Drowning under the pressure of yearning to know, one may stab themselves in the throat and twist the knife by asking questions that have no answer.
More questions lead to more pain. Is it worth seeking answers, knowing they may be worse than the ache of ignorance? When truth might hurt more than longing ever could?
Motionless, Kaya saw only the luminous shine on the steel door. She felt herself dragged into its world, faint calls of her name echoing as she drifted toward it, powerless to resist.
The hum of the waves faded. Her eyes submerged into the door's metallic sheen, flickering with the pulse of her heart.
It called to her. Magnetic. Monolithic. Monstrous. The faint glint of its mystery clouded her thoughts, grasping her, refusing to let go.
Then, the sound of the surface came again. Louder this time—
"Kaya, wake up!"
A voice pierced the illusion, snapping her back to the quiet deck. She caught her breath, like surfacing from deep water.
"You can't keep doing that, Kaya. It worries me," Malik said.
"Huh? Oh." She blinked, shaking her head, struggling to clear the trance. A slight, awkward laugh escaped her lips. "Sorry."
Malik gave her a look. The kind when someone says they're fine, but their eyes carry a cyclone.
"Come on, Kaya, join the conversation. You're curious, aren't you? Don't you want to hear the crew's old stories?" Kamil said, trying to lighten the mood.
"Yeah, come on." Amaya added with a smirk. "We were just talking about when Kamil tried to catch a wasp on the ship, like an idiot."
"Yeah, let's not talk about that, shall we," Kamil mumbled, rubbing his temples.
A small laugh slipped from Kaya's lips. Her eyes softened, though quiet. The burden she carried felt lighter as she allowed herself to live in the moment. Her constant falling into ponder began to ease.
I should enjoy this bonding time. It might take my mind off that door.
The laughter continued around her.
"And Malik," Amaya giggled, "remember when you told Kamil "don't overreact!" Right as he got stung and screamed like a goat? I nearly pissed myself."
Kamil groaned. "I'm right here, guys."
"Yeah, but you were crying to your mom on the ship's phone right after it happened," Malik said, fighting laughter.
The group cracked up, the noise warm and genuine, like a family. It filled the air with warmth, breaking the silence that had wrapped around Kaya. She let out a true smile for the first time in days, wishing she had met these people earlier.
Yet behind that smile, the door remained. Looming in her mind, ticking like a clock.
Waiting.
The laughter hadn't faded when a loud bang echoed from the corridor, followed by two chaotic voices yelling over each other.
"You actual gremlin!"
"Don't touch my f**king wrench!"
Zayne sprinted down the stairs first, tall, with a grown-out military haircut, barefoot, wielding a mop like a greatsword.
Behind him scurried Lias, wearing a black hoodie three sizes too large, long dark red hair covering one eye, pale complexion, eyeliner, and jet-black nail polish. He held a hissing soldering tool like a flamethrower.
Zayne darted toward Malik, comically ducking behind him despite being much larger. He whispered loudly, "Yo, Malik, back me up. This emo-imbecile is trying to summon Lucifer with his nail polish again."
Lias hissed, "It's not nail polish! It's anti-corrosive arc-metal gloss, you mop-wielding cretin! I was tweaking the railgun's frame, and you wiped it down like a janitor."
"And then you vandalized it with a label saying 'BEWARE: MAY SUCK THE SOUL OUT OF YOU' with a skull emoji."
Zayne peeked from behind Malik, "That's called accurate branding, d**kweed."
Lias snapped, "Oh, that's it, you motherfu-"
Malik stepped between them, raising his hands, barely containing a laugh. "Ladies, we were just finally acting like a normal crew."
"Yeah, well, tell him he can't just walk into my workshop with his Swiffer like it's some exorcism," Lias said, polishing the welding tool.
"Bro, it smelled demonic in there, like an open casket on a Thursday. I had to clean it."
"Sorry not everything smells like Febreze, prick. They're bullets."
Amaya facepalmed. "Great. The circus parade is here."
Kaya nudged Kamil. "What's going on with them?" Kamil chuckled, "That's our entertainment. A walking sitcom. They're here to bless us with a new form of brain damage."
Malik tried stepping aside, but Zayne clung to him. "Don't abandon me, bro. You said you'd take a bullet for me, remember?"
"Metaphorically bro."
"Figuratively, emotionally, whatever, we're day ones. Be my shield."
"You said that while unclogging a toilet with a mop, claiming it was cursed."
"It was haunted. The bolt that poser flushed ruined it."
"It was a prototype. It glowed and had a heartbeat, so I flushed it."
"Oh really? Name three Callgray songs."
"Easy. Uh, 'Feel Of Chains,' and . . . shut up, mop boy." Lias sticked his tongue out.
"As I thought."
