InsaneJournal

RafeDraft - Chapter Three

There were no streetlights here--they were only installed in earnest on the really major streets, and this was barely more than a glorified alleyway, as far away from general transit as you were likely to get on foot.

Rafe hummed a jaunty little tune as he walked and wondered if perhaps he was going insane.

There was, of course, the voice, but he was nearly convinced there could be a rational explanation for that. He'd heard that people with fillings could sometimes pick up stray radio signals if they turned a certain way--perhaps that was all it was. Just some errant radio static, and the occasional coherent sentence was just pattern-matching on his part, borne of job- and health-related stress. Granted, he'd never had a filling, nor did he have any other sort of metal object anywhere in his body, but he was confident he could work around that. It was something about skull structure, perhaps, or maybe it was a new sort of radio wave that reacted strangely with certain people.

But now he was hiking across town at midnight in the middle of an unusually chilly fall in nary more than a light jacket, with nothing to protect himself save a favorite kitchen knife he appeared to have shoved into a pocket before leaving, and he was fairly sure there was nothing you could do to make that sound sane.

It was a troubling thought. Of all the things he'd ever doubted about himself, his sanity had never been one of them, and he certainly did not appreciate it acting up like this at his time of life. He had much better things to worry about.

Idly, he considered simply turning around and going straight home again, but two more blocks passed and he still hadn't managed to get around to it. Perhaps later, then. After all, mysterious hunches were not exactly daily occurrences; he might as well stick around to see where it ended up.

His surroundings were starting to look... vaguely familiar, as if he'd been here before, years and years ago. It was too dark to see any illuminating details, though, and he had no idea whatsoever where he actually was--he didn't know much of Tessa save his own neighborhood and a bit of downtown, and this was far, far away from either of those.

Wait, though, that wasn't entirely true. He had stayed in Tessa for a while, when he was very, very young. And it had been in a rather run-down neighborhood, like this one seemed to be... and there had been a lot of very narrow streets around, just like the ones he'd been walking on...

But that was ridiculous. Wasn't it? He'd barely been six years old when he left. Oh god, he hadn't just half-sleepwalked here in the freezing cold just because of some errant childhood memory, had he? That would be ridiculously embarrassing.

He found himself stopping in front of a dark shape that with a bit of squinting revealed itself to be a warehouse. Yes, there had been warehouses too, sort of squeezed in to one side. No one had really known what they were supposed to store, but they'd been good places to sleep, even if everyone did say they were haunted. He thought they'd have been torn down years ago.

The door was slightly open, but rusted from years of disuse. Rafe hooked his fingers over the edge and pulled, grunting as the metal bit into his hands. With a mighty heave, and a brief blast of pain that for a moment convinced him he had dislocated both shoulders, he managed to slide it the rest of the way open, revealing the pitch blackness inside.

It was only at this point that he remembered the flashlight he'd apparently shoved into the knife-less jacket pocket shortly before leaving home. He took it out, feeling slightly foolish, and turned it on. The tiny beam did very little to improve the general gloom, but it cut out a dim little circle of light on the far wall, which revealed, as he slowly panned it around, a multitude of old crates stacked and scattered across the floor.

A feeling of intense deja vu came over him. Okay, he thought. So. Logically speaking, there was no way this was actually the warehouse he was thinking of. He was remembering a pattern of crates that was twenty years old, at least. The chances of the whole place staying the same for that long were next to zero--it would have to have remained completely untouched, for one thing... although there did seem to be a thick layer of dust over everything, it could easily be twenty years' worth...

He swung the flashlight over a little further and froze.

There was an unmistakable brown stain on one crate in the corner.

#

The stain had bothered him even then, tiny and confused and with a working memory that only went back to a few minutes ago, when he'd first woken up there, nestled in between two of the larger crates. It had been much darker then, sort of reddish, and it seemed to be almost oozing out of the wood, occasionally letting a drop fall onto the rough stone floor. He'd watched it for a good while, wanting to go outside but not entirely sure if it was safe to go past it.

