Mikkaill's buried his face again into his brother's shoulder. He blurted out a muffled "missed you" Ricohh clung to his brother but gave the shadowed tunnel's ceiling a look. His voice roughened by emotion.
"You sound like a girl. And your hair...so long." He finally pulled away to get a better look at Mikkaill, who withstood the scrutiny with an all to soft laugh for the leader of the Freemen.
Mikkail's steel gray eyes glittered. "And am I pretty?" He teased his younger brother. Younger by mere minutes. Ricohh replied with a choked laugh and followed by finally holstering his gun.
"Hardly."
"You are so mean to me!" Mikkaill couldn't hold the stricken look and laughed again, a sound the caverns deep beneath the medical complex ruins had not heard for some time.
Ricohh's head was buzzing. Mikkaill's proximity sent him sailing and made him almost forget how deep underground they were. He grinned as he cuffed the back of his brother's head. Not a hard blow, but not a gentle one either. It cut off Mikkaill's words for a mere moment. Then Mik in turn began to circle Ricohh; his gaze one of careful appraisal.
"By the moons, you look...positively dangerous."
Ricohh was pleased. He had dressed in tattered rags that had once been sturdy denim jeans and shirt. Years of use had bleached the cloth out and turned it threadbare. Only the dirt encrusted into the fabric kept the ensemble together, that and strategically placed duct tape. Thin-soled phlupp leather boots and a ratty cloak, complete with dust shield, completed the outfit. Ricohh looked like any other drifter, used to life on the streets of New Rydynn above.
Ricohh cracked his knuckles. His grin turned sly as he replied. "When I can find the bullets." He watched his brother's circling till Mikkaill stood directly behind him and sighed. Ricohh twisted at the sound.
"I have some for you," Mikkaill said. His tone spoke of the difficulties of staying below and out of sight, while Ricohh braved the world above. "Just make sure you are the one firing them."
"Always," the younger brother said feigning bravado he didn't really feel at the moment.
He took a deep breath and let the words out in a rush. "I don't want you down here anymore."
"C'mon," Mikkaill began, then halted -- perhaps for the first time in his life he was visibly startled by what his brother had to say. His lips parted, his nostrils flared. "Time to trade you mean?" Yet, he knew Ric didn't mean that ... he knew the last place Ricohh wanted to be was anywhere near the deep dark places of the planet. It was something perverse -- the excitement of leaving where he'd lived in for so long maybe -- that made him say it.
Ricohh shifted his stance. His skin prickled at the thought of living down here in the deep dark. He gave a suspicious look to the low ceiling. He quickly found something else to look at. He fiddled with his gloves, speaking slowly.
"If you want. I just. By the gods, Mikkaill, I worry you'll turn into a mole down here."
"Salvation via Spelunking?" Mik tried to joke about it, but he felt his brother's emotion and knew it. He grabbed Ricohh's shoulder. "Come into the big chamber."
The contact with his brother steadied the younger man. "All right," Ricohh said. "Lead the way." Mik's hand, far whiter than it should have been, gripped a moment longer, then dropped. He turned in the tunnel and moved down the way he'd come. "I can't wait to get out of here -- but there are things to show you, first."
The walk was no more than thirty paces. Small glowing markings were scattered on the entrances and exits of the tunnels they passed through. They were made in Mikkaill's own hand -- in a code only he and Ricohh alone could ever possibly understand. Ric made note of each marking, knowing through the odd link with his brother where each passage led. The burrows were actually former service corridors that linked New Rydynn Memorial Hospital with it's satellite buildings. The Freemen had stumbled upon the man-made burrows after a patrol fell through into maze.
The tunnel opened onto a chamber that vaulted into the darkness overhead. Snaking tubing, pipes, wires and access ladders dangled in frozen tableau like live creeping things caught in the startled stasis of sudden light.
The sight gave Ric pause. It was one thing to see the "big room" through his brother's eyes. Now he experienced the cavernous room in person, and it made him feel small and foreign. He had to get Mikkaill out of here, yet it was in this one place where Mikkaill felt he was comfortable, perhaps overly so; safe when no where else had ever been.
"Elliot ..." Mikkaill said suddenly, and the sing song voice answered him.
"Yes, RMG?" The small speakers on the desk top terminal issued the voice that echoed all too faintly in the cavernous room. A low whistle came through Ricohh's teeth.
Mik smiled back at Ricohh, thinking that one thing had been so very clever of him to teach Elliot to do. He was forever identified in E-7's databanks as RMG.
Ricohh hovered in the doorway, unsure of just how much the supercomputer could hear or see. He decided to forgo speech. You are sure, no one knows about this?
