If The Music Stops - Revised RePost

Revised #15 - Silence.

“Hey T, Pass me that… Oh.”

 

I forgot. It’s been a week and still I forget, mostly because I want to. I want to forget, loose myself in my work, turn to him for something and find him there, staring at me from above whatever he’s broken now. It hasn’t worked so far. Every time I turn from my desk to look at his workbench, forever covered in bit of scrap metal and bolts and wires and rusted tools that no-one but him has any possible use for anymore, he’s not sat behind it.

He isn’t going to pass me anything. He just isn’t here to, and he isn’t magically going to appear, no matter how hard I wish.

I don’t suppose leaving his archaic “rock” music blasting out of the ancient speakers that only have one setting - loud - is going to help my mind frame, but it is better than The Silence that fills the workshop instead of the sound of him tinkering on some new project or his skates across the rough concrete floor as he slides across for something…

 

The Silence is the worst part. Not just of him being gone, but of living, today. I’d say of living here, but I have no idea where ‘here’ actually is. We’ve moved around so much, going where the work or the parts dictate, just trying to survive in a world that’s trying to kill us. You stay sharp, stay ahead, stay safe… or you die.

At first The Silence just made things weird. It made empty rooms feel wrong - could never place how, it just felt wrong... like you wanted nothing more than to run out of there screaming about some imagined horror. If that was all it did, if it had stayed like that, it wouldn’t be the thing seasoned survivors whisper about when they meet. It’s all we want to talk about, but we’re all too afraid to say its name in case it hears us and singles us out.

It’s already evolved once, to kill us better.

It doesn’t make you want to run any more. It creeps over your skin with an icy touch and freezes you in place. It holds you there while it pulls the creatures of your nightmares from your mind and gives them form in the shadows. By the time it’s done pulling things from your mind, you’re silently praying the razor-sharp fingers… no, Talons… of your nightmares would stop gently slicing your skin to ribbons and instead release you into the relief death would be.

Believe me, I know. First-hand knowledge kind of knowing too, and I still bear those scars. It was only ten days ago. Voltaire… he saved me. He just skated in with his lab coat flying out behind him like some kind of punk mad-scientist superman. He’s my own personal Superhero, on roller skates.

I don’t know what hurt The Silence worse - the sound of his skates or the music playing loudly from the portable speaker he set on the desk next to me, this very desk. It all happened in this very room and I’m not sure how much of it was real to him. I remember the Silence fading, fizzling away into nothing once more the same way it had appeared and Voltaire looked at me, confusion etched across his face.

“Kali… You’re bleeding.” I don’t know if the confusion was for the why I was bleeding - nothing around me to cause it right then, not with the way I was stood… Or if it was for the feelings in him that he’s not used to feeling anymore. The probable worry, and the confusion itself.

I don’t think he saw my Shadows, I don’t know if he can. I explained what happened to him and that awful music has been playing non-stop ever since. Not even half-a-second silence between the track looping - he knows his stuff. His genius is part of the reason I agreed to come with him.

 

He doesn’t ever go far from our ‘home base’ usually, unless he’s going for a part, but usually he sends me. At first I wasn’t worried - there’s a couple of hot spots nearby that we like to hit for spares and he’s usually careful. He usually grabs one of the two-way radios on his way out in case he runs into trouble. He always comes back, usually covered in oil, his multi-coloured hair sticking up every which way, holding something rare, black with dirt and heavy, clutched to his chest.

 

It’s been a week since he stepped out for a coil for the drill, explaining the exact sizing to me as he left. The coil circumference had got to be the length of his thumb exactly, wire the same size as the tip of his smallest screwdriver, fifteen coils and three fingertips long. A tape measure would be no use here, no point measuring stuff in inches when you can bet your last energy bar there’s a better use for that tape measure. Heck, there’s at least one running through the wiring of this room, and I mean the security of this room, not the lights. You need something that doesn’t look out of place in a scrap pile, you see? Those measuring tapes conduct nicely, and you get a nice flat line from them as well which makes them just perfect for things like a contact switch. It’s one of my more brilliant ideas, if I do say so myself. One of my dumbest was letting him go out alone for that damn coil, and the blasted drill is still just sitting there, looking at me. I shouldn’t have let him and his fractured mind wander the streets alone. I don’t even know if he went out armed, and if a gunner can’t even protect her Mad Scientist, what use is she? I just… I can’t be with him all the time. I wish I could… that man knows things I don’t, that’s for sure, and I can’t help wondering if he knows things about The Silence, things it wouldn’t want shared.

There it is, my Catch 22. I need to keep him safe, but part of keeping him safe involves me taking jobs when I can, running messages, so that we don’t have to take the more dangerous end of the job spectrum to keep us afloat. I work and I have to leave him alone, probably too entranced in his work to notice anything around him. I don’t work and I put him in more danger. Sometimes even the easiest jobs turn bad and some messages are harder to deliver than others. That’s my life, my choice. I chose to run messages, even after it’s cost me dearly. I don’t wear this amber screen over my right eye for the fashion statement, it’s to stop people who get too close from noticing the eye isn’t real. Voltaire did a good job there, back before he lost parts of his mind. I think my aim might even have improved with having a camera wired into my brain.

So, it’s my fault. As he was leaving for the part I was strapping on my guns for a job, for a very good contact and a well connected client. Maz always comes to me for his top jobs. I haven’t died on him yet. Maz pays us in whatever it is we need at the time… parts, food, technology… you name it, he can get it. Cash, if we wanted it. Millions of any denomination… not that it’s worth the paper it’s printed on these days. Don’t think it has been my entire life.

It’s my fault on a whole other level too. We only stopped here because Maz has some big jobs lined up for me, too good to turn down, and the affectionately termed ‘Land Shark’ gave out. He can drive the thing through brick walls without a dent to it, but he forgets to put fuel in it. It’s filled now, courtesy of Maz, but I still had jobs… still Have jobs to do here, and our little base here was just so well set up for the both of us we hadn’t thought about moving on yet. I think it could be a hot topic once he gets back, that’s why I’ve been checking my side of stuff out on the ‘Shark. It’s his baby and he’d never leave without it so I may as well make myself useful. No point in having a gunner if the guns wont open out on the car.

 

You know, we’ve been partners so long, I don’t think I could be without him. I wouldn’t want to be, that’s for sure.

 

I never told him I love him.

He doesn’t know.

 

Okay, I know people always say that, but it’s true of Voltaire. Him and his emotions are only just starting to fire on the same page again. Ever since the ‘accident’ that wiped his memories he’s been almost machine-like. Ironic, considering biologically, he’s the more human of the two of us.

He was just starting to act like a normal person  - to feel and play music and laugh! I wasn’t going to push him, to re-declare my love for him before he was ready.

I mean, I’m not going to push him.

He’s alive, he is.

I Will See Him Again.

 

I mean, he isn’t going to get very far without the spark plugs and keys for the ‘Shark. I’ve got the plugs locked up in one of those handy-boxes, and the keys are strung around my neck. He’s not getting them without me knowing.

 

He’s probably just lost somewhere in the dark, got turned about without realising. Maybe he’s even just stuck somewhere, trying to make noise to keep the Sound of The Silence at bay if his music’s gone off.

 

The Silence can kill you here, in this wasteland that once used to be a thriving city.

 

…If the music’s stopped, he could be in serious trouble.

 

I’ve got to go look for him.

 

…After I put the spark plugs back in, just in case.

 

~Kali

Author's Note

This is part of a larger story.