Rings of Rhea - Part 1.2

For each empty concrete box of a room he enters, he stamps his foot twice to check for the woman’s presence. If she does not respond, then he finds a way to one of the adjacent rooms until she does. Through a snaking maze of doorways and cramped cubic spaces, they attempt to keep in contact through their primitive code of knocks. Whenever she taps her ceiling between them, she does so from one or more of the four sides. He construes that whichever of the four directions she taps from is the direction she can to go from there. Upon finding another hole or door in the same direction that allowed them to move on, they begin to chisel away the distance between them. The further Craig goes, the further away from his destination of the next level he feels. At times, he wonders how she was able to destroy the guardian. These thoughts, however, are pushed far into the back of his mind.

The path they take winds further downward. At the same moment she is forced to go down a floor, he finds a single flight of stairs down to a lower level. Never is there such a thing as empty space between them. Several times, he hears her let out shouts of frustration in her language. Trying to visualize their respective paths, he finds them to be oddly convenient in their methods of keeping them apart. Every time he feels one stairwell away from her, his path veers in the opposite direction. As they continue, the woman ends up looping above him more than once, and they find themselves in directly adjacent rooms on several occasions. After a time they come to a joining wall with only a locked door made of reflective metal between them.

Neither side is able to unlock the door with nary a keyhole in sight. Still panting from rushing through the innards of the concrete structure, Craig lets out an anguished cry of frustration that echoes enough to strike pain through his eardrums. As the echo fades and only his breathing remains, a hard blunt strike sounds from the other side of the door. Over and over the woman strikes the door with the faint background noise of her cries spreading through the walls like waves. Though he cannot tell what she is using to bludgeon the barricade the slab of metal does not budge a single inch.

“Stop! Stop!” he calls through the door, hoping that she hears him. “We can find another way around, so just stop for a second!” The smashing continues, however, as Craig lets out a sigh of fatigue. He on now discovers how tired his legs feel as he lets them crumble underneath him. The sting of his muscles is much less than that of knowing he is so close to the only other person he has ever known, yet so far. Sidling up to the door, he lets the back of his head rest against it. He feels the slight vibrations from her strikes against the metal through his mat of hair. The rhythm created by another person gives him a sense of nostalgia; a familiar smell of unknown origin arouses some memories he cannot quite grasp, then disappears.

As he begins to feel comfortable, the beatings on the door halt. Curious, he turns to take a look at the door, as if doing so will tell him what he wants to know. He stands up on rickety legs and picks up the pipe that he toted around since the battle with the guardian. Readying the weapon with both hands, he swings at the door as hard as he can. With a clang that resounds throughout the hollow tube and the walls around him, Craig feels his arms nearly pop themselves out of their sockets as the weapon bounces uselessly off of the door as if all of the force of the swing turned in the opposite direction. Not a single noticeable mark shows on the face of the strange, suddenly powerful-looking, gate before him. Whatever this slab of metal is made of, it is by far the hardest material Craig has ever come across. Turning his attention to the walls of concrete bordering the door, he lets loose a swing against it, chipping off a small rock the size of his thumbnail to the right.

His eyebrows raise, and an absent amazement suddenly appears in his eyes as he proceeds to hammer upon the manmade rock with all his might. Working at the wall from the chip, it begins wearing away, revealing some of the wire mesh underneath it as he does so. To get through that, he crushed the concrete around it into dust before tearing at the metal mesh with his fingers until his skin grows brown with dust and blood. Next come the steel supports, the core of the wall, which seem to be just as hard as the pipe he is using— not as if that will stop him. If he tore this weapon of his right out of another wall, then he can rips these out just as well.

During his wind-up for another swing, a faint crunch emanates from the other side of the barrier, directly on the other side of his own hole. Another. A faint smile picks at the corners of his lips as he, too, begins anew. Each hit dents his pipe, while the solid iron rods within the wall bend out of shape more so than the pipe with each whack.

Craig has always known that other people exist but has never seen one before, as far as his travels are concerned. For an unknown stretch of time that could have been years or decades, he only spoke with himself, consoled himself, confided in himself, and thought for himself. He only knows the sound of his own voice, the feel and shade of his own skin, and the structure of his own face, seen in reflections on stray pieces of unmolested steel throughout the structure. For what reason he was bestowed so much and so little knowledge fuels his anger as he beats on the obstruction that now keeps him from the secrets of the world.

The moment tears well up in his eyes, a glint of light cuts through the wall along a crisp crack in the concrete. Wafts of dust and air filter through it, nearly glistening in the light from the next room over. He stops his advance, wary of possibly hurting the woman on the other side as she makes her way through the rest of the shards of rock between them. As the shadows in the hole disappear, he hears the sounds of something clatter to the floor on the other side, along with breaths of exhaustion that mimic his own. Letting himself fall to his knees, he reaches for the hole in the wall, still partially occluded by sharp metal support rods, with one hand while using the other to steady himself against the concrete. His eyes detect movement beyond the small opening, but he cannot tell what is moving with so little knowledge of what this person looks like. For a moment, his heart sinks as he wonders whether or not this could all be a clever and cruel trick staged by the machines to keep him from the next level.

Craig scarcely hearts mumbled words from the other side as three slender fingers slide between the remaining bars just as his did the same. Their fingers hover in front of each other’s, as if in confirmation, before they gently touch and latch together. Her skin is cold, scarred, caked with dust and fresh sweat, and the softest thing he has ever felt. Craig lets out a combination of a cough, sigh, and laugh as tears create clean streaks along his cheeks. He leans his head forward and taps against the cement above the hole and closes his eyes, reveling in the feeling of another’s skin; at once so foreign yet so familiar.

