”Sit.”

I’m so tired that I can barely stand. The wooden crate feels like king-sized bed, and for a moment I get to curl upon it on my side. Then he’s back, and I have to give him space to sit as well. He’s tired. Even more tired than I am. He’s been carrying me for the last four hours.

“Eat.”

Part of his rations. A half of energy bar and some water. A part he really couldn’t afford to share, but he has no other options. I eat them fast, before anybody notices. They have stopped talking, but they’re still angry at him for dragging me along.

“Sleep.”

For once I’d like to do this the other way around. He carries the heaviest burden, so it should be me offering my lap as his pillow, not the other way around. But there really are no options. He has to stay half-awake and alert, so he sleeps sitting up. I have to stay close to him so that I don’t get in to trouble, so it only makes sense to curl against his thigh. Keeps us both warm.

“Are you expecting a fucking lullaby?”

He doesn’t like it when I look at him. But it’s hard not to look at him. Hard not to wonder what goes on in his mind when he leans back and lets his body relax, and I can feel him twitching slightly in his dream. Twitching and gasping.

“Come on, kid. We got few hours. Just close your eyes. I’ll be here when you wake up.”

It’s childish, but before I close my eyes and let the sleep take over I curl my fingers around his belt. I have already lost so many; I don’t want to loose him as well. I know that he will untangle my fingers as soon as I have fallen to deep sleep. He needs to be able to move fast, and if I’m clinging to him he’ll either stumble or snap my wrist if something happens. But it’s still comforting to feel the leather under my fingers, and the searing warmth that radiates through his clothes.

“Tickles… Let go, kid.”

He’s burning up. Still healing. We got ambushed earlier today. He’s the team leader; of course they tried to put him down first. Superficial wounds healed instantly, but from the inside… I saw him coughing and spitting blood when his men weren’t watching.

“What the fuck are you up to now?”

I’m cold. I’m always cold. My mommy used to say that I had bad circulation, what ever that means… If I can just… Slide my palm in… There.

“Oh, sweet Jesus… Just be careful, okay? There’s… It’s… Just be careful.”

His wrist and forearm feel as hot and swollen as the rest of him. He seems to like when I hold him from there with my icy fingers. I know I have to be careful. If I squeeze too hard I’ll hurt him. I have seen what’s buried inside his powerful forearms. Three sharp metal blades in each hand, and if I squeeze too hard those blades will cut him from the inside. But I can hold him and cool his skin if I’m careful.

“You’re not going to sleep, are you?”

No. Not tonight. It’s his turn to sleep. To really sleep. If I stay awake he maybe dares to close his eyes and rest. If I keep watch he can do that and I can wake him up if something happens. Of course it’s not going to happen. He’s too wound up to sleep, but maybe we can both pretend, and then I don’t have to feel so useless anymore. Maybe we can pretend that there’s a good reason why he saw it fit to let me live. That there’s a real reason for him to keep me alive and with him instead of throwing me for his team the next time they raise a ruckus about dragging me along.

“Fine. But I’m beat. Wake me up if anything happens, okay?”

Right. At least he closed his eyes. Won’t take long before I… Should let go of his hand before… So tired.

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“Wake up. Were moving on.”

He waits until everybody else has gotten up and started walking before he drags himself up. He’s tired. I try to move fast enough, but he grabs me and hoists me up on his shoulders.

“We’re crossing a swamp. You’ll drown in it on your own.”

He’s right. Soon we’re wading through murky water. It reaches his armpits. Rest of his team is carrying their weapons above their heads to prevent them getting wet. Swarms of gnats and mosquitoes keep buzzing around us, but as soon as they touch my skin they die. There’s at least something I can do for him. Keep them off from him.

“Watch out!”

At first I thought he lost his balance, but as seconds tic by and I’m still threading water and men keep disappearing from around me I know it wasn’t the slippery mud that made my mount stumble and plunge under surface. And when bubbles from the oxygen that escaped from their lungs under water turn to red pools on the surface there’s nothing left to do but to scream. Nothing but to scream and bite the hand that suddenly clamps over my mouth and face and pulls me under.

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“That’s it… Just spit it all out… Better?”

We’re alone. Everybody else is gone, and we’re alone. Just the two of us. When I woke up his lips we’re covering mine and I could feel his warm breath filling my lungs, making the water in there swirl and slosh around. It made me gag.

