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heliads · 1 year ago

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everything is blue • conrisa space au • chapter three: some are taken away

Risa Ward escaped a shuttle destined for her certain, painful death. Connor Lassiter ran away from home before it was too late. Lev Calder was kidnapped. All of them were supposed to be dissected for parts, used to advance a declining galaxy, but as of right now, all of them are whole. Life will not stay the same way forever.

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Stars above, Connor Lassiter is so screwed. Just when things were starting to go his way, too. He’d actually managed to sort out the autopilot long enough to limp over to XXIII, not to mention conducted a fairly textbook landing. Sure, the only thing he’d really done to help with that was fight the urge to press random buttons, but, like, he’s in the pilot seat, isn’t he? That means he has to deserve at least a little of the credit.

Besides, he was the one who spotted that weird lights show going on in the space some distance away from his shuttle and managed to steer himself away before a collision. When he peered out the cockpit windows, Connor thought it might have been a meteor shower, but unreported– his nav system failed to pick up on it, which he definitely doesn’t like. Connor likes being aware of large chunks of rock whenever they’re directly in his flight path.

All in all, it had taken more energy than Connor had hoped just to straggle over to a small planet in the same star system. This makes it crystal clear to him, if it wasn’t obvious already, that he won’t be able to make a jump between systems by himself. Not without having a better idea what he’s doing. Once Connor had managed to get his stolen shuttle landed in a commercial spaceport, he’d collapsed in an untidy heap in his pilot’s chair. No wonder it’s so hard for AWOLs to get away. Surviving alone is damn near impossible even after you manage to shake the Juvey-cops, and Connor has no idea how long that will last.

Once he’d recovered sufficiently, Connor had taken it upon himself to do a slow loop of the spaceport and see if there were any larger ships that might overlook a stowaway. Unfortunately, he’d had no luck in finding anything. Everyone was already gone for the morning, and Connor didn’t want to stay in one place long enough to wait for anything new to land.

So he’d headed back to his shuttle, trying to figure out his next course of action, and that’s when he ran into trouble. Connor had left the shuttle ramp down, which is a terrible thing to do, but he couldn’t risk locking himself out accidentally. He knows next to nothing about Officer Nelson’s spacecraft anyway, there’s no point in taking stupid chances.

Still, maybe he should have looked harder and tried to find an instruction manual or something before he left. Maybe then he wouldn’t have come back to his shuttle to find someone else on board.

Now Connor stands in front of the escape ramp he barely remembered to close after him, staring at a strange girl staring back at him, and the only thought on his mind is that this can’t be how it ends. The girl has a wild, frightened look to her, like she might do anything at any moment. He can’t read her enough to tell if she’s aiming to turn him in or just kill him outright so she can steal the ship. He’s heard of worse things happening to lonesome travelers in the outer, darker stretches of the galaxy, anyway.

She looks at him. He looks at her. Her spine straightens almost unconsciously, a silent message to back off: she won’t be talking first, so he might as well set the scene for how this is going to go. Fine, then. Connor would prefer it if he was the one in control. This is his ship, after all. His stolen ship, yes, but his. At least until the Juveys track him down again to reclaim stolen property.

“Who are you,” he asks, as slowly and deliberately as his nerves will let him, “and what are you doing on this ship?”

Belatedly, he realizes that he should have said something like my ship. It’s all in the details now, how he protects himself. One little slip and everyone will know he’s an AWOL. Even a runaway like her could figure that out.

However, the girl seems less preoccupied in figuring him out and more in how to keep him from focusing on her story. She folds her arms across her chest and narrows her eyes at him. “How about you tell me about yourself first?”

He blinks at her in surprise. “You’re on my ship. You go first.”

She arches a dark brow. “Is it your ship?”

She’s onto him already. His poker face must be worse than he thought. “It’s certainly not yours.”

The girl can’t argue with that, although she looks as if she’d like to. “Fine. I’m Risa.”

Connor waits a beat for something else, maybe an explanation as to why Risa seems compelled to enter strange ships and demand answers from him, but she stays silent. He heaves a breath that, although more dramatic than strictly necessary, makes him feel substantially better.

“Fine, Risa,” he mimics, “I’m Connor. Lovely to meet you. Why are you on my ship?”

This, finally, makes her react. Sure, it would be fascinating to see how long they could continue this sort of stalemate, but Connor would like to take off before anyone can find him. After all, he’s still not one hundred percent certain that Officer Nelson wouldn’t have a tracker on this shuttle. That escape plan involves getting this strange girl out of here first.

“I need to go offworld,” she announces. “I needed a ship. Yours was here.”

It’s such a dumbfoundingly simple answer that he almost wants to laugh. “I assumed you wanted to leave this planet,” Connor remarks dryly, “That’s usually why people choose spacecraft as opposed to, say, running with their legs. That would be significantly slower, but far better for me. ”

“Depends on whose legs you use,” Risa shoots back, just as snide. He searches her face for some kind of sympathy for the distribution process but just finds bitterness. Good, that’s something they can finally agree on.

All of a sudden, an alarm starts blaring across the shipyard. It’s not super loud, probably just one of the few grounded cruisers in the area forgetting to turn off an entrance alarm overnight only to have their pilot trigger it by accident when they left for the morning, but it makes both of them jump. Risa looks even more stunned than Connor feels, and despite her attempt to seem casual, Connor can’t shake the feeling that she might be just as terrified of getting caught as him.

“Okay,” she says abruptly, voice high. “Fine. You got me. I’m on your ship and I shouldn’t be. What are you going to do about it? Turn me in?”

