A Couple of Freeloaders

There was a big light above me when I woke up, convincing me that I was in that tunnel everyone says you see when you die. Had Yuri’s hat not been blocking a quarter of it from reaching my eyes, I would have thought I actually was going to see those pearly gates.

“You’re awake, thank God,” Yuri said, swabbing my head with a cool rag. “You're lucky I got to you in time.”

His words registered in my head, but I wasn’t ready to respond for a solid minute.

“What happened?” I asked.

“After the airlock door sealed shut, you managed to get it back open by messing with the breaker, but not before passing out. I ran in just in time and rescued you.”

Everything that happened was such a blur, and my head was pounding, making it even harder to remember those last moments.

“Guess you saved me twice now,” I sighed, sitting up and massaging my temples. “Keep that up and I might feel like I owe you one.”

“We’ll call it even,” he replied. “It’s thanks to you that my brother is back, but…”

I risked my life to save his brother. If he was about to tell me that his bro didn't make it, I was gonna flip out.

“What happened to him?”

Yuri gestured to a row of beds next to mine, showing me the three scientists were recovering on mattresses. It only just then hit me that we were back in his hideout.

It was impressive that he managed to get all four of us here on his own, but he clarified that it was thanks to me setting the bots to idle mode. Otherwise, getting us all back here would have been impossible.

“All’s well that ends well, I guess.” I scooted to the edge of my bed and got back on my feet. “Any idea why that door sealed shut by the way?”

I wasn’t willing to blame him for that, especially considering he was the reason I got out alive. But it was pretty suspicious that it happened when it did.

“My theory is that the airlock door may have shut automatically when it detected people were leaving the room,” he suggested. “It does need to close in order to replace the air.”

That reminded me of the whole reason I didn’t get out right away. One of the scientists, the one that looked exactly like Yuri with a beard, told me to grab a notebook and a container of glowing yellow liquid.

Yuri had already been investigating those things while I was out like a light. The piss jar was apparently some sort of experimental rocket fuel, and the notebook had some very important details on it.

“Unfortunately, half the notebook is missing,” he showed it to me. “I don’t know if the other half is still in the room, or if this was all that was left when you found it.”

I couldn’t remember well enough if I picked it up in that condition or not, but it looked like someone purposefully tore away a good chunk of it.

“Seems like someone around here doesn't like books very much,” I mentioned. “That manual you found had pages torn out too, right?”

“That’s right,” he nodded. “And how convenient is it that it happened to be related to something so important as the airlock?”

Someone else was in that plant, and I had a feeling they might have been the one who set off the explosion in order to kill these guys.

“Think someone set off the rocket fuel to cause the explosion?” I asked.

“That may be,” Yuri nodded. “But why try and kill them?

“Don’t put it past the Feds to try and kill people who know too much. That notebook probably had info on something big.”

“Can’t argue with that logic,” he said. “I’m just glad we made it out of there safely.”

Feeling a bit better, I started inspecting the condition of the scientists. Both the men were scuffed the hell up with burns and scrapes, so they definitely weren’t out of the woods yet. Doc back home could probably fix them up if we could get them back soon.

The girl scientist was in surprisingly decent condition. She didn’t have a single major wound on her. Yuri couldn’t figure out why she was still unconscious like the other two. He suspected she might have breathed in too many fumes, which was a reason we needed to find a real doctor and get them all checked out properly.

“I got a guy back home who can help,” I said. “We can take my boat back right away.”

“Alright,” Yuri nodded. “Olga! Pora ukhodit'!”

Olga’s little head peeked out of a crevasse in the wall. “Ladno!” She already had a little backpack stuffed full of her things. Clearly she was ready to leave this den of mice. Couldn't really blame her.

***

My rented sail boat was hardly big enough to accommodate six people, so it was a really rough and worrying ride across the shores of Lake Michigan. To make it worse, the lakefront winds were just awful tonight. Everyone was freezing to death.

Despite the perilous journey, we made it back to home territory at about midnight. When I walked up to the gates carting three people and harboring two random Russians, it didn’t surprise me that the guards were a bit suspicious.

“Vanessa, don't tell me your trading people now…” The security guard said over the comms, hopefully joking.

“Go to Hell and open this door already. They're wounded.”

They let us through and immediately took everyone to the doctor in town. I called his wrinkled butt Doc, but truth be told I didn’t like him very much. He had every excuse in the book to charge me just a little bit more money each time for my brother's meds. The only thing that kept me from knocking his teeth in was that he also promised he was on the verge of a cure for his condition. Even if he was stringing me along, I didn’t have any choice but to work with him.

