companionwolf

She pauses, tells him the numbers of her engineer friends, and he notes them in his phone. Somewhere, as he types, a door shakes as a unseen dog barks and throws itself against it. Hazel yells for it to shut up, shakes her head. 

“That’s still, um, not good,” Pillow Central says, putting away the phone as he steps over the sewing machine and boxes in the cramped hall as she leads him into the kitchen. 

“I know, govie, but arrest me later,” she snaps. 

It’s small, pots and pans and unwashed plates, a fridge coated in stickers and a sink full of potato skins. She opens the freezer, pulls out a squashed black bag, and opens it with the mouth toward him.

Pillow Central looks inside.

It’s mauled, and freezer burnt, but it’s still grey pink and bug eyed. Pillow Central looks up from the bag at Hazel. “How did you...?”

“Dog brought its leg to me,” she says. “Went back for the rest and I followed him. Found this and the pieces I sent out.”

“So it was dead when you found it?”

She nods.

He grimaces. “Still not a great sign,” he says, mostly to himself.

“What is it?” she asks. “Some kind of alien?”

“I’m not sure,” he says, careful, careful. “But if you let me take it, I can find out.”

Hazel squints at him. “You’re not gonna arrest me?”

“No,” he says. “Just give me this and tell me the address of your friends; I’ll need to get those fragments too.”

“What is it though?” 

“We aren’t sure,” he says, and the lie hurts, but he’s gonna stick with it. “We haven’t gotten anything solid yet, so you’re doing us a favor providing a body. We only had pictures before.”

“Better you have it then me,” she says, and ties the bag shut. She hands it to him. “You’ll wanna get a cooler or something,” she says, “or it’ll stink up your car.” A pause. “Well, maybe. Maybe it doesn’t decompose.”

Memories flicker in his head, memories that aren’t real aren’t real never were. “We’ll find out I guess,” he manages.

There’s a knock at the door then, and a muffled voice calls ‘FBI, open up.’

“Uh oh,” says Pillow Central. 

Hazel rounds on him, eyes flashing. “I thought you were the FBI,” she hisses.

“Uh, well—“

More knocking, another yell. 

“Are you some sort of criminal?” she asks, and then darts to the side of the kitchen, ducking into a corner where she grabs a broom and welds it like a bat. “Don’t get any closer!”

The knocking at the door becomes more insistent. Pillow Central’s grip on the bag tightens. “I’m not what they’re here for,” he says, “I don’t think so anyway. I’d bet they’re here for this. Did you... did you contact any authorities?”

“No!” she snaps. “I hate the police!” 

“Then why did you let me in?”

“You seemed stupid enough to not be trouble, but I guess I was wrong,” she says, and swings the broom at him. It catches him in the side and bongs off harmlessly. 

“What the hell!” Hazel says.

He doesn’t stick around to let her swing again; he sprints out of the room, staggering as he runs into unpacked boxes in hall. There’s another yell at the door, something about forced entry.

“She’s coming!” he calls, and lunges for a door that he hopes is to the garage by the fact it’s got a coat hanger next to it. 

He hears Hazel scrambling behind him; she yells something at him, and the. Yells at the banging at her door. In that moment Pillow Central manages to get the door open and —

Thank god, it is a garage. 

He fumbles in the dark next to the door for the door button, slaps it once he finds it. The garage door heaves itself open, creaking, and Pillow Central streaks across the space, half ducking under to get out.

He sprints down the driveway, fingers digging into the black plastic of the bag. Two men in black at the porch turn and look at him as he scrambles last; he hears one of them shout at him. 

He fumbles for his keys as he darts across the street, is nearly around the car when the shot rings out.

The faint “what the hell” does not register to Pillow Central until he’s jumped into the truck and is speeding it down the street, nor does the pain in his stomach until he’s driven tires screaming out back onto the main room.

He feels the phantom blood, then, the slowly spreading and increasing tendrils of pain then. 

