Coming out of cryo was like catching yourself nodding off. Awareness came in waves. Heat first—seeping from the outside, sliding across skin like rain on a pane of glass. He shuddered as he took a true breath, biting his tongue, and ripping his frosted eyelids apart.
This is wrong.
Around him, there echoed a disembodied and eerily calm voice.
“Impact. Impact. Impact.”
Panic swelled from within his heaving lungs. He sought refuge from the physical sensations by taking note of his surroundings.
I’m in a pod.
The restraints that once held him secure, now cinched unevenly around his body, half inflated. The canopy was cracked, and fog spilled into the interior.
Air…Wherever I am, there’s air.
He freed his hands from the restraints, every muscle protesting, begging him to remain still while his body warmed as protocol suggested—but did he have that kind of time?
Pushing his hips and knee against the bed, and bracing his arms against the canopy, he managed to wedge himself upright. With a careful hand he tried wiping free the moisture from the canopy, but he couldn’t make out anything on the other side.
Something’s obstructing the canopy. Crashed into it. Explains the crack.
He adjusted himself so that his back was against the canopy and his feet were on the bed. Then he pushed in an attempt to open the canopy. It opened an inch—then snapped shut again.
Impact warnings. Air. Large obstruction. Still alive.
But he needed more information.
He searched the pod for anything that could help, and found what must be the control panel by following the lines of orange light pulsing along its sides.
He ripped off the cushion covering and found the panel underneath, which slid away with a firm tug. In moments he’d found the manual override to open the canopy, but when he flipped it, all he heard was the motor whine against the weight of the obstruction. Even as he tried to help it along with his own strength, he couldn’t get it open more than an inch.
What the hell is this thing? Move on, Hitori. Move on.
He searched the pod for more, and only served to get himself tangled in the partially inflated restraints…He stared at the restraints again, then at the canopy.
That’ll do.
He pulled the restraints out at the seams, careful to not damage the material and risk a tear. After a few minutes he had them coiled at the bottom of the pod like snakes in a basket. He returned to the panel and triggered a manual deflate.
Step one.
His shoulders and hips burned from the strain of keeping himself upright in the tiny space, but he grit his teeth and started rolling the restraints around his elbow and hand like a fireman’s hose. When done, he paused to catch his breath.
How long had he been awake now? Thirty minutes? An hour? The fog had almost completely evaporated, meaning the air inside was now the same as the air outside, but he still couldn’t see past the obstruction.
A part of him wanted to rest longer, but knew he needed to act quickly. He replanted his feet on the bed and heaved the canopy open that same desperate inch, then began to feed the restraints down the gap. When the restraints reached the bottom, he deftly started another row beside the first and repeated this on both sides till the gap was filled, and there was no more slack.
With a shrug, and one arm covering his face, he engaged the restraints to manually inflate. They swelled, and slowly the canopy began to open. The glass continued to crack, and Daiko waited for the canopy to open wide enough for him to sink through. There was a grinding sound, and the obstruction rolled off, Daiko had hardly a second to adjust as the canopy catapulted open, and flung off its hinges. Without its support, he dropped two meters to the ground, clipping his head on the lip of the pod as he fell.
His vision blurred, and that same robotic voice early dragged him back to alertness.
“-activated. Emergency protocol activated. Emergency protocol activated.”
The klaxon cut off, along with the red flashing lights. They were replaced by dim yellow service lamps running along the walls, which created yawning shadows and made the space appear far more cavernous than it was.
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I’m in the Razorback. We’re still in the Razorback. Think…Red lights for impact. Yellow lights, for backup power.
He wanted to run, to find anyone else still alive, but he forced himself to remain huddled there, listening to the sounds around him.
No sound of the engines. Grounded? Too quiet for a firefight.
Cargo lay scattered in heaps across the hangar, while sparks showered from shorted fuses like fireworks. He investigated the obstruction which had fallen to the side of his pod. It was a cylindrical tank the size of a truck. He spotted a line of them across the room, still secured. Only the one had broken free and rolled this way. He looked back at his pod which had escaped all but a glancing blow.
Had it been a meter to the right I’d have been…
“Mina!”
He could hardly speak, his throat felt like it was filled with sand, but her name echoed and carried itself back to him over and over as he rounded the tank. The pod next to him had been struck by the rolling tank head on, he couldn’t even see the cavity where the pod was embedded in the wall anymore.
