A man glanced up as the front door creaked open. He took one look at the pair of silhouettes and turned back to the stark white glow of computer screen. “We closed thirty minutes ago,” he called out with annoyance weighing heavily on his voice.
“We need a flight off-planet.”
The man straightened up in his chair, peering between his screen and the divider used to separate his side of the desk from the public-facing side. His ruddy complexion darkened the further it moved from the glow of the screen.
The first of the two men stepped through the shallow lobby and approached the desk. The muted lights above his head cast his sepia skin with a dull glow, and his dark brown eyes seemed even darker in the shadow under his brow. The dark leather jacket he wore seemed to soak in the shadows of the room.
Behind him, a wiry man with mostly tan hair brushed aside the patch of white from his forehead. A black headband held back the rest, and a thick knitted scarf wrapped around his neck above a bleach-stained gray shirt.
“Off-planet?” The man repeated as the dark-eyed visitor casually rested a hand on his desk.
“We know you were the pilot who shuttled New Arden’s officers across a couple planets not too long ago,” Elliot casually slipped his other hand into his jacket pocket.
The pilot narrowed his eyes skeptically. “Who told you that?”
“Name another pilot in the tri-city region who still has aircraft able to go into space.”
The pilot shifted uncomfortably in his brown uniform. “Sir, I hope you can understand I can neither confirm nor deny that I, a humble transport pilot of Harbour Shipping, would shuttle New Arden’s officers—”
“We’re not here to get anyone in trouble.” Elliot eased with a quick wave of his hand. “We just need to go back to one of your stops.”
“Oh.”
Elliot’s brows raised in anticipation. “So?”
“All right, all right,” it was the pilot’s turn to wave his hands. “Which stop were you looking at?”
“The Tallelands.” Ace stepped up to the desk.
“Tallelands,” the pilot’s fingers pattered across his keyboard. “Yeah, I was there a few weeks ago. Country of Northaven, looks like.”
“That’s it.” Ace’s eyes lit with hope.
The pilot glanced up from the computer. In the beam of light above their heads, the thin man’s streak of white hair seemed to glow. “Say,” he asked curiously, “you’re not one of those Aravasts, are you?”
“No, I’m a Daethen from Northaven, hence why I need to get back there.” Ace said matter-of-factly.
“Oh!” He exclaimed as he leaned back in his chair. “Wow, I was wondering what they were doing picking up a bunch of people like that. They didn’t tell me much, just where to go and when to do it.” His ruddy face paled. “I mean... I didn’t say anything about picking up anybody. Nothing at all.”
Ace waved it off with a grin. “Yeah, they were trying to see if I could help them, but it didn’t work out.”
“Sorry to hear that.”
“I’m not.” Ace smirked.
“So, when can you fly?” Elliot asked.
“When can you pay me?”
Elliot reached into his back pocket and handed him a small card.
“A cash card? I didn’t think cards still existed without a name attached to them.”
“It was a birthday present.”
The pilot swiped it through a machine and nodded. “Nice birthday present. Now, I’ll need to scan your chip.”
Ace promptly backed away when the man stood and reached for his neck.
“What, you think you can just fly off without being scanned? It’s standard protocol to track all off-planet passengers!”
Elliot’s annoyance turned to silent dread as the pilot waved the scanner in front of them.
“Oh, it’s not that,” Ace recovered and offered reassuringly, “it’s just that I don’t have a chip.”
“Don’t have a chip?” The pilot blinked.
Ace held out his hand for the scanner and, with his back safely pointed away from the pilot, he pressed the scanner onto his own neck. It buzzed out an error. “See? I’m from The Tallelands; we don’t have chips there.” He handed the scanner back.
“Oh!” The pilot gave a short laugh and stepped back behind the computer with the scanner. “My apologies, sir. I guess you’re going off-planet as a chip read error, then.” He then sat back in his chair. “All right, I can probably get the ship up and running in about an hour.”
“Wait, what about him?” Ace pointed to Elliot.
“What about him? This ain’t enough for two tickets.” He lifted Elliot’s card.
Ace and Elliot glanced at each other. Ace had donned a look of worry, and Elliot frowned and pulled him away from the desk.
“Listen, I don’t need a ticket,” he spoke softly.
“Don’t need a ticket? You’re supposed to come with me!” Ace hissed back.
“You heard him; I don’t have enough money for us both!” He winced and added under his breath, “Besides, I can’t risk being scanned. If they follow me, they’ll be able to find you.”
The Daethen’s brows knitted. “But, you won’t be safe here.”
Elliot put his hand on Ace’s shoulder. “But you will be safe there.”
Ace shook his head, his eyes wide with fearful sorrow.
The Barean gripped his shoulder tighter. “Now go on. And don’t you dare turn this into another sappy moment.”
Ace was struggling to retain composure. “Elliot.”
“Stop it!” Elliot released Ace with a half-shove. “What did I just say?” His voice cracked.
“I can’t—”
“You can. This is how it has be.”
His words flickered a light in Ace’s eyes.
Ace rushed back to the counter. “How about this,” he looked hard at the ruddy pilot and he slipped a silver ring from his left ring finger. “You take this for payment, but we don’t scan him.”
“Ace, what in the—”
He shoved his friend back with his other hand, holding the shimmering ring between his fingers. “It’s pure white gold.”