The crew burst into uncontrollable laughter. Zayne patted Malik on the shoulder. "If that quiet kid tries anything with his welding torture device, tell my mom I love her."
Lias smirked, "Yeah, tell his mom I 'love' her too."
"Now wait a damn minute, what's that supposed to mean?"
"Children," Malik said, "you don't want another strike from Amaya for the captain."
Amaya crossed her arms, foot tapping. They dropped to their knees, frantically repenting.
"Please forgive me, sir- I mean-"
"F**k! I mean, ma'am, madam."
Lias turned. "Bro. Seriously?"
Amaya glared. "Apologize."
They stood, gagging.
"I apolo-"
"God, I feel like I'm gonna vomit," Zayne whined.
"Say it."
". . . I'm sorry, bro."
"Ugh. I said it. I need a shower," Lias muttered.
"Now hug it out."
"Nah, that's too far," Zayne said.
"Yeah, no way," Lias agreed.
Amaya glared again. "Idiots, you just made a bad first impression on your new crewmate." They turned to Kaya, who smiled nervously and waved.
"Huh."
"Hey, I'm Kaya," she said, her eyes shifting to a gold tint.
Lias shook her hand, stepping aside. She scanned his thoughts.
He's just thinking about welding. Impressed by my firm handshake for my size.
Zayne grinned, shaking her hand. "Hey, weren't your eyes brown a second ago?"
"You're the first to notice. It's my Kolxayne."
Malik blinked, "What's a 'Kolxayne'?"
"You seriously don't know? It's when—" Zayne started, before Lias kicked him.
"Ah, we'll talk about it another day," Zayne muttered.
Kaya noted how Zayne's thoughts took time to form. His mother. She reminded him of his mother.
"She looks like my mom. I miss her. It's been so long."
Kaya didn't mention it. It wasn't the right time.
They seem carefree, but behind the jokes, they're empty. Why? Who hurt them?
"Yo, Malik, want to go fishing with us?" Zayne asked.
"Yeah, give me a minute." They left, and the silence returned, washing over the deck like a tide.
Kaya blinked, "They're . . . interesting."
Malik chuckled, "Yeah, they're my brothers. Dysfunctional, feral, dumb, but they're my best friends."
Kamil whistled, "They love Malik like a brother. You three, that's something real."
Kaya smiled as Malik waved goodbye. Amaya caught her look.
". . . So, you like him, huh?" Amaya teased.
"Huh?" Kaya froze.
"It's obvious. He's a ghost with a pulse. Hard not to be curious."
Kaya lowered her voice, "I can't read him, but something pulls me like an invisible string. I feel peace around him, a peace I've never felt." She sat down legs crossed in front of the wooden railing as she spoke.
Sighing, Kamil sat down next to her, contemplative. "Malik is a strange kid. He looks up to those bozos more than he lets on. Sure he's got manners unlike them, But deep down?" He pointed at his temple. "He's hiding somethin', somethin' he don't know about."
Amaya sat down to join the discussion, "That boy grew up under Cyrus, makes sense why he's polite, but he lost his first crew when he was small. People just like us gone like that."
"That's why we were very sensitive to answer your question. He doesn't remember much, Or maybe he does . . . and he just doesn't talk about it. We don't ask."
Kaya looked down in shame. "You think he's hurting?"
Kamil exhaled, "Yeah, I do, the kid's crying to himself at times, I hear muffled noises, trying to not wake us up, it saddens me, and he endures it. Although . . . that may be only one piece of the puzzle." He pauses.
Continues, "he never makes it about himself, always with a smile. Most people fall inward when they break . . . he fell outward, in his own misery that he shuns. He fights back."
"It's just . . . I read all three of their minds, inside their masks, they're crying, they're like a broken record. Who hurt those poor boys?"
Frowning, Amaya responded, "Zayne and Lias were both drafted to the ongoing war of the trials on opposing sides. They were eighteen at the time, and became great friends."
"After that, I'm not so sure what happened, but it led to them signing up for ocean patrol in the marines, where they are today. Only Zaleth knows what they went through."
"My reading said a lot about Zayne and his mother, forgive me if its a sensitive topic." Kaya closed her eyes.
Amaya spoke seriously, "Zayne misses his mother a lot, he was raised by her, and since he got drafted he hasn't seen her since, and he hasn't come home for dinner once." She said in a monotone manner.
Her body language speaks only regret. Feeling down, Kaya lays her back on the wooden floorboards sighing away in solace.
"Say Kaya, your mind reading, I've noticed, why have you only read everyone here but me?"
"Its because I trust you, I guess."
"From girl to girl, I know you have trust issues Kaya, more with men than women, it shows in your attitude, your posture, at least make a good lie."
Kaya looked down at her feet, expressionless.
