[Splat]

It's just under a month!
This is the first chapter in ages that I've proof-read before posting. It was a hard one to write and needed some polishing afterwards; possibly it needs more; I might change and update it sometime in the future.

Anyway, I'll get on with it.
Whole lotta itallics in this one! Not to mention two new sliggish curses, one old sliggish curse and at least two instances of strong language; I guess Stivik was having a rough day. (you have been warned!)

Chapter 27

“How long were you a scout then?”

“Odd, don’t ask… Seven years.” Stivik leant his head back, breathing deep from his cigarette. “Don’t tell anyone else any of this. The story I put on my job application wasn’t completely true; I wanted the job but I doubt Bescher’d accept anyone with a past like mine, paranoid as he is.”

He’d told Dionysia this at least twice before, and now she just ignored him. “What was it like out there? I’ve only been outside around factories and my lab.”

Odd, what a question. What could he tell her: how the space around him made him feel so tiny and yet so significant? How on thinly cloudy nights the stars were more beautiful than all the jewels of the Cartel? How the smell of grass and trees and things growing filled his head until he felt more alive than all the cigarettes and alcohol could ever do? How he longed for an untainted view of the sun?

“Well when things weren’t trying to kill you it was pretty dull. Animals, natives… We’re safer inside.” He glanced at her, felt a twinge or nausea at the thought of talking to her, one of the species who had murdered Stack.

“Is that what made you quit, and come inside?”

'Ugh, like I’d tell a stinking mud something like that!' “I should get back to work; this part of the factory is dead and I’ll get in trouble if I spend too long down here.”

She looked annoyed at being shunned like that, but he ignored it. This was the third time she had stopped him and started a conversation with him herself, and he had no doubt that she’d do it again.

He never really minded, until something reminded him of what she was; it was weird; she could seem so much like a slig when you weren’t looking at her; her voice was slightly rougher than a mud’s, and she spoke like a slig, like a decent one; not the gtrz you got in factories like this. That made him think of his pack again; Odd, they’d feel so betrayed if they knew he was thinking of a mud as he had thought of them! Or Dekas would have at least. The others would probably just be disgusted.

But to be honest, this place was as boring as any other when she wasn’t around, whether they were just talking or she was heckling the other – thicker – sligs. He often saw her with them, and would watch from a distance, jeering with her in his head.

The next time he saw her she was with one of her vykkers again, heading, he assumed, towards the lab, though he only saw them briefly, and from a distance.

Later on, just before his patrol ended he was lounging in a corridor when Bescher came round a corner, flanked by a pair of big-bros. He spotted Stivik immediately and called out, “Hey.”

Stivik pushed himself to attention quickly.

Bescher and his guards hurried over. “Do a job for me. I need to get my vykkers into the lab in an hour and it needs to be set up. Go over there and tell the vykker in there – he’s one of the ones that made the black mud – to get out. My sligs will be up there to set things up in 15 minutes.”

Stivik had to resist the temptation just to blurt out something along the lines of ‘How on Oddworld am I supposed to do that?’ and replied instead with a, “Yes sir!” And went away, cursing under his breath. So much for building a reputation if the boss set him impossible challenges!

He was somewhat relieved therefore as, when he entered the corridor of the lab, he met the vykker he had seen with Dionysia coming away from the lab towards him, pausing to give him a look that seemed to say ‘I know something utterly hilarious which you know nothing about’.

Feeling rather better about the situation, Stivik headed to the lab anyway to check that the vykker hadn’t left a mess. As soon as he walked through the door, however, he saw Dionysia lying on a table, unconscious, curled up in a foetal position, groaning lightly.

“Dionysia?” He asked cautiously, approaching her. She gave no reply and he cursed mentally; in ten minutes there would be a bunch of sligs arriving at this room who hated the mud on the table, who could quite easily inject her with something nasty and blame it on the vykker who had just left.

He reached the table she was lying on and seeing her up close didn’t even bother trying to shake her awake. Whatever the idiot vykker had done it would keep her down for hours.

Cursing aloud this time, he dragged her off of the table and slung her over his shoulder before hurrying out of the lab. His shift ended in five minutes so no one ought to notice if he vanished for a few hours.

Trying to avoid any busier passages and any places he expected to find people at this time of day, he carried her towards sector six of the factory, which was currently not being used. He managed it without being seen and with about 30 seconds before the shifts changed and all the sligs started moving about to different parts of the factory, and quickly worked the slig voicelock that shut off the disused sector.

Once inside, with the door closed behind him, he headed out into the main production area, huge, dark and almost silent except for the constant, otherworldly whirr of some air recycling machinery.

The sector was not damaged, but of the six sectors in the factory, two were always shut down, one for cleaning and one just to give the machinery a rest, or to use if another had a malfunction. They cycled so that every sector had a break each year.

Stivik found his way to a small room at the back of the production lines containing a few crates of spare machine parts. He pushed a few of the boxes that were roughly the same height together, and put Dionysia onto them, and then wedged a pipe into the door to keep it open so he would hear anyone approaching, and settled down to wait.

