Tory

“Just do what frick you are told. They won’t hurt you if you don’t. Please.”,” her former tall dark and Martian friend told her.

Tory scowled at Gurminder. He said he was her friend. That he’d help. But now she was being dragged away by the angriest looking giant she’s ever seen. Sure, she realized that she’d made a big mistake when everyone started pointing their huge guns at her, but how else was she going to make anyone serious that she meant business? And that if anything they did meant to send people like her parents back to Earth and the team, then she meant to help.

Adults everywhere, weren’t so big on listening, but they were big on dragging.

The tall angry man to lead her into the old base, through a rusty looking hatch and into a tunnel. It was the dingiest place she’d ever been on Mars, all dust and rust, stained walls and floors.

If he had his radio on he wasn’t listening to her. Tory tried to tell him that she was on their side, but got no response no matter what channel she tried.

The airlock looked gross, like it hadn’t been scrubbed in forever. It was like some of the worst parts of lower Angeles, the part where the city had flooded and was like a canal city. Not the upper parts. They were amazing, but the slimy underbelly for sure.

They passed through an airlock, then at a locker he removed his helmet, gestured her to do the same. Well, if he could breathe it. Tory instantly regretted taking off her helmet. The air here smelled worse than the CU, even if it seemed to have enough oxygen.

“You know I can help you people,” she insisted. “I want to leave Mars.”

He pointed at an open cabinet in a row of stained metal cabinets along the stained wall.

“You will one way or another. Now remove p-suit, Shit for brains, and put it in locker. Won’t need it,” he told her in a thick accent that barely sounded like English. “There is good air in here. And you’ll empty your tanks anyway. Be a waste.”

He too began to remove his suit, revealing dirty looking overalls underneath. They were even in worse shape than Valentines had been back in the service tunnels underneath Cerberus Underhill. Tory was starting to regret horribly what she had done to get her here and hesitated, then started to remove her suit.

The man was a lot bigger than Gurminder, and likely could have removed her suit if he wanted to. The air wasn’t as good as he claimed. It was rank, smelled like urine maybe? Sweat and a lot of other bad stuff. She wrinkled her nose. It was worse than the ruins underneath New Angeles here, with no topside.”

“Pockets too,” he ordered. “All of them.”

Tory sighed and empty her pockets, the oxyinjector Valentine had given her was the last thing she pulled out. She didn’t want to give it up.

“I need this,” she told him. “Your air isn’t good, not for me. And you wouldn’t want me choking to death on it, now would you? You know what this is right?”

Soshnikov scrutinized it for a moment, then nodded.

“Fine, you can keep,” he told her. “Now come.”

The inside the structure was another Martian maze, cruder than the CU’s but not as vast, and much of it carved from the bedrock, not dressed up nicely. Tory kept track of turns they went through and the markings on each of the hatches he lead her through. She’d be able to find her way back. One thing she never, ever forgot is how to get back to anywhere she started.

Soshnikov finally brought her to a corridor that ended in a hatch entitled ‘ШКОЛА’ opened the hatch then shoved her inside. Beyond was a nook an older woman in patched up clothing and not much taller than her waited. At least she and the room Tory had been lead to was cleaner than the rest she’d seen. It did look a bit like a schoolroom, she realized.

Tory let out a breath. Why did everyone on this planet want to treat her like a child? It wasn’t her fault she was so short.

The big Rus talked to the woman for a few moments in what Tory assumed was actual Russian or some pidgin version of it, since it sounded like they were all speaking backwards, then returned out the hatch they’d come by. She turned to watch him go. Where was he going? She started to follow but the woman grabbed her arm, hard and painfully enough to make her gasp.

“You stay,” she said in an accent similar to Soshnikov but a lot more commanding. “I am teacher. You are student. You do as you are told.”

Despite being not much bigger than her, this woman was a lot more intimidating than even the lumbering giant guard. Tory was used to teachers, though. So she nodded, and went where she was led.