A boy nearing the end of his teen years sits on his bed, in his room. His eyes drift, though his mind vibrates, a hot needle, focused on something not in front of him.

A dresser. A hat-stand, though it’s just for the novelty. A computer-setup upon a desk– one layered with papers. Some hold colorless, though still expressive drawings. Others hold what’s obviously schoolwork– lessons in engineering, no less.

He’d given up on school, and hadn’t explained why.

His parents were worried sick.

He’d broken off contact with all his friends.

He couldn’t afford any distractions.

He had someone he really, actually wanted to kill. He’d needed time and space to process that feeling, for it was new.

He wasn’t new to the notion, of course, public media old and modern had seen to that. He’d been thinking of ways to do it, as of recent– slow and loud, or fast and flashy. 

He’d decided, based on what he’d seen, that it would be best not to have a plan for the way he’d end it.

He didn’t even feel too strongly about her, anymore. It was more what that shit-stain had done– how little she’d deserved it, just how far he’d involved himself in what didn’t affect him at all. How he’d tried to make it into some sort of fucking lesson, about freedom or whatever.

How he’d had no fucking reason to stick her in that chunk of rock and let her suffocate.

How he’d done it anyways.

In a much less comfortable part of the world, three wounded souls are sitting amongst trees in a biting tundra.

Four, if you count the thing behind Jordan that’s making it so stupidly fucking hard to hear Rudy.

The bewheelchaired old man had, a moment ago, removed a tarp from a pack in his lap and covered one side of it in snow. Then, he’d laid it over Jordan’s shoulders and head. 

Now, he was explaining something about camouflage and sentry distances– all shit Jordan couldn’t hear because of not-Zain’s incessant blabbering about shit he didn’t care to dwell on:

“–Why did you rely on that locker gag so much, anyways? I remember at least one time where you did it on a wall and actually hurt yourself, though, so it was probably for the best– I think you mighta just resorted to it so often ‘cuz you still weren’t comfortable around me. And, god and Christ and Mary above, have I mentioned your legs are fucking swiss cheese? If they were open to the wind right now, I swear they’d be whistling like a low-budget quior!”

The tarp doesn’t make things much worse– the cold had already been sapping his strength for a while. It’s already at the point where he can’t bother to have Rudy repeat himself.

Soon after, they’d begin to move again– more or less following the straight line they’ve been travelling along.

Jocelyn’s abandoned the notion of full-on carrying him this time– now, she’s just dragging him through the frozen waste. It’s not like he has to worry much about his calves getting frost-bitten.

He’s beginning to fixate on just how white everything looks– the snow, the sky, the clouds– when “Zain” pipes up again;

“Say, y’know what’s happened to Scott?”

That one sticks. And stings.

It brings a pulse more of blood to hit Jordan’s brain, yet more exhaustion following it– where was his friend? Did he know what’d happened to Zain? What he’s currently going through? Or, is he five feet under– in not so much a state to know anything?

The exhaustion takes fuller hold. The world becomes a colorless gruel.

Even the tearing cold gives way to numbness. In fact, he is starting to feel warmer.

But, it is not an entirely pleasurable warmth. It is like the deep, painful ebb one feels when having stayed in bed for hours too many.

Mercifully, though– Jordan is roused from this torturous rest by the feel of a hand against his cheek. His eyelids are like wet paper– they’ve been doing nothing to halt the light, reflecting off the snow as it had been, but they are hard to open all the same.

It is Jocelyn’s hand– but past it, Rudy is pointing at something, and is hunched as low as his chair would allow.

Straining his pained eyes, Jordan can see what he’s indicating; a lump of white among many. But, this one is– different. It doesn’t catch the light quite as smoothly, he could swear there was a line of shadow by its base.

Rudy motions he and Jocelyn forwards, pressing a finger to his lips at the same time. 

He is inching up, himself, and seems to cringe at the low sound of the snow packing beneath his wheels. Jordan’s dragging legs aren’t much quieter. 

Eventually, they get close enough that even Jordan can see what this thing is. One of the foundation’s folks, judging from his riot gear and guns. The white mound atop him was a blanket, colored to match the surrounding powder.