“We can’t stay here for long. Those fuckers will be back for more soon enough. Climb on to my shoulders.”

His bare shoulders. He’s burning up, and I can still see the faint red lines criss-crossing his skin. Most of them curving and jagged, but there’s three short lines in a row on his chest, right below his ribcage. I reach down and place my palm over them.

“Don’t worry. It’s dead.”

He keeps coughing up black bits and pieces, like chitin, and something green that sizzles and smokes when it hits the water. It really is dead. The creature that lodged inside of him when they purged The Nest. I think none of his men knew about it. I wouldn’t have known about it either if I hadn’t felt it moving inside of him every now and then. Stringy tail sliding, long skull pressing forth and stretching his diaphragm, trying to chew its way out of him.

“At the next camp we can enjoy from little luxury. Whole container and all the rations of the team just for the two of us.”

He makes it sound like it’s not a big deal. Like it doesn’t matter that his whole team got slaughtered. But I can hear the strain in his voice. He’s fighting tooth and nail not to scream. He told me earlier that there had been fifty of them when they landed on this planet, and that he had been just one of them. When they found me there was eight left, and he was the team leader because he had been in the service few years longer than his teammates. And now there’s just the two of us. Lone mutant soldier and civilian mutant who’s so poisonous that even the beasts of this planet won’t take me as their host.

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“When we get back to the ship the first thing I do is to drop a goddamned nuke to this hell. Jesus, I’m tired…”

He’s tearing in to the packages that hold fresh uniforms. He’s shivering from cold. The air is hot and humid, but his teeth are chattering. Fever. There are small wounds all around him, small nicks and scrapes still left from gaping wounds and he’s sick. There’s gazillion different parasites living in the swamps we crossed and some of them have taken residence in him. And he’s been carrying the biggest parasite of them all on his shoulders the whole day. He’s not immune to my toxins; it just takes longer from them to work through his system because of his mutation. Yet he doesn’t shy away from me. Even now he makes sure that I’m alright and wipes a smudge of dirt from my cheek with his bare thumb before he stretches on his back to the floor of the container.

“Help yourself if you’re cold or hungry… I’m… There should be some rations in that box… Over there…”

He’s falling asleep. Real sleep. Not the ordinary, one-eye-open-ready-to-blow-if-anything-happens –semi-rest, but real sleep. Finally. From the looks of it, it is a touch-and-go whether his body will be able to cope with everything that’s going on, and if he dies… I know where the evac zone is, he told me that, but I have no idea of how to call the ship that’s somewhere in orbit.

“No… Good for… Look out, Vasquez!”

He’s dreaming. Dreaming about the lost ones. Screaming and crying in his sleep, something he’s unable to do when awake and surrounded by others. Vasquez. I liked her. She was hard and cocky. Only one who didn’t seem to care when Logan told to his team that they’d be taking me along. I think Logan cared about her a great deal. Why else would he bolt up from that floor, a scream so loud and ragged lodged to his throat that no sound comes out from his mouth?

“Oh, fuck… Come on, we better get moving…”

I’m going to hug him.

“It’s okay. You don’t have to worry. I’ll take care of you.”

He thinks that I’m afraid. That I’m worried over my survival. He denies the comfort I’m trying to offer. I’m not going to let go of him before he realizes that this is not for me, but for him instead. I want him to know that I’m here for him. I want him to accept the fact that nobody’s supposed to suffer through this hell alone.

“Come on, kid. Let go. We have to start moving and… Just let go…”

His mouth says to let him go, and he seems to be completely unaware that I have already let go of him. He’s holding me instead. Holding me, pulling me closer and there are tears on his face. His knees make a sharp thud when they hit the floor of the container and he hides his face against my midriff, hands grasping my waist so hard that there will be bruises later.

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“It’s on the other side of this steaming pile of shit… Evac… Alpha… Gamma… Charlie… Thr… Three hundred… Seven… Five.”

The code. I know it by heart now. He started hallucinating little after noon today. He has been repeating it non-stop since then. But we’re going to right direction. He’s right, assuming that he told me right coordinates earlier. Evac is just across that marsh. But I’m not all that sure that we’re both going to make it.

