MindFall

Chapter 2.

Kane reached home and immediately rolled up his metaphorical sleeves and went to work.
He swept the dirt floor (hard packed by years of walking on it), until it was as clean as possible.
He then made both beds, unpacked the old blanket they ate on, set out the dishes,
(sorry looking plastic bowls and a few plates, scraped clean with sand) and brought in fresh water from the spring in the good jug with a tap on it.
“hmmmmm....” Kane stood back and surveyed his work, the hut looked pretty good,
but it wasn't 'birthday-ish' enough yet...
“ah ha! , decorations!” Kane started back down to town, then realized something. He had never thrown a birthday party before, and therefor, had no idea what to use for decorations.

This left him with a problem: he had spent almost all morning cleaning and preparing for this party, and now he only had two hours left until it became too hot to work and His sister returned.
How was he going to walk back downtown, buy some decorations and get it all set up in time?.
Kane sighed and broke out into a flat out run, feet pounding on the sand and kicking up red clouds of dust with each step.
He had just passed the rotted wooden marker that signaled the halfway point from the hut to town when a flashing caught his eye.

Now it could have been Roldo, decorations in hand, ready for a party, and the day would have been saved.
Unfortunately, life doesn't work that way. It wasn't Roldo, or Nathanial, or even a guest at all, it was Xenon, and she was running for the hut.
Kane should have made it there first, he should have beaten her back and hidden the party things, but he had been working all day, and was quite tired, so she beat him back by about sixty seconds.

When Kane finally dragged himself home, he was surprised to find his sister packing her things. “what are you doing?” he asked, she turned around quickly and placed her hand on his shoulder, “I have to catch a shuttle in twenty minuets-”
“Why?!” Kane asked, panicked.

Xenon leaned down, “I know it's sudden, but remember when I put that 'job wanted' sign up in the square?, well somebody read it, and they think that they might have a job for me!-”
“but why do you need to leave right now?!”
“ If you'd quit interrupting me I'd tell you”
“sorry”.
“anyway, I met with this guy called Cyrus yesterday, and he said that I was a shoe in for it, but I need to leave right now because Maximilian is giving one of his stupid city wide talks,
and you know what would happen if I tried to make it to the shuttle port during that, he would recognize me, and them we would both be shot as escapees”.

Kane wasn't processing what he was hearing, “but-”.
“I don't like it any more then you do, but, I mean come on!” she stood back up and waved at everything, “do you want to live like this your whole life?, in a freaking clay hut in the middle of nowhere?, sleeping in a hole!?”.
She sighed and looked down at him, “listen, I only have to apprentice for three years, then I can start my own shop here, just like roldo!, wouldn't that be fun?”. Kane stared at her, completely unconvinced, “what is this job?” he asked,
she shrugged, “I don't know, working for some contractor called 'Brillouin industry's', I think that they work with the military or something”.
She slammed her suitcase shut and locked it,
“my god, it's that late already?” she mumbled, and then, with a pat on the head and the promise of postcards, she was gone, walking away into the setting twin suns, the promise of a paying job in her mind driving her onward.

Kane watched for as long as he could before going inside, he spent the rest of the day staring at the wall, wondering how he was going to survive without his best friend in the world by his side. Even when Roldo and Nathanial showed up a few hours later and were informed of the news, he still just stared, as if hoping that Xenon would suddenly emerge from the wall like a phantom.

A day passed, then a week, then two weeks, until finally, Kane had been sitting around in that hut for over two months, and he would probably still be sitting there today, his eyes eternally watching the horizon for a shape that would never come, a voice that would never call his name, if it weren't for two things. A sandstorm the day before, and the revenge of Maximilian Moon.

Maximilian Moon had been the leader of the colony for fifteen years, and he had screwed up every step along the way.
His first and biggest flaw, was his love of money. He lounged for the stuff, and sought it out any way he could, legal or not.
His second was his hate of Raptors, or anything that wasn't a 'pure' human being.
This lead him to build the arena, a massive gladiatorial...well...arena, for him to dispose of anyone, (or anything), that he didn't like.
Even as the rest of the city started to fall into disorganized chaos, he spent all his time and money on his pride and joy, the school had no books, but the floor of the arena was polished to mirror like shininess, the hospital was inadequate, but the arena had new seats, (you get the idea).