The pilot selected the ring from Ace’s fingers and held it closer to his computer screen for light.
“You cannot give away your wedding ring!” Elliot tugged on Ace’s arm. “Are you insane?”
“If I don’t receive money, I can’t issue a ticket.” The pilot’s eyes were still glued to the ring.
“See? So, take it back!” Elliot ordered forcefully.
“I can replace a ring,” Ace replied sternly. “I cannot replace a friend.”
Elliot’s mouth hung open, but not a single word could escape from it.
“If I can’t issue a ticket, I don’t have to scan you.” The pilot looked up.
Ace’s brows raised in anticipation. “So?”
“So, both of you just come back here and get on the shuttle.” He shook his head, pocketed the ring, and unlatched the half-door beside him. “I swear, you’d better not be on the run or something,” he muttered with a sigh.
Ace turned to Elliot with a wide grin.
Elliot, however, had not yet recovered. “Why?” He finally managed to get out.
“I told you why. Now, come on.”
He tugged Elliot through the door and followed the pilot through a series of hallways until they reached the hangar. While the pilot barked their last-minute plans to the crew, Ace and Elliot started up the portable staircase into the ship’s cockpit.
Ace bounced into one of the chairs and chuckled as it spun. He looked up to the door, turning his head as the chair slowly rotated below him.
Elliot stood silently in the doorway, almost trancelike as he ran his fingers across the curved shape.
“You can come in.”
Elliot looked up. At last, a smile tugged at his lips. “Forgive me; it’s odd to think I’m actually leaving this place.”
“It does seem a little surreal after basically convincing myself I didn’t have a chance,” Ace leaned his elbows on his knees.
Elliot puffed air through his lips as he sat in an adjacent chair. “It’s not like I’m leaving behind anything important. Just a dead-end job, a shoddy apartment, and old memories.”
“Good ones?”
“Gershwin’s are the only good ones.”
“But you grew up here,” Ace tried, “you’ve got memories of your family before Gershwin, right?”
Elliot took in a slow, deep breath. “Those are... too buried beneath the scars.”
“What happened?”
“You’re really going to make me get sappy again?” Elliot sat back in the chair.
“I’ll get it out of you one way or another.” Ace raised an eyebrow.
Elliot’s smirk softened. “When I was fifteen, something happened with the water, and my entire family—and most of our apartment building—got really sick.” Elliot’s eyes turned idly out the open door, “I rushed them to the hospital, and they got them into beds and hooked up to monitors, but that’s when NAGA came in. They said due to a greater emergency, they would be unable to care for my family. So, they left them, hooked to the machines, to slowly die before my eyes.”
Ace had frozen, his hand pressed across his lips.
“To this day, I can’t stand thinking they could have been helped, but they weren’t. I can’t stand that I couldn’t do anything about it. And to this day, I can’t stand looking at those beds and machines—as you are well aware from my stupid panic attack.”
“It’s not stupid,” the white hair slid back into Ace’s face.
“And like you, I still wonder if I should have done something differently. Should I have run and grabbed a doctor, or not taken no for an answer, or not been so useless and helpless... It tore me up so bad; I lost everything, including my sanity.”
“And that’s when Gershwin found you.”
Elliot looked up. “…Good job.”
Ace offered an empathetic smile. “I’m really sorry you had to go through that.”
“It’s all past now.” Elliot leaned back in the chair and used his legs to twist it from side to side.
“Well, I hope you can come to make new good memories in The Tallelands now.” Ace leaned over with a smug grin. “Maybe even add a few more names to your two-person friends list.”
“Oh, you still think there’s two, huh?” Elliot ribbed him.
“Oh, sorry, am I being pretentious again?”
Try as he might to hold it back, Elliot broke into a hearty laugh. He held up one hand to shield his eyes and he heavily shoved Ace with the other.
Ace yelped as his chair spun in circles, though he was laughing almost as much.
Elliot hooted an exaggerated sigh. “Have you thought about what your friends are going to think of you and your newfound power?” he asked once Ace’s chair had slowed to a stop. “‘Cause you’re, like, crazy powerful now.”
“They’ll be surprised, that’s for sure. But, I don’t plan on using it much if I can help it. Although technically, there are sorcerers around.” Ace raised a hand and caused mist to rise above his fingertips as the light flowed through the veins of his arm. “I may blend right in.”
“Sorcerers?” Elliot’s brows peaked. “This I gotta see.”
Soon, the pilot joined them in the cockpit, along with two crewmembers to help with the hours of travel ahead of them. In the cover of darkness, from an aircraft hangar twenty miles outside of New Arden, a ship slipped into Barea’s atmosphere and shot into space.
--
For the first time in weeks, her eyes were not wet with tears. She had not forgotten, nor would she ever forget, the loss she had experienced, but it was becoming easier to live beyond the icy hole punched through the center of her life.
She leaned heavily on her brother-in-law’s arm as they walked down the sandy road to her door. She had been grateful to have James and her husband’s longtime friend, Dorian, at her side as they worked their way through their grief together.
“James,” Dorian shouted suddenly, giving his free arm a tug.
James stopped walking and turned to him, but he could only follow Dorian’s line of sight when he couldn’t speak further.
Athena broke from his arm and clamped her hands against her mouth, tears of hope welling in her eyes.
Two figures were walking over the hill towards them.
Thank you for Reading!
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