It was cold; not powerfully, but enough so that his breath was just visible in the air. It was the sort of chill that, after you stayed still for a while, started freezing your bones.

He lit himself a cigarette and paced to the door. The production lines seemed unnaturally still, and the whole place was dark, illuminated barely by pale backup lights which made a shadow fall from everything.

He could here the mud breathing behind him. He slumped back against the wall.

Once he and Stack had been working together, hunting something or other. Things had gone wrong, Stack was unconscious and injured and he’d radioed Tilic who had told him to stay where he was until they reached him. He’d been hiding in the back of a narrow cave.

How long ago was that? How old had he been? Not much older than two years anyway; not far out of basic training, and young enough to still make his pants jerk when he walked. He’d waited for hours for Tilic and Burn to get there. He hadn’t known if Stack would survive, if he’d treated him properly with his half-forgotten knowledge of first aid.

He’d stood at the entrance of the cave, waiting, watching, for any sign of rescue, or of more trouble. The remains of the paramite that had almost killed Stack were on the ground, a bloody mess with all the bullets he’d put into it. He’d panicked; all that time he’d spent training himself down the drain. Just shot at the thing madly until it was flat on the ground and most of its guts were on the outside.

He’d been lucky it wasn’t him hurt, or killed, but then that was Stack; he was always one to jump a bullet.

When Tilic had finally arrived the moon was high; the sun had been out when they’d been attacked.

Tilic had told him to guard the entrance with Burn. Dekas and Braz had gone to retrieve the mugs and bring them.

Burn hadn’t been much use then, having never been trained properly, but even though he was more nervous that Stivik himself, he was a comfort. When Tilic had checked over Stack he told them, “He’ll be alright, but we’ll have to get him back to civilisation soon. The job’s off for now. You bandaged him well Stivik; good job.” He hadn’t mentioned the mess he’d made of the kill.

Stivik put his head back against the wall, his cigarette between his tentacles, and the otherworldly whirr of the ventilation system in his ears. Odd, he’d hated that wait, but he’d go back there right now if he could. If they’d known, in two years Stack would be murdered by Grhzz muds; in six, Tilic would turn traitor, Dekas would die, Stivik would give up his freedom for…

Ugh, what a mess he’d made of everything! What the Hell was worth this? He kicked the nearest crate, a small one, which went skittering across the floor, its contents rattling, and for a while he vented his anger, kicking the box around the room, leaving cracks and dents in the wood and probably wrecking whatever was inside.

Eventually he flopped back against the wall as the somewhat abused box slid to a halt in a shadowy corner. A glance showed him the mud wasn’t awake yet. He could probably leave her here and head off to the lounge or something, but he didn’t. He stood where he was, letting his pulse return to normal, his breathing slow down. How long had he been back here now? Odd if he knew, but he wasn’t working for the rest of the day so it hardly mattered.

He let his body switch off and focussed just on what he could hear, filtering out the background noise and listening for any change or disturbance. He rolled forward off of the wall, resting easily in his pants.

An hour later he heard the change in Dionysia’s breathing. Five minutes passed before she spoke, “We’re in a closed sector?”

“Yes.”

He heard her body move. “What happened?”

He turned towards her. She had pushed herself up onto her arms. Her eyes where shadowed and he wondered how much pain she was still in.

“The bzstrk vykker left you unconscious in the lab ten minutes before a pair of sligs came to clean it for Bescher. I’m betting they wouldn’t have hesitated to kill you and blame it on the vykker if the thought had crossed their minds. Bescher wouldn’t believe them, but he’d back them up.”

She said nothing. After a minute Stivik blurted out, “What did he do to you?”

She turned away, defensively. “Nothing unusual.”

“Nothing unusual? He almost killed you!”

“Well if he’d known your hyper violent sligs were coming he wouldn’t have left me there! Why didn’t you tell him?”

He glowered at her, “’Cus I didn’t know the psychopath had left you there unconscious! Do you know how long it’s been since I found you?”

She shrugged, “Three hours?”

He stared at her for a moment. “Odd, how often does he do these things?”

She glared at him defensively. How long had it taken them to brainwash her like this, he wondered.

“He knows what he’s doing.”

He shook his head and turned back towards the door.

“Where are you going?”

“You’re awake now. I’ll leave you to whatever it is you do.”

He had stepped out into the production lines before she called him, “Stivik.”

He held the door open with his foot and listened.

“You’re misjudging him; he’s not like that.”

He paused before answering. “I don’t trust vykkers, as a rule. Call it life experience. But either way I saw the expression on his face when he left you in there, like he’d just stolen some great prize and no one had realised yet; you can’t tell me he didn’t enjoy whatever he did to you.”

“He’s a vykker; they like science and medicine,” She said, but to him it sounded a feeble excuse and he wondered how far she believed it herself.