It had been that way for ten years, a paradise for a select few, hell for everyone else, until two things happened. The anti-gravity jets had needed work, and two fighters had escaped.
The engineers had barely set foot on the planet when a Bedraggled Girl who's legs and right arm had been replaced with crude cybernetics,
and a young Raptor had stumbled into their camp.
The engineers were horrified by the condition of the two, and of the terrifying story's they told them of being forced to fight in a pit for the enjoyment of Maximilian and the gold barons.
They had immediately opened a com link to the capitol, and it was rumored, that the chief of the team had even talked to the chair woman of the senate before it was all said and done.
In about two hours, a humanitarian team had warped in and arrested Maximilian on no less then twenty charges. Ranging from hate crimes to child abuse, it had taken all his wealth to pay the bail.

When he returned, he immediately started looking for the two who had caused all this, The government had expected this, and so put them under their protection.
But even thou he couldn't harm them physically, he still made life impossible for them.

Hired hit men burned down three of the houses they had tried to live in, all of their money was siphoned off by hackers, and he even turned the public against them, saying that all Raptors were
'cold, inhuman mechanization's, that deserved nothing but death'.
Until both the Raptor and the girl had escaped from the government agents, and began building new lives outside the city.
And even thou Maximilian quit combing the city for them, he still never forgot.

This was what made him even think twice when he was told of a unmarked clay hut outside the city next to a spring.

“How did you find this place again?” he asked the man groveling at his feet.
Snide was a man with much to tell you, if you payed well enough.
He was a snitch by profession, and spent all his time sneaking around and spying on people like a good snitch should, but he couldn't help thinking that he was in over his head this time.
He licked his lips, dry from nervousness, and started telling his tale for the third time.
“It was but just this morning sire, I was taking my morning stroll, like one of my profession is inclined to do, when I noticed a glimmer off behind a dune. Now we had a large sandstorm pass threw yesterday don't you know, and I though maybe it was a piece of a ship, or something valuable like that-”.
“Get on with it” Maximilian growled, Snide swallowed some bile that had risen in his throat and continued.

“Well, I walked for about a half hour, until I sees a hut in the distance, a shabby thing too it was, all rough and with sticks poking out of it-”

Maximilian Picked the unlucky snitch up by his shirt, “you have sixty seconds”. Snide's eyes were bulging out from his head like a grotesque fish as his face turned all the colors on the blue end of the rainbow.
“I think your choking him sir” a guard piped up,
Maximilian grunted and dropped him onto the floor, were he sucked in and flapped around like a carp until Maximilian's heavy booted foot came down on his stomach.
“Start talking snitch, before I see how many shades of blue your blood is too”. Snide started talking like a mad man, “A Raptor Sir!, A Raptor! , it was half buried in the sand from the storm, and was asleep when I found it, but it kept mumbling about someone named 'Xenon' , I had heard that your lordship was looking for two escaped pit fighters, A Raptor and a girl and that sounded like a girls name, so I came here at once!”.
Maximilian rubbed his chin, “were was this?”.
“Half way to the box canyon sire, I can show you!”
“you better” Maximilian picked the man up by his arm, “or you'll spend the night in a cell with my pit rattlers, and they like eating rats like you”.

Kane didn't remember when he had crawled outside, maybe a month ago, maybe a few days, all he remembered was that, in his deep state of depression, his mind had started hearing things.

As he had sat huddled in the corner staring at the wall, a raging sandstorm swirling outside, yet threw the maelstrom and howling winds, a comforting voice drifted over the desert.
“come to me my child, and let me comfort you”
Kane raised his head and threw half blurry eyes saw a vaguely human shaped form in the blinding sand.
It was a woman and she was beckoning him.
He started, then stopped, his mind, dulled by grief, managed to pull up a name for this apparition.
“I'm not going with you,” he slurred, “your the lady of the sands”. The lady laughed like a thousand tiny sliver bells all tinkling at once,
“you are correct young one, but I am not the monster that the miners make me out to be”.
Kane tried to remember what he had been told about the lady,
she was like a siren of the desert, calling men out with her angelic voice and beauty, before burying them under a sand storm, never to be seen again.
They said that only those that were crazy saw her, and Kane had definitively passed that point.

