Young Writers Society

Rem was about to shove this ridiculous suit up the guards' rigid behinds very soon. She didn't bother bashing on the change room door once pushed inside; she knew it was a waste of her precious regal energy--and dignity, for that matter.

With anger simmering under the luminescent purity of her skin, Rem put on the goddamn hazmat suit. For the first time ever, she wondered whether they made suit sizes to fit the more... obscure-shaped aliens of Pheligian Prison Camp. Unlikely.

Once both Kazimir and Rem were out of their individual changing stalls, on came the pedantic handcuffs again. They were marched out an exit different to the one they came in by, being led through a dim, narrow passageway that reeked of smells yet to be defined by living beings.

Rem glared at anything that crossed her field of vision, including the overconfident human she would be spending the next uninformed amount of time with. For basic public brawls the standard was two weeks--but Rem's fights could hardly be called basic, surely.

The passageway met an end, opening up into a ginormous, high-ceilinged nightmare of sludge water and accumulated debris. It was worse than Rem had previously remembered.

"Have fun," one of the guards said, throwing an assortment of cleaning tools at the two mortified prisoners.

Chuckling like the morons they were, the guards returned to the passageway, activating a forcefield to seal Rem and Kazimir inside the isolated ejection tunnel. The magnetic handcuffs released once more, hitting the platform underneath them with a dull, synchronised clank that echoed infinitely.

He made his way over to the guards waiting by his cell door. A sharp pain shot up in the place where the cuffs were placed. The yellow jumpsuit, though it looked odd on him, provided a little protection from the harshness of the metals they consisted of. He grit his teeth. It hurt, but he could never let them know that. His weaknesses had to remain a mystery if he wanted to escape this place in the near future.

They led him through a labyrinth of hallways. Even if they were the type to rile up their prisoners if they got too out of hand, they had no need to. He was as obedient as he could be. They stopped in front of a room that could only be the mess hall. Tables littered with half-eaten food and dirty plates filled the entire space. Foreign utensils and ones he recognized were discarded at random across the floor. "Mess hall" was an appropriate name.

"Clean it," one of his guards simply said. He had already guessed that would be his job, and he didn't offer any objections. Compared to organizing The Lotus, this would be easy to clean up.

The other guard turned to the first. "Wasn't there supposed to another guy?"

"Yeah - the idiot got put on ejection duty for fighting."

He hesitantly cleared his throat. He didn't want to intrude on their conversation, but he needed to clarify some things before he began. He didn't want to get on their bad side for failing to complete his task. "I'm sorry to interrupt," he began, "but I have a few questions about my job. Do I also wash the plates, or is that taken care of by someone else?"

The two guards exchanged a look.

"There's someone else for that," the first one said, gesturing at a slot on the far wall that Maahes assumed the plates were supposed to go through.

He nodded. Simple enough. "What do I do when I finish?"

Another look was shared between them.

"You wait for us to come," the other answered. "We'll know when you're done."

He smiled and took a step into the mess hall. "Thank you." His cuffs surprisingly floated back to them after they came undone; simultaneously, the door began to close. The last thing he heard was the guards debating if they had heard him right.

He surveyed the room.

"Well, Leo," he said, "it looks like you've got your work cut out for you."

Kazimir had to summon all will within him to keep himself from vomiting inside of his suit as the smell entered through the filter of his face-mask. If it was like this in suit, he could only imagine what it was like outside of it. He looked over to Ren with a bitter smile that did not meet his eyes.

“Well, no use fighting down here,” Kazimir muttered. “So I’m gonna get to cleaning, empress.”

He picked up the deep suction vacuum that had a power hose attached, presumably to be used one after another (sucking up the dirty water). As he rolled it up beside him and leaned down to flip the switch to turn it on, he caught eye of a warning sign painted on the filthy wall. Though worn, with layers of goop dripping down it, he could read: “beware the bardbugs. recent infestation problem.”

Kazimir’s heart sank, and he let out a low groan. The sign was dated as of a week ago, which meant it was recent. He looked at it, drawing Ren’s attention to the notice.

