been offended by that sort of thing. Bariyan shrugged it off, and kept going.

[ ooc: do you want to timeskip to back on the road / more microchipping adventures soon? 8) ]

Bariyan.

Martin hadn't moved since he heard it, the dead man getting ahead of him. Names are power people. More than titles. The numbness that settled in at thinking of his sister was getting washed away by a small wave of dread.

But he'd already decided.

"Sorry!" he called, trotting to catch up. "B-Bariyan. I'll remember."

[LEAD THE WAY DEADDAD o7]

Bariyan ransacked as many cars as he could in that town, and it was well past noon by the time they hit the road again. Having remembered that Martin did have his netbook with him, he'd borrowed it to check the state of the network. Nothing good. People still getting chipped, Masked still rampant. The only good thing he could say of it so far was that at least there weren't any death tolls, yet.

He made another couple stops along the way to salvage more gas, or food and drink for Martin. Bariyan was fairly certain that he saw them being watched once, but as soon as he straightened up for a better look there was a flurry of movement, and nothing. But nothing came after them in pursuit.

A couple days later found them slowly rolling up the side of a small mountain. It was colder up here -- not that Bariyan noticed -- and when the fog cleared slightly he could just barely spot the Hold and the surrounding city. It looked peaceful from up here. If this was a siege or an occupation, it was an odd one.

He pulled them to a stop once they'd reached level ground and stepped out. "Break," Bariyan decided aloud, and swung the door open to climb out.

By then, the truck was less of a nightmare and more of a wonder. Fed, coherent, with more than a few distractions to keep him from slipping too far into dismay for long, he was more company than inconvenience as they traveled on. Sure, he didn't remember the names of all of the things he pointed and asked about in the car, but he was making an effort to learn. It was a breakthrough finding out the window could go down; it filtered out Bariyan's smell long enough for Martin to pretend it was almost normal to be out there.

It took Bariyan checking in for him to even remember he had the netbook; he checked in, too, if only because it seemed a polite thing to do. The other Martin, for one. And though he, unlike his undead driver, did feel the temperature change, it was actually pretty welcome. Olvoski was chilly, too.

He stirred out of his half-awake daze at the announcement, finding himself all too easily lulled to sleep when the truck was in motion...and not hitting potholes. He stretched, rolling to face the door, opening it up and sliding out lazily to come to a crouch on the ground, wiping his nose on his sleeve. When he straightened up, he stood to his tiptoes, peering out toward the stretched-out landscape below. Wow...

"Where are we now?"

"Back up north, looks like." They weren't high up or far out enough to see any water, though.

It was dead quiet here, save for the wind. Bariyan blinked and took a moment to absorb it all in. He'd always liked mountains; he'd grown up near the edge of a desert, then went on to spend far too many years trapped in the same one. He had no love for that sort of land. Mountains were nice and permanent, in comparison.

He forced himself out of his daze. A thought had been bothering him as they'd run through the posts on the network in the last couple days.

"Hey. Can you do me a favor?"

"Huh?"

Martin rocked back onto flat feet, glancing over his shoulder. He turned, walking away from the scene and back to the truck. "Like what?"

"I think... I might've gotten chipped." Bariyan scowled. "Not sure though. Can you check for me?"

He had no idea what it'd look like. He assumed there'd be a wound of some sort. But it might be hard to tell, given the fact that -- for whatever reason -- all the stabbing that had been inflicted upon him shortly before and after his death still remained in the form of old scars and unhealed cuts, scattered haphazardly across the entirety of his torso.

Bariyan turned his scowl at himself, looking over his shoulder and tugging at the collar of his shirt.

...Oh.

Martin's expression fell to a nervous concern. He gulped. From what he understood, being chipped was like...like a brand. For what purpose, he didn't really know.

"Um. I...I can try." But he sounded very dubious about it. Hopefully it was either easy to spot...or not there at all.

"Great. I don't know what it'll look like--" Bariyan turned his back to Martin, and pulled his shirt off. "--if there's a wound, it'll probably look fresher than, er, everything else."

He glanced down briefly at himself, as if hoping that all the stab wounds would have somehow disappeared by now. Nope. Still there, to his great disappointment. And just as many as he remembered. His death had not been clean or painless by any means.

And it was still unpleasant to think about. Bariyan sighed to himself and stared back into the trees, waiting for Martin's verdict.

Martin's gulp was audible. He really wasn't the right person for this, he knew, but there was no one else around. It couldn't hurt to...

Oh.

He winced, grimacing at a virtual canvas of punishment, somehow much more dramatic than things he'd seen carried back to the compound. Or maybe no more dramatic, just...more dead? He wasn't sure, and he certainly wasn't going to speak a word about it. Simply do as told, he thought, and that'll be that.

His feet scuffed dirt as he scooted closer, wringing his wrist with a hand as he peered. I don't...know what to...

"Uhm..."

He held his breath as he leaned in, peering around. There was a little indent not like the others...kind of square, with little puncture dots around it. Still raw.

"Oh. I think I see it."

Well, shit. What was he supposed to do now? There was apparently a clinic back at the Hold, but that was far away. And apparently the Masked could use the things to track a target, which meant they could come right after Bariyan and Martin, right now.

That was an unpleasant thought. Sure, they hadn't shown up yet, but that meant nothing.

"I'm going to have to ask for another favor, then," Bariyan said, reluctantly. "Do you think you could cut it out?"

"But--"

Martin felt his stomach do a flip at the request, eying the mark with more unease. It was really in there, whatever it was. Not a simple matter of...of picking it out with a fingernail. "But wouldn't that hurt...?"

Bariyan shook his head. "I can't feel it. You can carve out half my back if you need to, it won't matter."

He stepped to the side in order to reach through the window of the car and pull out his knife. Earlier in the week, he'd taken the time to sharpen it. The blade had a sufficiently good edge on it now.

"You have to be careful, though. Don't damage the chip. Apparently that brings them back." Bariyan paused to think about that, straightening up as he did so. How would they do that? Unless they were secretly following at a distance, he didn't understand how the Masked could easily find him again after the chip had been removed. Damage or no damage. Still, better not to take chances.

He held the knife out to Martin, handle first. "Understand?"

That was a lot of responsibility to note for such a little chip. Martin gulped again, staring at the knife with big, round eyes. But what if I miss it? Or do something that makes things worse? It only sounded like a simple thing to do, but he wasn't...wasn't very good at doing things right, especially the first time around.

He tried to accept the knife with a steady hand, but his nerves had the better of him. He closed his other hand around the first and drew the knife closer to himself and took a bracing breath, nodding a little.

"I'll try," he uttered, almost a whisper. Another swallow, speaking up. "S-so...turn around, and...And I'll try."

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