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It's the first time in a while that the weather has forced them to pitch camp. There's been some rain occasionally, but not a downpour like this; they're all wet and miserable by the time they get the tents up, 21 and 49 both looking worn out, and so 18 gathers 13 and 68 and herds them gently to the other tent, figuring their leaders could do with some peace and quiet.
Fluffy's excited to help, offering as many towels as 18 needs. He hands off a small pile of them to the 21s and 49, helps get one of the mini stoves started as Vika 21 starts to rub her hair dry, and then takes another armful back to 13 and 68, who've managed to light the other stove without incident. Morrison is mostly dry, grooming herself in a corner; Phil is having the time of his life, settling down next to her. 68's already flagging heavily, and 18 and 13 work together to get his hair acceptably dry before they let him fall asleep.
He mumbles an apology to them as they ease him down, tuck him gently between them. 18 shushes him with a pat to the shoulder. He'll probably be the first to wake in the morning, anyway.
Morrison comes along to curl up inside 13's jacket, purring up a storm against his chest. It's easier to sleep all huddled up together in a pile, some nights.
-
68 is the first to wake, but 18 isn't far behind, shaking off disconcerting, fractured dreams the moment he feels him stir. The rain has stopped, apparently quite a while ago, and the air is crisp and pleasant; they leave 13 and Morrison asleep, decide not to wake the three in the other tent, and step out in search of food or firewood, whichever they can find while the weather permits.
Instead, they see the ship.
18 breaks into a jog as he realizes what it is, thinks for a horrifying minute that it might have crashed there in the night with no one there to notice, its occupant dead. As they draw closer, it's clearer that it's undamaged, the capsule standing open, a uniformed figure sitting crumpled, but awake, against the foot of the machine.
"Looks like a new guy," 68 says, and gestures up toward the ship, offering to check inside. 18 nods, lets him go on ahead, and approaches the man on the ground.
It's one of them - just not one they've met before. Another one of them, his face smeared with dirt, his jacket unzipped, staring blankly into the distance. Breathing heavily, like he's fallen there and can't quite remember how to move again.
18 reads the number on his lapel, crouches down to kneel in the grass beside him. Takes a gentle hold of his shoulder, to no response. "71? - Jack? Hey, what happened here, are you okay?"
He says nothing, just barely manages to move his head the slightest bit. 68 calls down from the ship.
"Hey, he's got a whole bunch of stuff in this place. No passengers or anything."
"Deckard, we've got a situation, get down here." He turns back to 71, softens his voice again. "71, are you hurt? Can you - " he changes tack, as 71 lifts his head and meets his eyes, still looking like he's hit a wall, blank and heavy with exhaustion. "Okay. Nod if you can hear me? Blink twice if you can hear me."
71 does, two rapid blinks.
"Okay. Good. Are you hurt? One blink for yes, two for no." Two more. Okay.
68 appears beside them, back down from the cockpit, hovering in concern. "Hey, what's wrong? Hey, you hurt? Sick? We can help - we can try?"
"Deckard." He gets the message and backs off a little, as 71 turns his head with an effort, looking up at him, then back to 18.
"Why are there two of you?" he finally says, his voice low and hoarse, clearly taking an effort to use. "It's giving me a headache. What the fuck."
"Oh, so just one of us would be okay? That'd still make two, you know." The words are out before 18 can stop himself, but 71 doesn't laugh, just closes his eyes and drops his head with something like a sigh. "Hey. Hey, you look awful. Come back to the camp, there's more of us, there's coffee and some food. You can always...fly out again later, there's time to find whatever it is you're looking for."
"I'm not looking for anything." He tries to shake his head, doesn't quite succeed. When he looks up, he's smiling just a little, but it's faintly bitter. "I look like a guy on a mission to you?"
"Nah," 68 says, "you just look like you went to sea in a sieve."
71's eyebrows quirk, and 18 huffs a laugh despite himself. "Come with, man. You can tell us later. Shit, we can tell you later. Fuck knows there's a lot to tell."
71 doesn't take the hand he offers, tucking his arms around himself instead, but he does let them coax him up. Between them, they slowly guide him back to the tents. There's no way 21, at least, won't be awake by now, so 18 nudges them towards their tent, a hand resting lightly between his shoulders for just a second, wary. 71 doesn't flinch, but he doesn't reach out in return, either, simply ducking down under 68's arm to enter the tent through the flap.
21 is awake, talking quietly to 49 who's less so; 18 calls out to them softly from behind 71, and they both turn to look. Vika 21 is curled up in her sleeping bag facing away from them, her hair a tousled mass of red above the blanket, and he knows from the way he lifts his head to look at her, from the way 21 and 49 look at the expression on his face, that Vika 71 is dead.
No passengers, indeed.
"Found ourselves a new one, boss," 68 offers. "We got a spare blanket?"
21 leaps into action. "I don't need mine, come here, c'mon." 18 takes the time to settle 71 into the warmth of 21's blankets beside 49, and 68 promptly sits down at his other side.
"Someone explain?" 71 croaks, half a whisper as his voice gives out.
21 returns to offer him a tin mug of coffee, and he seems to perk up at the smell and heat, wrapping his fingers around it slowly but without hesitation. 18 notices his gloves are thicker than the rest of theirs, seemingly more woolen, though the same shade of grey.
"Uh, we're all clones of the same guy," 21 says. "That's pretty much - yeah, that's pretty much it. All the technicians are Jack Harpers, all the comms officers are Vika Olsens. I'm 21, this is 49...yeah, read the jackets, that's it. We're just out here looking for anyone else we can find. Today it was you."
"...Okay."
"Listen," says 49, "you look like hell. You rest up a bit before any more explanations, okay?"
