The Edge

Matteo: Part Seven

The road was longer than he'd expected. Matteo tried to keep up the pace by alternating between walking and jogging, but that only went so far. Didn't help that his shoes were better equipped for casual walks on a paved road, not long-distance travel down a road with more craters and loose rocks than a moon. Or that his stomach was stabbing its way out of his gut from worry.

Optimism, Matt. Keep pushing through.

The further he went, the more tree cover he got. The shade made the walk a little less unbearable...for a little while. As the trees grew thicker around him, the road started getting mushy. The amount of insects increased, too. Am I in a swamp? Matteo sighed heavily. Of course I'm in a swamp. Today just keeps finding ways to suck.

Matteo checked his phone again. Still no signal. He wondered if the others had tried to contact him yet. He was sure one of them was blowing up his phone right now and calling him ten flavors of stupid for jumping on the back of a moving van. As much as he wanted to make the argument that it had been very brave of him...no, he knew better. Running off after some jacked-up cyborg gang members without a plan was deeply stupid, plain and simple.

It was almost funny to think how abnormal this was, even for him. You'd think being one of the older siblings in a large family composed mostly of mutants, all of whom had grown up on a space freighter with two siblings adopted (well, kidnapped, kinda) from two wildly different cults would mean he was used to weird occurrences. He kind of was, but this was beyond the pale. He could handle the secret hacker club on that first planet. That was one thing. But now within a week he'd added bizarre eldritch creatures that might be real, might be hallucinations and sibling kidnapped by body modders to the list. Too damn much.

Cassandra, what have you gotten us into?

His transcriber hummed, but it was just birdsong. Matteo hoped it was an actual bird and not a bird-shaped security camera. Some of those things were getting too convincing.

The road began to curve, transitioning to a bridge over an especially marshy, almost-a-stream-but-not-quite section of swamp. Matteo approached the bridge carefully. There were no other signs of civilization, but something told him he was getting close. You didn't build a bridge like this unless it led somewhere. At least the bridge was sturdy, and the road on the other side was just marshy enough to clearly show tire tracks. Hopefully this meant he was still going in the right direction.

But what are you going to do once you've caught up? He still had no idea. He had nothing to negotiate with, aside from a handful of cash, and he didn't know enough to make any kind of plans. He just hoped there wouldn't be any fighting, because there was a non-zero chance that fighting to save his sister would rapidly turn into getting his ass kicked for his sister. That had happened before, but in middle school, when the punches weren't quite so metal and the intent considerably less lethal (well, most of the time anyway).

He was still mulling on the question when a building began to appear in the distance. It looked like some kind of barn, but with weird construction--more like a longhouse from a fantasy story than a traditional red-sided barn. Matteo was glad to see signs of civilization, but less so when he realized the building was right smack in the middle of a clearing with basically nothing to cover his approach. He'd have to stick to the trees, but that meant going off the road. Not exactly ideal for his shoes, or his poor feet, but...

Just find as many dry patches as you can. No time to complain.

Still, he stayed on the road until he was sure he was courting death before stepping into the trees and starting a slow prowl around the clearing's perimeter. The van from the hospital was parked outside the barn, which meant he was in the right place. There were three other buildings besides the barn: a smaller building that looked like a standard house, a medium-sized shed, and a small shed, all made of what was either real wood or rapid-colonization-build fake wood. Hard to tell from a distance. That cluster of buildings gave off the vibe of either a crack den, but the more elaborate longhouse structure made it veer more cult compound. Neither option was especially fun. It didn't help that there were no signs of life besides the car. Theoretically, that meant Matteo could creep around unimpeded; practically, that meant anyone could pop out at any time from anywhere.