"I grew up fine. Sure my parents barely showed up, but they worked hard for me. With most boys near my age, one second they like you, next second they ignore you. Its hard to trust them at times cause of how unpredictable they are, my ex-boyfriend was like that."
"Its the same both ways Kaya dear, not a gender thing. He is only one person. They want control. They think if you're a 'good girl' you can be taken advantage of, but that's flawed beyond belief and happens in most realms . . ."
"And I find it odd that you seem to have an affinity for the one guy you cant read. Its kind of ironic." Amaya lightly grinned.
"I understand, I know I cant see what he's thinking, but I feel solitude around him, A peace that gives a warm hug. I've never felt that before. That peace makes me count on him."
She pauses with an inhale.
"Do you think I can trust him?"
Kamil paused, then scanned the motion of the waves for an answer.
He sighed, eyes scanning the waves. "You already do. Question is, do you want to trust someone you can't understand, or does not knowing feel safer?"
Amaya added softly, "Sometimes, the people we trust most are those we least understand. It doesn't make it wrong. Maybe it'll feel real . . ."
Kaya nodded, nearly lost in thought.
She whispered, "Real."
The silence settled again.
This time, it wasn't just Kaya.
It was shared.
. . .
The one who heard cries.
Beneath the desert of a dying sun, long ago.
Charred remains of bones held bright flowers which flowed in the soft wind of agony. The toxin still radiated like fire and painted the thin air around, faint strands of virus danced in the gusts. There was no life, no swooping of birds, nor the buzzing of insects lingering, only the winds of a perishing deity.
The corpses near the buggy were decaying, revealing more of the blue stems blooming from empty eye-sockets and teeth, violent as the violet sky illuminating across the beige-orange pathways of the desert with no end.
Mercury walked alongside Lisan, embracing a vessel out of comprehension.
Halting, "Lisan . . . How'd you even find me?"
Lisan didn't look back. His sunglasses reflected no violet light in presence, only the black of glass.
"Nobody came . . ." Mercury insisted. "They all howled, decaying. I howled."
He tensed, dropping his voice low, "How did you hear me?"
Lisan turned like a creaking boulder.
"I never heard you, Mercury."
Softly tapping his temple, "All I heard was the echo."
". . . What echo?"
"The Kolxayne," He replied gently, as if it was blasphemous to speak of.
Mercury blinked twice, "That's not an answer."
"Then listen closer."
Silence sparked between both.
"I was never meant to save you," Lisan added. "Unfortunately, the Messengers don't deploy retrievals, even you should've known that, General. All they deploy . . . is a prewritten tragedy foretold."
"So what? You just happened to be nearby coincidentally?
"I was dying nearby . . ." Lisan remarked. "That's why I came, to see if death was prettier in lands with forgotten aliases."
". . . Why'd you change your mind then? You could've left me out here to rot."
Lisan glanced at the graveyard of the once-beloved unit bound to flowers about their falling flesh.
"I didn't, but you cried in that tone I once felt. Not hope, but refusal. Indifference," marching forward, kneeling near Mercury's fallen helmet resting in the sinking sand.
"At most times, that speaks louder than prayer."
Glancing downward, Mercury let go of tension. "This 'Kolxayne' . . . does it have to do with me?"
"No, not yet at least."
He stood, shaking dust off his rich-layered white robe. "But it was your call to earn it."
"Earn? You make it sound like a possession, a title." Mercury said.
"It isn't yours. You merely borrow it, and its what frolics when the soul ascends past adversity, when its too far mangled that it re-constructs itself to carve a new path."
"The Sklaves stole the serpent crest from ignited horrors they tamed, and those worthy steal their gift. It reshapes, molds, reinstates." Lisan states. "A personally wrapped gift that molds you until it can't die, but it does anyway."
"This 'gift' you say, this 'Kolxayne' you sense, what does this all make of you then?" Mercury asks.
Showering gusts of orange sand prance upon the two with violet smiling glints amongst their grains.
"I am the result of when one perseveres in searching lands of tranquility even when none believes, and the atlas's only lead to remnants of beauty."
Mercury glanced backward in understanding of what Lisan meant though vague, then staring at the graveyard that held his unit in a car. Flowers emerge in frisk, bones decay relentlessly, all contained in the slowly sunken buggy that will take the memories with it.
"My men died agonizingly, Lisan." The Replicant muttered.
"Its true." He pauses. "But did you not feel peace in their suffering?"
"I never said that."
"There was no need. You had it written in feathers and ink eloquently on your face."
Heartbeats arose from the desert louder and louder as the sand of violet-orange smiles passed without care.
"I wasn't in peace." He mumbled.
"You weren't. Yet you felt free, didn't you?"
The priest exhaled like a beast from the divine, like sand dripping slowly from an hourglass.
