*
As he walked the couple of miles from the shuttle terminal to his family home, Flynn didn’t know what to expect. For all he knew, in the last four years, his family could have uprooted and left. How much had changed, he wondered.
As he made his way through town, he was drawn to the Pour Pour Pitiful Me tavern, a local bar he’d snuck into a few times as a burgeoning juvenile delinquent. He needed a little liquid courage to get him the rest of the way home.
Hinges squeaked and wood scraped across wood as the door to the saloon opened to the dim interior. He looked around, eyes adjusting to the light. The lunch crowd filled the bar, and Flynn glanced quickly at each face. In a community this close knit, he was bound to know someone. But the familiar face he landed on surprised him more than it ought to have.
“Putty.” Flynn bit the inside of his cheek, watching his brother’s face shift through a tangle of emotions.
Two years older than Flynn, Patrick could have been mistaken for his twin. They shared their mother’s dark hair and their father’s square jaw. But in the past four years Flynn had managed to get two inches and fifty pounds on his mechanic brother. His brother’s insistence on wearing bright, garish flannel shirts had not changed.
“What the….” Putty tackled him in a bear hug that would have sent them both to the ground if Flynn hadn’t been prepared for an attack.
Of course, he figured it would come from a trained killer, not family.
Pain shot through his neck as Putty embraced him, but he didn’t push his brother away. Pushing would only tear the tender, healing skin, and it had been too long since someone had been happy to see him. He let himself revel in the feeling for a moment.
Putty finally let up and, with a hand on each shoulder, held him at arm’s length. His brother looked him over with a scrutinizing glare. Flynn gritted his teeth against the pain and saw the inevitable question in the shift of Putty’s eyes, the subtle drop of his smile.
“Where is she?” he asked, looking hopefully past Flynn.
“She’s not here.”
Putty’s jaw clenched and his hands fell to his side, balled into fists. “What? Where is she? Is she with Mom?”
Swallowing heavily, Flynn pushed back the wave of guilt and sorrow threatening to break his resolve. “She’s still on Ludo.”
Putty decked him.
Spitting out a glob of blood and saliva, Flynn wiped the back of his hand across his mouth and looked up from the floor. “I deserved that.”
Fists pummeled Flynn’s ribs, his arms, his face. One punch twisted his head around, sending a new flash of searing pain through his neck. Flynn let out a pained gasp, but did nothing to protect himself. He deserved this. Putty deserved it.
When the blows stopped, Flynn looked up to where his brother was held back by three of the bar’s other patrons. There was murder in his eyes, but he shook them off protesting he was fine, and turned to stare into his half gone beer. Another man helped Flynn up from the floor.
When he was upright, the guy asked, “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, he’s my brother and I deserved it.” Flynn dusted himself off as he moved to the counter beside Putty, keeping an empty barstool between them.
“You left Kathrynn there?” Putty shrank away, unshed tears glistening in the corners of his eyes. “You left her?”
Flynn wanted to correct him, wanted to make him understand. He didn’t leave his twin sister behind. He would have given anything to bring her with him, and he tried. But he couldn’t force her to leave.
“It’s not like that,” he said, his disappointment equaling his brother’s.
“She’s alive?” Putty asked in a manner that made it clear there was only one acceptable answer.
“Yes.” He could say that much without feeling like the worst brother in the universe.
Putty’s shoulders dropped and he took in a deep breath, closing his eyes before he looked up to Flynn again.
“Then there is still hope you’ll find a way to bring her back.” Putty glared at him and the message was clear.
Flynn was responsible for their sister being on Ludo; Flynn was wholly responsible for getting her back. And if that death glare told him anything, it was that he’d better do it soon.
“Well, I see nothing’s changed, you two are still more likely to kill each other than ever.” A familiar voice brought Flynn back to the present. He cursed himself for letting his guard down, knowing how the Lazarai dealt with deserters.
Chadrick VanHeslinbergenstone stood in the small alcove that divided the bathroom doors. He was a man with a mouthful of a last name, a mind like a sponge, and a face Flynn would always and only describe as ‘girlish.’ Luckily, the boy he’d known since he was twelve had never been annoyed overly offended by the comparison to his sister.
Striding forward, appearing intent on delivering a rib cracking embrace, Chadrick stopped dead in his tracks. His eyes fell to Flynn’s neck, narrowing, and a finger raised, pointing to him accusingly. “What is that?”
His hand flying involuntarily to his neck, Flynn realized the makeshift bandage had come loose in the scuffle with Putty. He adjusted the bandage to cover the ugly wound almost on auto pilot. “It’s nothing.”
Chadrick slapped his hand away, taking a closer look at the rope burn. “Ooh,” he said, “I hope this heals before the wedding. It is going to look awful in photos.”
Flynn looked at his brother. He was ruffled and staring at the floor, pissed off as anything, but he wasn’t going to lunge again. The Monroes had mastered the art of pent up aggression.
“Who’s getting married?”
Putty shrugged.
“Don’t be like that, Patrick!” Chadrick was one of the few people who called Putty by his birth name. “You were over the moon just a moment ago.”
Flynn spun back around to his brother, “You’re getting married?”
Putty shrugged again.
“Exciting, isn’t it?” Chadrick said like a giddy schoolgirl. “By the way, where did you come from?”
“I thought you moved off world.” Flynn ignored Chadrick’s question. It was his turn to point an accusing finger and he was beginning to suffer from mental whiplash.
