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Ivan was choking him.
Ivan was kissing him.
Kissing him?
No.
He was falling, ruby red falling from chapped lips that had smashed insistantly and hurriedly onto his own only seconds before.
It felt like he was falling in slow motion. The movement continued until, suddenly, Ivan’s now empty body hit the stage floor with a dull heavy thud.
The ruby red continued to drip from his corpse. He knew what those rivulets growing into a gruesome cascade of ruby red was: Blood. Ivan’s blood. Ivan was dead. He died because he wanted to. That much was a given. Didn’t he hate Till? Ivan had rushed to Till as the song was ending. Till knew Ivan saw that his score was low, lower than Ivan’s.
Till wanted to tell him no.
But he was already dead now, bleeding out at his feet. The phantom pain of his fingers that had dug into the skin of his neck ever so feverishly, lingered.
Ivan had died for him. It was stupid. So incredibly stupid.Till would be against Luka in the next round, there was no guarantee of his win, or if he’ll win. There was no reason to prolong his death.
All his friends were gone. No reason to keep living. Sua, dead, shot in the neck. Mizi, missing, no one knew where she had been taken to. Now, Ivan. Dead, bleeding out lifeblood on a cursed stage.
But if it weren't for Ivan, who had… given him a chance, he’d be …. He'd need to give his best, even if he knew his best wasn’t enough. It wouldn’t ever be enough to beat Luka.
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Till didn’t know what happened after Ivan fell.
It was a complete blur of going backstage then back into his lonely cell. But there was no time for recalling, he had to sing against Luka. If he wanted even a miniscule chance of beating him, he’d have to do everything he could, all his skill with a guitar would have to give him a small chance.
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Till was faced with bright insufferable lights, his vision blurry, sweat dampening his clothes, microphone close to his lips, ready to spit out lyrics at a moment's notice. As he started his guitar riff, Luka materialized his own instrument. The violin. An elegant and princely instrument.
It was then, Till realized belatedly, even with his best, he would still lose. Till wasn’t great, he was living on borrowed time, reminded of such when Luka did something that had and would forever haunt him, even as Luka’s thin, cold, corpse - Ivan’s corpse - dug into his bottom lip.
There, in the crowd.
Pink.
A bright pink.
A colour only one human could have.
Mizi.
What was she doing here?
Till wanted to hug her, sob into her wonderful and comforting shoulder.
Just as they reached towards each other:
Pain.
It exploded on the side of his neck, his metal branding was probably damaged at this point, Till thought hysterically. He was probably falling, blood falling from his chapped lips, a tall body falling starboard, like Ivan once did, to never do again.
Next thing he knew, he was recalling sneaking off to who knows where with Mizi, away from their caretakers.
She was smiling up at him.
No.
She was crying down into his face.
Shorn pink hair waving in the soft night breeze.
Big tears falling from bright amber eyes, it should’ve been ugly.
His last thoughts were that he wished he could tell Mizi to Just Stop Crying. So he lifted his hand and stroked the too warm hand against his own too cold hand.
His mouth moved, but he couldn’t hear anything.
As his vision darkened, he saw that Mizi was still crying tears.
Then darkness.
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When Till next woke up, he was in a room that was coloured in beige and dimly lit. It was drastically different from his own quarters in the care of the aliens.
Till thought that was strange. The afterlife was not how it was pictured to be by his ancestors. The door creaked open painfully, and a man with a gruesome scar slashing across his face. Though, for all the ugliness of the scar, the man himself was very handsome. That was hard to deny.
“Ah, you're awake,” The man shuffled about in the room for a bit.
Till attempted to ask the man about the happenings of the world, however, he found attempting to speak brought a slight metallic taste to his tongue and unimaginable pain. As he doubled over and spit the coppery liquid out, he saw that it was red. Red, Till realised.
Till was coughing blood.
“Stop trying to speak.” The man handed Till a glass of clear liquid. Water. “My name is Isaac, this is the headquarters of the Human Rebellion.” The man, now known as Isaac, spoke the unsaid questions. “Your throat had been shot in, it's damaged. Speaking now would mean coughing up blood.”
Till just stared at the man.
“What, it just happened, I’m not lying.” Isaac said exasperated.
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The four unnamed children mingled mindlessly in their cells. They knew they were cloned from the participants seven years ago.
Hence why their cells were located in the memorial museum for the beloved contestants.
The child with pink hair thought it was more akin to a mausoleum.
The children could hear the revving of an engine in the distance. The pink-haired child was puzzled, the engine was coming closer, rapidly. The bearer of the engine was directly in sight, the human, for it was another human wearing a helmet on his head, took his bulky helmet off and smiled at the children. His smile was kind.
The children that looked like long dead, knew they would be okay.
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The pink haired child was content. Or as content as one who had not lived in a place better and therefore had nothing to compare to other than the deathly still of the keeping centers. The child could describe their inner being as pleased though. The children had enough in this new environment. It wasn’t sterile with the scent of chemicals wafting about the air, but smelled sweet with warmth and the spices of human cooking.
It was a very lively place.
It was new but pleasant.
The man who had brought the children to this new place had let them meet a dark-skinned man with a gruesome scar crossing his face from chin to nose who then welcomed the children and said his name was ‘Isaac. He had also stated that this was a “headquarters” for a certain “Human Rebellion” and the man who had brought them there was ‘Till’, a former contestant of season 50 Alien Stage.
Till was kind, but haunted.
But that was okay, the children were haunted too.
They could fix each other.
Maybe.
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