I wasn’t unaccustomed to waking up in a man’s arms, but I never thought that man would be my annoying captain. I wouldn’t have known who held me if not for my cracked visor blinking, failing to send out a SOS, that illuminated Roys’ pallid face. That face contorted in pain when I moved.

Roys opened his eyes and heaved a great breath. “Are you alright? Injuries?”

“I’m fucking fine,” I grumbled.

He gave me a narrowed look, right eye twitching. “Lucky is an entirely unfitting nickname for you.”

There were more moments in my life that agreed with him than not. However, I pushed off Roys to discover we fell next to a stalagmite that could have impaled us. Also, the water canister fell in with us. Roys saw that, too.

I grinned. “The name is entirely fitting.”

Rolling off the captain, I tinkered with my commlink. Also broken, making the holo screen jagged but that wasn’t what caused the interference. We were cut off from the world above.

Above. I shifted my weight from one foot to the other. We were buried. Just like they were.

“My calls won’t go through. What about yours?” I removed my visor and checked my temple. The nanomites were there, so that wasn’t the issue, either. I went for the water pack. The bag was intact, albeit scuffed up.

“My comm isn’t working either.” Roys struggled to sit upright. He used the flashlight on his visor to illuminate the cavern.

To our horror, we were nestled under the heart-like structure that caused the fiasco in the first place. My hand fell on the flamethrower that, also to my horror, was missing. Right. I lost it up there.

“We move and we move slowly,” Roys said, though couldn’t follow his own order. Attempting to stand resulted in him falling to a knee. Sweat dripped from his temple and his knuckles trembled in the dirt.

I weighed my options. He was injured. He would drag me down, but I didn’t know how to get out and if I needed to outrun something later, he’d make for good bait.

“I expect not to be lectured for at least a week after this.” Turning on my flashlight, I knelt by him where I got a decent look at his injury.

Whatever that liquid was tore through his exoskin and our secondary layer of clothes beneath to leave a wicked burn. Blisters formed across his back, some busted and oozing. His shirt was torn apart, hanging on by a half ripped collar and a few string strands on his right sleeve. The exoskin flickered along the torn edges, broken pieces falling away and threatening to give out entirely.

The exoskins were meant for light travel and equally light attacks. A hit from those vines would have stunned us but not left much of a mark. The acid, however, proved far too much to shield against.

“You deserve to be lectured for at least a week, considering what happened.” Roys didn’t mention how I abandoned him up there. He just hissed when I locked an arm around his waist.

We marched backward. His attention never strayed from the flora. Mine shifted between our front and back. The root system dug a large cavern. There were multiple tunnels branching off from this one. I tried not to think of the dark, of dead end after dead end, of our bodies broken and defeated, left alone to rot.

The flora wiggled and I took the closest tunnel exit.

“How did that thing not get us down here? We’ve been out for,” I checked my comm that still showed the time, “almost an hour.”

Roys didn’t answer. He spent his energy on moving, fixating on the path ahead. Over our shoulder, the flora slept. None of the small tendrils from above reached for us. Perhaps the flora expended its energy and required rest. I didn’t want to stick around and find out.

The tunnel led further in, tall enough that my head brushed the ceiling. The root system twisted among the tunnels, traveling above and below. However, those roots thinned yet the tunnel remained and that raised the question; was it the flora that dug the tunnel or something else?

With the vines dissipating, a pattern emerged, ridges on the soil. Roys grunted when I stopped to investigate. He settled against my side, panting, eyes having fallen half mast. My fingers danced over the soil, feeling the ridges, perfectly apart.

Something dug the tunnel and it wasn’t that flora. As frightening as it was to think of a creature alive down there, that also led to the conclusion that there was a way out. An exit out of the deep dark to the suns.

“I need a break.” Roys’ legs gave out.

I wasn’t expecting it and he fell to his knees. He tugged off his visor and set it in his lap. I wanted to get further, but Roys required medical attention and nothing proved a danger thus far. Roys needed the cradle, but the best we had was med spray. The ointment could do a lot of work and aleve much of his pain. However, that wouldn’t last forever, and frankly, I hadn’t read the manual in years. We were meant to reread, but I was never much of a reader.

“I need your shirt.” I tapped on his exoskin.

He was too out of it to care, letting me tug the upper half off. His veins were dark on his arms, nearing black. Many had the same marks at the Colony. I delivered a lot of the shit they took to get those scars. Moira, no doubt, a type of synthetic that brought on practically maddening euphoria, and incredibly addictive. I took my fair share of synthetics, but moira was always a hard pass. I never thought Roys would be a user. He was too much of a stick in the mud.

I proceeded to rip the ends of the shirt off. “I suggest you bite down on this and lay on your stomach.”

Roys’ eyes fluttered open, his breathing less labored.  “That look on your face is saying you are enjoying this.”

“Immensely, though I admit I would enjoy it even better if there were less clothes, blood, and puss involved.”

Roys grunted, unimpressed, then shoved the ruined shirt in his mouth and laid on his stomach. His back was awful. I used my canteen to wash the debris off. He groaned and muscles flexed. Though the tunnel was cooler than the jungle, he continued to sweat, more from pain than heat.

