Purple Skies -Chapter 2- Traitor

His feet were heavy in his wet shoes, and his legs stuck to the fabric of his jeans as he struggled to heavy his legs through the soft orange sand. He felt a surge of warmth before the pain - searing pain, like a burn, across the back of his neck. Bray couldn't think anything but be still, his body seized and he fell into the sand. His head plowed sideways into the orange and his eyes remained forced open in a burning paralysis. There was a ringing in his ears and his head felt as though it were a hairdryer in bath. His entire body was buzzing and jolts of electrical impulses seemed to coarse through his veins.

He felt the man turn his rigid body over, and he was screaming uncontrollably. The pain was so intense that Bray felt like he was going to die.. There was a crush of footsteps in sand and the helmeted man was joined by the driver, who made no introduction other than a quick slap across Bray's face, and Bray''s screams choked him silent.

"Concentrate on staying quiet, I'll fix it if you can stay quiet." The man nodded at him, and Bray believed him.

"Shit, York, you damn missed, you're no better shot than a drunk crippled baby." The driver crouched beside him. "This is why you stay behind the damn spotter, I told you," he muttered, and Bray couldn't help but feel protected by him.

He was older, Bray noted as York took off his helmet. The sand had found it's way into the crevices and the shape of the goggles was clearly marked in orange.

"He ran, I shot, he fell over ,and now we have him. I don't see the problem." The boy sneered.

The man snapped his head back into a fierce glare that Bray only caught the corner of.

"This isn't a game of catch, this is complicated, it's politics." He turned back to Bray, his eyes still fixed to the side, "This is a job, this is your... honor as a servant to Wolsa."

He slipped the fingerless leather glove from his hand, brushing sand from his palm before feeling behind Bray's neck, feeling for...?  

Bray felt the impusles stop, in place of a sickening crack , as though his spine had been pulled from his skull. He tensed, though the paralysis was gone and the pain lessened.

"If you comply, boy, I'll keep this with me." He held a metal bar in his hand, no wider or longer than two of his longest fingers. It was a dull shade of grey and pronged at each end on one side. The long prongs were covered in blood, oozing over flesh pulled from the wound at his nape.

He looked Bray in the eye. His eyes were light blue and worn - the iris seemed tethered around the edges. Smudged, almost. Bray laid still as the man fastened his hands in front of him with another strange metal device. His hands went numb and his fingers felt dead.

"Can you speak?"

Bray croaked, defeated and confused, "yes."

"Do you have a mark? An identity mark?"

"I don't know what that is."

Bray felt more inclined to obey him than to fear him. He was missing a recklessness that had immediately been obvious with the other, York, and later evident. He demanded authority but seemed sympathetic by nature.

His blue eyes were strange and something Bray couldn't help by remember. There was a sadness about them when Bray answered his question, though.

"Who are you?" He asked, "do you know where you are?"

Bray stared at his cuffed wrists and struggled to make his fingers move, but only slightly.

"Boy, look at me. This is very serious and I need to know what the hell you were doing out here."

"I don't know. I went to sleep last night, at home in my bed with my girlfriend. I woke up and... I mean, I think I woke up. Maybe it was a dream, but water started filling the room, and Anna was screaming and I guess that's... what woke me up, maybe. I don't remember anything else, other than waking up on the beach down there, and Anna was gone"

Bray looked up at him, his boring brown eyes made him feel alien next to this man and in this place. He sighed and felt his neck muscles seize again, prompting a sob.

"My name is Brayden... er... Bray... Ambrose, and don't know where the fuck I am. What the hell was that this your guy shot at me? Where am I?"

"Brayden-"

"Bray."

"Bray, then. Bray, I need you to look at me and listen to everything I say-"

"What are you doing, Creost?" York interrupted from a distance, still lingering around where he'd shot Bray from.

Creost looked back to York and yelled at him, "go back to Stand and get me some edical supplies, I don't want to move him until he's stopped bleeding-"

"-but what about you?"

"I'll stay, now get the in the dune roller and do what I say."

