Chapter Two: The Stranger

The first thing I notice is just how cold my back is, and how grating the dirt is against my burnt skin.  The second thing is just how warm my chest is, and how my arms are wrapped around something.  I feel my arms rise and fall, and the sound of breathing is audible.  With a start I realize it’s the stranger I met the other day that I'm currently wrapped around.  I try to shift my arms but she starts to move as well and I realize that she's sleeping, her slow and rhythmic breathing soothing my panicked mind.  Not wishing to wake her I stay as I am, praying that she'll wake up in a good mood and won't kill me.

Time seems to be at a standstill as I wait motionless in the dark.  I can't really see anything, but I have a feeling that this is in fact the hole she was talking about, and I doubt there's much room to move around.  I jump when I feel her arms wrap around me in her slumber and I get squeezed.  It takes all my willpower not to scream, not just from the intense sensation of pain that my body is going through but also the frustration of being unable to move or escape.  My life is entirely in her hands, and there is nothing I can do to change that, so all I can do is wait for the day that I have recovered enough to survive on my own.

I don't know how long I waited like that, it could have been minutes, maybe hours, but at long last she started to move around and her breathes began to come more rapidly.  Suddenly she pushed me away, and I gasped as my raw skin was dragged along the dirt ground and I flailed around helplessly in agony, a large groan escaping my mouth before I am able to regain control of myself.  She gasps in shock and rushes straight towards me, though this time I am the one holding her back.  I want nothing more to do with someone who so carelessly injures me.

"Oh my god, I am so sorry.  I didn't mean to do that, I just didn't remember that it was you, I thought…"

She stopped talking for a moment, perhaps regaining her composure.

"Are you alright?  I know that you've been badly burned and I might have just hurt you carelessly…"

I hear her shuffling around and then unzipping something, and then a light turns on as she flicks on a flashlight.  Now that I can see my surroundings I understand it really was just a hole.  Its pretty much just a hole in the ground, made under the collapsed walls of various buildings leaning towards each other and the entrance appears to be a broken door simply leaning on its side, maybe only 3 feet high.  The girl probably had to crawl in order to get in here, especially with me in tow. I see her backpack from earlier leaning against one of the crumbling walls, unzipped when she retrieved her flashlight.  I see a small pile of food and water in the hole, and I notice more in the backpack.

She steps closer to me and starts to pick me up.  I don't have the ability to resist her and remain limp as she leans me against a wall in a sitting position.  I notice that sometime while I was unconscious she put some pants on me.  I don't know why, but I feel embarrassed by that idea, however I cannot reflect on this mysterious feeling as she presses the partially eaten bar from before towards me.

"Here, I know it isn't much but you can probably eat the rest of this now.  You're body desperately needs energy if its going to recover, and food is the only thing I have that will help.  I don't have enough credits to buy any bandages or medicine unfortunately…"

She sighs and looks at the ground for a few moments.  I reach up and take the bar from her hand and start to chew on it in silence.  Normally I'd be suspicious of any food someone had given me, but she'd already had many opportunities to kill me and she'd invested a large quantity of water and energy on me, so I decided she wasn't going to hurt me.  Yet.  I still can't trust her, but maybe I don't have to worry for a little while about her plans.

"So how long have you been here?  I can't imagine you've been here more than 2 months in the state you're in all on your own.  I've never seen anyone as starved as you make it past a month, though maybe you're the first.  Where was it that you came in?"

She waits expectantly for me to answer as I ponder what she's asking.  She can already tell that I'm new here from my condition, so some of my deductions about this place are right.  It’s a cruel world, and in order to survive you need to get a strong foothold and learn how to operate safely and efficiently.  Its also fairly common for newcomers to die, though that doesn't answer my question as to why anyone comes here or how they even get here.  She wants to know where I came here, but what does she mean by that?  As best I can tell one place is much like another, what's the point of determining unique points?  Does the terrain actually change?  Or is there something that I haven't noticed yet about these areas?  Her questions have only given me more, and I don't know how to answer her.

"Seems to me that you don't really have much of an idea about what's happening, do you?  Hasn't anyone explained anything to you yet?  How is it that you don't even have a backpack or any supplies yet?  It’s a wonder you've survived this long by what you've scavenged alone"

She persists in her questioning, and I wonder what she is looking for.  To the best of my knowledge she seems capable of maintaining a conversation by herself, but she seems particularly intent on these details.

"I've been here about 3 weeks I think"

I cough as my lungs ache from the unexpected exertion, having remained silent ever since that hell-sent fire.  She nods at my words, probably encouraged by my cooperation.

"Well you're lucky I was the first person you ran into then, most others in this place would kill you on sight.  So I take it you don't know anything about credits, the zones, or the people here?"

"What's to know"

I say it as a statement.  I know fully well she'll let me know what I want to know without any further prompting.