Rem spent the next thirty seconds flipping her deep suction vacuum back and forth in her arms, trying to remember how the common invention operated. A signal from Kazimir interrupted this process.

"What?" she snapped, looking towards where he was pointing.

Bardbugs.

What was worse than the nauseating conditions of the Pheligian Falcon's ejection level? Bardbugs, of course.

The two heavily-suited prisoners commenced their purging duties with some uncertainty and much reluctance. The large quantities of refuse their vacuums inhaled entered a cylindrical teleportation chamber, which transferred the waste to a huge, transparent airlock at the far end of the ejection level. Not the most pragmatic system of disposal, but also not the worst.

Needless to confirm, Rem was not in the mood for talking, and, fortunately for her, Kazimir kept his witty mouth closed (for the most part).

After a lengthly time had passed Rem felt she was getting the hang of cleaning, which terrified her a great deal more than it would most. Every so often Rem swore she heard a scurrying, fluttering sound among the decomposing piles and overspilling dumpster drums under their metal chutes. The occasional surge of new waste from the many surrounding chutes did not ease this lingering paranoia.

When Rem experienced a large crawling sensation up her back, she shamefully lost a fraction of her cool. "Hey, frowning spaceman of the sewer, is there anything on me?" she asked, swivelling so Kazimir could examine her back.

Kazimir looked up from his menial task of vacuuming over to Rem's back. His eyes widened, and he froze in place for a moment. His eyes laid upon the sight of the giant bardbug perched on her back - it's black shell nearly the size of her head (out of suit) as its spindly legs gripped the small yellow filter tank on the back of her suit.

He slowly raised the nozzle of his vacuum, and in one swift movement, hit the giant beetle-like bug off her back.

"Not anymore!"

With a little resistance, its legs gave and it spun to the ground, landing between Rem and Kazimir. The alien bug let out a loud high pitched screech, it's wings fluttering as it turned to face Kazimir.

Kazimir, in a flurry of movements, whacked at the disgusting creature with the nozzle of his vaccum several times, waiting until he heard the crack of its shell, and saw its guts spill on the floor, to be sure it was dead.

A small shudder went down his spine, as he looked at the goopy guts.

It seemed Rem had underestimated how thorough Kazimir could be. As Rem watched the human beat the screeching bardbug over and over, her opinion of him shifted ever so slightly for the better. Many others would have relished in watching Rem squirm her own way out of that awkward situation.

"Don't expect me to thank you for that," Rem said, after the bardbug was well and truly expired. "I could've worked it out on my own." She wished her tone sounded frostier than it actually emerged. In truth, she was glad he'd helped her, but she refused to tarnish her high esteem any further.

"But you didn't," Kazimir replied with a small smirk as he began to vacuum up the dead bug. "So you're welcome."

The remaining of Rem and Kazimir's ejection duty shift unravelled less eventfully then it notably could have. Rem liked to believe Kazimir's vulgar display had scared off the other bardbugs, however she was certain they'd avenge their fallen sooner or later--if not during this shift then the next. When that time came, Rem wouldn't be sitting around acting all civilised.

Even after the two prisoners were back in the guards' custody and out of their hazmat suits, the smell of the ejection level lingered on Rem's nose like the ghost light of a distant, perished sun--and not a pleasant sun at that. She couldn't wait to get back to her cell and forget the entire series of recent events, Kazimir included. She didn't like how favourable the human had become.

Except Rem wasn't taken back to her cell. After rising inside the elevator on an aimless trail of thought, the Camp Pheligian guards shoved Rem and Kazimir out onto their arrived level, shortly directing the two of them around a different corner. They were heading towards the mess hall again.

"Look, thug drones, your concern over my wellbeing is terribly cute, but I'm really not that hungry," Rem said to the guards behind, barely containing her bitterness as they strode along. "How about we all just go our separate ways so no one gets murdered tomorrow."