She juts her chin out as she says this, practically daring him to screw them both over by calling over a cop. It’s kind of cute, honestly, except Connor has no time to think about cute girls because he is a dead man walking so long as he sticks around on this planet. So he doesn’t. Or he tries not to, at least.

“Why shouldn’t I?” Connor asks, cool as a synth-cucumber, “You’re an intruder. That’s the reasonable thing to do.”

She scoffs. “You’re not reasonable. Or you wouldn’t be walking around like you don’t even know your own shuttle. How long have you had this thing, anyway? An hour?”

That makes his insides shut down. Connor can’t afford to be caught, and he senses that this girl is just as desperate as he is. Perhaps desperate enough to call the spaceport marshals on him if it lets her slip away unnoticed. The only way he can keep this situation under control is if he reminds her who’s in control, who has to be in control– him and him alone.

He stalks towards her. There isn’t a whole lot of room in the Juvey-cop’s narrow shuttle, so within a few footsteps Risa has her back to the wall and her eyes fixed on him. Her chin is up even more than before in an attempt to both seem taller and less afraid, but neither works on him.

“Listen,” he says slowly, “It doesn’t matter what you think about this ship. It doesn’t matter what you think about me. The only thing that’s important is when you get off of this shuttle and leave me the hell alone.”

“I’m not leaving,” she spits back, “so you better learn how to deal with that. You can’t get rid of me without outing yourself for whatever you’ve done wrong. We’re stuck together, Connor, so you might as well get used to it.”

Connor did not sign up for a traveling companion, and he’s about to tell her that in no uncertain terms when someone outside bangs on the wall of the shuttle, making the whole ship rattle with metallic drum beats.

A man’s voice shouts from outside: “This is Spaceport Security. In the name of the Collective, disembark from the shuttle. We’d like to talk to you about your authority to land here. Mind stepping out with your identification and cosmic license?”

Connor stares unthinkingly at Risa, and they may have been fighting since the second she turned up on the shuttle, but at this moment, they are exactly in unison. In a heartbeat, they turn and sprint to the cockpit. Connor throws himself into the pilot’s seat, Risa by his side strapping into the copilot’s chair. The shouting outside grows louder, but neither of them have any intention of meeting it.

He blanks for a moment, hands hovering over the controls, trying to remember what in the suns he did to make this thing airborne last time. A second later, the neurons in his brain finally piece themselves together and Connor toggles a few switches, presses a few buttons that may or may not be necessary until the autopilot kicks in and starts bringing them up more smoothly.

As they lift off, Connor can make out the silhouettes of the security officials like tiny insects on the ground. Within moments, they’re racing away again, hopefully towards a different target.

Connor breathes out a deep sigh of relief. “And we’re safe.”

“Not quite,” Risa replies, craning her neck to see out of the cockpit viewscreens even as they enter the atmosphere, “I think they’re following us.”

Connor nearly snaps his spine in half trying to jump up and see what she’s looking at. “What do you mean, they’re following us?”

Risa extends a slightly trembling finger to point at the two or three ships starting to take off beneath them. Connor shifts a few of the steering controls, but even after their path takes a drastic turn, the ships remain bent after them. Worse, too, the engines on those things are way better than Connor’s puttering piece of Juvey-crap, so the distance between them starts to shrink rapidly.

Connor swears terrifically under his breath. “What do we do?”

Risa vaguely moves her hands towards the equipment panel. “You’re the pilot. Can’t you get us into hyperspace or something? If we do it soon, they might not be able to mimic our jump.”

That’s a great idea. It would be even greater if Connor had any idea how to do that. He’s been relying on memories of an old friend to get him through the basic flight controls, but there was no way in all the worlds anyone in their right mind would let that hungover moon jockey do a hyperspace jump by himself, so Connor hadn’t been able to hear an anecdote involving that particular skill. Instead, he desperately scans the instrument panel, searching for something hopefully labeled.

Risa peers down at the avenging spacecraft behind them, then back at him. “Any day now would be nice. You’ll have to be careful, I think there’s a passenger ship in space near us, too. Make sure you don’t hit it when you get us out of here.”

“I’m trying.” Connor forces out through gritted teeth. There– a section of the instrument panel curves past his left and Connor can make out several switches with a label underneath. The printing is smudged, likely from repeat use. That’s promising, at least: that Juvey-cop would have had to jump to hyperspace several times in his illustrious career hunting desperate kids, right? That’s the only way to get beyond the reaches of one’s own star system without spending years floating inside a tin can like this.

Blast it. Connor has no better options. He reaches forward and flicks a couple of the switches. Maybe that’ll do something to trigger the autopilot?

“You’ve locked onto the passenger ship,” Risa announces doubtfully.

Connor’s heart drops into his feet. “With missiles?”

“No,” she says, frowning at the nav readout, “With a tractor beam, I think. You’re drawing them towards us.”

Connor leans forward, staring out the main viewing window of the shuttle cockpit. Sure enough, the only other entity in the space around them other than the swiftly gaining ground security is smoothly pivoting its course to move towards Connor and Risa. A beeping light on the nav readout indicates that the locking mechanism was successful, whatever that means.

“Well,” Connor says feebly, “we can disengage it, can’t we?”

Risa fixes him with a judgmental, if not outright victorious, look. “This is your ship, isn’t it? Shouldn’t you know?”

He has to white-knuckle the armrests to keep from descending into fury, and it’s only partially successful. “Now is not the time.”

The passenger ship they’re currently towing seems to agree, because a warning light beeps to life on the communications viewport. Accept communication channel from: SS-Disciple?

Connor wrinkles his nose at it. “The Disciple?”

Risa shrugs, but she looks just as confused as he feels. “Maybe they’re religious. Who knows?”

