Chapter Text
Hugh stumbled back into the shelter, barely able to keep his balance.
"Welcome back!" Cabin said, the robot's voice filled with excitement. "What's this? Travelling alone today?"
Hugh opened his mouth to answer when a loud crunch caught his attention. He moved the boot of his armor, revealing the remains of a small, yellow car.
Sorry Diana, he thought to himself.
The dead filament infection behaved similarly to third degree burns, he noticed. At first, there was agony as it dissolved tissue, followed by nothing as it shredded through his nerves.
He knew it had reached the tendons in his knee when his leg gave out and he collapsed facefirst onto the floor. The suit let out a chime of warning in response. He muted the warning and turned off further notifications, adding it to the others for pain level, heart rate, internal temperature, and respiration.
He forced himself to roll over onto his back. The suit obliged in a slow, halting manner. The suit was battery powered, but he’d removed it, plugging it into the cargo container to ensure Diana would get to earth. From there, he’d been running on a dwindling backup supply.
The plan was to keep the suit closed off from the environment. Once the backup battery ran out of juice, the life support would fail, and he would suffocate. It wouldn’t be quick, he would panic, and fight it, trapped in his tin can of a suit, but it sure as hell beat waiting to dissolve as the dead filament ate through him.
He signaled to open the front shield of his helmet and turned his head toward Diana's toys, looking at the beach set, the umbrella and the sand castle, one last time.
Then, he closed his eyes, and waited to die.
---
Diana felt the grains of sand squish between her toes, an experience unlike anything she'd ever felt before. The floors in the cradle had been mostly hard metal, and any carpet was flat and limited to small, square rugs.
The wind blew threw her hair about in wild directions, bringing with it a faint hint of salty mist. Hugh had told her about the ocean, and they'd seen the facsimile of it on the moon, but he hadn't told her that she would feel it on her face, nor how loud it was. The constant roaring of the water crashing against itself, and the gentler lapping at the shore, the birds (laridae, her information bank told her) calling as they wheeled in the sky.
"Hugh..." the thought of him hit Diana with a pang of anguish. The last time she'd seen him, he'd opened his faceplate and she'd seen the dead filament, lines crawling up his face. He'd smiled at her.
She'd spent the two days in transit from the moon to the earth crying. He must have been hit at the same time as her, when they'd been attacked by Eight. It would explain why he'd been asking about cleaning dead filament from living tissue. He should have told her, she would have stayed, they could have found a solution.
Right?
The ocean, despite all of its noise, did not answer her unspoken question.
---
Diana walked at a leusirely pace, stopping often to examine anything that caught her interest. It wasn't long before the sun went down. The dark didn't bother her though, her systems automatically changing over to infrared.
The seagulls had disappeared, gone to bed, but were soon replaced by nocturnal animals. Tiny crabs (ocypodinae) had dug themselves out of the sand and scuttled across the beach. Diana laughed, feeling like a giant in a village of tiny people.
She wasn't sure how long she had travelled. Her positioning system stopped working once she'd left the moon. She could have hacked the cargo container's systems to attune herself to Earth, but she'd been distracted.
It was another four hours before she found a sign of human civilization.
Diana had been used to the faint glow of electronics in the cradle, but a light filtering through the greenery here stuck out. She followed it, coming upon a small house (recreational vehicle the system corrected) with wheels. The light came from within.
Diana approached, her hand in a fist and ready to knock, when she paused.
Humans were all different from each other. What if they weren't like Hugh? What if they were mean?
Before she had a chance to think any further, however, a sound caused her to jump. Her hand flared open by instinct, ready to hack whatever was coming, before she realized it was barking.
There was a loud thump as the dog hit the RV door, followed by a woman saying "Arty, get down!"
She was shouting, causing Diana to step backwards. The woman sounded angry, maybe this was a bad idea. She could keep going, find another person.
The dog continued to whine as the RV shifted. The door was thrown open and Diana came face to face with the first human she'd seen that was neither Hugh, nor a scientist.
The woman was older, probably the age most of the senior scientists were, with gray hair so curly, it almost formed a triangle. She gave Diana a puzzled look for a few seconds before the large, black dog knocked into her on the way out the door.
Diana spun around as the dog circled her, snuffling. After several quick rotations he became brave enough to press his nose to her skin. Diana shrieked with laughter, the cold and wet sensation of it at odds with the dog's hot breath. He reached her hand and his tongue began to lick at her hand.
"Doggy!" Diana squealed.
---
Hugh wasn't sure how long he was out, but death did not come.
Cabin leaned over him, a concerned look on his pixelated face.
"Is there anything else I can do to assist you?" the robot said.
"Ungh" Hugh replied. His suit, detecing conciousness, automatically ran a systems check. The backup battery was recharged and stated it would be good for three hours, given the current requirements. His suit didn't draw ambient power from the floor the way Diana did, so what happened?
When he moved his head, he saw a red cable plugged into the left breast, where the main battery would normally be located. He grabbed it, following it with his eyes to where it was plugged into the center console. A back panel had been removed, and the cable spliced in.
"Cabin," Hugh croaked, "did you do this?"
"Yes sir!" Cabin said, his face blinking into a smile as he saluted with a small wrench in his hand. "You appeared to be having difficulties with your equipment. I ran a diagnostic and found you were having low power issues. Using my repair skills, I was able find a soluton that would most efficiently fit the requirements at hand."
"Thanks, buddy."
A flood of heart emojis appeared from the bottom of Cabin's screen, floating to the top in response.