A faint, tinny, clanging noise from the far side of the partially opened door was what finally made him work up the courage to leave. He inched along the floor on hands and knees, pressing himself against the crates opposite the stain, watching it all the while to make sure it didn't get him.

The noise from outside got louder as he approached the door. It never occurred to him to be afraid of it--he was too busy being scared of the stain to even bother thinking about other threats.

Finally, he was close enough to peer outside. The noise, he found, was apparently being caused by a pair of legs, sticking out over the side of an overlarge green dumpster. Loud bangings and clangings emanated from within.

As he watched, fascinated, the legs wriggled backwards and the rest of a small and grubby person emerged, landing with a thump on the sandy ground. There was a hunk of moldy bread in its mouth, and assorted food-like items clutched in one small hand.

It dropped the handful of scraps and began to attack the bread, tearing out huge chunks with its teeth and swallowing them noisily. It didn't seem to have realized he was even there.

"Hi," he said.

The person whirled in mid-bite and stared at him like a startled deer. It crouched slightly, looking ready to run at any moment.

"Don't go," he said, alarmed. He didn't want it to leave, he didn't want to be alone again. He was beginning to realize that he didn't have any idea where he was.

The person looked at him warily. "Y' after m' catch?" it said.

"No," he said. "What's a catch?"

The person relaxed, and returned to its frantic eating. He decided it was probably a girl.

After a moment, once the bread had been completely consumed, she looked back up at him and scowled. "What're y' starin' at?"

"You?" he ventured.

She looked him up and down. "Scrawny thing, aintcha? Doncha eat?"

"I don't know," he said.

"Doncha know how to scrounge?"

"No. What's that mean?"

She gave him an odd look.

"You don't gotta gang?"

"No."

"Me neither." One last, scrutinizing glance, then she dug a half-eaten chicken bone out of the heap beside her and tossed it to him. He caught it before it hit the ground, suddenly realizing how ravenous he was. He tore a chunk of meat off, barely chewing it before he swallowed.

"Wanna be m' gang?" said the girl. "Can't steal much with one, shopkeeps always watch ya. Gotta have someone t' distract 'em."

He thought about this. "Does it mean I get food?"

"Yeah."

"Okay." He took another bite of old chicken. It seemed like a decent arrangement to him.

The girl beamed, her grimy face lighting up. "'M Aria. 'M six," she added, proudly.

"I'm four," he said, and paused. "I think."

"You gotta name?"

"I think." Now that he thought of it, though, he couldn't remember ever having a name. Everything before he'd woken up was just a vague blur, a random collection of images that was already starting to fade. There was something, though, a word, tickling at the back of his mind...

Aria regarded him skeptically. "Ev'ryone's gotta name," she said.

He thought of it, finally. "Raphael," he said. "My name's Raphael."

"Raf-ale?" Aria wrinkled her nose. "Weird. How 'bout Rafe?"

Rafe nodded. It was, he thought, a very good name.

#

Rafe waved the flashlight around aimlessly for a little longer, taking in the desolate little room. "Okay, then!" he announced to the ceiling. "I've--I've re-connected with my past, it was very nice and, uh, sappy! Am I done, can I go home now?"

He glanced hopefully towards the door, but found no inclination to go back outside. Ah, well. It couldn't hurt to look around a bit more.

His eye (or rather, his flashlight) fell on an odd jumble of crates around the middle of the warehouse--odd in that it definitely seemed different from how he remembered. It was a stupid thing to think, of course, he couldn't actually expect to rely on the fuzzy memories of a four-year-old who'd been in there exactly once, but still... He wandered over to the pile and shone the flashlight over it. It definitely looked like it had been stacked haphazardly, not even in some lazy semblance of order like the other crates. And some of the top crates were leaning strangely, as if they were precariously balanced over empty space rather than solidly supported by a lower layer of boxes.

There was a small gap between two of them; Rafe shone the flashlight down into it and caught a glimpse of metal. Aha, he thought. Bingo.