Connor glances back towards the looming spaceship. It’s bigger than theirs, although that’s not a difficult feat to achieve. The strangest thing about it is the ship’s appearance. The edges are smooth, and gleam with the extra sort of shine anything gets when enough money and time are poured into it. It’s practically pearlescent, and definitely more expensive than anything should be out here. Connor can’t help but wonder why someone would go to the trouble of keeping such a thing so well maintained in OH-10 of all places. This isn’t exactly Centerworld, most of the elite don’t come out here that often. Obviously, someone wanted to be comfortable, but why here?

The comms channel beeps again, and Connor accepts before he thinks it through. A voice crackles to life over the intercom, the speaker shaky and uncertain. “Is this– is this a Juvey-cop shuttle?”

Connor’s eyes widen. Suns, he forgot about that. This thing must still be transmitting Juvey-cop identification. Risa stares at him, making Connor wince. He’ll have to cook up a good explanation for that later.

Not right now, though. The other line crackles and hisses expectantly. Connor takes a second to locate the comms button and speaks as deliberately as he can, intentionally pitching his voice lower so he sounds older. “Yes. This is, uh–” What was the guy’s name again? “Officer Nelson.”

A large gush of static; on the other end, someone must be sighing. In relief or despair, Connor can’t quite tell. Juveys elicit startlingly different reactions from a lot of people. “Excellent. You’re here for Lev, then?”

“Yes,” Connor says instinctively, then mouths what?? To Risa, who just raises her hands, having no more clue what’s going on than him.

“Alright,” the speaker says. “We thought you’d show up closer to the colony, but oh, well. We’ll open up once we dock.”

With that, the comms channel is unceremoniously severed. Connor almost misses the background din of static. At least he didn’t have to think about what he’s going to do when that ridiculously overpriced shuttle ducks onto theirs while it was humming in the background.

Risa leans back in her seat, fingers steepled together. “Why–”

“I don’t know,” Connor says, when it’s clear that her questions are far too numerous and all-encompassing to even begin to voice.

“And you–” Another interjection, another weighty pause.

“Yeah,” Connor replies, hoping he’s not agreeing to anything too terrible. It’s not like it matters, anyway. The worst she can guess is the truth.

Silently, they watch the pearl of the Disciple drift towards them. The ground security ships are just moments away, but for some reason Connor can’t think about them, not now, not when this gaudy ship is locking onto them with a gentle hiss and click of machinery.

Slowly, almost in unison, Connor and Risa turn to stare at the awaiting hatch on the side of their cruiser. He’ll have to unlock it, Connor realizes, and then it will dawn on whoever is on the Disciple in need of Juvey-cops that they have only two feral teenagers for help. Stars, he hopes it isn’t a rogue groundless kid who’s getting turned in. This shuttle doesn’t have room for three runaways butting heads, but how could Connor leave someone like that behind?

His decision is made by another comms channel sounding off in a tumult of static. “This is the security force of OH-10 XXIII Spaceport C. Cease your flight attempt and turn yourselves in at once.”

Connor can’t see whatever is happening on the other side of the hatch, but he assumes that whoever had prevailed upon the nonexistent Juvey-cops is probably freaking out just as much as he is. Connor can’t turn himself in. Not yet. They’ll have to force him out.

He glances over his shoulder at Risa, who sets her jaw determinedly. She’s not going down easily either. At least he has that.

A sudden idea occurs to him as he glances back at the awaiting hatch. Stars above, it’s stupid, and probably going to get himself killed even more than he is already. Connor’s already rock bottom though, right? There’s nothing worse than distribution.

So, as if in slow motion, Connor presses the button for the hatch and watches as it whooshes open to reveal what he assumes is a family standing there, frozen in shock. There are many younger siblings and two parents all standing in a semicircle around the youngest kid of all, who’s probably not more than thirteen.

Another man stands somewhat uncomfortably to the side, dressed in a pastor’s usual formal attire. Unlike the rest of the family, who are just now starting to look alarmed, the furrows in this man’s brow tell Connor that the pastor has been unhappy for quite some time. The pastor catches him looking, glances towards the young blond boy at the center then back towards Connor, and, steeling himself, nods. Just a small incline of the head. Just enough to know that somehow he’s guessed at Connor’s terrible plan, and against all odds, agrees with it.

Connor looks at the blond kid in earnest. He’s wearing these strangely formal clothes, like he’s going to a recital or legislative function. They look weird on a kid that young, especially since they’re all white, kind of like– oh. Connor gets it.

Sometimes, your parents decide that they’re going to have you distributed even before you’re born. It’s a practice called tithing, mainly used by the more religious families. Apparently there’s some belief dating back to old-Earth times that the universe was made not by rogue explosions of stardust but a god, and a God who expects that his people will give back to him after he gave so much to them.

The beliefs change from system to system. Some think that the idea of distribution is divine work but don’t attach the name of any particular religion to it. They like that there are grander forces at work than just them, forces who compel the constant circulation of life around the galaxy. Others prefer something a little more concrete. And then there are the tithing families, who would take their dedication to their religion so seriously that they would give up a child just to say that they’d held up their idea of the bargain.

The kid, strangely enough, looks totally chill with the idea. If it had been Connor in his polished white shoes, he would have sprinted for their shuttle the second an escape route opened itself up. Instead, this kid curls back towards his parents, the ones giving him away, as if to hide from Connor and Risa.

It won’t do him much good, though. Connor is already moving, throwing himself out of his pilot’s seat and towards the hatch, then grabbing hold of the blond tithe before anyone knows what he’s doing. Even Risa looks stunned. Connor yanks the kid over the threshold into their shuttle, then slams his hand onto the button to seal off the hatch.

