The Deal (Delo)
Railin threw down his makeshift screwdriver in frustration. “Lua’s divine bosom,” he hissed.
Delo almost laughed in spite of everything. These bougie, pampered tower kids had no idea how to swear. Railin and his older sister Crai both were technically originally from the same region on Earth as he and Shay were, but while the two of them grew up in the factory slums, Crai and Railin were towerlings. Their father was a nephew or cousin or something of Executor Avantus, and they'd had everything handed to them on literal golden platters, including a place onboard the Zariman.
Somehow despite it all Railin wasn't a terrible guy. Delo wouldn't go out of his way to hang out with him if he wasn't so damn cute, but in an emergency he didn't totally lose his head. And he was even willing to work alongside a dirty street pobber like Delo and take his suggestions seriously about how they could possibly fix the terminal.
Problem was, the terminal was basically fried.
“I'm going to go get us another light,” Delo said, rocking back onto his heels and standing up. “I'm not totally certain this is fixable without a replacement board and some new, non-fried couplings, but since we dismantled the two lights we had I can't fucking see.”
Railin waved his hand. It was an imperious, screamingly Orokin dismissal. Apparently it was all the acknowledgement he would get.
Again, he was lucky he was cute.
Delo looked around the room. It was so full, and everyone had sectioned off into groups. Mostly around the walls. Shay, Koris, and Annily were trying to figure out some way to interlace a bunch of desks together to barricade the door a little better. Sirafin, Tranla, and several others were crowded into one of the corners. Another of the corners had a bunch of people clustered around Sumiru and Therine, who were doing something on a pair of tablets. As he watched, someone– Kendra, maybe, sat down with them, holding a third tablet of a different design. With the lights so low, it was hard to make out faces, especially of the handful of people who were either facing away from him or practically face planted into the wall.
Not that Delo blamed them. He'd like to face plant into a wall right about now, too.
One of the people who was sitting curled in on themself had a globe light. They looked… bad, honestly. Almost as bad as Shay or Sirafin or Annily, but instead of being comforted or doing something to take their mind off it, they were just facing the wall in the fetal position. Not good.
Well, if he kept Railin waiting while checking on whoever that was, it served the pretty prissy asshole right.
“Hey,” Delo said softly, coming up behind them and then crouching down. “You should come sit with everyone else, where it's all warm and not so dark.” He rubbed the back of his head. “Also, uh, me and this other guy’re trying to fix the cephalon terminal, and we kind of took our lights apart to try and power it. I think it still might work but we need another light to see what we're doing.”
They didn't turn around. Instead they raised one hand and knocked their knuckles against the wall.
“Why don't you come with me, and bring your light?” Delo suggested. “You can hang out with Railin and me until we get the cephalon working again. We’ll keep you company in exchange for borrowing your light.”
Their shoulders jumped. For a second he thought they were crying, but then they turned around and he noticed two things.
The first thing was that they were laughing, not crying.
The second thing was that they looked exactly like him.
“Yo,” they said, and giggled. They looked exactly like him, but their eyes were black. Totally black. They had his same hair, his face, but not his eyes.
Delo opened his mouth. No sound came out.
“Thanks for the offer, chief,” they said. “Y'know, it's tempting. But I could do something for you, eh?” They grinned so wide he could see their back teeth. “I can save them. All of them.”
Save them? From this hellhole nightmare they had been flung into? Maybe this was some weird manifestation of a cephalon, or some other way that the people in charge of the ship were sending them help?
“But you have to want it,” it went on.
“I want to save them,” Delo said immediately.
“Let's shake on it.” The him that wasn't him held out their hand.
He took it.