York snapped back at him, "get fucked, don't talk to me like I'm your slave."

The driver stood up, "that's your job. I'm your commanding officer, and you listen to me. You ain't been doing much of it lately so I'm figuring you learned some kind of complex from your little friends back at the training compound. If you don't like me telling you what to do, fucking quit, because believe it or not I'm actually one of the nice training officers. However, iif you want to one day have your own snot nosed shit following your orders, you suck it up and do what I tell you to do."

Without a word, York slunk back to the dune roller and started it up.

"Be back within an hour, and bring that same roller. I need the space for this guy."

The dune roller reminded Bray of the old steam-powered paddle wheelers that churned through the rivers where he'd grown up. Under the car-like structure there seemed to be the same kind of paddle wheels, but as the roller powered up, it seemed to lift out of the sand and float, as though the paddle wheels somehow created lift, as well as momentum. It reached a  ridiculously high speed almost immediately, and Bray felt stupid for even trying to out-run it.

Creost crouched beside him and checked the cuffs, "they're not hurting?"

"Where am I?"

"You're in the Sands. It's forbidden."

"Why are you here?"

"Someone has to make sure it stays forbidden. It's not safe out here."

Bray cringed, "yeah, lucky I didn't run into some trigger happy psycho."

"Yes, well, we're not perfect." Creost cleared his throat, "listen, now, Bray. I'm going to give you a choice in this."

"What the fuck is going on?"

"You're not from here, you don't belong. It's obvious. There are people who will hurt you because of it, and unfortunately I'm sworn to deliver you to those people. It's happened before and I've seen them do terrible things to those like you. I don't know if I can bear to live with myself if I did it again, this time knowing I'd be a part of something like that."

He looked confused and hurt, his furrowed brows made his blue eyes darker, turning them a stormy shade of grey. Bray couldn't understand why he related so much to Creoste's eyes, there was something so familiar and comforting about them that he hardly noticed anything else about the man.

"I'm... I... I'm asking if you want me to let you go. You could run again, there are villages of people just below the mountains and it's barely two days walk from here once you get past the dunes. They wouldn't know the difference between they and you, not like Wolsa's people.

"So you let me go and I run off, then what? What about your guy, York? He'll come back ad you'll tell him I got away, and that's it? Bullshit. You'll have to come after me, or someone else will."

Creost cracked his knuckles, "Would you rather us just take you?"

"I don't want to be shot again."

"You're taking this seriously, aren't you?"

Bray shook his head, "I don't know what the hell to think. I'm lost in this crazy fucking dream and I have no idea where Anna is, I just... and you, you're fucking weird, you and York... what the hell am I supposed to do? What will they do to me if you take me to them? Take me to who?"

"I would take you back to the Stand, our base camp. They'll search you and process you and probably imprison or enslave you for life."

Bray hadn't expected that answer.

"If you come with me, you may as well run off into the wild. You stand a better chance out there."

"So I run? What, now?"

"Go." Creost pointed, "that way. As the sun sets it should lead you away from the patrols, follow the sun."

There was an awkward silence and Bray stood slowly, quickly losing strength.

"Bray, this isn't a dream, trust me. Get out of here. If I see this Anna, I'll tell her I found you and I promise I'll deliver her to you. Safe. As an apology."

"Why are you being so... hospitable?"

Creost pushed Bray in the sun's direction, shaking his head, "you caught me on a good day."

Without looking back at him, Bray ran as fast as he could through the shifting sands.  
His wet clothes made him heavier and clumsier and the sun grew hotter with each step. It must have been morning when he woke up, as the sun continued to rise before eventually falling. Brays watch still worked and after seven hours of walking he collapse. His feet were raw and his clothes were muddy and tortuous against his sunburned skin.

It was barely a second after he sat that the now familiar sound of that dune roller rang in his ears. Was it Creost again? Bray rolled to where he thought was out of sight. He hadn't counted on the parked dune roller just beside him, below the dune's peak. Not a day after running, his head met the butt of a rifle and everything went numb and black.