He stood there silently for a while, silhouetted in the dark, framed in the doorway. She didn’t mention the vykkers again and he was about to leave when she spoke, “What happened to your arm, Stivik?”

He glanced reflexively at himself, taking in for the millionth time since the bandage had come off the mangled scar over his upper left arm.

“Old, old injury. A long story,” He replied, raising his eyes to look in her direction.

She was now sat up on the edge of the crate, her legs resting heavily on the ground. “I don’t intend to go anywhere for a while,” She told him pointedly. Her eyes were still dulled.

He stood in the door for a while, unmoving. At last however, he stepped back inside the smaller room, kicking aside his make-shift doorstop and letting it swing closed. “Back when I was scouting,” He said flatly, as if reporting on the weather, “It was the last job we did. I mean, as the team we were. We were working for some vykkers at a lab they had in the middle of nowhere. After being there for a couple of weeks, Tilic, our leader, told us that the vykkers were planning on turning on the Cartel, and he had agreed to join them.” He swore in sliggish, “Grand ideals, equality, fluffy animals, the same old story. We couldn’t let them go through with it so we had to tell the Cartel. We turned our own leader in to be killed… Shit;” The emotion came back into his voice suddenly, “I can’t explain what that was like.”

“You don’t have to,” Dionysia said softly. He glanced at her.

“You don’t understand. These weren’t your normal, stupid sligs. We had to think if we were going to live, and they were all incredible guys. I’d put my life in their hands any day, for anything. The industrial life doesn’t encourage that sort of relationship, but we were closer than you can think… Then Tilic betrayed us. I…” His voice failed and he stayed silent, not trusting himself to speak.

Dionysia waited.

Perhaps minutes passed; he wasn’t facing her anymore. “You know what the f**king stupidest thing about it all was? For all I hated it out there, I loved those guys; I would have stayed with them for… But Tilic… We caught him alive. He was taken in, he would have been sent to Skillya; you couldn’t imagine what that would mean for him.”

“Tortured, humiliated, cooked alive and eaten.”

He met her eyes again.

She explained; “Krik worked for her once, a long time ago; I know a fair bit about her from his stories.”

So her vykker had worked for the slig Queen? He thought of the box on his leg and how his bosses could use that information and nearly screamed in frustration; he wanted to hurl that thing across the room! He wanted to run from this stupid spying job and never, ever think of it again.

Maybe that was what helped him tell her, “After the fight against the vykkers – we helped, the five of us left in the pack – the Cartel said they wanted me to do a job for them. I would have refused, but… They said, if I did it, they’d let Tilic have a decent death, away from Skillya. Something painless and private. Hell, I brought Tilic in, but I couldn’t let Skillya have him.”

“So you gave up scouting to save him from Skillya?”

He gave her another look, and then turned his face away, “Like I said, we were close. I thought when he betrayed us I could leave him to what he deserved (and he did deserve it!); I thought I could stop thinking of him as part of the pack, but when I thought about what would happen, I couldn’t let him die like that. He was still my brother, even if he’d turned on us, even when his decision killed another of our pack.”

She gave him a moment before asking, “What job did the Cartel give you?”

“…Hell, it doesn’t matter. After a week I felt like quitting. I decided to do the job for as short a time as they’d let me. I found out a few months later that I’d been pretty much banned from ever going back to scouting, though.” That had been the worst thing; they’d trapped him, they’d given him nothing to go back to.

After a year, when his original contract had ended, he had finally decided not to leave, because without spying and what with being banned from scouting, his only available option would be to become a normal guard, and he couldn’t bear to even consider doing that.

“You got the scar in the battle with the vykkers?”

He nodded.

“What happened to Tilic?”

“Lethal injection by some vykker. I didn’t see it. Grhzz.”

He walked away, leaving her there. She didn’t leave that dark room until well into the night.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Stivik gave up scouting to save Tilic from Skillya's oven??
Yes, this was supposed to be a revelation, so I hope none of you knew it already, though I guess you may have worked it out.
Seriously, post and tell me if that 'revelation' impacted upon you at all. I tried to put power into it, but only you can tell me if it worked! I'm really not sure if it was effective!

Also, what did you think of the chapter in general? Did you think it flowed well? Was it too rushed, too disjointed? I'm really unsure about this one so LET ME KNOW YOUR HONEST OPINION!!! Please!!! (That includes you Dripik! )
It was a significant chapter for Stivik, but it was also an important one for Dionysia; it starts her realising that there's more to the world than what's under her nose; everything is not hunky dorey. Hopefully their relationship will start moving more quickly now. Some W@RFers may know what's in store for Dionysia and Stivik; don't ruin the surprise for anyone; just sit back and enjoy the show.

In other news, during the last month I've also written a chapter of this story which will occur much later on, after W@RF in fact. It's a very important bit and was very challenging to write, but I liked it and am looking forward to posting it.

Anyway, I've rambled on enough. Really really give me some criticism in this and let me know your true opinion. Even you Dripik!
Ciao (hope I spelled that right or I'm gonna look a right twit.)