GREEN [complete]

CHAPTER 22: Mars

Mars bumped Dylan's elbow. Again. For the fifth time.

They turned, a heavy sigh already parting their lips. They were better now, no longer on the edge of fainting from dehydration. They clutched their water bottle to their chest, so tight Mars wasn't sure if he could pry it from their hand if he tried. "I'm sorry," they said again, "but you can't use the water to clean yourself off. We don't have a lot left."

"Please?" He rubbed the raw spot on his wrist with the pad of his thumb. Hard. Hard enough to flake more of the blood off, hard enough to agitate the bruises that were growing beneath his skin. The blood crusted his hand and his forearms and splattered his chest, it coated his neck and face and made his insides squirm. He wanted it off. "I only want a little bit," he said. "I only want to be clean."

His belly was full and his mind was beginning to clear from the aftermath of another seizure. Physically, he felt as good as he had since they left containment ... which meant he could focus on less dire issues, like wanting to rip his own skin off if he didn't get clean—and soon.

"We don't have a lot left," Dylan repeated. "We need to focus on staying alive right now."

"But ..." His sentence withered away and he nodded a small nod. They weren't going to understand.

He rubbed his wrist harder, freeing very little of the dried blood. The squirming feeling dug deeper into him; the feeling of being unclean. He wanted to be clean. He needed to be clean. He was glad they were holding the water, he wouldn't have thought twice about using it to clean himself.

Ahead of them, Sekam stopped walking. She stood on the edge of a rocky outcropping, her toes over the edge as she looked down over the edge of the cliff she'd lead them to. She took a half step back and looked over her shoulder at them. "Can either of you climb?"

Dylan snorted. Then, they thought better of it and barked a proper sarcastic laugh. "Yeah, me and my one arm, scaling a cliff. That's definitely something I'd do for fun." They barely let their words skip the surface before adding a flat, "No."

Sekam directed her attention to Mars.

"I don't know," he said.

"He doesn't know," Dylan translated.

Mars crept closer to the edge, placing his hands on the lip of the precipice and leaning forwards. The cliff cut a sharp line down, its sheer face devoid of anything a person could use to support their weight. Pale lichens clung to the dark rock, bunching up into clusters of rich green moss in the cracks. Mars doubted he would be as resilient as those lichens.

But Sekam didn't expect them to scale the cliff. She was already searching for another way down, striding away from them; so close to the edge Mars worried that a stiff wind might pick up and blow her right over. She didn't seem to think the same thing, her concerns were far more internal. Her sturdy composure was cracking, frustration and despair leaking through.

"Is she okay?" Mars asked.

Dylan shrugged. "Does it really make a difference? We're stuck with her either way."

Sekam's ears flicked back, but she didn't comment. Mars took off after her, distancing himself from the face of the cliff in favor of the underbrush. Dylan kept pace with him.

Every now and then, they asked Mars if he was okay. He told them he was, although he didn't feel it. The creeping discomfort stayed under his skin and the bruises grew on his forearms. Relentless pain wallowed around in his insides, reminding him that his organs were shutting down. It was only a matter of time.

Sekam stopped again nearly an hour later, holding her hand up. Dylan and Mars came up next to her. Mars followed her gaze down into the valley that waited below. The colors blurred together in a murky grey-green at this distance, and any heat signals that might be down there were muted by the environment. He did, however, hear them. Their vibrations sneaked up from the valley, tickling the back of his mind and alerting him to life. Or something like it, anyway.