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Ben left a trail of blood wherever he clambered in the wreckage, his paws and feet covered in scratches from the debris. The smoke stung his eyes, and he blinked hard to clear them of the tears that welled up between the coughing fits and the desperate need to find whoever he could. But so far he had only found Dee, the Slig who had paused for crucial seconds to clear the path for him. He’d encouraged him to keep running. He’d been reluctant when ordered to hit him. He had to save him. If he didn’t find the right supplies, or, hopefully, other survivors to help, he would lose him, too.
But the destruction had been thorough. He held his fingers over a Mudokon’s throat, listened at his lips, and felt nothing. He salvaged the poor slave’s dusty loincloth and left his corpse behind. He lifted a Slig’s tentacles to feel for breath on his paw. Dee had breathed quickly but weakly. This Slig was silent and cold. He had nothing to salvage. Ben moved on, his chest and stomach aching.
There were no screams or signs of movement from the fire that still raged elsewhere in the wreck - Ben wasn’t sure how he could help if there were. Maybe it was for the best there was nobody left.
And so it continued. Suits and pins from cold-eyed Glukkons with no pulse through their bulbous heads, the broken cord of a Vykker’s bag - the bag itself and its owner completely crushed by a fallen sign spitting sparks that nipped sharply at his shins. Nothing but still hearts and empty lungs and clothing and effects added to his growing burden with a whispered “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I need this. I’m sorry.”
The thought of ending his search made him feel heavy and worthless. If he gave up, any survivor waiting for his help might die because he left them. But if he waited too long to free Dee from the debris that had pinned his arm through to the ground, he would lose him, too.
He eyed the knife in his grip, knowing it was too dull for the awful task ahead of him. He reached for a sharp piece of broken screen lit with the misty red light of its failed display, the solid, sturdy kind from the industrial LEDs. That could be a wedge, he hoped, swallowing the heavy knot in his throat. It settled in his heart with the rest of the weight of the lives he hadn’t saved.
Then he saw the red light behind the shard was not part of the machine.
It was the faint glow of a living Glukkon’s eye, and it was instantly familiar.
Ben gasped sharply, and sank to his knees in a coughing fit as the smoke filled his lungs, even so desperately shoving the scattered metal and wood and glass aside. His knees and paws accumulated more stinging, raw wounds, but he knew this Glukkon had been elevated, and would have less debris to comb through.
This was his very own boss, laying there on the remains of the couch Ben had left him on. The Glukkon who had laughed at his joy, sat with him through his sorrow, laying there with so much metal and glass stuck into him, streaking his pale gray skin with red blood and black ash. The Glukkon who had let him cling to him when he was scared, who had been there as he and his brothers hatched into the world, gently discouraged him from scratching at his growing feathers - now laying there, barely clinging to life. His eyes focused on him with the slightest of movements, and Ben couldn’t tell if he was lucid or not.
“Mr. Drunce,” he whispered, watching a bubble of blood pop at the edge of his mouth, proof of faint breath and injured lungs. “I’ve got you...” He reached out to touch the side of his face. He didn’t react. “Just hold on, please, I-...”
With a rattling gurgle and a final sigh of blood-laden breath, he slipped away under his gaze and touch.
“What- no, no. Come back.” Ben reached up, under his eyes, as if he could hold on to the fading glow within. Tears choked his next breath. It wasn’t fair. He had been alive. He had looked at him. He was there!
There was something he had to be able to do, he thought, but even as he tore at Drunce’s suit in spite of the metal that pinned it to his body, reality battered him in waves. He didn’t know where in a Glukkon’s chest their hearts were. It was a small space - if he broke a rib he could ensure he never revived. His lungs were already damaged. A Glukkon’s mouth was too wide for a Mudokon’s to make a seal.
There was no help coming soon. If they did, and saw a lone Mudokon alive, they would not help him. Given recent events, they might even kill him on the spot, believing him to be the one who started the fire.
Reality battered him in waves, and left him clinging to Drunce’s shoulders, heaving anguished, wracking howls into his unmoving chest.
Come back, come back, please come back, each one said without words.
Reality dealt another blow. Dee wouldn’t be coming back, either, if he stayed. He couldn’t lose everyone.
Ben forced his trembling limbs to cooperate, and pushed himself up, to look Drunce in his deadened eyes.
He had just smiled at him no more than an hour ago, as he had gone on one of his aimless drunken rambles at Dee, stories of teaching Ben to read and write for him.
“I’m sorry,” he said, and it hurt so much more this time, as he took his knife to the suit he’d helped Drunce put on this morning. “I need this. Dee’s- he’s gonna die too, if I don’t-...”
When the suit and Drunce’s flask - alcohol disinfects, he remembered - were gathered at his side, he found he couldn’t will himself to stand. He couldn’t leave him like this.
He wanted, desperately, for him to gasp and his eyes to light. For him to come back.
But that was never going to happen. His boss was gone, and something deep inside that twisted his heart into agony acknowledged that the word he was looking for was father.
“I gotta-...I need to save Dee. He saved me, you know. But to do that, I-... I wish I could have had you with me.” Ben leaned over, and brushed his lips over Drunce’s forehead, just above his eyes. “I’m sorry I couldn’t save you. I love you.”
The last word he had to say fought with everything it had to stay in his chest, leaving a burning pain from lungs to heart to throat. His tears slipped onto his tongue. He tasted salt, blood, and ash.
“Goodbye.”