He was unmoving save for the restful rise and fall of his back, a fully-protected head having seemingly planted face-down into the ground. A small, stout white bottle seems to have rolled only an inch from his limp hand. 

In a whisper so quiet as to nearly not make it over the small wind present, Rudy instructs Jocelyn to set Jordan down and claim the man’s weapons.

She is quick but sleight. A pistol, a flare-gun and a knife had been laid out by his side beneath the tarp, which she was careful to avoid moving. 

When she takes out his bolt-action rifle to hand off to Rudy, Jordan sees that it had been pointed towards the treeline. At this his shiver, long exhausted, returns for a moment. As does “Zain”, though regrettably for longer.

“Ooh, someone’s feeling was right, huh? There really might’a been a scope on your head! Oh, but I bet this isn’t it.”

Rudy grumbles, his eyes tracing what little he can see of the man with the tarp down. “Don’t take anything else. Just this much, and we’re risking taking trackers with us. I’d like to screw with his comm, but they’d started varying where they set it, before I left.”

“Zain” smiles, smugly.

“They’re going to check in on him, soon, if he hasn’t been answering the thing for a while.” Rudy continues. “We ought to keep moving.”

Jordan watches Rudy as Jocelyn bends to lift him once again.

Their brow is furrowed harder than ever, almost painful to look at– but he could swear a hopeful smile had wafted across the man’s face.

As they pass the sentry, Jordan sees that Jocelyn had brushed some of the snow blocking the hidden man’s visor aside. Behind it was a face that could hold no more years than five above Jordan’s, though its state could mislead one otherwise. He holds a stony grimace, and the streaks beneath his eyes can be little else than frosted tears.

The bottle by his hand seems to be a pill container. It is only the large line at its labels center that Jordan can make out, and it reads “Oblivisci corpora”. It’s something in Roman, or Greek.

Only when they are a minute’s trudge from the tarp does the idea of killing the Foundation-man cross Jordan’s mind. When he sees not-Zain’s eyebrows perk up at that very moment, however, he rethinks. 

He’s disarmed, now. The only dangers he poses are using his communicator, wherever it might be, or waking up right that second and charging them like a madman might a car.

For another minute, he tries to press the thought down. For another minute of being dragged through piranha-esque cold, he has to deal with “Zain’s” smirk.

The notion only leaves his mind totally when Jocelyn lowers him for a moment, supporting him with her knees as she rounds and snaps a picture of the mound whereon the man had been.

“Y’know”, Zain headaches, as Jocelyn retrieves Jordan and resumes the march, “That tenty-poo joke I made a while back coulda been a Wild West reference. Fuckin’ waste.”

Jordan feels that Jocelyn’s arms are tiring. She’s let more of him drag along the ground, so that his tailbone is getting well-acquainted with the snow. He, himself, had tired of feeling guilty for being this burden a while back.

As Jordan twists his head to see Rudy peering into the sky, and hear him say something about snow, go figure, he comes to the sickening realisation that he can’t see anything but white and gray behind him.

It’s going to be a long road.

 Far away, in a much warmer place, one that smells like whiskey and feels like pinching wood and bindings, Scott is awakening.

The last thing he remembers is his head being rattled to gumballs by many limbs and bats. Soon enough they’d blended together and his daze had become an unconscious state. 

He soon becomes cognizant of a pressure on one of his eyes. It hurt. It was like someone was trying to press it into his brain!

Scott lurched forward, but didn’t get far. His arms and legs were bound behind and under what must’ve been a chair. He knew right away that his armor, helmet and armor amongst it, had been removed. His eye’d stopped being socket-squished, at least.

A recently familiar voice slithers from just in front of his nose.

“Yah, that tends to wake people up. Eye’s a vital organ, body’s hard-pressed to lose it.”

The voice, a man’s, gets further. Scott can hear clattering, more familiar and compoundingly daunting.

“Fuckin’ thing. Damn, you have some small fingers. I wonder how long–”

The Mk-II’s gauntlet, held up in a closed fist, is allowing only trace shreds of its palm-light through.

The room is still partially lit by the potent streams. A fridge. Wood-laden walls. Some doors. His bonds.

His captor’s form is lit, as well.