The tithe looks furious, but Connor quickly disengages the other ship before he can try to open the hatch again. Leaning over the pilot’s seat and reaching for the comms channel, Connor addresses the spaceport security ship. “Attention, ground control. We have a hostage on board. Return to your port at once or–” Or what? Is he going to kill this kid here and now? “Or the kid gets it,” he finishes somewhat lamely. They already think he’s an unwind, don’t they? They wouldn’t put anything past him.

The voice that answers him seems furious. “Put the hostage back. Land without any more trouble and we’ll take that into consideration.”

“Consider this,” Connor says, and pokes the tithe sharply in the side. Not expecting it, the kid cries out in surprise. He isn’t hurt, but the ground-sec has no idea of knowing that.

This little action is greeted by a quick rush of words and static. “We’re going to retreat. Put the kid back.”

“You move first,” Connor tells them, and waits until the sec-ships start to back off.

He locks eyes with Risa, and whispers to her while keeping the comms channel off. “Plot a hyperspace jump. The autopilot will help you.”

She nods, eyeing the tithe for a lengthy moment before shaking her head and turning towards the instrument panel. So she gets it, then. She’s like him. They would both do anything to survive.

The comms channel crackles to life again, this time more demanding than before. “Return the hostage immediately.”

Connor scoffs. “What, so you can shoot us out of the sky? No thanks.”

Risa winces as she peers over the instrumentation, and yeah, Connor probably shouldn’t have revealed himself so fast, but he’s running on adrenaline right now. In all the times he lay awake at night wondering what he’d do if something so crazy happened as his parents revoking his grounds license, Connor never made a plan for when he inevitably took a tithe captive miles above the atmosphere of the closest planet.

He peeks at the buttons under her fingers. “Any luck?” He hisses.

She’s about to shake her head, and then her eyes light up and she dives forward to snap on a few switches. The nav readout whirs to life, asking Risa where she wants to jump. She picks one at random. For a moment, nothing happens at all, and Connor watches, panic mounting, as the ground-sec ships start slicing through space towards them once again.

He feels it before he sees it. It’s like the air in Connor’s chest has been punched out of him, and when he sucks in a fresh lungful, the stars are melting together, swimming and elongating until they are no longer in the space outside OH-10 XXIII, they’re hurtling through a place Connor can only recognize from grainy snapshots in school textbooks.

Hyperspace.

He lets out a loud whoop. Risa’s face cracks into a wide grin, the flashing lights from the quickly speeding stars outside reflecting on her teeth. “We did it,” she blurts out, astounded.

Beside them, the tithe crosses his white-clothed arms dolefully. “We did? You kidnapped me. You’ll get in trouble for that.”

Oh, stars above. Connor is so past the threat of vague trouble. He ran away from home. He’s come to terms with his own looming distribution and chased it off. He shot a Juvey-cop and stole a ship and yes, kidnapped a tithe, and the fact that this kid thinks a little bit of trouble will straighten him out is so ludicrous that Connor genuinely bursts out laughing.

Once he starts, he can’t stop. A heartbeat later, Risa joins in, and then the two of them are practically doubled over, gasping for air in between bouts of laughter. The silver threads of stars shoot by outside, and Connor’s stomach aches for laughing, and although he is most certainly a dead man flying, he can’t help but think that just now, just this once, he has never been more alive.

a/n: smh lev. he just doesn't get it!! (he will)

unwind tag list: @schroedingers-kater, @locke-writes, @sirofreak

all tags list: @wordsarelife

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heliads · 10 months ago

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everything is blue • conrisa space au • Chapter Twenty: The Final Call

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The nurse in charge of Risa’s last rites is surprisingly cavalier about the whole affair. Probably because she’s been too busy flirting with one of the guards outside to really care about Risa’s personal feelings regarding her own imminent demise. Once the nurse got over the lingering remains of a boy named Starkey still encrusted on Risa’s skin and clothes, she started ignoring Risa entirely. It’s as if Risa is nothing more than a beating heart and breathing lungs.

Then again, to the workers of the Proactive Citizenry, that’s all she’s ever been, ever since her distribution order was signed by the OH-10 State Home. More than a year ago, Risa Ward was marked for death, and now she’s finally about to face her fate. Funny, she really thought she could escape it. Guess it just goes to show that no one can avoid their path, not forever. Not Starkey. Not even Risa.

The nurse cranes her neck to glance at the soldier standing guard just outside the door of Risa’s holding room, and blushes saccharinely. Risa fights the urge to roll her eyes and asks dourly, “How’s the sweetheart?”

“Charming,” the nurse gushes, then remembers that she probably isn’t supposed to be talking to the sacrificial lamb and shuts up.

Risa snorts. “Yeah, I just love it when my future boyfriends are supportive of killing kids. It really brings out the best in both of us.”

The nurse’s eyes narrow, and she deliberately wraps the cuff too tightly around Risa’s arm when checking her blood pressure. “It’s not murder,” she says, “Murder is what you just did to that boy. This is distribution. It’s different.”

Usually, Risa would like nothing better than to engage in a fascinating debate on the true meanings of distribution, but all of a sudden it strikes her that the whole thing would be pointless. Risa is going to be dismembered regardless of whether or not she can argue with one of the Proactive Citizenry’s many nameless nurses. She’d just be wasting her breath, as if that isn’t also going to be taken away from her in a matter of hours.

The nurse smirks slightly when Risa goes silent, evidently assuming that she’s won. In a way, Risa supposes she has. Everyone in the PC has won. All this time, Risa’s been running around the galaxy in an attempt to escape this, yet here she is, having her vitals checked in preparation for the one problem she couldn’t solve, the one trap she couldn’t help but fall for.