“Here comes the spray.”

The med spray was a long tube with a top that popped off. Pointing the spray at his back, I moved slowly from side to side. Roys tensed, the muscles in his back visible even beneath the chaos. The shirt did nothing to cover his pained noises. The spray fell over him in a thin film, a liquid that clung to his injuries like living organisms.

“Done.” I tucked the near empty canister in my pack. Roys should have one, too.

The spray did its job, slipping beneath the wounds to stop the bleeding. The blisters oozed, lessening in size until they were little more than dead skin hanging off his back. The cradle could piece him back together in a minute, but the spray did enough to let Roys stand on his own.

“Something down here is blocking our comms,” Roys said while tinkering with the nanomites on his temple. They flashed from each of his failed attempts to call out. The med spray did wonders, seeing as he was already back to commander mode. “I can check my downloads but I can’t contact anyone. Yours?”

“Same.”

“Check your supplies.”

We didn’t have much, seeing as his was burnt off from that flora and I was assigned the water canister, so I wasn’t carrying another pack. Weapon wise, we had two blasters, a flamethrower, three blades, two flash grenades and two regular grenades. In terms of supplies, we had one full med spray, our water canister, a lamplight, and three ration packs.

“We could last a few days down here,” said Roys.

“I’d prefer it if we didn’t.”

“We wouldn’t have to worry at all if you followed orders.”

“That took longer than expected.” I stood with the water canister on my back and marched.

Roys put his supplies on his waist, including his visor. He left the top half of the exoskin dangling, too broken to do much else. The flashlight illuminated the path ahead.

“And here you are making the same mistake.” He caught up to block me. “We need to scan these tunnels as we go, otherwise we may end up moving in circles.”

“Then start scanning.”

“I am in no mood for your attitude, Ethin.”

“Lucky.”

Roys got in my face, eyes blazing. “You do realize you would have gotten your friend killed had I not managed to intervene?”

I waited to see if he’d add that last bit, how he came in to protect me but I didn’t return the favor. He didn’t and I shoved past him. He bit back a pained noise.

“That thing would have killed us all if we stood around. I wasn’t about to die doing nothing,” I said.

Roys marched with me. “We had no idea what the flora was or what it could do and you made us learn it the hard way. You shouldn’t have shot, as I ordered, but you panicked.”

“I didn’t panic. I made the best choice that I thought would get me the fuck out of there.”

“Just you?” he challenged.

“Just me.” I took a random turn while Roys had his scanner out. “Now cut the fucking lecture. We’re alive. That’s what matters.”

“You best hope the team is alive. We won’t know until we’re out of here, if we get out of here,” he said and my blood ran cold.

I wouldn’t die down there. I wouldn’t be left in the dark.

Roys stepped in front of me. “You’re impatient, stubborn, and you always do whatever you want regardless of the consequences, especially if those consequences don’t really harm you.” He retreated, voice low. “Maybe you are lucky, lucky that it’s you down here and not any of them.” Then he turned away. “I’ll scan. Stay behind me, if you can do that much.”

Every muscle in my body screamed to walk in the other direction. I would show Roys what it meant to do whatever I wanted. I’d leave the bastard to defend himself, to rot away after that med spray wore off. Pivoting, I had every intention to do exactly that.

Except the tunnel was long and dark and I heard the rustling of the mine, the constant creaks and cracks. The message. A single fucking message on our broken holo screen with our parents pictures. I wouldn’t even get that much. I didn’t have anyone to send that message to, anyway. I had given away all I ever knew, everyone I loved, for a glimpse of freedom. Most wouldn’t see this life as free, but compared to the Colony, tolerating Roys was the better option. Still fucking horrendous, but better.

I marched after Roys’ back, keeping my blade out, considering what happened with the blaster. Roys had a flamethrower in one hand and the scanner pointed ahead in the other.

“I can’t see the team’s vitals on my commlink,” Roys said, bottom lip caught between his teeth.

“They’re likely searching the perimeter for us or waiting for backup.”

We trekked about three hours away from base prior to the attack. Since we were out for an hour, that could be enough time for another group to have caught up, or were close to it.

“Except they listen to my orders and my orders state that no one can stay out after dark. They have at least a three hour walk back, so they don’t have much time to search for us,” he replied. “We should have brought the rovers out today.”

“Good thing nights last barely more than five hours because, if they haven’t taken notes from me, we’re going to be alone out here.”

“We aren’t alone,” he mocked, referring to what I said yesterday outside the habitat.

“I would rather be alone.” And I was once again tempted to make that happen, considering beating the bastard over the head with the water canister.

“How touching.” Roys reached into the small pack on his waist. He retrieved a candy to pop into his mouth. “I don’t think we should move on after nightfall, either.”

“It doesn’t exactly matter here.”

“Caves are well known dwellings for nocturnal creatures. We aren’t too certain if there are any, but I don’t believe we’re equipped enough to risk finding out.”

He had a point there. My silence made him smirk. Death by water canister was growing awfully tempting, but instead, we walked in silence through the tunnels.