“Come on, guys! We’re going home! Alph… Gamma… Charlie…”

He’s half-blind already and I think something’s wrong with his brain. His left hand is curled against his chest and those blades that are supposed to stay inside of his arms are partially out. And he thinks that his team is with us. He keeps talking to them. Trying to cheer them up and at the next moment cursing them because they can’t keep up with his pace. He looks almost like one of those black beasts I saw few weeks ago. It was stumbling and shaking its head, hissing and screeching and randomly attacking everything around it. Others of its kind stayed away from it. At the end of the day it was dead, and there were huge white maggots crawling out through its eye sockets.

“Get on to my shoulders, kid. That muck will suck you in and eat you alive. Alpha, gamma, Charlie, three-fucking-hundred-seventy-five-and you’d fucking better memorize this shit because I’m not that sure of how long I can remember anymore…”

I’m not getting on to his back. It’s enough that he can keep himself from falling face down to the shallow water, but he probably thinks I’m up there because he walks little hunched and keeps avoiding low hanging branches. I really hope that there are no maggots in his head. Or if there is, that were off to space and on a course that’ll take us to the nearest outpost before they have eaten all of his brain.

“Alpha-Gamma-Charlie… Three hundred… Seventy-five… How are you holding up, kid? Think you could walk for a while? I need to stretch my shoulders, and I think I saw something moving in that thicket…”

I splash the water with my foot and he straightens his back. Only movement he can see is that white something that’s wriggling inside of his eye, and I think he knows that. I think he knows that he’s in bad shape. He must know. But he keeps up the pretence. Lunges in to the deeper water, blades from his right hand bared and stabs… And there’s something. I don’t know what it is and he doesn’t seem to care, just throws the green and slimy carcass to the side and returns to me.

“I can smell the jet-fuel. It’s not far anymore… Alpha… Ga… Gamma?… Fuck. Can’t remember. When we get there, find my… F-f-f-find my cr-cryo locker and strap me in. Rest is… is-is automated. I think. And go in… In to Vasquez’s locker. You’re s-s-s-same size as her.”

He’s listing to the left. I have to nudge him in to right direction every now and then, and I think he’s starting to wonder who the hell I am. He’s twitching and glaring at me and those claws… They’re claws all right, not blades… They keep pumping back and forth, in and out of his hands. His left hand has fallen completely limp on his side and he keeps cutting his thigh whenever it sways past his leg when he’s moving. And I think he’s blind.

“W-w-w-won’t hurt… you. D-d-don’t w-w-worry. W-w-we’ll get t-t-through…”

He stutters and lisps and drools. And if we don’t hurry up, he’s going to fall down and there will be maggots coming from his eyes. They’re must be filling his head to the brim by now. And I don’t want them to be coming out. Not yet. Not ever. I want them to die and melt away and stop hurting him. Stop eating him, because I want to thank him properly when this is over. I want to walk to him and kiss him and feel him holding and kissing me back just because we both got through hell and the hell wasn’t able to put us down.

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“R-r-r-red b-b-but-t-ton fr t… th… air-r-rlock…”

We’re here. It took an hour from the drop-ship to land, and I had to keep him up for the whole time we waited. He kept slipping in my grasp, spitting and stuttering curses and twitching but we made it.

“G-g-get in!”

Unidentified biological entity detected. Airlock locking protocol. Purge in ten, nine...

No! No, you stupid bitch! I didn’t drag him all the way here just so you could annihilate him! Open this fucking door!

… seven, six…

Open!

“K-k-kid… H-h-h-haul you’re a-a-assss in to a l-l-l-locker…”

Open! Now!

Airlock purge protocol aborted. Airlock purge protocol aborted.

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He didn’t know. It doesn’t matter. I’m not in stasis, but that just means that I can keep watching him. He didn’t know. How would he? I can look at him. There’s white fungus inside of the plex of his locker… No. No fungus. He had a fever. Before the hibernation protocol kicked in that plex steamed up and frosted afterwards.

He didn’t know. Couldn’t know because he was just an ordinary soldier, not some tech-wisecrack. Those red lights that are blinking on the screen that monitors our lockers… They mean that we’re dead, but that’s not true. I had to put him to Eastman’s locker because I couldn’t get his own locker to open. Eastman’s dead. And I’m in Vasquez’s locker. Both Vasquez and Eastman are dead, not us. There’s no fungus in his locker or maggots. And I’m going to fall asleep as soon as the hibernation process in this locker kicks in. It’ll start soon, because I can already feel the ship jacking up the speed. Any second now…

Hey, he’s awake, too! He just waved at me! Those white, nimble fingers sliding over the plex of his locker…