He pressed his face against the wall to get a better look, but he couldn’t make anything out. The tank had likely crushed the pod into the wall even further. He pushed at the tank one time and knew it was too great of a weight to move on his own.. He tried to remain calm but the panic boiled inside him. And as he bolted across the hangar, he begged for help.
“Anyone! Hello!”
No reply. He jogged the entire length of the hangar till he came across an overturned skiff.
Sweating, panting, he drove the skiff back to the tank, then slipped one of its prongs between tank and wall. Inch by dreadful inch he turned the skiff, rotating the tank off the pod. When he had a meter of empty space in front he slammed the emergency brake and leapt from the skiff. But his legs weren’t ready for such exertion and he crumpled to the ground before the pod.
He remained there on the ground, his body racked with sobs. He’d seen the state of the pod when he removed it with the skiff, now he had to find out. He had to. Slowly he turned his head up.
The pod was crushed flat like roadkill. Orange frost glowed from within, illuminating the twisted flesh remaining.
Grief threatened to consume him, but still he crawled closer. Since moving the tank, blood began seeping through the cracks in slobbering drops.
“Mina…no…”
He reached for the canopy—not to save her, for he knew it was too late—but because she couldn’t remain inside.
As he pulled on the canopy, it simply fell away like an autumn leaf. What was left of her dropped downward, strung up still by a tangle of restraints. He started tearing loose the restraints, as he’d done with his own, careful and methodical, but eventually he was ripping them free as though his own life depended on it.
Without warning she dropped into him, her weight enough to take them both down to the ground. Before they hit, his hands found her head and neck—somehow his protective instincts were still active.
They lay there on the floor—Daiko’s bloody cheek against the cold metal floor, his hand holding what remained of his daughter’s face…
“Erin?”
He held the crumpled remains of Erin, and for a moment was completely stunned. A new feeling came, not relief, but a new storm of grief unique to itself, and he wept anew. He didn’t know how long he waited there, holding the remains of the closest thing to a son he’d ever known, but he did know the blood had run cold by the time he stood. And when he did, it was like a ghost from a grave.
Daiko stepped back from the line of pods, his gaze rolling over the wall to which he—just yesterday—tucked everyone in. The first pod, was pristine, Erin’s a mangled wreck, and his own damaged beyond repair.
His eyes drifted, teeth chattering, to the next pod after his own.
Mina…Gods. Thank you.
It glowed warm and untouched. He pressed his forehead against the glass, leaving a red imprint as he pulled away. She was alive, and that was enough to drive him forward. He had to know.
The two pods after Mina’s were pristine as well, but the next one…
Oh Mark…
The man’s body hung out of the canopy from the waist. The wall behind the pod had bulged outward, as though the Razorback’s hull had been kicked from the other side. His legs were still encased in the pod, but one, one arm dangled toward the ground as though he’d only just dropped something and was merely picking it up again—except for the blood pooling beneath his fingertips.
Shock set in, and he greeted it like an old friend. Wrapped himself in its numbness like a blanket, just like that day he had survived and Imperia Aneeda had knighted him, given him the title of Mons and the moniker of Dragon. He still could remember how clean her hand had been when compared to his bloody pilot’s jacket.
His body was moving in the now once again, down the line of pods, waiting, begging for his attention.
A thin but long shard of steel protruded from the next one, piercing the canopy without a single crack. He gave the steel a tug and knew, as he had with the tank, he couldn’t do this with his strength alone. He estimated more than twice its length had been embedded through the pod and onto the other side.
In not but one or many blinks, he was searching the hangar for tools, and returned again, set to severing the shard so that it was flush with the canopy. He removed the canopy by cracking the hinges, then sliding it off the shard. And there lay Joyce, neatly pinned through the abdomen. No wails came this time, the shock had taken over his higher functions.
In yet more blinks, he had cut the section of shard from behind her, and lowered her to the ground.
Her face was placid, somehow beautiful, as though she were still dreaming. He promised her there wouldn’t be nightmares—he promised—and hoped he was right. He checked her pulse, by instinct, not hope, then placed a hand on her cheek and admired her smile
He was walking again, feeling fresh tears on his face, but not knowing when they’d come. He managed to walk by the last three pods, who hummed healthy and untouched, before his legs gave out and he collapsed.
As despair gnawed him to the bone, he wished for death, but not even sleep was short in coming. The world had ended, and Daiko had survived, again.
What have I done?
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