“I did,” Chadrick replied. “Enrolled in med school. Doing well enough; not so much that the Colarium is looking to recruit me, thank God. We’re on a term break right now. Most of my classmates have more money than brains, so they’re partying on Oblivion.”
“Then why the hell are you here?” Flynn finally sat down and tried to work out what exactly was going on.
“Chad’s here to see me,” Putty said. “Seems he’s got a friend in the Redlands in some trouble and he came to the only Monroe brother anyone can count on.”
Chadrick sat down next to Flynn and moved in to get a closer look at his neck.
“It’s fine.” Flynn grabbed his friend’s hand to keep him from touching the wound.
Sliding a pair of glasses onto his nose, Chadrick stared at his neck and grimaced. “Actually, it looks like it’s started to get infected. You haven’t picked up a predilection for tribe medicine, have you? I know some of the settlements in the no man’s zone have reverted to primitive ideas, like mud cleaning a wound, but surely you’re not that stupid.”
“It is fine.” He said again, through clenched teeth. He was getting annoyed with his friend’s persistence. “So, what are you doing here?”
“Like Putty said, I need your help.”
“Why would a doctor need my help? I’m not a nurse. I don’t know anything about medicine other than the bare minimum required in the field.”
“He doesn’t need your help; he needs mine,” Putty huffed.
“I don’t need the medical variety of assistance. I need your proverbial brawn, not brains, and the expertise that made you invaluable to Archimedes Holzen.”
Flynn’s lip curled in a silent growl at the name of the Lazarai leader, but he bit his tongue.
r /> “This isn’t something I can take through legal channels – unless I’m willing to wait until everyone’s dead before help shows up. All I know is my friend says they are facing a hostile takeover. A few people suggested I get mercs to deal with it, which made me think of my dear friends, the Monroe brothers.”
“We’re not mercenaries. Mercenaries bleed you dry then leave you to die.” Flynn had dealt with his fair share of mercs. The only thing worse than hiring them was working for them.
Chadrick gave him an eye roll Flynn remembered all too well. “I’m not stupid. I completely ignored those suggestions.”
“And you figure Putty is your best bet? How much trouble can this involve?”
“Well, it’s not like I can just hire a Pagoan.”
Putty’s face twisted in disgust, and Flynn felt the same recoil at the mention of the Colarium’s alien assassins.
“If I’d known you were home I’d have come for you,” Chadrick said excitedly before adding, “No offense, Putty.”
Chadrick had taken Flynn’s side against Putty in the great water battle of 1331 P.D., and countless others. Putty had gotten over those blows to his ego. Flynn knew he’d get over this slight, too.
“So, what’s this trouble you’ve gotten yourself into?” Flynn stole the doctor-in-training’s beer and took a gulp. His face twisted into a sour grimace as the tart sweet-cider covered his taste buds.
“I don’t know the specifics. A friend is in dire straits, and if you don’t want to help, I’ll go without you. But my transport takes off soon. There isn’t much time. You have to make the choice now.”
“The Redlands, huh? Which backwater dust ball is that city on?” Flynn asked.
“Sukiyaki, and it’s not exactly a city… more of a settlement. If we get there and you don’t feel right about it, you can leave. The job pays. The money isn’t great… but it’s something.”
Flynn shook his head, wincing as the movement tugged at his neck. “I just got done fighting one war. I have no plans to dive into another.”
“I wouldn’t ask you if there was anyone else I could turn to, believe me.” Chadrick frowned at his cider, taking it back from Flynn.
“There is nothing you can say that will change my mind.”
Chadrick nodded, pausing to look him in the eye. “People are dying.”
Flynn bit his tongue. That was probably the only thing Chadrick could have said to change his mind.
“Okay. I’ll go. If I don’t like it, I bounce.” Flynn knew it was a lie. He’d stay till the end, bitter though it might be.
“It’s a good thing I’m already packed.” Flynn nodded to the duffel shoved against the bar at his feet.
“Flynn, don’t you think you ought to go home and let Mom know you’re back?” Putty said, ever the big brother.
“It’s best if she doesn’t know I was here,” Flynn said solemnly. “When I get done helping Chad, then I’ll come home and be home for good. In the mean time, what she doesn’t know won’t hurt her.”
“I’m going too.” Putty stood next to Flynn, his arms crossed over his chest, a dead look in his eye. “You can’t stop me. If I don’t like it, we’re leaving. I won’t let you go off and get yourself killed. You’ve already lost one of her children, I won’t let you break our mother’s heart again.”
Flynn studied his brother and saw the unwavering resolve. “Fine. Tag along, but if you get yourself killed, that’s on you. Not me.”
“I’ll need ten minutes. If you leave without me, I’ll shoot you both myself.”
Putty disappeared, and Flynn let out a defeated sigh. When was his family going to learn… he needed them to stop following him on his idiotic crusades.
Chadrick grimaced yet again, studying Flynn’s neck closely. “Who the hell put a noose around your neck?”
“It doesn’t matter.” Flynn clenched his teeth as the doctor-in-training touched it again, sending stinging pain through his neck.
“Yeah, right. You didn’t do a very good job of cleaning it, I can still see fibers in the wound,” Chadrick moved his head from side to side looking at the wound. He picked his medical bag up off the floor. “Tell you what, we’ve got time, let me fix the hack job and I’ll never ask you about it again.”
“That’s a deal.” Flynn followed Chadrick into a back room where he sat in a chair and unbuttoned his shirt collar.
As Chadrick opened his bag, Flynn knew this wound wasn’t the only thing that’d get worse before it got better.