"Well the way people get things here is either by scavenging and stealing items, or by killing others and accomplishing certain missions or accomplishments and earning credits.  Scavenging and stealing is far more dangerous, requiring you to go into other people's territories and leaving with maximum mobility.  Most everyone just settles for killing others since you can set up an ambush or find a safe spot from where you can pick off unwary fools.  That’s why it’s a good thing that you found me, I'm currently in need of someone who can watch my back, being solo is a double edged sword and I've determined that I need someone to help me"

So she's not as virtuous and selfless as she's been trying to portray herself.  It was exactly what I was expecting from her however.  That is interesting regarding why everyone is always killing others, though I don't quite know what she means by credits.  Almost as if she can read my mind she continues on:

"Oh right, I haven't said what credits are.  Well there are shops and shopkeepers scattered here and there throughout this place, and you can go into one and find out how many credits you have and buy things with them.  For instance you could buy food, some clothes, a backpack, certain weapons, armor, etc. all depending on what the store has in stock.  Food and clothes are almost always cheaper than the combat items, which is another reason its so hard to survive here since you need to be able to steal from some item that you can use to earn credits better or somehow kill someone worth a lot of credits that you can then uses towards your survival.  But it’s a vicious cycle, the better you are at killing and the more credits you gain, the more people start to aim for you since you'll be worth that much more for them to take"

It’s a barbaric system clearly, and yet it drives everything that happens here, its implied rules the most powerful laws that could exist in such an anarchic state.  Now that I think about it, it’s a wonder that I've survived this long as she said, when everyone is just looking to kill anyone else and I've been all alone all along.  But how did everyone else already know these rules when they got here?  I saw several other people who seemed like they had just arrived here like me immediately start killing each other the instant they made eye contact.  What was it that I had missed?

"How is it that you didn't know any of this?  I mean, now that I think about it, wasn't all of this explained to you when you got here?  That’s where I heard it all before I was released from the start zone"

"Start zone?  You're the first person that’s ever talked to me…"

Her face crinkles as she ponders this, clearly confused by what I said.  The silence stretches on as she comes to grasps with what I said.

"How do you not know what the start zone is?  Everyone has their own place where they are released right when they get here, and that’s where you're given your clothes and told the rules of this place.  I don't understand how you can forget something like that…"

She pauses again.  Clearly something I'm saying is upsetting her.  I wonder how it is that I'm not the norm.

"Wait, how far back can you remember?  You say you've been here 3 weeks, but how do you know that?"

Now I'm the one pausing as I wonder how to answer.  I've never considered that, its always just been a fact that my first memory is when I first arrived here.  But how can I be certain of that anymore?  Clearly something had to have happened before then, I had to have lived some portion of my life in order to get as developed as I am physically.  I've even seen others running around who are clearly younger than I am.

"I… how… that’s as much as I remember…"

I stammer, the realization that perhaps my whole 3 week existence has been a lie hitting me hard.  How is one supposed to act when even the questions you've been asking haven't even scratched the surface of the mysteries?  I always saw myself as an observer, trying to piece together what was happening here, and yet I'd never considered my own part in it.  How careless of me.

"That’s… something can't be right.  Now that I think about it, you look incredibly starved for someone who's only been here 3 weeks and living as you are.  Not remembering anything about the start zone?  No one knows anything about before the start zone, but everyone at least has that in common…"

"Everyone's forgotten their lives from before this hell-hole!?!"

I almost shout it, startling her and I cringe at the pain and the volume of it, realizing that I may have just given our hiding place away to anyone nearby.  We sit in complete silence for several minutes, the tension in the air palpable as we pray that my outburst went unnoticed.  Eventually she decides we're safe and answers me.

"It’s universal that everyone forgets everything before the start zone.  Even the shopkeepers can't say anything from before they came here.  Do you even know how old you are?"

"How old I am?"

The question is odd, and I wonder at it.  Why is it that I see people of different ages around me, some older and some younger, and yet there seems just as much a chance of a child coming here as a middle aged man.  What is it that brings us here?  What decides that?  The question nags at me, not for myself but how everything here works…

"You don't even remember that?  I at least know how old I am.  You look to be about the same age as me…"

It seems that no matter what I do I find more questions, more mysteries in this strange world.  And from what she's saying there isn't anyone here who could ever answer my questions.  I wonder if anyone in this world… not that couldn't happen.  Not with what this place is like.

"How old are you then?"

I divert her attention away from myself.  Its making me feel awkward to have someone else focus on me after so long in isolation.

"well… 15 actually.  I turn 16 in 3 months though"

She starts as if she realizes something of great importance.

"Oh my god!  I haven't introduced myself to you!  I'm so sorry!"

She takes a deep breathe, closes her eyes for a moment, then holds out her hand.

"My name is Fleet"