He turned his back to her, blanket hunched on his shoulders, “go away”
a sandy hand gently turned his head, until he was face to face with the Lady of the Sands. “you and I both know that you don't want that-” Kane turned his head back towards the wall “I just want to be left alone....please....go away”.
The Lady clicked impatiently, “you must come my child, if you stay here he will find you”.
“Who?” Kane asked, some of his sense coming back,
“that demon Maximilian-” Kane waved her off, “he doesn't know were this hut is, now go away”.
But the Lady would not be denied, she scooped Kane up in her arms and brought him outside.
The first thing that he noticed was that the storm had stopped, the wind was quieted, the sand grains had stopped drumming on the walls, and it seemed as if the world was at peace.
Kane felt his eye lids slowly closing as a strange tiredness washed over him, body and mind.
He fought to stay awake, sure that the Lady was doing this, but when he rolled over she was gone and he was laying on a sand dune, still warm from the day's heat.

The effect was swift and sudden, his eyelids were like lead doors that slammed closed, and as he drifted off to sleep, dreams of a happier time in his head, the Lady whispered in his ear. “I will protect you now little one, but tomorrow, you must hide from the demon yourself”.
And with that, he was asleep.

“Be still! , he is here”.
Kane heard the Lady whisper in his ear, and cracked hie eyes open. He was in the crest of a dune, his head just barely sticking out so he could breath. This made it so that he could barely see, but still hear everything clear as day.
“Were is he then snide?” a deep, evil voice commanded, and Kane knew that this must be Maximilian.
The other voice, (“snide” he guessed) was whiny and nasally, but dripping with fear.
“But-but he lay right there yesterday sire!, I swear on my mother's grave!”.
Maximilian snorted in contempt, “oh really snide?, so the massive sand dune just grew there overnight then huh?, oh I know!, maybe it was the Lady of the sands, come to haul your crazy ass into my dungeon for me!”.

Maximilian was enraged now and half screaming, “I had to cancel a meeting with my black market dealer to come out here, and what do I get?!, a god damn pile of sand!”.
Thump!, Snide screeched in pain as Maximilian hauled him up by his neck, “get out of my sight you filthy backwater scum”.
Kane watched in amazement, as Snide was thrown at least a good ten feet threw the air and into the sand, were he lay still on the ground as Maximilian walked back to the colony, the veins in his neck pulsing from rage.

Kane waited until he was sure that Maximilian was far away before he plopped out of the dune and started over to Snide.
The Lady formed up from the sand and hovered next to him,
“What are you doing?” Kane leaned over the broken body of the man at his feet, “checking if he's still alive”.
“But-he is your enemy, why are you going to help him?” she sounded puzzled. Kane picked the man up and over his shoulder, “I'm not, he's dead”.
“Oh....then what are you doing with the body?” .
He wasn't really sure himself but he tried to come up with what the best thing to do was.
“I'm. . .um going to bury him”.

After a few minuets of digging, Kane had made a nice deep grave in the loose sand a few hundred feet away from the hut, and thrown Snide's body in it. “what . .um. . Do you say now?” he asked the lady, but she just shrugged.
“I do not know”.
So Kane just decided to bury the body in silence and be done with it.
After the last bit of sand was thrown on him, Kane sat down and though long and hard over his next move.

He couldn't go home, nor could her stay here.
And yet there was nowhere for him were he could be safe-
“Wait!” he yelled, a idea suddenly upon him “I'll just stay with Xenon!”.
“but did she not leave months ago?”
“Yes,” Kane said, “she did, but she also said were she was going too, if I can just catch the next shuttle to the capital I can track her down”.
“But if you go back Maximilian will hunt you down”. Kane nodded, “Your right....hmm....if only I had another way to get on a ship. . .”.