"Okay," 71 whispers again, lets them warn him not to jar 49's hurt leg, and then crashes spectacularly the moment he's done with the coffee.
"Don't go on without me," he mumbles in 21's general direction before falling dead asleep.
13 shows up shortly afterwards, bringing both Morrison and Phil. 18 explains the morning so far to him, while Morrison decides to sit on 71, who doesn't wake.
-
It's several hours before 71 stirs again. They've found some food and firewood by then, and the sun is high in the sky, blazing down, so they're all back in the same tent when he suddenly blinks.
He looks better, but only somewhat, still dazed and tired though tracking. He sits up, nods to 49 when he pats him on the back; cautiously flexes his hands, one by one, then stretches his wrists and shoulders. 18 tries not to let on that he's watching him, but 68 isn't good at being subtle, practically radiating concern.
"You okay?" 49 says, and 71 nods, his eyes closed again. "Right, yeah, I'm gonna have to ask one more time."
That gets a smile out of 71, faint but there. "I just kinda hurt all over. It won't last." He doesn't sound convinced, nor does he manage to convince any of them.
"You should eat something," 68 says. "Also, you should meet my toad."
" - your what now?" 68 holds Phil up for him to look at. "Huh."
"Let him breathe for a second, Deckard," 49 says, but he's smiling as 18 offers 71 an energy bar, almost tripping over Morrison as he approaches. "Hey, Thirteen, get a hold of her."
13 does, and 71 squints up at him. "You're new, right?"
13 grins. "Speak for yourself, new guy."
"You weren't here in the morning - right?" 71 takes a minute to open the energy bar, fumbling slightly with the wrapping.
13 relents. "Yeah, no, I wasn't. I'm Thirteen, this is my cat."
"Hi, kitty."
"Her name's Morrison."
"Hi, Morrison."
"Oh, we're gonna get along." 13 offers him a fistbump, which he hesitantly returns, taking a while to make a fist, another to slowly loosen it after. "Hey, are you gonna join us? Did you decide?"
"Thirteen, he literally just woke up."
"Yeah, I - if you don't mind," 71 says, directed at 21, who spoke. "I just...don't think I can walk much right now? Sorry. I'll - I'll explain."
21 shakes his head, goes over to reassure him, carefully sidestepping Morrison and Phil. "We're here for the next few days, I think. You can rest up - you can rest up too, 49."
"Yeah." 49's clearly rueful, but resigned. "Don't worry about it, 71, you can explain what you want when you want."
-
71 tells his story. Like with most of them, it has to be coaxed out of him as evening falls, all of them sitting around the fire 13 and 68 built.
"109 tried to kill us," he says, then pauses to take a breath.
"That old chestnut, huh," says 49. He and 21 are the only ones who smile, though 21 looks deeply horrified at himself for doing so.
71 doesn't seem to really hear it. "Tried to - I say tried to, she did kill Vika - she was ash when I got there. If I'd been on the upper levels, I might have got to her in time, but it was cold, I was hurting, I - my hands." He holds them up for a moment, and a few things about him start to make sense. "I was down in medbay. Sally was furious. Said I was unfit for service, but I don't - I didn't know why that meant she'd just shoot us. Guess I know, now."
49 doesn't look surprised. 13 and 68 look like it's never crossed their minds. None of them speak.
"There were twenty of them, or more, that followed 109. Fought 'em all off till the Tet went down. I don't know what happened, but you know it was a hell of a crash."
"I'll tell you later," 13 says, when 49 refuses to elaborate. 71 acknowledges with a nod.
"I thought I'd fly through the radiation zone," he finishes. "'Cause anything was better than the cold, by then. The Scavs in Alaska could take it, I guess - built for it, maybe, but I never was. I've just been flying south since then. I mean, I'd stop sometimes, but never for long. Until I just...did, last night."
"It's been months, 71."
"Sure feels like it."
"Christ." That's Vika 21.
"It's okay, 71, you get to stop now." That's Jack 21. "We'll tell you everything by and by."
71 nods, takes a breath, then looks up with a sudden mischievous smile, a real one, and points at 68. "You can start by telling me why you all call him Deckard, yeah?"
-
They attempt to explain Philip K Dick to him; for someone who's never read him, it goes fairly well. Later, 68 guides him through some stretches for his arms and hands. He's gasping with pain by the end of it, but settles back down with something like relief in the lines of his face, something intangible lifted from him, worn out in a lighter way than before. Morrison sits on him again, arranging herself on his hands as they lie folded on his chest, and he answers her friendly nuzzle with one of his own. 68 rambles on about who they all are, where they all come from, and he listens with attention, if sometimes disbelief.
18 and 13 fetch some of the things from his ship, 18 quietly wondering how to tell him about Fluffy. They find a few books and notepads, as well as several scarves, a striped sweater and a few balls of wool, knitting needles stashed safely with the ship's medkit. Vika 21 feels the texture of them all, asks 71 how he learned to knit, and 71 answers cautiously but gladly, says he found a book about it, that he'll start again when his hands stop flaring up so. 68 steals one of the notepads they found, tears out a page or two, and attempts to fold an origami star from memory, with mild success.
"You feel any better?" 18 says to 71, when it's quieter, when he gets him alone.
"Some," he says softly. "Thanks."
"We'll find you some of those physiotherapy squeeze toy things," 18 says. "I'll figure out how to make you some if we don't."
"Thank you," 71 says.
"Hey," 18 tells him. "I know it's all new and a lot to deal with, but we've got you now, okay? It takes time, but you've got time."
He nods, quiet, then gently reaches up and pats 18's arm.
They manage to get another smile out of him by the end of the day, and that night they all pile together in the same tent to sleep. 21 tucks himself close beside 49 just like usual, and 68 absently folds some more paper stars and puts some of them in 71's hair as he drifts, and it doesn't rain again.