The nurse enters something into the records, then unwraps the cuff from Risa’s arm and places it back in her basket of essentials. Her hand moves towards another device, but stalls halfway there when she gets a message, no doubt from her complicit boyfriend out in the hall. The nurse’s face flushes a happy pink when she opens the message, but quickly her smile fades, replaced by an unnerved, tight-lipped stare.

“What is it?” Risa asks, unable to resist.

The nurse shakes her head tightly. “Nothing you’ll have to be concerned with, I can assure you. Your operation will continue as scheduled.”

Risa groans. “Just tell me what’s going on. Like you said, I’ll be distributed anyway. What if my cranial matter is damaged because I’m dying of curiosity when you slice me up?”

She’s not entirely sure if that’s a thing or not, but evidently the nurse isn’t willing to risk her job like that, so the woman sighs and answers Risa. “Apparently, some contraband radio broadcast went out a few hours ago while that boy was being distributed. It told all listeners to meet up here to protest distribution. Ridiculous, I can assure you, but it’s got some of the stockholders worried. The guards have all been placed on high alert, so be confident in the fact that the PC will hold strong.”

Inside, Risa’s heart leaps. The broadcast the nurse was talking about has to be Radio Free Hayden, which means that Connor is still alive and somehow managed to get the Graveyard AWOLs to safety. No one else would have the means of uniting that many people.

If Hayden’s calling the galaxy to arms, that means they must have a plan. Admittedly, Risa would have appreciated it if they could have rescued her first, then maybe sent out the broadcast later, but perhaps it’s harder to break into the PC headquarters than she thinks. Or maybe that’s just the terror in her talking, trying to dissuade her from thinking that Connor and her friends will have enough time to break her out before Risa gets split into a thousand different vials. If they fail, this time there will be no one there to shatter the pieces and put her to rest.

Risa’s lip curls. “I don’t know. I’d tell your little boyfriend that he’ll get slaughtered with the rest when they come to save me. Don’t you know what the Akron AWOL does to Juvey-cops?”

The nurse rears back. “Don’t talk like that, young lady.”

Risa eyes her maniacally. “You already know it’s true,” she says in a sing-song voice. “Even if we lose, they’ll still get to him. Do you think you could still love your boyfriend if he had unwind parts?”

The nurse jams a syringe into Risa’s arm. Risa hisses in pain, but the nurse doesn’t seem particularly bothered by it. Suns, the nurse is even pleased by prospect of throwing Risa off. “Nothing will happen to Heyward. Don’t be absurd.”

“Tell Heyward to watch his back, or we’ll take it back,” Risa grins.

“Sick, all of you,” the nurse spits. “This is why we distribute kids.”

Risa’s stomach twists. “Every one of us is more deserving to live than you.”

The nurse’s lips thin to the point where they look as if they’ve been stitched shut. She doesn’t answer Risa, instead opting to tighten the restraints keeping her in place, just in case. The nurse takes a few more readings, all the while glancing frantically towards her small holo display whenever a new message from Heyward pings in. For someone who insists that Hayden’s broadcast was nothing more than a scare tactic, the nurse looks awfully worried.

As if catching her looking, the nurse grits her teeth and mutters again, “Nothing is going to happen.”

Just as she says this, Risa starts to hear voices out in the hall, shouts of surprise and confusion. Around the same time, the ground shakes. Risa lurches forward in her seat, kept in place by the restraints and only able to loll around like a doll with its strings cut.

“That doesn’t feel like nothing, does it?” Risa asks, pushing herself back into a sitting position.

The door flies open. A young man in soldier’s fatigues stands in the door, eyes wide like a startled synth-rabbit. “Time to go,” he shouts to the nurse, who wastes no time in abandoning Risa to run to the guard.

This must be the illustrious Heyward of the nurse’s giggles and blushes, but Risa quickly realizes that he isn’t here on official business. “Wait!” She shouts desperately as the pair head to the door, “Aren’t you going to take me with you?”

The nurse doesn’t spare so much as a backward glance towards Risa, shutting the door behind her with a loud click. Risa screams again, a guttural, twisting yell, and thrashes against her restraints to no avail. The building rocks again. Risa doesn’t know what’s going on out there, but it feels as if the whole PC complex is about to be ripped from its foundations. Normally, Risa would have no problem with this, but there is the small issue that she’s still inside it, and if Connor is coming to get her, she would like him to retrieve her, not just her corpse.

The door flies open again. Risa looks to it eagerly– could the AWOLs be inside already, are the defenses here that bad– but instead, she’s just greeted by the sight of four armed guards. They undo the restraints on her chair and start to yank her into the hallway. Risa’s feet give out beneath her when the walls shake again, but other than a slight stumble, the soldiers carry on.

“Wait,” Risa says, suddenly frantic, “Where are you taking me?”

“Last minute distribution,” one of the guards grunts out. “Orders from higher up.”

No. Risa puts her entire body weight into the sole task of trying to get free. She twists and writhes and claws at the guards, hoping to slow them down or otherwise break away, but their grip remains firm. She is carried down the corridor regardless of her attempts.

When they turn around a corner, Risa realizes that she remembers this particular hallway from earlier that day. The door at the far end is marred slightly, its surface blotted by bloody handprints. Risa’s handprints. This is the room where Starkey was distributed, and soon, Risa will face that same fate within those same walls.

As they draw closer, Risa starts screaming again, the words scraping her throat as they’re forced out. No, no, NO, NO. Vividly, forcefully, Risa cannot help but remember Starkey’s last moments outside of the machine, how he had begged and pleaded with her to kill him or otherwise save him from distribution, how his words had lost all sense at the end until the only thing out of his mouth was loud, horrified gibberish. She’s there now, fully mad, absolutely terrified of what is about to befall her.

