PROLOGUE
---
Silence.
In this world, it was a commodity as rare and as valuable as fuel and water. The roar of engines revving, of tires screeching against sand and rock, of factory silos working tirelessly to mine and pump out guzzoline for the world's cars... on a normal day, you'd be hardpressed to escape the distant din of the wasteland, no matter how far you drove. That was if you were lucky.
If you were unlucky, you heard those sounds up close.
Just because silence was scarce, though, didn't mean it didn't exist. There were whole plains of it out there, far away... and if you knew where to look, chances were you could reach out and take some, just some, of that silence for yourself. In that moment, there was no wasteland. This scorched earth all men walked upon, this world of fire and blood...
didn't exist. When silence washed over you like a rush of water, in that single, fleeting moment... you were free.
The real trouble with silence wasn't finding it, though.
The trouble was holding onto it once you did. Because just like water, and fuel, when you had silence... chances were it wasn't gonna last long.
Max.
Here they come again.
You promised you'd save us, Max.
Like ghosts, conjured up from the drudges. The recesses. They swarmed, burrowed into the black matter of his brain.
YoupromisedMaxyoupromisedMaxyou'dpromisedyou'dMaxMaxMaxMaxpromisedyou'd-
Whispers of an age long past. The ashes of the dead phoenix, except this phoenix never rose anew. He told himself they were in his head. They could not hurt him.
-youpromisedyoupromisedyoupromisedyoupromisedHello?
"......."
The youthful voice cut in above the cacophonous whisper, bringing the past's badgering to an abrupt halt, and it was time to go.
Because here
they came again. The ghosts not of his mind, but of the desert. They were not dead. They could hurt him. He could hear them, the drumbeat rising in pace and rhythm, vicious souls howling with glee and the thrill of the hunt. They wanted nothing more than to soak in his blood. To be witnessed.
A war party.
"WE ARE AWAITEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEED!"
"HIS HEAD! HIS HEAD GOES ON MY BONNET!"
"BY OUR DEEDS WE HONOR HIM! RIIIIIIIDING ETERNAL!
IMMORTAN!"
"IMMORTAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN!"
VRMMMMMMMM
The Interceptor's powerful V8 engine roared to life, exhaust pumping out thick plumes of smoke as the raggedy man scrambled behind the wheel. The pursuit vehicle's four wheels spun up a storm, kicking up clouds of dust in their wake, and the car lurched into movement, taking off down a steady incline and picking up momentum as it went. He had a head start, but it wouldn't matter much. The warboys' buggies were built for navigating the sand, for chasing down their prey. The man called Max knew this all too well.
He was
not gonna be a fucking bloodbank again.
His only hope was outmaneuvering them, and he was confident he could do it. He'd been a road warrior, once. And he knew how they drove. Wild swerves. Mad gambits. He just had to make sure none of them paid off.
Farewell, silence. Hello, normalcy.
It wasn't long before the scout vehicle was on him. Good. The more they split up, the easier it was to pick them off. The buggy made its first mistake quickly enough, and Max made sure it'd be the last. He slammed his foot down on the Interceptor's pedal, veered the wheel sharply to his left, and rammed the car viciously, the sand's poor traction aiding him in running it clear off the makeshift road. It nicked its wheel on a rocky outcropping, spun violently and crashed into a ditch, the sound of tearing metal and burning rubber just barely masking the cries of the deceased warboy's brethren as they advanced from the rear.
"MEDIOCAR!"
"MEDIOCAAAAAAAAAAAAR!!"
Max stepped on it.
Throughout all this, he felt the throbbing pain in his stomach grow, like something was churning around in there. He'd had it all day, but hadn't paid it much thought. Tapeworm, maybe? When your diet consisted of lizards, rats and occasionally a handful of maggots you fished from a rotting corpse, you learned to cope with illness. Problem was, it was getting worse. Getting distracting.
That didn't stop him from dealing with the second vehicle to come at him in short order. The war buggy leveled out alongside him, its driver absolutely bouncing in his seat as he stuck his head out his window to leer at Max viciously. Max countered the grin by sticking a sawed-off shotgun out the window, leveling the barrel with the warboy's face and shooting him point-blank in the head, sending a splatter of sinew back to paint the car. The vehicle, now down a driver, veered off-course and straight over a steep drop, tumbling through the air with a strange grace before crashing down far below.