He set down the flashlight and gave one of the crates a tentative shove. It didn't budge, but as he pushed he accidentally jostled an adjoining crate with his elbow, and it moved quite easily. He pulled it down, and tried another; some experimenting determined that the top crates at least were about evenly mixed between full and empty. With the empty ones removed, he could make out the general shape of the object underneath--it was a rectangular metal box, perhaps seven feet long by two and a half feet wide. There were no visible seams anywhere, at least not any that the flashlight could pick up, which made him wonder what exactly had convinced him it was a box, but it just seemed very box-like to him. He decided not to worry about it. Weirder things were going on than a bit of semantic confusion.

He made a few more half-hearted attempts to move the full boxes, but they refused to budge. It was definitely going to take someone a lot taller and sturdier than Rafe to move those crates. He thought of trying some of the lower crates, but most of those were either full or under another box, and the one empty one he managed to tug out from a corner did not bring him any closer to getting that metal thing out.

So. He would just have to go get help.

#

It took much longer to find his way back home than it had to get out there in the first place--Rafe stopped counting how many times he'd gotten lost after the sixth dead end, and he had to constantly fight the urge to turn around and go straight back to the warehouse. To make matters worse, his lack of sleep was beginning to catch up with him, and the temporary lucidity he had enjoyed in the warehouse was quickly slipping away. By the time he found his way onto a familiar street and started the long trek over to Alex's house, he was almost half-asleep again, and only the thought of getting run over by some over-enthusiastic commuter kept him from laying down right there in the road and going to sleep.

It was morning when he finally got there, the sun just peeking over the rows of rooftops. He hesitated for a moment on Alex's doorstep, wondering if it was all right to knock this early. After all, it was a Saturday--at least, he thought it was a Saturday--or was tomorrow a Saturday?--and he knew how Alex hated to be woken up any earlier than necessary. But this was necessary, wasn't it? The box was important, he knew that much, and he could never get it out without help. Confident once more, he raised his fist and knocked smartly.

He had to knock almost seven times more before Alex showed up, groggy and bathrobed and looking entirely unhappy. "What the hell, it's six in the--" He blinked. "Oh, hey. Rafe."

"I need your help," said Rafe.

"Okay..."

"We need to take your car. It's very important."

"Sure, I guess..." Alex looked at him oddly. "Rafe, are you... aware that you're still in your pajamas?"

Rafe looked down. He was, indeed, in his pajamas. So that's why I was so cold, he thought. "Yes," he said, because it seemed like the best way to deal with the question.

"Um. Do you want to go back to your place and change, or..."

"No. It's important."

Alex gave him another odd look, but shrugged. "Okay, then, suit yourself. Just... let me get some pants on."

He disappeared back into the house, muttering to himself under his breath. Rafe sat down by the door and began to hum again, cheerfully.

#

"The middle of the night?"

Rafe was not particularly fond of cars--he found them noisy, and they made places smell like exhaust. But he had never really minded them, either. They were handy little things, he thought. Sure, he rarely needed to go anywhere that he couldn't walk or bus to, but if he was running late or didn't feel very good, there was nothing like a car to get him where he was going with minimal fuss and discomfort.

Now, however, he was finding the inside of Alex's little four-door Ford to be decidedly unpleasant. It seemed altogether too small for him, even though the roof was several inches above his head; he had to keep staring out the window to keep from getting nauseous and panicky.

"Turn left," he said. "Um, yes. That is when I was out. More or less."

"Can I ask why?"

"Ummm..." Rafe thought about it. "Because it seemed like a good idea at the time?"

Alex sighed. He did not appear to be pleased by the whole thing, Rafe noted, and he seemed to think it was just some bizarre fancy of his, which did not seem very charitable to Rafe. "Look, Rafe. I know you're not exactly the most, um... normal of people, but you could still get really hurt out there at night. I mean, you could at least have called and told me where you were going."

"Well, I really didn't know where I was going," said Rafe shortly. The 'normal' comment had stung a bit. "Besides, you would have just told me to stay home. Left here."