The force of her screams brings tears to Risa’s eyes, and then she’s sobbing in earnest, tripping over the sound of her begging for her own life. She doesn’t want to die. She doesn’t want to die.

(No one listens).

They’re at the door now. One of the guards pauses, reaching in his pocket for the key. Risa stares at the dried blood and gore on the surface before her. They’re here. Connor is too late. Stars, she hopes he forgives himself for it, that he won’t spend the rest of his life wondering if there were moments he wasted that, if used properly, would have led him to her in time. She’s wondering this now, and remembering a long-ago conversation with a blond boy named Hayden Upchurch, back when she was safe with friends and thought she might live to die of natural causes, if she would ever die at all.

The boy had asked her a question.

Which is better?

In front of her, the key clicks in the lock.

Death?

The guards ready themselves to pull her inside. She’s screaming again.

Or distribution?

Risa makes a choice right now. Dying is better than this. Dying is better than this. She screams once again, gutturally, and stamps her foot down hard on the shoe of the guard who’s attempting to open the door. Risa’s ears are ringing to the point where she can’t hear anything but the tumultuous beat of her heart against her temples.

And– it’s funny, really, what the power of a stressful situation can do to you. Risa didn’t think she was that strong, but the second she slams her foot against the guard’s ankle, he crumples and falls like a stone. He doesn’t move, just lies there on the ground, pulling Risa down somewhat with him. The guard doesn’t land on the ground immediately, supported as he is by the dense web of arms of the other soldiers. Risa pauses in her escape efforts momentarily, staring with confusion at why this guard has suddenly gone silent. The soldier’s head lolls to the side, and then she sees his empty eyes, the perfect circle of red leaking out from the back of his neck.

The other guards see it at the same time, and start shouting in surprise. They wheel around, dragging Risa with them. She blinks stupidly at the people rushing towards her down the hallway. They’re too young to be soldiers, but they’ve got guns, big ones. They aim at the soldiers around Risa. She flings her hands in front of her face instinctively, as if that’ll do any good to stop real bullets, but she isn’t hurt. The other guards either get killed or take off running, leaving Risa’s attackers to run after them, all except one, who takes her in his arms like she’s a dying synth-dove, and whispers tenderly, “Risa?”

She blinks, and then the face comes into focus. Connor. Suns. Risa chokes and flings her arms around him. Connor holds her close, tighter than he ever has before. She thinks it’s a better embrace even than when they had been separated across the worlds and he had found her in the avenging path of an angry cyborg. One of his hands rises to cradle her head all too carefully, and when he finally leans away, he can’t stop looking at her, eyes raking her body over and over again. There’s a horrified expression on his face, a sick and twisted guilt, and it takes Risa a moment to realize why before she remembers that she’s still covered with the debris of a boy named Mason Michael Starkey.

“No,” she says quickly, “It’s not my blood, Connor. I’m fine, I promise. Look at me. I’m fine.”

Connor breathes out slowly. “But– there’s so much of it–”

He raises a shaking hand to trace at Risa’s cheek, her throat. Risa can feel the uneven stickiness of dried blood on her skin. She must look a fright, but the only thing that matters now is convincing Connor that she’s still alive.

“They unwound Starkey,” she chokes out. “I smashed the pieces so they couldn’t use him. I killed him, Connor. I killed him. Starkey wanted me to save him and I couldn’t.”

It’s strange. Risa hasn’t cried about Starkey since he came out of the distribution machine. When the nurse had expressed discomfort about Risa’s condition, Risa had been proud of what she had done. Once she’s face to face with Connor again, though, all Risa can think about is the horrible, horrible thing she had been forced to do. Sunfire, it must be all he can see when he looks at her. There is no Risa anymore, just some creature in her skin, covered in the gore of what had once been a living, breathing boy.

She waits for him to let go, to take several steps back, to run from her as you would any other monster. Instead, Connor holds her close again, and whispers against her ear, “It wasn’t your fault. None of this was your fault.”

Risa is shaking and she can’t seem to stop. “No, you don’t understand. I pressed the button. I did it. All Heartland had to do was stand there and watch. Starkey was begging me to help, and I couldn’t do it.”

If she tries hard enough, Risa thinks that she might be able to float away into the vast and unknowable sky. Her soul could leave this terrible, exhausted frame and find somewhere else to stay, somewhere she wouldn’t have to think about everything that she has done. She could, maybe, except Connor is holding on to her tight, keeping her back on the ground like a tether. She couldn’t leave him if she tried.

“I know you, Risa,” Connor says softly. “I know that you’ve saved my life about a thousand times. I know that I fell in love with the kindest girl I ever met. I know that girl wouldn’t do something like that unless she had no choice. I know that this wasn’t your fault, and I know that we’re going to get out of here now. Is that okay with you?”

Slowly, carefully, Risa pieces herself back together enough to answer in a shallow voice, “Yes.”

Connor smiles. “That’s my girl. Come on, the others will help us out.”

Risa lets Connor lead her carefully back the way they’d come. “I’m confused. How were you possibly able to get in here? Heartland must have a small army of Juvey-cops just in case you tried something like this.”

“Well, that’s the thing,” Connor says. For some reason, he’s grinning. “I had to get a large army, just in case.”

Risa frowns at him. “You have an army?”

Connor’s grin broadens. “Wait and see.”

He pulls her to a stop in front of a large window. They look out at the chaos surrounding the PC complex. At first, Risa doesn’t understand what she’s looking at. She can see the Juvey-cops immersed in fights across the area around them, but she doesn’t recognize any of their opponents at first glance.

“Who are those people?” She asks, craning her neck to see farther.