Two down. Now he just had to--
"Gnh-!"
Max grunted in sudden pain, almost losing control of the steering wheel as one hand shot down to clutch at his stomach. This wasn't no tapeworm. This was... different. It felt strange, like... like...
Like silence.
And silence, and blackness, was what overtook him.
---
Max.
He didn't know where he was. Was this it? The plains of silence at last? When he opened his eyes, what awaited him? Would he walk over the white hills to see the gates to that which was lost, an old, dead world, or would he go right back to...
Reality.
Wake up, Max. They're waiting for you. Wake up, wake up wake up wake up wake-
He should've known better. As soon as his senses returned to him, he found himself bombarded; sensory overload, his neurons on fire. The ringing in his ears. The fire in his veins. Pulsing. Pulsing. Pulsing. It was agonizing. He couldn't see, couldn't breath, panic briefly taking hold of him as he staggered to his feet in a rush, fingers flexing erratically. Wheezing, raspy breaths heaved in and out of his lungs. His eyes, wild and skittish around the edges like those of a startled horse, darted around the room, too fast to really register anything. His brain throbbed like a drum, rattling around his skull, his heart threatening to crack through his ribcage like a jackhammer. For him, this was a common occurrence, system shock and information overload addling his mind, a mind already fractured and broken by the desert. He was unable to process it, stress and anxiety leading to a momentary panic attack, the only relief attained through continuing with those shallow, uneven breaths. It was temporary. He just had to wait it out, wait out the ringing and the fire and the pain and the shock. It'd pass. It always did.
The attack gradually began to fade, the rise and fall of his chest normalizing, the pounding in his ears starting to calm. He found himself by a wall in the room, one hand clutching at it for support as the panic passed, gruff exterior reasserting itself. And then, after that, he simply observed. He didn't know where he was. He didn't know who these people were. Better to watch and learn than talk meaninglessly, he figured. This felt like a dream, but he'd seen stranger.
Well, maybe not. The way these people talked, the stuff they were saying... talk of lawsuits and novels... it was almost like they came from
before the world went to hell. And that didn't make sense.
Since this lot seemed as clueless as he was, he didn't bother asking about it; obviously there was something else going on here. Hell if he knew what, and hell if he cared. His priority was what it always was, what it always
had to be-- survival. One thing, however, caught his eye, and it gave him a question he knew he
could ask.
He knew just who to ask it of, too.
He took care to avoid the bulk of the other room's occupants, regarding them with suspicious, mistrustful eyes as he navigated the floor in such a manner that he steered around them, keeping generally out of sight and making himself seem innocuous. Innocuous, that is, until he suddenly grabbed Nathan by the lapels of his jacket, aiming to slam him roughly down onto the table he'd been leaning against and pin him there with both arms, not outright striking the boy but not much caring if the maneuver hurt him either. He addressed him with a low, almost feral growl, eyes equally as animalistic. His strength was impressive, reflecting his powerful build, and it seemed he knew
just how to apply it most effectively.
"You. You, were in there."
He sharply thrust a finger over towards the sliding metal door, the same one Alan had disappeared through. His voice, harsh, gruff and low-pitched to the point of almost incoherence, still bore a fairly strong Australian accent after all these years.
"The rest of us weren't. Tell me what you know or I'll put you back through that door myself."
Waiting for a reply, he restrengthened his grip with both arms and glanced back over his shoulder, eyes rapidly scanning the room until they settled on the forms of Picard and Captain America. He'd seen them step in when the man with the gun was pumping this runt for questions. The woman had form and technique he couldn't deal with on his best day, too.
"Keep back. All of you. Anyone takes a step in this direction and I'll break his neck."
He wouldn't, but the rest of them didn't know that. And he needed a way to keep them off his back while he got his answers. After that, they could do what they liked. The boy didn't strike him as the type to answer questions politely, so this was how it had to be. No matter how the pacifists among them felt about it.
