After crawling as far away from the explosion as his battered, exhausted limbs would allow, Justin simply collapsed into a long, deep sleep. He would later remember little beyond the darkness, and ever-present hum of monolithic amounts of power. Curled up in the chill of the vents that reminded him so much of the cold concrete of the Ruins.
Much like his fun stay at Pullman Mine Camp, during his nightmare days here, sometimes he remembered things from his hazy days aboard the Skerry. That strange time of his life whose exact length was lost to him, when time almost seemed to have no meaning. Alone so much of the time, on such a large ship; wherever the passengers were, they seldom showed themselves to him. And aside from a few long-term crew members he only vaguely remembered, only a couple people stood out to him in his miserable remembrances at times like these, and on most of those occasions, her name always escaped him.
Eleanor.
When he was half awake, he grasped at long-lost names like straws. He knew he didn’t see her very often, though she seemed to have been around from before he ever came aboard. Eleanor never really spoke much, and he found he could not even remember the sound of her voice. The only other thing he could remember was that when she was about, she was often accompanied by a fluffy black kitten that he was fairly sure she called Poe. Everytime she came to mind, he found himself wondering where she was now, what she was doing.
Otherwise, the only other person who stood out in his memory was another whose name he had reclaimed only in his most desperate gropings in the darkness. Mr Morgan. The name itself was almost as hard to recall as Eleanor’s, and he still wasn’t sure just what the man’s exact purpose on the Skerry’s crew served. Just mental snapshots of a middle age man with a short, bushy beard, bespectacled, with eyes that seemed older than his years. Were he much older, he would have been more like a kindly grandfather, while what few encounters he sort of remembered having with the rest of the crew made him feel somehow underfoot. Morgan, as he recalled, was a guardian of sorts, for Justin was increasingly certain that he was wasn’t supposed to be onboard, and he was fairly sure he remembered the man teaching him how to read as well as sticking up for him.
These moments almost messed with his mind, tantalizing him with scenes that always faded into the mists of the past as he drifted toward consciousness. Though, unlike his stint in the mines, perhaps as a result of his growing desperation in this place that he strongly believed was never meant for humans to live, he was retaining more of it after he woke up. When he thought about it, it at first made him wonder why he was thinking about all this crap, before he finally realized it.
Because there was nothing here, and he was left alone with himself, alone with just his thoughts to keep him company…
After a while he was more awake, just resting his eyes and gathering his strength for what he knew was the next step. Free from the Enforcer, he could finally slow down and begin to formulate a strategy for getting the hell out of this place. He had managed to get in, so as far as he was concerned, there also had to be a way out.
NK-525 had left him no time to explore, or even to figure out much of anything. In his exploration of the ventilation system, he had seen other rooms besides storage, some of which had what looked like computer terminals. The chief problem being that he couldn’t use the computers, and be close enough to the door to disable the controls in case a certain mechanical monster just happened to stop by. And of course, given how everything around here was computerized, he feared that damaging the controls prematurely would somehow set off the alarms.
For now, he would take it slow, allow both his body and mind to recover as much as this hi-tech hell would allow, then build up a stockpile of food down here in the vents. As he woke up more fully, his mind began to pick up speed, racing with new tactics and ideas for eluding the other security systems. Now if only I had these vents back in the Triangle State…
For the first time in what felt like way too long, Justin Black could see a small slat of hope shining in through these seemingly impenetrable depths, hope that he may yet again see the light of day. Perhaps even hope that Max might somehow get to see it with him.
Author's Chapter Notes:
Justin remembers