“Oh my god, did they shoot me?” he asks, one hand jumping from the wheel to pat at his body. 

“Um, what is this?” Espeon asks him back, muffled under the bag of Sectoid. 

“Later,” he says as he pulls Alice from the hoodie. “Alice—“

As he flings her onto the dashboard, she sighs. “Yes,” she says, “you’ve been shot. You’ll be fine, though; there’s only a need to sew up the entry and exit holes—“

He wildly looks into the car mirror, sharply turns on the next road he sees, slams a hand against the window. 

Magicka pulses, and the blue of the car rear view mirror changes red. The cabin shifts, expands. 

“Oh, incredible,” Alice says. 

“Not incredible,” Pillow Central says, and it’s out of breath. “Bad! Bad!”

“No one would believe them,” she says.

“The license plate—“

“—probably changed as well. We are fine.”

“I have a hole in my stomach!”

“And unlike a human, it will pose you little determent to leave it that way. Drive, Bradford.”

Espeon has wiggled our from beneath the bag, and is looking between him and Alice with widened eyes. 

“Ohhhh, what did you do?” she asks, in the way a younger sibling does when they know their Elder has gotten into trouble.

“Got the evidence I needed that we need to work faster,” he says between his perception of gritted teeth. 

“What cryptic bullshit—“

“The thing in the bag is a alien, Espeon.” says Alice, much more calm then pillow Central thinks she should be. 

“Oh shit, it’s real xcom hours!”

“I’m going to throw you out this window into the highway,” Pillow Central says.

“Real! XCOM! Hours!” 

“Yeah, it’ll be real XCOM hours alright...if we get caught,” he mumbles, and then feels the sensation of nonexistent blood leaving where he perceives his face to be— there is a unmarked white van behind them, and maybe it’s his gut or maybe it’s Awakening, but he knows those guys from Hazel’s are in it.

“Shit,” he says.”

“There is no need to panic,” Alice says.

“What did you do?” Espeon asks again. 

“Pretended to be from the government, ended up the actual government showed up right after me, they saw me running, they shot me, here we are,” he says, before switching lanes roughly; Alice goes flying into the new backseat of the now minivan.

“Ow,” she says.

Pillow Central mutters a sorry as he speeds up. The van is getting closer, weaving through the traffic. 

“Me-ow,” Espeon laughs, but it turns to a screech of “OH FUCK, LOOK OUT!”

“Look out for—“

There is a screaming of rubber on asphalt, Espeon howling, and then a shrieking metal past metal— he spins desperately away. Pillow Central can see right through his to the van’s now that the cars been spun in a total half circle; the shorter man is in mid yell when the two cars finally crash together. 

Luckily enough, the air bag deploying does little to Pillow Central but push him hard back against the driver’s seat. The glass, however, cut into his astral limbs and makes even more the sensation of bleeding. Espeon has been thrown into the foot well, where she struggles out from beneath the sectoid body bag. 

“I told you to look out,” she says.

“Shut up,” Pillow Central answers. He reaches back for Alice, grabs her, and then nabs the backpack as well. He scrambles for the body bag, shoves it inside, and then puts Alice and Espeon on top of it before he exits the car. 

From the outside he can see the passenger side sustained the most damage, but there is no fire, and he thanks Awakening for that. The van looks more worse for wear then his truck, and much more then the Kia that he initially attempted to avoid ramming. 

He is about to walk away from the scene when something catches his eye. 

One of the doors of the vans has been knocked clean off, and something lies on the ground— a briefcase, its contents fluttering away into the wind despite the efforts of the taller man to catch them. The shorter man is looking around the area, and seems in great distress. 

Something gleams green on the edge of his vision as he looks the scene back and forth and he steps back— there, under the truck, by the back right tire, near him. Something shimmering. Something round.

He bends down and reaches toward it, gets his hand upon it—

///