Rem heard a guard snort over her right shoulder before speaking: "Orders from above say you're sticking with the newbies. Consider yourself their newly appointed tour and information buddy."

This had to be an exceptionally bad joke. Rem was about to snap back at the guards when her mind paused. "Newbies? As in more than one of these pestiferous creatures?" she asked, exaggerating to make Kazimir feel more of a nuisance than he was.

Before any of the guards could respond, Kazimir and Rem were steered through the large entry of the quiet, post-meal mess hall.

Which had never been more spotless in all Rem's twenty years of captivity.

Kazimir's eyebrows shot up and he nodded at the cleanliness of the eating area with an impressed frown. That, and anything looked better in comparison to the sewers of the ship that he'd been staring at for two weeks.

He looked at Rem in the corner of his eye, toying with the idea that it was his fault for her having to spend time with the 'newbies.' Though it certainly wasn't nearly as much of a chore as she made it seem, he could see how she would dislike the idea - what with her pride being the size of a supergiant star.

The thought caused a smirk to form on his face as his eyes fell on said other newbie at the corner of the room. Just to bug Rem, Kazimir gave the newcomer an enthusiastic wave.

"The place looks spotless!" He yelled, laughter in his voice. "If you like cleaning this, you should really try ejection duty!"

Maahes raised his head at the sound of the stranger's voice. He had been resting on one of the benches, thinking back to his previous adventures. Try as he might not to, his mind frustratingly continued to return to the transgression he had committed on Sen.

"It wasn't that hard," he said. He got to his feet and walked over to the other two. One looked decidedly not human, but the other, the one who had spoken, was definitely a descendant of the Ancients. "I have to clean my ship all of the time. This place was easy compared to how bad it can get there."

He smiled. Though he couldn't guess what these two were imprisoned for, he couldn't make any quick assumptions. He would need more knowledgeable allies if he wanted to escape in the near future. While he couldn't know how long they had been here, they were bound to have more information than he did. "My name is Leonardo Cartwright, but you can call me Leo."

"A pleasure," Kazimir replied in a tone both cordial and devious. Whether that's what he was going for was unclear, even to himself. "Call me Kazimir."

"But forget about me," He said with a sudden clearing of his throat. Then, with a sudden grandiose gesture, he held out his arms towards Ren, rotating his hands in a sort of jazz-hand manner. Then, to continue the theatrics, he mimicked the voice like one of an announcer. "Leo Cartwright, please. You are in the presence of royalty! Please, introduce yourself to the one, and the only, Rem Qaž jÿn Voiduum, empress of the Nihil Empire!"

From behind him, the two guards could be heard suppressing their laughter as the slid out of the mess hall, leaving the three alone.

In that moment Rem experienced several emotions.

First came the astonishment that Kazimir had carefully remembered her empress title, down to every syllable's correct pronunciation. That in itself was a remarkable feat for any inferior-minded Earthling.

Not long after came suspicion: Why had he remembered her title so well? What crafty motives was he hiding under that rash and soon-to-be remorseful mockery? She could not fathom why else he had taken the effort to remember if not for some untrustworthy scheme--not that Rem ever trusted anyone.

Third: a furnace of anger. "Why thank you, Kazimir," Rem spat, clenching her hands into fists. "You have now confirmed my theory that you have a death wish." In her mind, Rem imagined condensing the smug man's body mass until his tormented screams vanished into an atom-sized spec.

But then an image of Kazimir smashing the bardbug intruded upon this fantasy. The daring look he'd given her just before their first brawl. The look that said, fight, caged beast, if you have not forgotten to live.

Stupid memories. Stupid human.

The furnace cooled, morphing into something that was not quite tolerance and not quite homicidal intent. A deviant emotion. Rem's fists unclenched. "Call me Rem. You don't deserve to utter my full title," she said to the two other prisoners, her voice noticeably calm and subsided.

Kazimir's smirk quivered, as if holding back laughter, but also surprised that Rem didn't just smack him into the next dimension. He turned to Leo.

"Rem it is, then."