“Everybody,” Connor answers, a trace of raw wonder in his voice. “Bankers and scientists and regular, ordinary, every-day people from across the galaxy. They all heard Hayden’s distress call and showed up. There are hundreds of them, and more show up by the minute. Some of them you might recognize, though. Sonia from the boundary checkpoint. Your best friend Cam from Molokai. Suns, even Lev.”

Risa’s jaw actually drops. “You can’t be serious. Lev Calder is here? The tithe?”

“The tithe,” Connor confirms, halfway to a laugh. “Trust me, I had the exact same reaction.”

Risa shakes her head in disbelief. “I can’t imagine how he found you again.”

“You can ask him once we get out of here,” Connor promises her. “My plan was just to get you and then leave.”

Risa nods, but before she can say anything, a voice from down the hall tells them, “You won’t be doing either of those things, Lassiter.”

Risa bites back a scream. Slowly, they both turn around to see Dorian Heartland walking towards them. How is it that he always shows up when they least want to see him?

Connor grabs her arm, tugging her back down the corridor and away from Heartland. She follows him, but the door slams shut in front of their faces before they can make it out. When they pivot and try a different direction, the doors shut again.

Behind them, Heartland clicks his tongue disapprovingly. He holds up a small remote in his hand. “Security systems. You have to love them. When you run a building full of AWOLs, you have to be able to shut down sections of the complex whenever you want.”

Connor pushes Risa behind him. “Let us go, Heartland. You’ve lost.”

Heartland cocks his head to the side. “Have I? Yes, you’ve amassed quite a cult following, but those always die down over time. They’ll lose interest and we’ll be right back where we started.”

“They won’t forget this,” Connor vows. “Look around you. The galaxy is up in arms because of who you are and what you’ve done to us. No one is willing to settle anymore.”

Heartland sighs. “Yes, I must admit that your little exposé of my true identity was vexing, but I can come up with a suitable lie to hide it again. Do you think you’re the only people to attempt to reveal me over the years? I’ve had plenty of practice with making ends meet. I’ll get a new face and it’ll be like none of this ever matters.”

Risa actually snarls at him, her anger coiling white-hot in her throat. “No, you won’t. The hounds are at your door, Heartland. Your time is up.”

Heartland sniffs. “Is it?”

He pulls a gun from his waistband and aims it at Risa. His grip is perfectly steady, and Risa has no doubt that he has centuries of experience that would give him impeccable aim. She drops to the floor at once, tugging Connor down with her. The shot goes right over her ear, cracking the glass of the window. It’s a long drop down to the ground, where the only salvation would be Juvey-cops frothing at the mouth at the thought of re-capturing them.

Not a good end for Risa, then. But– an idea occurs to her. She locks eyes with Connor. “The window,” she says unsteadily.

His eyebrows lift, and she sees that he understands. They stand up shakily, each drifting slightly to the side such that their shadows seem to cut off Heartland like dark pincers.

Heartland laughs bitterly. “You won’t get another window escape, Connor Lassiter. I’ll shoot you before you manage to get that thing open, and there’s nothing to throw and break the glass here.”

“You’re right,” Connor drawls. “The only thing to break the glass is you.”

Heartland’s eyes widen. For a moment, Risa looks into the gaze of an old-Earth man and she swears she sees fear, real fear. It takes a lot to shatter a monument, to reintroduce terror into a man who thinks he’s past such base humanity.

When she and Connor lunge at Heartland, she sees it again. Heartland fires blindly at both of them, but his aim is off when he’s no longer careful and assured of himself. The bullet pings uselessly against the glass, fracturing it further. Risa’s hands connect with the man’s torso and she digs her fingers into the fabric of his clothes. His gun is next to her, and she rips it out of his hand with such brutal force that she thinks she takes some skin off his palm with it. The gun clatters to the ground behind the downed Heartland.

Risa’s fingernails are tinged with blood. Not hers. Not Starkey’s, either. Heartland’s head hits the floor with an audible thunk, but he doesn’t stay there for long. Risa and Connor force him up again, dragging the man down the hall and towards the window. He fights against their hold, but this time the momentum is in their favor, and they make traction before Heartland can shake them.

Risa sees the scene as if in slow motion. One of her hands is behind Heartland’s skull, digging into the snug skin with such force that she can feel the seams of different forced donors beneath her fingertips. The other is on his arm, pulling him forward even as he attempts to fight his way free of them. Connor’s stance mimics hers, except his hand is on Heartland’s throat instead, leaving bloody red crescents as Heartland’s diaphragm rattles for breath. Around them, soldiers and AWOLs streak past, fighting battles intense and totally independent of their own. Somehow, the three of them traverse on, interfered by no one. For Heartland’s claims of a loyal workforce, none of his guards stop to help their boss.

Or perhaps they simply don’t care. Right now, there are no age-old monoliths of distribution glory to be seen. Only an old man forced to his knees by two kids. They say the passage of the torch from generation to generation isn’t always easy. Sometimes, the old ones don’t want to give up control. Sometimes, the kids have to force the change themselves.

Heartland’s breath is fogging up the glass before Risa even knows what’s happening. His mismatched forehead leans against the window. “Please,” he says unsteadily. “You don’t know what you’re doing. We can reach an agreement.”

“No more agreements,” Connor hisses.

“Please,” Heartland insists. “You don’t– you can’t–”

A sick sense of victory taints Risa’s tongue. “Every AWOL begs for life before you unwind them. You never listened to them, why should we listen to you?”

“You children,” Heartland says, licking cracked and bloody lips, “So uncivilized.”

Risa and Connor shove in unison. The window has taken several bullet beatings by now. It doesn’t take much for the glass to break, and the full weight of Dorian Heartland is enough by far. The panes shatter around him as he falls through space. For a moment, he hangs there effortlessly, twisting midair to reach back to them for any sort of salvation, diamonds of glass collapsing around him like the rings of a planet.