"I might have. I might have just told you to wait till morning and we could go explore together."

"Like we're doing now."

"Us taking the car now does not cancel out the fact that you could have gotten seriously hurt last night."

"Doesn't it?"

Alex visibly restrained himself from replying. He waited a moment, then said, "I'm sorry for saying you weren't normal."

"Okay."

"Now stop being a dick."

"Okay. Turn right."

The car meandered slowly through the side streets, Alex making little hissing noises through his teeth as he maneuvered around the more difficult corners. It annoyed Rafe a little. Sure, the streets were narrow, and the car could easily get damaged if they weren't careful, but he just wanted them to be there already.

He considered just getting out and sprinting the rest of the way, because it would probably be faster. But no--they needed the car. Car was important too. So he just sat back and glared out the window, trying not to pay attention to his increasingly cramped surroundings, and told Alex where he needed to turn.

Finally, Alex said, quietly: "Listen. Uh, Rafe. I just want you to know that, you know. If there's ever anything wrong, if you have... any sort of problem... I'm here, okay? You can talk to me. We're friends."

"Mm-hmm," said Rafe, although he was only half-listening--he had just remembered that he still had a very large kitchen knife in one pocket, and was absorbed in trying to figure out how to remove it without catching Alex's attention.

Alex sighed heavily. "I worry about you sometimes, Rafe, I really do."

"Thanks," said Rafe. Maybe if he made as if he was adjusting his sleeve, he could at least move it enough to stop it poking into his side like that--

He snapped to attention as they passed the warehouse. "That's it!" he yelled. Alex jumped, and slammed his foot on the brake; the car jerked forward slightly and then stopped, engine whirring in agitation. Alex shut it off and gave Rafe a dirty look, but Rafe was already out, heading for the warehouse door.

"It's here," he said when they were both inside, and pointed to the big pile of crates near the center. "There's something underneath these boxes and I can't move them on my own."

"What's in them?" said Alex, eying the pile dubiously.

What a stupid question, Rafe thought. "I don't know," he said, "we just need to move them, okay?"

With Alex's help the pile disappeared very quickly, exposing the top of the box underneath. It was completely featureless, for all appearances just a slab of dull gray metal, but Rafe felt a thrill of excitement as they uncovered it. This was something big. This was something important.

He started to pull away the empties on the bottom as Alex deposited the last top box over by one wall. "Get some of these, will you?" he said, intent on his work. "I can't lift the ones on that side."

Alex didn't respond. Rafe looked around, annoyed; he was standing a little ways behind him, staring as if transfixed by the side of the box that Rafe had cleared a path to.

"What?" said Rafe.

"Rafe," said Alex, and his voice sounded strange and strained, as if he were fighting to keep it steady. "Do you have any idea what this thing is?"

"Well, no. Does it matter?"

Alex pointed a shaking finger at the box. "Rafe!" he exclaimed. "This is a cryo box! I'd know that control layout anywhere, god, I must have taken books full of notes on these things in college!"

Rafe glanced down at the box again. Sure enough, on the side he'd uncovered there was a little recessed panel with a faintly glowing screen and a jumble of buttons on it, and it did rather resemble something out of one of his old history textbooks about the Migration. But he failed to see what Alex was making such a big deal about.

"Okay," he said, "it's a cryo box. Does that mean it's going to be easy or difficult to carry?"

Alex nearly exploded in sheer moral indignation. "Rafe!" he halfway shrieked. "There are only maybe five cryo boxes left intact on the entire planet! They're practically artifacts! Do you know how valuable they are? I mean, my family's rich, but they'd be paupers compared to someone who--"

"Alex!" Rafe snapped. "For god's sake will you just shut up and help me carry this?"

Alex stared at him, as if Rafe had just announced his heartfelt belief that there were Martians living in the roof. Then the last bit of Rafe's sentence caught up with him and he blinked, confused. "Carry? Why do we need to carry it?"

