Neo-Odyssey

Chapter Seventeen

It was noisy.

There was no sight, no touch, no smell nor taste to be had.

There was just noise.

Only noise.

Accompanied by the noise was something else, a sensations stirring in their very soul, like thought make physical.

It was gentle, tender, yet firm and bold in every way that mattered. A caring hand caressing them, kneading them into something more with every resonate ring that resounded across their very being.

What was it?

Who was it?

Someone was saying something, yet, their voice was drowned out by the rest of the noise. The sentiments though? The feelings?

Reassurance.

Compassion.

Determination.

A subtle note of apologetics bound their conveyances together, enshrouded by regrettable necessity.

Why?

Something bright overcame them.

No... not bright... just light... they'd never seen anything before, and now, were burdened by dazzling sight in one grand moment.

Then came tactile sense, it was warm, stiflingly so, though, nothing they couldn't endure.

Something akin to scent, a registry of ozone, a coarse grimy haze, an oily-sweet aroma.

It felt overwhelming, it was wonderful, it was terrifying, it was new and vast and grand beyond scope.

"Is this... life?"

Their sight was adjusting, they could make out....

...make out...

...a silhouette. Slender form, confident posture, a smile gracing their face. Vivid light was wreathed around their arms, wispy embers of fractalized ether showering around them like sparks amidst the final stroke of a smith's hammer to red-hot iron, a flickering haze of phantasmal wonder ablaze amidst the dreamlike figure of the first face they ever saw. The first voice they ever head. The first touch they ever experienced.

This moment felt familiar.

It was familiar.

They were familiar.

A word came to mind.

Just as soon as it did, the vision crumbled to darkness...

***

"Coming to, eh? It took you long enough."

When Taylor Dane opened their eyes, they were greeted by the messy, empty chasms where Jonah Dunkel's had been. No trace of the ruined orbs could be seen, rather, a welled up scarred and webbed quagmire of webbed tissue and oily black viscera that bled through.

"Sir Redmond was getting worried. I was too, a little bit, anyways. How do you feel?"

Taylor narrowed their eyes, reaching out gingerly with their left hand to feel the sopping scratched tissue. They brushed over it for only a second before jerking their arm back.

Beyond the coarse, bristly texture of the scar-matter that'd welted over the wounds, the ichor was caustic. The moment their brain registered the painful, acidic burning sensation Taylor moved on instinct to wipe it off, thrusting their afflicted digits into the nearby swamp-muck and using it to slough off the painful irritant.

Swamp?

Taylor looked around and registered, sure enough, that they were outside, laid out on their back against some rugged makeshift platform just outside the plane. It was dark out, though not so much that they couldn't see, the inky black waters of the swamp darker still.

"Show me your hand."

Jonah had his hands outstretched towards Taylor, who acquiesced, pulling their pain-free hand up from out of the muck and between his cupped-together palms.

"Oof, that's..."

Taylor's index and middle fingers, the digits that had become covered by the substance now oozing from Jonah's 'healed' wounds, were bare of skin, the bleeding muscle exposed to the air... for a few seconds, at least. Before Taylor's very eyes, something more than blood began to seep out of the raw red flesh, silvery in color, though they couldn't feel any difference between it and the natural fluids also at work to scab over and clot the chemical burns.

It took a dozen seconds or so, yet, rapidly enough, the exposed flesh was overtaken. Silver strands wove over the injury, rippling veiny lines extending visibly under the skin from the new material, interweaving with vein and bone, enmeshed with their natural physiology to such a degree that the unnatural additions seemed to gently vanish amidst their mundane matter.

"Nifty, isn't it? Something similar happened with me after you passed out... or.... has been happening..."

He raised his right arm up, bent at the elbow horizontally, the flat of his forearm centered to face Taylor, he pulled down the long sleeve which had covered it, exposing his bite wounds to the young student of medicine.

It smelled necrotic, alkaline, and faintly sweet.

It looked like something out of a horror movie.

Every vein around the bite had gone black, the flesh turned pallid and callous, black hard patches that more resembled tree bark than living flesh mounded around the initial bite-mark. A vibrant sanguine discoloration ran around the edges of the hardened flesh, and through whatever cracked ravines of still-soft flesh held out in the initial area.

"...looks bad, doesn't it?"

He smirked, before pulling his sleeve back down and putting both hands onto Taylor's shoulders, firmly, though not so much as to cause discomfort.

"It doesn't hurt though. No more than I bet your 'injuries' do. Lucky us, am I right?"

Taylor didn't respond.

They couldn't have, even if they'd wanted to.

Breath-in

Breath-out

Breath-in

Breath-out

Their heart was racing a mile a minute as they processed whatever the heck was happening to them. Running through every plausible medical scenario they were read up on.

To their dismay, nothing came to mind which was remotely plausible.

Little came to mind which was conceivably possible.

The real world didn't have crazy mutant viruses. People couldn't bleed acid, or heal over wounds with a fresh metallic skin. This ongoing medical phenomena... it made as much sense as this island, maybe less. It sounded remotely conceivable that they could've crash-landed on some black site that'd been struck from maps through some conspiracy or other...