Then he falls, and falls ugly and beaten. His body crumples on the ground below. Everyone fighting outside turns to stop and stare. Heartland starts to claw his way up, gaze still fixed single-mindedly on Risa and Connor up above him like a wounded synth-dog.

The first AWOL to reach him steps down hard on Heartland’s hand, sending him back down to the ground once more. Another teenager joins in, then another, then another. Heartland is engulfed in a swarm of tearing, kicking, beating AWOLs in a matter of moments. Risa catches one last glimpse of Heartland’s asymmetrical eyes glaring hatefully up at her, and then even that sliver of skin is gone, replaced instead by the mass of people. There’s one low, choking scream of agony, and then Dorian Heartland goes silent.

The teenagers don’t clear out for a while, and when they do, the lump of flesh on the ground is unrecognizable as a man, let alone a distribution magnate.

“They took back their pieces,” Connor says under his breath.

Risa feels a twisted sort of satisfaction cloud her judgment. “Good,” she says.

Turning away from the grisly scene below them, Risa notices that some of the doors have opened up again. “Guess Heartland’s remote got damaged in the fall. I think we can leave now.”

Connor sighs, an exhalation of something far more grave and terrible than just breath. “I would like to leave.”

They depart together. They’ve collected injuries throughout this whole affair, and limping slightly, they emerge into the bright sunlight of their long-awaited freedom. Risa lets her eyes close against the harsh glare, and when she opens them, a blond boy is walking towards her.

“Hayden,” Risa says gratefully.

Hayden extends an arm, pulling her in for a quick hug before releasing her to Connor’s waiting hand again. “It’s good to see you, Risa. Glad you haven’t been distributed.”

“Right back at you,” Risa says. “Thanks for calling up an army for my rescue mission.”

“Connor insisted,” Hayden replies gallantly. “But of course, I could hardly pass up a chance to do another good speech.”

“I’m sure you couldn’t,” Risa says fondly.

Hayden cracks a grin, then turns upon hearing his name called and heads over to a girl several paces away. She’s got a deep glower, but it fades slightly when Hayden says something to her, probably one of his classic jokes.

“That’s Bam,” Connor supplies. “They’re hitting it off, actually.”

“Are they, or is Hayden just wearing her down with bad jokes and sentimentality until she caves?” Risa asks doubtfully.

Connor chuckles quietly. “Hey, it’s been known to pay off before.”

She looks over at him and smiles. “I suppose it has.”

Risa leans against Connor, resting her head against his shoulder. For the first time in a very long time, she realizes that she’s got nothing more to fear, no immediate concerns.

“What happens to us?” She asks.

Connor hums slightly, thinking. “I don’t know. That’s the best part, I guess. We get to decide.”

Risa likes the idea of that. As it turns out, they’ve got plenty of time to decide.

The fight is not over. It never will be. No one will ever stop looking for reasons to provoke each other, not until the last of the stars burn out, not until all of the ships and outposts and starfights are gone. First blood will continue to be drawn, but for once, it will not be the problem of two runaways from the OH-10 sector. Wars will be waged, and they will be safe. Those battles are not their story. They’re finally out of the books, but not for terrible reasons. Just because they’ve finally found peace.

Some people would say that peace doesn’t make for good stories. Connor and Risa would disagree. For once, their worries will be mundane. If a day goes badly, it’ll be because of something small. Maybe the galaxy doesn’t want to hear about the pitfalls of normalcy anymore, but Connor and Risa do. And they’ll do it as they have done everything since their lives started over again, how they’ll go on living for years and years to come: together.

With Dorian Heartland out of the picture, the Proactive Citizenry lost momentum, and, over time, significant chunks of its influence. Legislators across the galaxy were severely pressured to do something about distribution, and although the Collective initially didn’t seem inclined to change it, the sheer force of the galaxy is something no one anticipated. Laws were passed dropping the age of distribution, and then, eventually, it fell off the map altogether.

This is significantly helped by one formerly contraband and now supposedly historical broadcast entitled Radio Free Hayden. Hayden and Bam poked around the PC complex after Heartland’s death and ended up finding evidence of the Proactive Citizenry working in concert with the Collective to hide scientific progress regarding organ synthesis technology. Turns out, there actually isn’t a need for distribution outside of political control, and hasn’t been for a while.

Once that information was leaked, and a subsequent uproar was kicked up, distribution was obsolete almost immediately. Information never passes quickly through space when you want it, but the universe made an exception this time. Some things are important, like our children. When they’ve gone this far for their right to live, who are we to take it away again?

The galaxy is changing. The Chancefolk are returning to their homes in greater numbers. The veil of Collective propaganda is starting to slip from our eyes, and soon, it will disappear entirely. We have a lot to learn as a species. The galaxy holds many secrets that we’ve overlooked in our mad spree to conquer all of it. Slowly, carefully, we must retrace our steps, and look for the small details that hold the greatest of importance, the most enchanting of lessons.

As for Connor and Risa? Well. Their story is over. It’s a good thing, for once. They’re free. Free of the Proactive Citizenry, free of distribution, free of Dorian Heartland. Free of fear.

And, also, free of us.

a/n: the space au has ended!! thank you all so so much for reading, this ended up being wayyyy longer than i expected but i truly had so much fun writing it + interacting with everybody about it. please feel free to ask questions about worldbuilding/yell at me for creating too much drama, i would be delighted to hear from you. over 103,000 words later, it's been a lovely time. xoxo lisa

unwind tags: @reinekes-fox, @sirofreak, @locke-writes

all tags list: @wordsarelife

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