It was incredible, Rafe thought, what a complete and utter idiot Alex could be sometimes. "To get it into the car. Of course."

"The car?"

"So we can get it home."

Alex remained uncomprehending. "Why do you want to take it home? Come on, Rafe, it's a piece of junk. Expensive junk, but--it's a hundred and fifty years old. Look, it's not even connected to a power source. The most it's going to have in it is some moldy old cabbages or something. There's no point--"

"We have to get it home!" Rafe winced and clutched his head as a brief jolt of pain shot through his temples. Why couldn't Alex just cooperate? He was making everything far too complicated. "We just--we just do, okay? It's important."

Alex stared at him a moment longer, then shook his head, disgusted. "All right. All right. Fine. We'll take it home. Then we'll call the Historic Society." He came over and started to shove the rest of the crates away. "Man, Rafe, if we break this thing it is not going to be my fault."

It occurred to Rafe, as the last of the crates were carted away, that he probably should be worrying about how they were going to lift the box. It was very big, after all, and perfectly level, so it didn't seem like they'd be able to get any purchase under the corners. But further investigation revealed two small, hand-sized holes on either narrow end, obviously designed to let the box be carried. "You take that end," he instructed Alex, pointing.

Alex obediently went over to his side. "I hope you're actually going to help this time," he grumbled. "I can't lift this on my own."

"I helped before," said Rafe, offended. "I moved the empty crates."

He went over to his side, grabbed the handhold, and gave it an experimental tug. The box didn't move, not even slightly. It was like trying to lift the floor.

"We have to lift at the same time," said Alex. "Ready--one, two, three--"

They gave an almighty heave. The box came up, but not easily; even with Alex's help it seemed impossibly heavy to Rafe. The edge of the handhold felt like it was going to cut straight through his fingers.

"Is it supposed to be this heavy?" he grunted as they lurched towards the door.

"I don't know!" Alex snapped. "All we learned was how they worked, exact tonnage didn't really come up!"

It took a good ten minutes to get the box all the way out to the car--they had to put it down every few feet and massage the life back into their hands. "I'm going to be so sore tomorrow," Alex groaned, and Rafe had another brief flash of irritation at him. Who cared about soreness at a time like this?

Finally, they were able to manhandle it into the back seat--it barely fit, and in the end they were only able to force it in by folding down the front passenger seat and laying the box diagonally across it. Rafe sat in the back with it, legs scrunched up against his chest, arms and back gone nearly numb with exertion. Alex was silent and moody all the way home, but Rafe didn't care. He had the box. He was going home. Everything was fine.

Eventually he nodded off, and only woke up when Alex opened the side door and shook him by the shoulder. "We're here," he said shortly. "Come on, I can't get this in by myself."

Somehow the cryo box ended up safely in Rafe's living room. Rafe couldn't even feel his fingers anymore, but he couldn't be bothered to care. He sank to his knees beside the box, examining it closely. Most of it was covered in a thick layer of dust, like everything else in the warehouse; he brushed a bit off with his hand, achieving only moderately successful results. He got up, went to the closet in the hall and got out a small cleaning cloth, fumbling it a little when his still somewhat unresponsive fingers failed to get a proper grip on it. That did the trick--the dust came off easily, exposing the slight shine of the metal beneath. Regular motion was starting to get the blood flowing back into his fingers, restoring some of his manual dexterity, and so he turned his attention to the sides, and cleaning out the little nooks and crannies of what Alex had said was the main control mechanism.

He was halfway finished before he realized that Alex was still there, leaning against the door and watching him with a mixture of amusement, annoyance, and concern. Rafe scowled at him. "Do you mind?"

"Mind what? Oh no, am I disrupting your psychotic housewife routine?"

God, Rafe thought, what an absolute incompetent. He was witnessing perhaps the most important event in all of Rafe's life so far and all he could think of doing was make some idiotic joke at Rafe's expense. Of course, he probably couldn't expect much better from a--

Rafe paused, confused. From a what? What had he just been thinking? But the train of thought was already gone, leaving behind only a lingering twinge of annoyance.

