Chapter 20: Resurrection
Fred opened his eyes and gasped, gulping in lungfuls of sweet, cool air. He was lying on his bed, staring up at the familiar wooden bottom of Trixie’s bunk.
A silhouette moved above. Trixie, leaning over from her bunk to check on him, a routine she’d performed a thousand times in the last month, froze. Her breath hitched. Her eyes, shadowed and tired, went wide.
Fred rolled onto his side, coughing. His throat felt like it had been lined with rust and then scraped clean with a dull chisel. The sound was a ragged, alien thing in the quiet room.
Trixie nearly jumped out of her skin. A mechanical pencil clattered from her fingers, bouncing off the floor. For a second, she just stared, as if he were a mirage that might dissolve if she blinked. Then her eyes filled with tears that didn’t spill over, just pooled, making the green of them luminous.
She didn’t bother with words.
She swung down from her bunk in one fluid, desperate motion and captured his lips in the fiercest kiss she had ever given him. It was less a kiss and more a collision, a transfer of pure, kinetic emotion. Her hands framed his stubbled face, her thumbs pressing into his cheeks as if to confirm he was solid. He could taste salt and the faint, metallic tang of worry.
“You bastard,” she breathed against his mouth, the words trembling. “Don’t you ever do that again. Ever.” She kissed him again, shorter this time, a punctuation mark of fury and relief.
A symphony of chirps erupted. From the bedside table, from a specially built perching branch, from the folds of his discarded jacket, Fred’s slugs launched themselves. They tumbled onto his chest in a cascade of cool, vibrant color. Voltage zapped a harmless, celebratory current into his shirt. Scorch nuzzled his neck, radiating a gentle warmth. Zero pressed his chilly body against Fred’s wrist, his single purple eye blinking slowly. The chorus was one of hysterical, disbelieving joy.
The door to the room burst open, slamming against the wall.
Eli was first, his face pale. Kord filled the doorway behind him, and Pronto hopped from foot to foot, trying to see past the troll’s bulk.
Eli’s eyes locked onto Fred’s. The leader of the Shane Gang didn’t hesitate. He crossed the room in two strides and pulled Fred into a hug that only a brother could give—a tight, back-thumping, no-holds-barred embrace that squeezed the little air Fred had right back out of him.
“Whoa,” Fred croaked into Eli’s shoulder.
“You’re back,” Eli said, his voice thick. He pulled back, his hands still on Fred’s shoulders, his grin so wide it looked like it hurt. “You’re really back.”
Kord’s massive blue hand descended, ruffling Fred’s mullet with a gentleness that still nearly shoved his head into the pillow. “Took your sweet time, gearhead,” the troll rumbled, his own eyes suspiciously shiny.
Pronto wriggled between them, puffing out his chest. “Of course he’s back! The magnificent aura of Pronto, the greatest Molenoid tracker in the 99 caverns, was clearly the stabilizing force his wandering spirit needed to find its way home! I’ve been narrating my exploits to his inert form daily. The scientific link between heroic storytelling and coma reversal is plainly—oof!”
Kord had placed a single finger on Pronto’s head and pushed him gently but firmly aside.
The warmth, the noise, the sheer overwhelming reality of it all crashed into Fred. He looked past Eli’s shoulder at the curved white walls of the hideout, the soft blue glow of the slug tanks, the red fabric of Eli’s armchair.
The fight. Nacho. Blakk. The machine.
His memory came flooding back. Not as a dream, but as a physical echo. He felt a phantom ache in his bones from the mental pummeling. The scent of rust and ozone seemed to linger in his sinuses for a second.
He pulled back from Eli, his movements still jerky, uncoordinated. “What happened?” The question was a sandpaper whisper.
The room erupted again, everyone talking at once.
“Blakk pulled back,” Eli said, overriding the others. “As soon as you blew up his machine. He called a full retreat. Just grabbed his goons and ran.”
Kord nodded, crossing his arms. “We carried you out of there. Thought you were just KO’d. But you didn’t wake up.”
“We tried everything,” Trixie said. She was sitting on the edge of the bed now, one hand resting on his leg, as if afraid he’d disappear if she broke contact. Her voice was low, controlled, but each word was a crystal shard. “Every stimulant gel, every neutral energy charge Kord could rig. Nothing. Your vitals were stable, but you were just… gone.”
Pronto sidled back in. “It was I who suggested the therapeutic benefits of my own epic ballads! The ‘Ode to Pronto’s Victory Over the Sand Sifter’ has been known to stir the dormant—”
“It didn’t work, Pronto,” Trixie said, not unkindly, but with a finality that silenced him.