I'm sure, and Elliot can't see you or me. Our voiceprints measure identical, even though we sing an octave apart. So you …"can talk..." he finished out loud with a grin to his twin.
"Elliot, show me what's at the Sea of Hope installation."
Ricohh stepped from behind a large pipe and up to his brother's side. Identical in height and dimension, if Elliot could see them, it would not be able to distinguish between the two except for their clothing.
Mik gestured to the small screen that clicked at his words out of energy saver mode and came vividly to life. Silently, Elliot obeyed. The schematics of the inside of the Hope site flickered in both one-dimensional blueprint and three dimensional virtual spacing. Elliot showed them the location of the satellite controls ... everything.
They'd needed the numbers, the external coding that Garth and the Freemen's Special Ops who'd gone there to the angry sea and braved the monsters that hid the half buried installation had found. In the old days before Ric and Mik had been born, one could do little without bar-coding, serial numbers, all of that. It had been frustrating to Mikkaill over the last two years to need such things, the world only fifty years ago on the cusp of something so much greater, so much deeper, when the war took it all away.
Once they'd gotten the proper coding it was easy to ask Elliot what was there -- without it, someone would have had to search every file -- hundreds of long dead ends to find any help for the Freemen at all. Mikkaill had been trying, but it was a mind-boggling task and the tunnels, the place he'd affectionately named the DeepDark, was drawing him in well enough on it's own without numbing his mind through numbers.
"It's one we're going to want to defend..." Mikkaill had already known that Garth Lowinn and his Special Ops Freemen had arrived at the site and were working to secure the facility. It was how they'd gotten the codes. Originally, they'd known that something was there, something important, but Elliot had only been able to tell give them the slightest details about old installations without specific names, dates, and codes. What they needed to do after that was to go in themselves and hack the on-site system's passwords. Elliot hadn't been able to help them with that from the remote location of the hospital's dark underbelly.
"Yeah. We can tear down the surface structure, turn it into more desert." Ric fought to clear the buzzing in his head that happened when he was so close to his brother. Connections between the two still needed to be made, but for now he busied himself with logistics. His stomach rumbled.
"When we have the passcodes from Hope maybe we can guess at what it was used to do." They were both hoping it had been a weapons satellite facility, but it could have been a weather station. Until they got into the guts of the place, they wouldn't know. Mik sat on the edge of the desk. "You hungry?"
"You know I am." Ricohh grinned as he rubbed at his chin. Mik smiled and moved toward a small foot locker. "I've been saving some things - scavenged some... "
"They should've left you food," Ric said as he turned away from the terminal.
Mik crouched down, dialed the combination and unhitched the lock from the eye. "They left standing orders. I get 'care packages'."
Ricohh squatted down beside him, his arms resting on his knees. "Probably better stuff then what we eat." Mik lifted the top and grinned. A few things stood out immediately: a bottle of champagne and several good cans of edibles. They were dusty, but intact: Ricohh swore at the sight of the liquor.
"What was it they used to say? ‘The Navy gets the gravy but the Army gets the beans’?"
That illicited a quiet chuckle as Ricohh lifted the bottle from its nest. He studied the label. "You gotta save this for something special, Mik."
Mik tugged out a can or two of "beans" -- one of a roasted fowl, nondescript -- the other of mixed vegetables. "This is the most special day I've had in a long time." He was proud of himself, that he didn't let his voice betray him. It would have been so easy to have gushed. Being alone a long time underground could do that to a man.
Mik smiled. "I managed to bake bread -- didn't have the ingredients for a cake, though." Setting the two cans down, he moved to the desk where the terminal rested and pulled out the first drawer, searching momentarily for a can opener.
"I was thinking more about opening this with a woman, Mik." Ric stopped, his eyes wide. "Bread?" He spoke in a breathy, excited whisper. How rare was that? Actual bread. Forget women.
"Yeah," he smiled more widely. "I'll get it." Mik disappeared a moment. Then even his footsteps grew silent.
Ric chuckled at the flash of memory that showed Mik kneading dough. Strong hands worked the cork of the bottle free with a loud "gunshot." The cork rifled through the air and clanged against a pipe. It finally skittered to the ground, leaving the room echoing silence. He sucked the resulting foam from his gloves then froze. He was alone in the "big room," alone. He couldn't see the exit for the shadows. They seemed to creep closer.
Mik's footsteps resumed and a faint smell of the bread came with them as they grew louder.
In his grasp were two hand thrown ceramic cups. The bread rested in an apparently clean towel sling, and the can opener dangled from his fingertips. He stopped just next to his brother and looked down.