...this...

"...either everything I thought I knew about medicine is wrong... or..."

Taylor looked up at Jonah.

He was grinning smugly. Punchably so.

".... what did I say earlier? Oh, right, magic!"

Taylor backhanded them in the gut.

They'd intended to just do so hard enough to wind the greasy jerk.

They instead send him flying a food foot, the black-clad young man tumbling into a wet, sticky slump as the swamp muck and marshy earth beneath it broke his fall.

"What?"

Taylor looked to their right hand, open and outstretched, grasping at air, as its biomechanics followed the rhythm of instinctual disbelief that was running through the rest of their body.

Taylor looked away.

It still felt normal.

It still looked anything but.

"Some help..."

Thankfully, Jonah didn't look too beat up by the tumble. Though, they couldn't say he looked good in general. Looking past just the swamp sludge that stained his ruined designer clothes, his skin, beyond just the arm wound, looked discolored and sickly. His fingernails were blackening, his hair was oily and unkept, darkened veins bulged across nigh on every patch of exposed skin Taylor could spy as they rushed over to help the blind man up.

They steadied him as he coughed up some dark corrosive ichor, wheezing and shaking in place as he fought against his unresponsive body for control. His heart was beating a mile a minute, his skin was clammy, warm, perspiring at an unnatural rate.

"Muscle spasms... rapid heart rate... labored breathing... nausea... and..."

Taylor could smell Jonah's breath, it had a minty sweetness to it, not dissimilar to the odor of his bite wound.

"...magic or not, you're sick. Whether you want to admit it or not. Jonah-"

"Don't! Just... I'm fine, believe it or not, I'm fine. Better than ever! That's that. It'll take more than a snake bite to put me in a coffin."

"After that fight, I would've thought you'd have mellowed out a bit. I don't get how you can still try to act so cocky after having your eyes put out? This isn't a game! Look at us, something is happening inside of our bodies, and whatever that 'something is, you need to take it seriously."

"I am!"

He pushed himself off Taylor then, stumbling a few steps ahead, careful with his footing as he could be, keen to keep from tumbling over helplessly once again.

"I... I have been the only person taking this seriously! I have been the only person who's tried to understand the situation we're all in! To connect with every last fiber of it, dream about what every unexplainable scrap of miracle we've witnessed means for you, me, and everyone inside that plane..."

"And what would that be? What delusions have you thought up? Stop acting like you understand this, stop pretending that any of what we've been through makes sense! It doesn't! It hasn't! Not a single thing!!!"

He took a deep, ragged breath, the scowl he'd put on melting into a neutral, exasperated frown.

"I can't see. I lost my eyes. Do you think I don't understand that?"

He gestured to the scarred pits with an index and middle finger extended in a 'v' shape.

"I get if I've rubbed you the wrong way. I do most people. I understand it, I always have, always will. That doesn't mean I'm blind. Even now, I'm not blind. I can see what I have to do plain as day, from what I know, from what I hear, from what I dream. I rushed out to help you that night because I knew I had to! Who would've cared if a useless, unstable, unskilled rich kid from a fucked up family went bye-bye? Merriweather, you, hell, everyone whose tried to take charge has something about them that's been useful. Me? I understand the situation, that's it. I understand its impossible, this island is impossible, that crash was impossible, our bodies are goddamn impossible! The world is bigger than we knew, or the world can become bigger, different, whatever the Hell we wanna make it after we get back home. When everyone gets back home. Except me. Not me. Never me."

Taylor had never heard the man so angry before, they didn't think he could've been so overemotional if they hadn't seen it with their own eyes. His voice sounded hoarse, he was forcing air back into him with every breath, his face looked a more rosy shade of pale and his body shuddered as raw feelings ran rampant through every fiber of his being.

A word came to mind.

Terrified

Taylor walked over to him, steadily, placing their hands on his shoulders as he fought against himself to regain composure.

"You know, I've had... bad dreams, I guess, ever since I went to board that stupid plane. I don't suppose you have bad dreams either?"

He jumped at that, stumbling backwards into the platform that had served as Taylor's bed, shivering all the while.

"I was the one who got you out here. Redmond and Blake kept the plane crew calm, still are, probably. I was the one who kept you safe though."

"What's that supposed to mean? Look, if you don't want to answer-"

"Don't tell me you're that clueless. Look at me. Look at yourself. The injured folks, the ones who saw that fight we ended, who knows what they're thinking. The Passengers though? The common rabble? What do you think they'd want to do to someone with knives for fingers? Or someone who looks like the living dead? It didn't cross their minds, Blake's too overwhelmed by the situation, and Redmond's too familiar with it. Neither of them really understood. Me though... if I look scared, it's because I am. Here be monsters, you and I are proof of that. Think of how much worse is probably out there. Think of what their imaginations, running wild, would definitely motivate them to do? We are frightened, we have more of a handle on this than I bet anyone else does. Our fear is justified, our fear is because we understand, but once they start figuring it out too, irrationality will take hold, and mark my words - they'll start acting in ways we can't even imagine."

