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The former messenger woke up to the sound of rain pounding against the outside of the shelter. A soft, fuzzy warmth was pressed against his chest, belonging to the slugcat that he was escorting through the facility grounds.
Waking up early was a normal part of his existence, having been engineered by his creator to require less sleep than normal slugcats. It was extremely useful when it came to crossing the vast distances between iterator superstructures, where the rain wasn’t lethal and the working shelters were few and far between. Here in an iterator’s facility, however, it was more of an annoyance than anything else, as he was on a strict schedule due to the lethal rainfall and there was nothing to occupy his time with.
Gently pushing himself away from the yellow slugcat laying against him, he stood up and stretched his muscles. A stab of pain shot through him as he attempted to do that. His muscles felt sore, as if they had been overworked last cycle, and several others felt like they had been torn in several places. Having not sustained any injuries of the sort during his travels through the facility, it was obvious that it was the result of the rot slowly consuming his body.
He felt the unnerving pulsating beneath his skin and the beating of the second heart, constant reminders of his impending demise, and quickly banished such thoughts from his mind. Such thoughts weren’t productive to the completion of his current mission.
He spared one more glance at the sleeping figure beside him before walking towards one of the corners of the shelter, feeling just a small bit of longing to return to her. He had taken to calling her Flower due to her fur color being close to that of a wheel flower and because she was very good at finding said wheel flowers. Standing a good distance away from her, he began testing his various limbs while thinking about the mission ahead.
Currently, he was escorting Flower to the still-standing iterator of the region, one that he had been told not to go to by his creator. There he hoped to intercept the white slugcat that he had seen being guided by a yellow overseer. Said overseer was trying to get the slugcat to acquire neurons, presumably for Moon. Despite trying his hardest to catch the white slugcat, he had yet to see him again. Worst-case scenario: he was dead, eaten by the inhabitants of that damned citadel, and the best-case scenario was that he was currently climbing the wall to reach the other iterator. There was technically another way to reach the inside of the iterator, but it was too dangerous for him to consider the idea that the overseer would lead him down there, even if it was faster.
He let out a sigh as he stopped testing his muscles. There was a very good chance that the slugcat they were tracking was dead, killed by the spiders in the citadel before he even reached the exit, and that they were now chasing a ghost. A mission failure, one that he had no idea how to inform Flower of. Should he even continue leading her to the iterator? Or should he lead her somewhere safer, somewhere where she wouldn’t die if she was on her own? She hadn’t shown much proficiency with weapons, and the wall of the iterator would almost certainly be populated by some of the more dangerous predators in the ecosystem.
No. He had agreed to help her complete her mission, and the most likely place that it would be completed was on the top of the iterator. He just hoped that he survived long enough to reunite her with the other slugcat.
A pressure in his stomach suddenly began to build up, and he turned towards the corner as he began to vomit. Bright red blood spewed forth from his mouth, causing him to get lightheaded. He took several deep breaths to steady himself. In the faint light provided by the shelter, he could make out a faint writhing within the blood on the ground.
Seeing it caused him to feel a nearly uncontrollable wave of anger wash over him. This was his creator’s fault; he had created him like this. He didn’t deserve to die. He had served loyally, and this was his repayment. The seething hatred and righteous anger caused him to tightly clench his paws into a ball. Quickly, he banished the unwanted emotions from his head, returning to a neutral state, just as he had been programmed.
That had been happening more often than it used to. His mental discipline had been slipping, and he suspected that he understood why. Turning around, he found said reason staring at him with a face of concern, and all of a sudden, he was forced to fight off another bout of emotions, this one much harder to suppress than the one before.
Flower slowly started getting up from where she was lying. From the way that she sluggishly moved around, it was clear that she was still extremely tired. Waking up at this time wasn’t something that normal slugcats should be doing. Yet she was still getting up, almost certainly in an attempt to help him. Guilt washed over him as she stumbled over to where he was standing, and he was forced to catch her as she almost fell over.
Holding her in his paws, he gently led her over to the middle of the shelter again, and slowly laid her down on the ground again. There was no need for her to be worried about him; he was meant to be disposable, and there was nothing that either of them could do about that. Communicating that was impossible, however, as they shared no common language. Instead, he stayed silent.
As he went to walk away from her, he felt something grab onto his arm and gently tug downwards. Flower was trying to get him to lay beside her again. The fact that he paused to consider the offer at all was alarming. He should have simply broken free of her grip to go back to preparing for the coming cycle, but his emotions were holding him hostage all of a sudden. His mind worked against him as it prepared all kinds of excuses as reasons for taking this ill-deserved rest. Soon the still working parts of his brain wrested control of his mental faculties back from his emotions and banished them from his mind.
As he gently tried to pull his arm away, Flower tugged on his arm again. Desperate, tired eyes locked with his as she let out a small whine, and in that moment, he knew that his fate was sealed. The emotions returned, stronger than before, and he quickly found himself laying beside her like he had when he had first woken up. Even though he had complied with her request—demand—she had yet to release his arm from the grip of her paw. The rest of her body pushed up against his, pressing a comforting warmth to his chest. Finally, as she drifted off to sleep, he felt a faint vibration against his chest as she began to purr.
Letting out an inaudible sigh, he surrendered himself to laying in this position till the cycle started. He knew that her attachment to him would only end badly. Yet he found himself powerless to stop it.
For once in his life, he found himself scared of dying. Not because he would be dying, mind you, but because he was scared of what would happen to Flower after he died. She wasn’t a skilled hunter like he was, nor was she even as good at stealth as he was. The only thing that she would have going for her after he died was her skill in diplomacy, and that wasn’t exactly the best skill to have access to. Sure, the scavengers loved her, but most creatures in the world couldn’t be negotiated with. When he died, she would be stuck with a suboptimal skill set and would be forced to adapt to a world that would kill her in a heartbeat.
As Flower started to softly snore, he expelled those thoughts from his head. They wouldn’t be useful in the coming cycle, and he would need to be at his best. For now, he lowered his head to the ground and focused on the sleeping form of Flower. Reaching his free paw out, he pushed down a stray piece of fur on her body, causing an idea to barge into his head.
Acting on impulse he reached his arms around Flower’s body and gently pulled her towards him. Her eyes opened for a moment, before she shifted her body to make herself more comfortable. The sound of purring grew louder as she wrapped her own limbs around his body, causing a smile to spread over his face.
Sleep wouldn’t be able to claim him until the end of the next cycle, but he could relax here until the cycle started.