“All these patients?” Doc smiled as he slid on some medical gloves and wheeled the scientists into the examination room. “What sort of mess did you get yourself into today, Miss. Walker?”

“Cut the crap,” I glared at him. “Just make sure none of them die, or there'll be hell to pay.”

I made enough of a stink about smaller things, so he knew I wasn’t messing around when I wanted the best care for them.

“Of course!” A nervous bead of sweat dripped down his face. “You know my hands are only the best. You're brother's still alive because of me, isn't he?”

That piece of work… Bringing up my brother was a dirty reminder that he had me by the balls.

“Just do your job and you'll get paid,” I prodded my finger his way before exiting his building with Yuri and heading home.

“You don’t trust him much, do you?” Yuri asked.

“Is it that obvious?” I rolled my eyes. “He’s got me on a leash until we can figure out how to cure my brothers condition.”

Yuri’s lips twisted. “What condition does he have?”

“Doc calls it mecha exactorintitus. Some weird disease that apparently began popping up around the start of the war to newborns.”

Yuri was a smart guy, but had never heard of that illness. Probably because he didn’t live in a community where people were affected by it at all.

“Some people say it started happening because Thorium power became pretty widespread... Like it was getting into the water or something,” I said.

“And I would say those people are mad,” Yuri asserted. “There weren’t any major changes to society at the time that would have caused children to get sick with some random disease. Thorium had nothing to do with it.”

I wanted to think he was right, but ten years of conspiracies have really made me pretty apathetic to what might have caused it. I just wanted it fixed, that’s all.

***

“Arron, I'm home!” I said opening the front door to my shop.

I usually didn’t wake him up this late, but I noticed his light was on.

He carefully came down from the second floor with an aggressive look on his face.

“You said you'd be home before dark,” he angrily said, suddenly shifting gears when he noticed Yuri and Olga. “Did you start a family or something?” His face twisted with confusion and laughter.

“With this nerd? No way.” I tossed off my bag and put it behind the counter.

“Are you going to introduce us?” Yuri grumbled, clearly not happy at my diss.

“Oh, yeah…” I sat back in my office chair and kicked my feet up on the counter. “Aaron, meet Yuri and Olga. They're our new employees.”

I picked up a remote and turned on the TV next to me, listening in on some old recorded broadcast from God knows when.

“Sis…” Aaron looked really concerned with what I said. “They're not slaves, are they? I heard people have been getting into that lately.”

“Where did you hear about that?!” I shouted, questioning when he would have talked to anyone about anything. He usually stayed at home all day due to his sickness. “No! They just owe me, and I'm giving them a job. Nothing more to it.”

Aaron let out a sigh of relief, then smiled along with a shake of his head.

“Softy,” he muttered with a shit eating grin.

“What did you say?” I pouted, clenching the remote tightly. “I'll have you know, I'm going to make them work hard for their keep.”

My finger accidentally turned up the sound on the remote, causing the TV to get very loud.

“...consin Dells! Come and visit with the whole family to the Water Park capi…”

“Hmm…?” Aaron had a burst of energy and immediately began staring at the screen, as if it were some obsession. “The Dells…”

So, that recording was a special on Wisconsin Dells before the war. I used to watch it all the time with Aaron when he couldn't sleep as a baby. He absolutely loved the color of the water on this crappy CRT-TV.

Come to think of it, I couldn't even remember the last time he'd been out long enough to see a body of water. His sickness kept him indoors and unable to stay awake very long at that. Too bad the world went to shit, or maybe we'd have had a good time making a trip down there…

“You both remind me of how my brother and I used to act,” Yuri laughed. “Always fighting about something.” He had a tinge of worry in his voice. “I hope those times aren’t over…”

He had to go and make it sad. Aaron started asking him about their situation and it almost turned into a therapy session. I wanted to decompress and not think about any problems. Things were so far looking good, and I wanted to go to sleep tonight with that in mind.

“Everyone shut up. I need some rest,” I waved them off trying to get comfortable in my lousy office chair. “Feel free to find a corner and curl up,” I said to Yuri and Olga. “We have blankets in the back.”

This place was pretty clean and thankfully vermin free. I was fine having them crash anywhere they wanted.

“You want us living in your…” Yuri scanned around the room, “GB Games store?”

“Yeah, where else can I keep you caged up?” I put my head back and closed my eyes, letting the soft screech of the TV soothe me. “Just don't take anything without permission. Breakfast is nine sharp. Miss it and you starve.”

Seeing as I wasn’t going to lift a finger, Aaron rolled his eyes and helped Yuri and Olga get comfortable. The two of them were able to share a spare mattress we had in the back. They ended up claiming a portion of the middle of the floor.