"That's not all though, is it?"

Jonah tilted his head quizzically.

"My question.... I'd like an answer: Do you have bad dreams too?"

He didn't answer Taylor.

Before the youth could press him again though, they were interrupted by the distant sound of yelling.

A familiar voice yelling.

"That's the Air Marshal? Taylor, I hate to ask, but could you carry me?"

Taylor would've used the moment to force whatever nonsense he was keeping bottled up out of him... if they didn't also have a bad feeling.

As much as I'd like an answer, I'm not going to take a page out of his book and act like a jerkwad when I ought to be serious. I guess I'll have to ask him again later, when there's more time to talk...

Wrapping their right arm around the lanky young man, Taylor took a deep breath, and began running towards the sound of the voice. A task made infinitely easier by the distinctive orange glint amidst the fog banks that, slowly but surely, became visible in tandem with the growing loudness of Kaleb Jones hollering.

Step by step, pace by pace, the silhouette of the lawman became distinct, illuminated by something next to him. At first, Taylor assumed it was a torch, then, they noticed that it had legs.

"Florence?" Jonah murmured, a helpless disbelief overcoming both his usual composure, and his emotional outbursts as of late. His breaths were short and shallow, he writhed under Taylor's grip, shaking violently as some new realization dawned upon him.

Taylor didn't think anyone could look worse than Jonah or they themself did.

Florence looked worse.

Their one good eye was darting all which-ways listlessly, mouth agape and muttering under every breath. Their hair was gone, their clothes were a tattered burnt mess, and what skin she had left was seared an unnatural hue.

The left side of her face, her right side down to the knee, they were ablaze. Wreathed in fire that didn't peter out a bit despite the humid wet environment, or the cold breeze upon the air. Her torso was marked by burns, patches of ashen white lit up by smoldering orange embers. Her arms were the worst off, skeletonized from the elbows down to the tips of her fingerbones. There wasn't a scrap of flesh left on them, there was barely any flesh on the outskirts of her other afflicted areas. Her scalp was smoking constantly, a trailing plume of soot billowing behind her head.

"Jonah, I'm sorry. I don't know what happened... I don't... I don't... I'm...." The Air Marshal stuttered and tripped over himself, a wide eyed shock plastered over his face. His body might as well have been moving on instinct

The blind man wormed his way out of Taylor's grip with a frenetic anxiety that worsened their worry all the more. He didn't even spare a word of regard for the Air Marshal, rushing over to Florence side, tripping over into the swamp for his effort.

"There was an explosion. She was close. It hit her bad. I... I didn't think she was alive till I saw her pick herself back up... merciful Providence... what's going on? Why was it just me? Why didn't-"

"Excuse me, sir, I'm Taylor Dane. I don't know if we've met?"

Taylor grabbed a handful of Jonah's ruined coat and yanked him back up onto his feet before he decided to try crawling towards Florence. Walking brusquely over to the shell-shocked lawman, they then set about taking Florence off of their hands.

She was hot to the touch, Taylor could see, glancing over to Kaleb Jones, that he'd suffered quite a few second degree burns helping Florence as far along as he had. It didn't bother them though. Their right side was warmed by the heat, but it didn't burn, Taylor wasn't even sure if it could anymore.

"Taylor Dane? No... no, I don't think we.. though, I've... wait, how are you walkin-"

Ah, he must've just noticed?

"Don't worry lawman, they're stable, for now."

Taylor felt something cold press against the back of their head.

The voice was wizened, gruff, yet not without a thoughtful spark to it.

"Mr. Arawn, I know the situation is dire, but you don't-"

Taylor's ears rang as a bullet thundered off right next to their ears, the cold barrel touching off of their skin and into the air long enough for Taylor to turn around to tackle the sneaky bastard.

It was to no avail though, by the time they were down on the ground they'd looped their arm around Taylor's head and were back to pressing the gun against their skull.

"Try that again, and I'll have to emancipate you from the land of the living, understand?"

The man's face was masked by a graven wooden visage of something unspeakable, yet not unrecognizable to Taylor, the carved facade triggering some primal recognition from the deepest recesses of their mind. Beyond that stark detail, he was dressed in a thick navy blue woolen coat that looked like something from Sir Redmond's day and age. A broad cloth hat crowned his head, though it was somewhat crumpled and damp due to the uncomfortable position Taylor's attempt to turn the tables had left him in.

"Good. It seems you do. My name is Arawn, Hunter Arawn, as your esteemed lawman said before. I am the only hope any of you have to get out of this situation alive. I only ask that you listen to what I say, and follow my instructions to the letter. Understood?"

Taylor nodded.

"It seems you've yet to take leave of your senses after all. Splendid! Now, if you would be a darling, please get off of me, pick that poor girl you let loose back up from the bog, and take me to the aeroplane you lot purportedly crash-landed into this fine primaeval realm..."