Chapter 30: "She'll live."

"You think Bukky would be okay with that? Getting her out even if it means leaving you down there?" Yiddek asked. He knew she wouldn't be, but that wasn't quite how his brother worked.

"She'll live." Harvel answered, tilting his head up towards the ceiling. He wasn't looking at it. He was too busy trying to feel out where his sister was in the depths of the ground. It was almost like phantom limb syndrome.

"You won't." Yiddek commented, a quiver starting to form in his voice. He wasn't ready to lose either of his siblings, but he knew which one was going to, no matter how things turned out.

"Yiddek. It's been getting harder to breathe over the last few minutes. I think my lungs are getting smaller. I don't know how long I've got. So, either I die up here and she dies down there, or I die down there, and she gets to live. I know which I'm going to choose." Harvel wheezed, letting the majority of his weight rest on Yiddeks back. He was beginning to feel extremely tired. He might have overestimated.

"Aldon, I'm going after their sister with them. I'll see you whenever I get home." Parker said, smiling to herself. This felt right.

"You what?!" Aldon shouted, looking up from the bill he was preparing for Lemmy. Yiddek leaned towards Parker.

"You know you don't have t-"

"Yes. Yes I do. Now that I've gotten my head back in order, I know I have to." She interrupted. Aldon moved to interject but she waved him off.

"I know I saw her down there, but that's just one moment. Who I saw in his memories is a good person, a good sister. We haven't done much lately to help good people, Aldon." She said, shooting her uncle a scathing look. It had all been trust funders and bankers for the last nine months.

They used to take the wealthy for all they had so they could pay the bills, while they helped the people who couldn't pay theirs on the cheap. They'd tracked down gang dens and drug houses, pulling out any unfortunate soul left behind by the world. They'd helped countless people in the last few years, and built a reputation to fund it.

And then there had been the incident. They were there to pull this kid out of the hands of traffickers and get him home. Some drugged up cooker with an improvised vaporization weapon popped out of the basement door. Weapons like that weren't just banned from Boris-Valka, they were banned from all warfare in this or any system. They didn't leave anything behind to repair. And it had barely clipped her face.

The bills had piled up after the surgeries. Doctor Valez had taken most of the brunt as far as the procedures were concerned, but medications and materials didn't come cheap. Within a few months it was back to chasing money like Aldon used to when he'd started out.

She hated it. Aldon hated it. After a while she'd begun to hate herself for dragging him down alongside her. She could barely stand to look in the mirror. When she did, she was only reminded of the mistake that had stopped them from helping the people that really needed it.

The only way she'd dealt with it was by focusing on the violence. It made her feel like she was the same person she'd been before it had all gone down the tubes. When the bullets were pounding into the hull, and the buildings were flying past her, all of the rest of it fell away. No questions, no answers, just lights in the night for her to take aim at.

Then tonight came along. A chance to help out someone who had done much more than help her. Aldon had charged Yiddek the normal rate, even with her protests. She hadn't quite forgiven him for that yet. Good thing she could set her own price when she was on her own time.

"So, seeing as I'm off the clock I'm thinking of doing some volunteer work. Like I used to." She decided, her headache slipping away. She knew he meant well, but his protective side had gotten a little out of hand after the incident. Yiddek looked over at her.

"We certainly appreciate it." He said, extending his claw out for a shake. She ignored it and attempted to fit her arms around Yiddeks massive reptilian shoulders.

"You saved my life. I can't just call it a day when your family is in danger. That's why we took this job in the first place right?" She said, pulling away. Aldon grumbled to himself a bit before sliding his phone back into his pocket.

"Fine then! Have it your way. Guess if I'm gonna let you walk into that ant infested hole, I'm not gonna let you do it alone. But, there's one problem we haven't really considered. How we're going to get down there. At least, without having to walk for days on end. Any suggestions mister mildew? You're the expert." Aldon asked, crossing his arms in sarcastic superiority. Harvel didn't make a sound.

"Harvel?" Parker asked, leaning around Yiddek to see what could be keeping him so uncharacteristically reticent. Yiddek shifted around to try and look over his shoulder. Harvels body slumped onto the floor, the all too familiar green ooze now flowing freely from his eye sockets.

"Harvel? Harvel! What are you sleeping for? You need to-" Yiddek said, pulling his brother upright. His voice slowly drifted away as realization dawned. He held his ear to Harvels chest for a few moments, then knowingly cradled his brother against his chest.

Harvels eyes, tinted green from the ooze, stared lifelessly out into the garage. He didn't breathe, he didn't blink, nor twitch. Nothing more remained of Harvel Gillis but his body.

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'Oh, No. Not again. I'm not doing the thing with the dying again. With the ball of fungus and the loud music. And if I have to listen to loud music, can it be stuff I like? Is that too much to ask?' Harvel thought, watching as his brother held his corpse. Things felt different this time. There wasn't any music, or a voice, or anything really.

Looking at his body he could tell that he wasn't almost dead, or nearly dead, or playing dead. His brain had shut off. The neurons had gone dark. He'd finally run out of oxygen.

He'd felt the space in his lungs getting smaller and smaller. He hadn't thought much about it. He'd known it might kill him. Some less than human part of him had decided that he didn't care. There were more important things to do. People to save that weren't already doomed.

Now that he was standing here watching his brother come to understand that he was gone, all he wanted to do was not be. Not be dead. Not be watching. Not be so callous as to have not said goodbye.

But then, why was he still here? Was he a soul? A spirit? Maybe, but he still sensed the world the same as he had.

The torrent of smells, tastes and eldritch knowledge hadn't gone away. It hadn't lessened in intensity. In fact it was just the opposite. The torrent was expanding, but now he could process all of it as if it were truly meant to be there.

He felt an odd sense of shifting gravity as he watched Yiddek carry his body over to a workbench. He could practically feel the wood against the back of his head as he laid him flat across it. If he could still feel, maybe it was just his human brain that had died. He could swear he was still in there. If he could just...