A metallic ring echoed, then silence. Healer Theron lowered the comm-unit, a faint tremor running through him. Rhys Kaelen's voice, though full of thanks, had held a brittle edge. An unnatural lightness. It gnawed at him, a dissonant chord in the Enclave’s ordered quiet.
His gaze fell to the data-slate. Caspian, subject of this strange relief. Two cycles ago, he’d been a ghost in a cot, a victim of the Wastes’ unforgiving brutality, suspended in a vegetative state. Then, the impossible: a flicker of consciousness, a slow, painful crawl back to the living. His intrinsic resilience, a rare strength, had aided the healing beyond expectation. Joints loosened, muscles regained memory, movement returned with surprising speed.
But that miracle had curdled. One week of slow recovery, then twelve days of an unyielding stupor. Hypersomnia. A waking sleep, a living death. Memory fragments were already a problem. Theron hadn’t truly expected a full recovery from such a head trauma. But the relapse, this prolonged sleep, was more profound than any sequelae he’d encountered.
He approached Caspian’s observation room. The air felt thick, charged with unspoken questions. Caspian lay still, lost to the deep currents of his illness. Theron leaned closer, activating a low-level stim-field. “Caspian? Can you hear me?”
A low groan. Eyelids fluttered, a struggle against some unseen weight. “S-sleep…” A raw whisper, barely audible over the hum of the air scrubbers.
Theron tried again, softer. “Just a word, Caspian. Whatever comes to mind.”
“Don’t…” Caspian’s voice, rough as grit, slurred. “Don’t… wake…”
A small, professional smile touched Theron’s lips, though it didn’t reach his eyes. “Good. That’s good.”
Later, walking the clean, antiseptic corridors of the Enclave’s healing ward, Theron couldn’t shake the words. *Don’t wake.* He rubbed his chin, a knot of unease tightening in his stomach. Overseer Thorne’s instructions still baffled him. Sending Caspian back to his peripheral dwelling, a small, isolated structure at the Enclave’s outermost defensive perimeter. It seemed… imprudent, given the complexity of the case. A larger facility, with specialized sensory deprivation chambers, would have been better.
But Thorne’s transfer of resource-credits was substantial, far beyond the standard compensation for such a delicate case. In the Enclave, such generosity often implied unasked questions. It wasn’t Theron’s place to pry.
“Ah!” A sudden snap of his fingers, a jolt of recall. He’d forgotten a crucial detail in his rush to relay the Hypersomnia diagnosis to Rhys. The other, less common, manifestations. Behavioral abnormalities. Uncontrolled hunger. Aggression. Hypersexuality. Symptoms often accompanying the deeper stages of the syndrome.
“Well,” Theron murmured, shrugging, a flicker of professional negligence. “What’s one more cycle? He’ll be fine. For today, at least.” A wide yawn stretched his jaw, chasing away the lingering thoughts.
---
Rhys hummed a low, tuneless melody as she walked, the wind from the Ashfall Wastes a cold caress against her face. Relief, sharp and unexpected, still thrummed in her veins. Caspian’s collapse, the Healer’s diagnosis of Hypersomnia – it was a reprieve. A miraculous escape from the trap of her own making, the desperate lie of ‘sworn partners’ she’d woven to protect herself.
The Enclave’s protective arc-lights glittered like fallen stars in the encroaching gloom. Her small dwelling, nestled against the weathered plasteel wall of the perimeter, offered a semblance of security. She keyed in the complex sequence for the outer hatch. A familiar click, but something felt off. A faint scent, not of the Wastes, but of disturbed air, of something forcibly displaced. A shiver traced its way down her spine. No déjà vu, but a prickle of primal alarm.
She pushed open the inner seal. The dwelling was dark, save for the emergency glow-stripes along the floor. Her hand reached for the main light panel. But her eyes caught it first. The rear access hatch. Not merely unlocked, but *torn* open. Twisted metal, splintered plasteel shards littering the floor. A gaping maw leading directly to the unforgiving Ashfall Wastes beyond.