"I, um," he said. His head was beginning to hurt again, a small but persistent ache. "I need you to leave. You're bothering me."

Alex raised an eyebrow. "Bothering you? Okay, so which one of us was it woke the other one up at barely six o'clock and dragged him halfway across the city so he could pull every muscle in his body?"

More sarcasm! Sarcasm didn't help! The pain was getting worse. "You're giving me a headache!" Rafe cried, clutching at his temples.

"All right! Fine!" Alex threw up his hands in defeat. "I'll go outside. Just come get me when you've calmed down, okay?"

He paused, as if waiting for a reply, but Rafe waved an agitated hand at him and he left, rolling his eyes.

Rafe waited a moment longer, listening to Alex's footsteps disappear down the street. After a little the headache began to ebb, as did his annoyance, and he settled back down to work, cheerful once more.

The controls looked like they had once been covered by a hinged panel; the hinges were still there, but the actual panel was long gone, probably broken off. Now that he was really looking at it, the thing really didn't look all that well--the screen glowed dimply but kept flashing intermittently, and the writing on the buttons was mostly faded and unreadable. Maybe Alex had a point; he wouldn't trust the thing to keep his groceries fresh.

But he still had to figure out a way to open it. And with the labels gone, that was going to be difficult. He considered just pressing buttons until one finally did something, but immediately dismissed it as a bad idea. There was no telling the kind of damage he might do to the inside if he wasn't careful.

Hmm. Well. Unlike Alex, he'd only studied these things in high school, and not in any great detail--mainly his knowledge of them consisted of the fact that they existed and were very cold inside--so there was no chance of simply recalling where the unlock button was off of some old textbook pictures. And calling Alex back was out of the question, not after the mood he'd been in. But it couldn't be that hard to figure out, right? He squinted at the buttons, and blew the last bits of dust away. He could immediately dismiss the little arrows around the center--those were probably for adjusting the temperature. And most of the ones around the screen looked like they were just for selecting things. But that left several more that he couldn't possibly divine the function of.

Hold on, though--down in the bottom there were two buttons that were slightly separated from the rest, and they were colored a faded red instead of a faded bluish-grey like the others. Aha, he thought, there we go. One of those had to be it. He reached out to press one at random--

--and hesitated. His finger hovered there for a moment, uncertain, and then, very slowly, it drifted over to the other button and pushed it.

From inside the box there was a whirring noise and several faint clicks, as some mechanism inside disengaged. Oh, thought Rafe, well, that was obvious. You had to turn the thing off before you could open it. A good thing he'd pressed that one first. But it was probably safe to open it now.

He depressed the other button, refusing to wonder how he'd known which one was the disengage. There was a much louder click this time, and the top of the box popped open with a hiss. A thick mist started to pour out through the crack; Rafe tried to wave it away and yelped as his hand went instantly numb. He pulled it away and blew hurriedly on his fingers. The mist was incredibly cold--but then it would have to be, to keep any contents in stasis. Normally they'd be at about 50 Kelvin, but the lack of an external power source and the generally eroded condition of the box indicated that it was working on reserve power, so the internal temperature might even be as high as 80 or 100 Kelvin--

Wait. Kelvin? What was a Kelvin? He was almost positive he'd never heard the term before. And where the hell was he getting all this information about cryo boxes from, anyway? But just as before, the thought vanished before he could get a proper hold on it, and he returned his attention to the box, wondering vaguely what he'd been upset about.

The air was mostly clear now, and he could reach the lid without losing a finger, although the metal was still uncomfortably cold to the touch and the temperature in the room had gone down by several degrees. Rafe tried not to shiver and pushed gently on the lid. It gave, but not by much. He pushed it again, harder this time, and with a creak of old metal it slid back along an inside track, the far edge thumping down onto the floor.

The box was just slightly too tall for him to see into from where he was sitting. He levered himself onto his knees and peered over, holding on to the edge for balance. Inside...

Inside was a man.