Ric looked up at his mirror and smiled weakly. He held the bottle aloft as his heart pounded on in his chest. "Got it open."
Seriously, softly, Mik said, "It's okay, it won't fall."
Desperately, Ric tried to make light of his nervousness. He gave a strained laugh. "I know. You - you should see me in the sewers."
"A regular Marco Polo, eh?" He settled to the floor and put the two cups down. His smile showed Ric he wasn't making fun, that he'd been alone too long to make fun and it damn sure wouldn't be worth alienating his other half for brief amusement.
Ric had to hold the bottle with both hands to keep it steady enough to pour. He appreciated the tactful way his brother paid no attention to his shaking hands as Mik opened the first can, the one with the fowl.
"Yeah, I ... ah ... don't sleep much down there."
"As long as it keeps the men safe. If things work out with this new find, maybe Hope will make a better base?"
"Maybe. I will have to see it myself. My first thoughts are that it's too open. To exposed." He gave his brother a wry look. "How's that for irony?"
He topped off the second cup and set the bottle aside. Every movement deliberate and planned. He forced himself to look at his brother and not at his surroundings.
"I think I should go there when we send in the Tech team." He looked puzzled a moment as he held the open can of fowl and then walked on his knees over to the footlocker and fished around with his free hand for two chipped but matching plates. He flopped the plates down and emptied the canned bird onto the plates. Once free of the metal the aroma of the tinned avian was wonderful despite having been ignominiously canned and regretfully unheated.
"We'll have to plan that," Ric said. His nostrils flared to pick up the scent of real food. "Maybe I'll check things in Perdoxx." Sight confirmed that yes, Mik was about to dish out food. Real food from a can.
Dividing it almost perfectly equally ... maybe even giving a bit extra to Ric, Mik smiled. There were so many times he'd looked at the things in his locker, saving them for this, that as he lifted his cup he gave private thanks for the moment. Then he hoped to the gods it tasted as good as he'd always imagined it would.
Ric raised the mug to his brother. He felt steadier, more able to withstand the shadows that surrounded them. "If you were a girl, I'd kiss you, Mik." Of course, it had been a long time since he'd kissed a girl. The thought of such a thing made him duck his head to hide his shy laughter. It forced him to gulp down his liquor.
Mik met the gesture of the toast, his own cup held aloft to match his brother's motion. Then he took a savoring sip with his eyes closed tight and let out a long sigh after.
The bubbles tickled Ric's nose and his throat and he laughed.
His eyes still closed, Mik said, "Do you even remember Macy?" A slow smile flitted across his lips.
"Huh? Macy?" How a girl could compare to cold roasted fowl, Ricohh would never know. He didn't even wait for Mik to start eating. He just dove right in.
"Macy Garrett ... she kissed us both." Maybe it was the drink, but he remembered, of course, that she was dead now. She'd been the one "normal" person to know about them when they were kids. The one person outside the military. He blinked and set down his cup. With a grin he grabbed up a big hunk of the bird on his plate, biting a messy mouthful off.
Ric looked up. His mouth was stuffed and he actually needed to chew a while before he could answer, so he nodded vigorously, murmuring a muffled, "She liked me better," as if it were the least important thing in the world. The repast before him had the lion's share of his attention at that crucial moment. He offered a greasy smile before washing the heavenly meat down with champagne. "Damn, Mik ... this is good."
Mik wiped his mouth on the back of his hand and took up the small loaf of bread. He ripped off a piece, handed the loaf to Ric and swallowed hard so he could respond. "I ... wanted it to be special."
Ric paused before mutilating the rest of the bread, and his steel-gray eyes glittered. "It is, Mik."
Tearing into the bread with his teeth, his voice came out muffled. "Wish I had butter." It always seemed that no matter how good a thing was ... the huumunn condition was to wish it better.
"And jam." A boyish grin lit up Ric's tanned face.
He opened the smaller can of mixed vegetables, frowned a second, then matched that grin on Ric's face. "Ohh, jam ..." He'd always been guilty of a sweet tooth. He stared at the vegetables and knew there were vitamins in them, but the bird was just so much better ...
"Just eat it off the spoon, you used to do," Ric mused between bites. He gave the vegetables a scowl. He was a meat eater and that was that.
Pouring some of the veggies onto his plate, Mik took a new torn piece of the bread and formed a small hole in it. He stuffed in a piece of meat and topped it with some of the canned greens. Holding it up victoriously, he grinned then took a large bite. Ric was duly impressed by the makeshift sandwich.
"Damn ... always were the smart one."
"Ya never get the girls if you have greasy hands," Mik said mid chew; his grin mischievous.