Eli ran a hand through his hair. “We’ve been guarding you in shifts. Keeping an eye out for trouble. Blakk’s been quiet. Too quiet.”
Fred processed this. The tactical part of his mind, the part that was always mapping angles and plotting loadouts, flickered weakly to life. “I saw him”.
They all stared at him.
“You… saw him?” Eli asked slowly.
Fred tried to sit up straighter. A wave of dizziness washed over him. His muscles, atrophied and unused, screamed in protest. Trixie’s hand on his arm helped steady him. He realized with a distant shock that he felt thin. Gaunt.
“He was in my head,” Fred said, the words feeling absurd even as he spoke the truth. “When I was unconscious. He was in there, talking, messing with everything.” He looked at Trixie, his gaze intense. “You were the way out. A portal that smelled like oil and moss-soap.”
Trixie’s lips parted slightly. A faint blush colored her cheeks, but her eyes never left his.
Eli’s expression darkened. “He was invading your mind? That’s… a new low.”
“It was more than that,” Fred murmured, his eyes losing focus as he remembered the corridors of rust. “He was mining for doubts. Trying to get me to…” He trailed off, not wanting to give the darkness air. He shook his head. “How long?”
A heavy silence draped over the room. The happy chaos evaporated, replaced by a grim, shared truth they’d been carrying.
Trixie’s fingers tightened on his arm. Her eyes, those brilliant, analytical eyes, finally let the tears spill over. They traced clean lines through the faint dust on her cheeks.
“Fred,” she whispered, her voice breaking on the single syllable. She swallowed, forced the words out. “You’ve been gone for over a month.”
The statement landed in the center of the room with the weight of a fallen stalactite.
A month.
Thirty-plus days of his life, stolen. Thirty days of them watching, waiting, hoping. The reality of his weakness hit him then, a physical blow. He looked at his hands. They were clean, but the calluses were softer. His arms, once thick with the muscle from hours at the forge, looked lean, the definition softened. A profound, deep cold settled in his gut.
He’d been fighting a war in a landscape of twisted steel for what felt like hours. Out here, a season had passed.
“The slugs?” he asked suddenly, panic spiking. He looked down at the cluster of loving, worried creatures on his blanket.
“They never left you,” Kord said, his voice softer than usual. “Voltage wouldn’t let anyone near you for the first week. Slept right on your chest. We had to feed ‘em all by hand. They’ve been dim. Like their lights were on a low battery.”
As if on cue, Voltage glowed a little brighter, a proud, defiant crackle snapping along his markings. But Fred could see it—the usual electric vibrancy was muted, like a lamp on a dying power cell.
He had survived. But they had all been drained. The fight had cost them all.
Fred swung his legs over the side of the bed. The floor was cold against his bare feet.
“Whoa, hold on, buddy,” Eli said, reaching for him.
“I need to stand up,” Fred said, his voice still rough but laced with a new, iron determination. It was the same tone he used when a weld had to be perfect on the first try.
He pushed himself up.
His legs trembled violently, buckling instantly. He would have crumpled back onto the bed if Kord hadn’t moved with surprising speed, catching him under the arms. The troll held him upright, taking his full weight with ease.
Fred hung there, panting, shamed by the simple, catastrophic failure of his own body. He felt like a ghost trying to operate a broken machine.
“Easy does it,” Kord murmured, lowering him gently to sit back on the bed.
Fred looked at his hands again, then at the faces of his family—Eli’s concern, Kord’s steadfast strength, Pronto’s uncharacteristically quiet worry, Trixie’s raw, unveiled heart.
A month was gone. Blakk was still out there. And he was a skeleton wrapped in loose skin.
But he was here.
He met Trixie’s gaze and gave a slow, deliberate nod. It was a promise, and a plan, all in one.
“Okay,” Fred breathed out, the word solidifying in the air. “I’m back. Now I’ve got to get back.”
The gang helped Fred move out of the bedroom and into the main room, a slow, shuffling procession that felt both absurd and deeply necessary. Kord acted as a living crutch, his enormous arm supporting most of Fred’s weight, while Trixie and Eli guided his steps, their hands firm on his back and elbow. Each shuffle was a victory against the profound emptiness in his muscles.
It was a far cry from the destroyed rubble he remembered.
They had done a great job repairing the place. The clean, curved lines of the hideout were restored, the scorch marks from the battle sanded away, the cracked viewports replaced with fresh, clear crystal. The air smelled of polymer sealant and ozone, not smoke and panic. It was familiar, but like a scar that had healed neatly—the evidence of violence was gone, but the memory of its shape remained.