Lisan steps forward, marching in imposing veneration, with writhing passion of a black spectacle that doesn't seek attention, only reverence of assertion.
Meticulously, the sand draws a gust if dust revealing Mercury's note, the page which scattered in the wind, with a spotlight from the nosy lilac crescent near the veil of stars.
Mauve lining put emphasis of a spotlight onto the second line of the page in a bonfire ablaze: "Life is punished by the burden of wake."
Noticing this, Lisan lights a faint beam in a clear grin. "So, you too believe that living is suffering?"
The Replicant responded with clarity. "It is, and it only ends when one perishes." He assents.
"So are you not glad for your unit?" Lisan tilts his head in curiosity.
"They didn't deserve to die in pain. Fate is merciless."
Lisan gazes downward, giving a faint smile. "I see . . . tempest trifles."
Confused, the droid raised an eyebrow at his unconventional phrase.
"Among your troops, they are grains of sand with others in the realms. Washed in expendability of governments, phenomenon's, disasters, and the unknown. No matter the largest stone, or the tiniest rock that constructs an individual—they'll still sink. We will be the island that upholds every grain, every rock, to become a beautiful island. To make them recall what beauty was."
Mercury swallowed a dry throat from a lack of moisture in the infinite desert.
"Forgetting is beautiful on its own. However, one cannot forget that which they look into with dilated pupils. I was unraveling myself, then I heard your cries of unraveling too, and so I arose again. I had died like you, now we are anew to slip off the mask of this ravishing plain that is ubiquitous." The priest announced wholeheartedly.
He stands with broad shoulders as his pony tail whips back in the air, letting loose of his hair tie as his tiger-like hair swayed in the crescendo of nightfall.
"So . . . We will make them remember." Mercury concurred.
"Exactly." The priest grinned brightly.
He kneels down in true prayer, takes out a cross necklace from under his robe, firmly holding it as he mumbles prayer.
Mercury looks down at him in recognition, noticing a tear dropping from the pitch black sunglasses narrowly passing his scar on the right side of his jaw.
"Are you . . . crying?"
Lisan inhales, "Although life is suffering, its the most beautiful of all. So it is best to make it worthwhile, but I shed no tear in sorrow for death, I shed it in content of tranquil, as they are allowed to be forgotten, drifting as their soul lets go. Its wonderful isn't it?"
Mercury kneels near Lisan, "Its an internal clock that's predetermined, they got a bad hand. All by a clock kno—"
"Known as the heart. Which determines our lifespan based on the quality of hands making it." Lisan finishes his sentence.
"Did you read all my notes?"
"No. I simply knew how you think, for we think the same. Just like how you screamed, and I listened." Lisan smiled.
Mercury glanced at the man whom he now considers a comrade.
Lisan stood up, "Now we've stalled for too long, let them rest. They made their train stop, time for our destination." He waved as he walked away into the foggy desert of piercing dust storms.
Following, Mercury caught up.
"Say Lisan, how could you even sense that I had potential for a Kolxayne?"
"Its a part of me I shroud in disdain, for such ability I do not deserve."
What an interesting person. Suspicious, but for now I have to keep watch although I know he is not of bad will.
"If you suspect me of nonsense then-"
The priest rolled up his sleeves revealing not one . . . two . . . three . . . four . . . five!
Five titanium bracelets with sigils and gold lining placed on both vascular forearms that displayed at least ten years of construct training.
Solythebitors? Who the hell is this guy? I thought he was just a priest?
"I'm sure you've seen these before. They restrict the energy from the blood, training it, but unethically."
Lisan continued. "You know 'Solythe' don't you? The energy that makes up the Volvern's vortex in the pocket of your military cargos.
"I've heard of it before." Mercury nodded.
Even with one of those things, the blood in your arms is tight, and with two can lead to a total blockage. But five? Either he's an anomaly, a lunatic, or both. If I got into combat with him Id most certainly lose at the moment.
Hours pass, the two men walk for what feels like eternity. Their sweat of self sheds an image of their corpses left in the sand as rebirth. The voice and the vessel.
A minute, then another. When will this desert end?
"Still going huh." Mercury said monotonal.
"Do not fret, for this pain purifies us." Lisan stated.
Mercury pondered.
Interesting . . .
"We should be arriving to a road where buses pass. Perhaps we ride in there." Lisan states gleefully, not an ounce of stress in the man's face.
Mercury nodded, wiping his face which was all left that stayed intact when he crumbled.
Cascading sand loses its violet light as the sun begins to slowly rise, peeking at the aftermath it could do nothing about.
Vast dunes extended, now conquered as the two who march past the facade of treachery, step towards beauty.
It is their victory, as they are renewed to prestige between them.
It is their victory, and none can take it from them.
That is the beauty of such triumph.
Nobody can steal it.
Nobody.