“W-wer bist du?”

He slowly opens his eyes and chuckles. “I can’t even understand you, but still…” He trails off and shakes his head as if in self-pity.

“Ah… ich bin Adele.”

“Huh?”

He senses her shaking her head in frustration. “Adele.”

After a moment passes it clicks. “Oh! Your name? I guess that’s your name?” The thought of talking to the wall is not lost on him, for all the good that it did him. “My name’s Craig. I guess you wouldn’t know the first bits of that sentence, so.” He clears his throat. “Craig.” It is almost embarrassing introducing himself in such a way with their fingers entwined.

Her fingers tighten on his. “Craig…”

Letting out a chuckle, he nods his head and plant it against the wall once more. His heart pounds and his mind races with thought he never expected to think. A wince of pain caused by his earlier fall comes back to haunt his legs and back. For the first time since he began to pursue Adele, he experiences the pain of several puncture wounds in his skin and wonders just how much blood he might have lost. Likely hearing his moans of pain, Adele says something in her own language and jostles his fingers with her own in an attempt to get his attention.

“Bist du verletzt?” she says with worry in her voice from the other side of the wall.

“I’m okay, just need to rest for a while,” Craig responds, grasping at straws for what she might have just said, though the worry in her voice gave him a clue. Slowly taking his hand away from hers he starts to take off his jacket. A shiver rides up his spine as he sees a stark red sheen on the inside, which is full of tears and holes. “Shit…” He figures that the wounds have gone nearly numb by now and gave him a much less severe view of his condition. Cringing at the thought of removing his already sweat-soaked undershirt, he peels it away from his damaged skin and the slowly crusting blood.

“Craig!” Adele calls him over to the hole with his name and a wave of her fingers. It was strange, hearing his name spoken by someone other than himself. Being careful not to wrinkle the skin on his back too much, he crawls over to the hold and peeks through it. Between the bars, she slips a small bottle of liquid over to his side. It is made of glass and sports a piece of paper wrapped around the middle of it. The paper has some writing on it that he cannot read.

“Breitete es auf deine wunde,” she says, making a sort of rubbing motion against the side of the hole with her fingers. As if to make sure that he understood, she points at the bottle in his hand and then rubs her fingers against the concrete again before pointing at Craig himself.

Piecing things together, Craig mutters unconsciously, “Use this, against me? Or— oh! Use this on my wound? Sure hope that’s why she gave me this. I think I get it. Thank you.” After some fiddling with the cap, he pours a small amount of it on his forefinger and middle finger. Tentatively, he reaches up over his shoulder and dabs the liquid on his wounds. The sting immediately tells him that the liquid is rubbing alcohol, though he wonders from where she got it and from where he remembers it. He waves to her briefly before applying some more of it to some other wounds on his back. The more he applies, the less it stings. Minutes passed as he did so, during which he hears Adele messing with something on the other side. Various clicks and whirring noises, along with some clunks and clinks, continue as time passes. He would have asked what she was doing, but decided against it lest he inadvertently say something that sounds like something else in her language. Unlikely, but he figures it could happen.

After managing to stand up to the pain of rubbing alcohol for a few more applications on his many other bumps and scrapes, he lays down on his stomach atop the jacket and undershirt that he discarded earlier. As he feels himself beginning to doze off, a distressed cry sounds from the hole. When he turns his head, he hears her breathe a sigh of relief as her shadow disappears beyond the borders of the hole. He thinks she perhaps thought him dead when he laid down.

It occurs to him that he has not yet seen her entire face, but she has seen his. For a moment, he automatically glances around the room for a mirror, as if suddenly his appearance matters. The stubble on his chin makes a scraping sound against his fingers as he strokes them across his face, and when he feels at his hair he finds it damp with cold sweat.

A knock on the wall sounds as Adele reappears in view of the hole. With her hand showing through, she motion for him to approach. After that, she holds up what looks like a roll of clean, if ragged, cloth. Never in his travels has he gotten the kind of medical care he is currently receiving. With a short chuckle, he crawls over to the hole and reaches for the roll. After dabbing a little rubbing alcohol along the entire length of it he wraps it around his torso and over his back. The sting returns with renewed vigor as the wrappings touch down on his ravaged and scraped skin.

“Thanks,” he says to her with a smile as he finishes tying a knot with the last of the length of cloth. Very dodgy work at best, with some loose sections not even touching his skin, but he figures his shirt and jacket would pat them down enough to make them effective; his head holds no memory of getting an infection anyway. He smiles and sits down in front of the hole. Possibly understanding the simple gesture of thanks, she nods her head. Taking that as a cue, he lays down once more on his stomach and waves to her before closing his eyes.

“Schlaf gut,” she say.

He laughs at his own lack of understanding and turns on his side. For a moment, he feels as if she is right next to him— no walls or metal bars to separate them— and unconsciously closes his fingers around an imaginary hand beside him as if in nostalgia.

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A/N: I feel that I padded this scene too much, but I'll leave that for the rest of you to decide. The German in this was just directly translated with some English-to-German text translator I found on the internet. I don't actually speak German, so please don't call out anything about the language-- I won't understand it. If I ever put this to print I will make quadruple-sure that it is grammatically correct.

In any case, constructive criticism is always appreciated, and I hope you enjoyed this chapter.