Caspian. Gone.
A cold dread seized her, tighter than any Wastes snare. Informing the Enclave guard units was out of the question. Questions would follow. Questions about her lie, about why Caspian was unsupervised, about her desperate manipulation. That path led to judgment, to exposure, to a potential stripping of her Enclave privileges. Her only sanctuary, gone.
Survival instinct screamed. She grabbed her pack, her multi-tool, a portable glow-lantern. The harsh winds carried the faint, distant howls of scavenger-dogs. Rhys stepped out into the biting chill, the ground crunching underfoot with volcanic ash and shattered rock. “Caspian!” Her voice was a thin, reedy sound, quickly swallowed by the desolate expanse.
She scanned the ground, the skeletal remains of ancient structures looming against the horizon. Her lantern beam cut through the gloom, searching, desperate. Soon, a dark, wide gouge became visible. It wasn’t a foot trail. It was a drag mark, heavy and sinuous, leading away from the Enclave's light, deeper into the Wastes. Not human. Too wide. Too deep.
A dry, humorless chuckle escaped her lips. “He truly is… something else entirely.”
Rhys followed the unsettling trail, her heart hammering a frantic rhythm against her ribs. The drag marks led to a derelict comm-post, its corroded antenna pointing uselessly at a perpetually bruised sky. A faint, frantic fluttering sound came from within the collapsed shell of the building. Her pulse throbbed in her ears. She gripped her multi-tool, its weight a cold comfort.
Her lantern beam cut through the dust-choked interior. Caspian. He was hunched over something, his back to her, obscured by shadow. A small, feathered scuttler lay at his feet, its neck twisted at an unnatural angle, a dark stain spreading across the ash-caked ground. He lifted something to his mouth, gnawing.
“Caspian! Drop it!” Rhys’s shout was ragged, torn from her throat.
Slowly, too slowly, his head turned. His eyes, when they met her light, were blank, unfocused, devoid of recognition. His jaw muscles worked rhythmically, a guttural growl vibrating in his chest. He spat. A gobbet of raw flesh and matted feathers landed in the ash near her feet. Rhys gagged, bile stinging her throat. Her hands trembled, an uncontrollable tremor of primal terror. This wasn’t the vulnerable Caspian she’d left in the Healer’s care. This was something else. Something primal, something horrifying.
She fought down the rising panic, forcing her mind to cold, stark calculation. She couldn’t show fear. She needed to control this. “Caspian,” she said, her voice strained but steady. “You shouldn’t be out here. It’s not safe. Let’s go back to the dwelling. We can… rest.” She tried to imbue her words with concern, not the chilling dread that gripped her.
He dropped the mangled scuttler. The sound of its small body thudding against the ash was sickeningly final. He turned, fully facing her. He seemed taller, broader, his form a menacing silhouette in the dim light. Dust clung to his worn clothes, matted with darker, viscous patches. The Wastes wind, a mournful sigh, whipped his tattered tunic, revealing the taut, corded lines of muscle beneath. A sudden, vivid image flashed through Rhys’s mind: a forgotten medical drawing from an ancient text. A ‘Crimson Serpent Bloom,’ a predatory parasitic plant, its tendrils unnervingly muscular, its flowers a deep, vital red, feeding on life. A shiver, colder than the wind, ran through her.
“Caspian…” Her voice was a mere whisper, dying in her throat.
“Name?” His voice was flat, devoid of inflection, yet it carried an unsettling weight.
“What?”
“Your name?” His blank eyes bored into hers, a terrifying emptiness. Rhys’s mind raced, a frantic scramble. What name could she give? The lie she’d spun, the ‘sworn partner’ identity, now felt flimsy, dangerous. Her true name, Rhys Kaelen, was a secret, too perilous to reveal. Silence stretched between them, taut as a tripwire, waiting to snap.