Robert found himself upside down. The metallic taste filled his mouth; some of it was blood, but some came from actual bolts that found their way under his tongue. He spat them out and rolled to his stomach to get a better chance to sit up. The ringing inside his skull got quieter and he could finally hear stuff around him. The rustle of wind on the trash, the crunching of plastic shards under his knees, and loud, desperate sobbing somewhere above.

“K-kolya? I’m alive.” Rob coughed and slowly opened one eye and then another. There was something sticky on his brow. He couldn’t see much as he was buried under a thick weave of cables and construction plastic.

The sobbing hitched. The crunch and rustle indicated Nikolai got up and started climbing somewhere behind and above. “Robert?!” He screamed a bit too loud than necessary, his voice husky as if he hurt it while crying earlier, which he probably did. “Where are you?! Don’t be silent!”

“Here! I’m fine, honestly. Just… Need to get out.” Robert looked around and realised he was still inside the cockpit of the plane. Despite being very light, the skin of it was so tough, it wasn’t affected by the landslide at all. Whatever broke off the wings earlier and turned the shell into a piece of garbage must have been really strong.

“Are you under?!” Nikolai was now directly above him, and there was a noticeable change of light.

“Yeah! Not kidding, I’m still in a plane.” Rob laughed. He found the whole situation extremely amusing.

Nikolai huffed, straining against something. “I will…dig you out!” And then a stake poked through the lattice of trash and froze just a couple centimetres away from Robert’s nose.

“Uh. Kolya?”

“Yes?”

“How about you dig a metre further from here?”

“...Sorry.”

Robert worked from his side too. He didn’t lose the cutters that were tied to his belt, so he managed to clear cables from an area above the cockpit. A minute later, the weave broke and fell inside, giving way for the daylight to fill his little cave. Nikolai poked his head through, his face dirty, his eyes bloodshot, his nose running. He looked both relieved and distressed, and when he finally saw Robert, he burst into tears again.

“I’m fine, I’m fine.” Robert sighed as he pulled himself up and on top of the creaking lattice of plastic. The side of the pile he climbed earlier collapsed, and they were sitting at the end of the long tail of assorted trash and out of the shade. The landslide stopped when it reached the slope of the crater, bringing them a bit closer to the crawler, at least.

Following Nikolai’s horrified stare, Rob looked down and realised another thing – taking off his shirt before diving into scrap may not have been the wisest idea. His arms, chest and stomach were criss-crossed with scrapes and bruises, and at least two tiny shards of plastic embedded themselves in his skin. He didn’t feel the pain yet, but it would hurt soon enough.

“Shit.” He murmured in a small voice. The scary thing was that he lost his t-shirt in the chaos: it was no longer tied to his back. The signal detector was also gone. Meaning, there was no way this would go unnoticed once he returned home. His mom was going to kill him.

First, they returned to the crawler, where Robert spent a good chunk of their water supply to clean his scrapes. He used bits of old woven fabric he brought for wrapping and insulating tape to cover the deepest scratches; it wasn’t perfect, but it would do until he was back home and in reach of sanitizer and bandaids. Maybe, he should have brought medical supplies with him. He used the rest of the wrapping cloth to fashion himself something like a tank top.

Then, he managed to start the crawler again and brought it between the cisterns and along the rim of the crater, where he could see the fresh tail of a landslide below. With Nikolai’s help, he attached one end of the cable to the crane at the back of the crawler, and pushed the other end down closer to the trash. They would still have to drag the plane up the slope a good 30 metres, but it felt more doable than previously. 

Diggin out the shell took almost an hour. Robert became aware of all the scrapes on his body; it took a great effort not to scratch at them, and he felt like his skin was on fire. He wondered if it was possible to die from not disinfecting so many little cuts in time. Nikolai was really helpful; he didn’t complain and diligently cut all the cables around the cockpit when Rob gave him the cutters and explained what to do. 

They pulled the plane to the surface by attaching some of the cut cables to the loops on the cockpit floor where a seat used to be installed. Wearing the tangle of cables as a harness and ignoring the flaring pain from where they pressed into his sore skin, Robert climbed up the crater slope while Nikolai pushed (or tried to) the plane from behind. It was light, really light for something that could fit a human inside…but really fucking heavy when you had to work in the scorching heat, bruised and hurt. Yet, Rob managed to grab the end of the cable from the crawler and attach the harness to it. He untangled himself and climbed much faster all the way up, fired up the crawler’s engine, and activated the crane to pull the plane up into the cargo compartment. It barely fit, and its hind part was peeking from under the tarp, but it didn’t matter.

They had a plane with a real working core (maybe), and there were so many possibilities of what could be done with it. Nikolai put his hands on the white shell and stood like that for several minutes, while Robert checked if all the cables held. This seemed to be an almost religious experience for the younger boy.

Once he drove the crawler into the shade of the cisterns, Robert let it cool down again before they attempted going home. It was properly afternoon, and small puffy clouds travelled across the sky, occasionally dropping shadows and desaturating the surrounding landscape. 

When Nikolai finally sat down on the cool ground next to him, leaning back on the track of the crawler, Robert took a good look at him. And immediately sat up.

“What the fuck, you are also injured!”

He grabbed Nikolai’s arm and pulled up the sleeve. The left glove was torn to shreds, and long cuts crossed his forearm and wrist; the blood had already caked and it looked too dark as to not be mixed in with dirt.

“It is nothing.” Nikolai whispered. This was one of his latest ‘things’. He learned pretty fast that just not talking to anyone was creating more trouble than it was worth. Still, it was impossible to make him talk about unpleasant things. For example, nobody was sure where he came from. Or who locked him in the janitor’s cupboard after school two months ago. But these days, instead of just staying silent, he would say ‘It is nothing’. Often, it made the asker give up on prying further.

Robert was not such an asker.

“Bullshit. Take off the gloves. We need to wash off the dirt.” He got up and pulled out the half empty water cylinder.

“It is nothing.” Nikolai repeated and didn’t move.

“Kolya, I am serious.” Rob glared down at him. “I know it hurts, you wouldn’t be trying so hard to ignore it otherwise. How did you even get these?”

Nikolai didn’t answer but allowed the gloves to be pulled off and the deepest cuts to be tended. He trembled and hissed, and started crying when fresh blood bloomed under the wrapping fabric, but didn’t fight back. Then Robert pulled on a strap of his left sandal and saw red blisters.

“Dude, seriously? Can you, like, tell me next time that something’s wrong? Preferably, before you fall dead from infection or whatever.”

“It is-”

“Shut up.” He padded Nikolai’s ankles with the last bits of fabric and sighed. This whole day was a total mess.