The gang lowered Fred onto the sofa, where he sank into the cushions with a helpless groan. Trixie and Eli kept holding him upright until he found a semblance of balance, then perched on either side of him, not letting go. The world tilted slightly, his equilibrium still convinced he was in that weightless, rust-colored nowhere.
Kord went to the kitchen, the familiar clatter of pots a comforting sound. “Gettin’ some soup into you,” he announced. “My recipe. You’ll keep it down.”
Pronto sat on the arm of Eli’s red chair, uncharacteristically still. A rare look of concern pinched his features, silencing his usual bravado. He just watched Fred breathe, as if verifying the function himself.
“The last thing I remember clearly,” Fred began, his voice low, “is the jump.” He looked at Trixie, then Eli, piecing the fracture together. “Blakk’s machine. At the base of the mushroom stalk.”
Trixie nodded, her hand finding his. Her fingers were cool. “It was sawing through. You didn’t say a word. Just ran and leapt over the railing.”
“I fired Bulk, Voltage, and Scorch on the way down,” Fred continued, the memory gaining sharp edges. He saw the trio of slugs streaking ahead of him, becoming a demolition crew mid-air. “Took out the main housing. Then I fired Webs.”
Eli leaned forward. “To break your fall.”
“He spun a net,” Fred said. “A good one. But I’d misjudged the distance. Ran out of altitude.” He instinctively touched the back of his head, where a faint, smooth tenderness under his hair was the only physical remnant. “The web softened the hit. But not enough. My head hit dirt, not void.”
The thud seemed to echo in the quiet room.
Pronto finally spoke, his voice uncommonly small. “We heard the crack. From all the way up there.”
“What happened after?” Fred asked, looking around at them. “After I didn’t get up.”
Trixie took over, her tone clinical, as if reciting a report was the only way to get through it. “Blakk’s entire operation short-circuited. The machine was dead. His mecha-beasts froze. He just… called the retreat. Like you’d flipped a master switch he didn’t control.” She swallowed. “We got to you. Kord carried you. You were breathing, but your eyes were open and didn’t see anything.”
Eli picked up the thread. “Doc did everything he could. Healed the concussion, the fracture, the bruising. Your body was perfect in a day.” He ran a hand through his hair, frustration etched on his face. “But you were empty. A house with the lights off. Doc couldn’t fix your mind. No slug can.”
“You were in a coma for a month,” Kord said, placing a steaming bowl on the low table in front of Fred. The smell of thick broth and blended root vegetables hit him, and his stomach clenched with a sudden, primal hunger.
A month. The number was a cold stone in his gut.
Fred stared at the rising steam. “I wasn’t just asleep.” He told them about the corridor of rust and neon, the doors of bleeding ink. He described the memories Blakk had weaponized, the feel of the pipe in his mind-hands, the visceral crunch of the dark water doctor’s fabricated jaw. He left out the specific, gutting content of the doubts, but the architecture of the attack was clear.
It was psychological warfare of a kind they’d never faced.
“He was trying to bury me in my own head,” Fred finished, his voice ragged. “To make me quit. To make me think I belonged in the dark with the broken gear.”
Trixie’s grip on his hand was bone-tight. “How did you get out?”
Fred turned his head to look at her fully. The fear and fatigue on her face was the most real thing he’d seen since waking. He didn’t dress it up. There was no poetry in him, only the raw,assembled truth.
“You,” he said, the word simple and absolute. “A portal that smelled like you. Felt like you. It was the only thing in that place that wasn’t poison. I fought my way to it. I aimed for it.” He paused, the admission hanging in the air, vulnerable as an open wound. “It was my memory of you that saved me.”
Trixie’s eyes, already shimmering, filled with tears that spilled over without sound. A soft, broken sound escaped her throat. She didn’t speak. She just leaned into him, burying her face against his chest, her shoulders shaking with a month’s worth of fear finally releasing its hold.
Fred held her, his own arms still weak but determined, and pressed his lips to the crown of her vibrant red hair. Over her head, he met Eli’s gaze. There was no rivalry there, no tension. Only a shared, exhausted understanding of how close they’d all come to an end.
Fred looked past him, at the repaired hideout, at his slugs now perching quietly on the back of the sofa, their lights slowly brightening. He felt the warm weight of Trixie against him, the solid presence of his team around him.
The void had been fought. The retreat had been called.
Now the real work began.