ukan | IC CONTACT

About what?

Cold.

Cold.

No clot-

Have some here.

[Not much. But it'll be better than whatever Alec has now.]

Better ETA?

Depends on her.

[Alec, even without his abilities, can make better time over most terrain than most humans.

But back to English.]

Two d - ree?

[He's grown so used to Alec's abilities. Two days would have been perhaps twelve hours back home.]

- hold the fort here, th-

[Alec, too, it must be said. He's ignoring the feeling that being this unbearably slow will get him killed.]

-ouble?

What? Trouble?

Yes. Y - ny troub -

[He can only fill in the blanks and hope he's got it right.]

No. -ll good here. Quiet.

Good.

Clear.

[Alec isn't so sure about how quiet it will stay, or how well he and Ulla will fare in it either way, but he means to make the most of it.

He checks in periodically as they go but it does, indeed, take them the three days and some change. He also doesn't bother trying to have much of a conversation over the walkies given the crappy reception and how there's no way to tell if they're secure or not - and he expects the same of Lark.

He's shivering fairly constantly by the time they make camp although he ignores it; he's hungry but not bad off, sore but whole. The impending hypothermia is the worst of it, due entirely to the fact that what he walks into sight of the camp wearing is his boots, a thin pair of boxers, and his leather jacket over his bare chest. Ulla has the rest of his clothes, including his cargo pants cut open flat and layered with hastily sewn moss and boughs for insulation.]

Lark becomes aware of him within a few minutes. He comes out to meet him, not running, looking exhausted. The relief shows through, but only just. He has a canteen of water that he hands over.

"Are you injured?"

Alec is on high alert as they approach, wary of what the camp holds and what they'll find. Lark would have warned him about anything he needed to know but it doesn't change old habits, and it doesn't mean he has all the details by a long shot.

Which means he shows absolutely nothing as they walk up, which means he takes the canteen and takes only a mouthful before he'll toss it to Ulla, and he shakes his head.

"No. Just like old times, except I'm taller," Alec smirks, eyes still wary. "We didn't have any trouble, but we saw... signs that that wasn't the case for everyone. Are you good?"

"I'm fine. Come inside." There aren't many blankets, but Lark has deliberately been using one so he can set it aside for whoever walks into camp and needs to warm up.

"We'll need to start gathering bodies as well as people. We don't have a head count and I haven't figured out the best way to do it yet--I'm useless out there, it's better that I stay here to hold things down. You aren't going out until you've warmed up and eaten."

He eyes Alec's attire and raises one teasing eyebrow. "For the record, you were wearing clothes when we got here, so you can't blame me for the cold."

"She wasn't," he answers, shrugging, because he did the best with what he had. It's the most he's capable of teasing at the moment, and he nods to the rest.

"I know where two are," he answers. It'll be a bit longer to get Ulla settled, to get her a place to rest and something to wear and food and water, but then he'll finally let Lark lead him somewhere more private before he lets down his guard enough that his whole body starts shaking enough that he has trouble unlacing his boots.

"Sit back," Lark says, soft but it's unmistakably and order. He unlaces Alec's boots, he gives him the blanket, he gets him the meager broth he's made and kept warm by a fire.

Alec is hungry, he's dehydrated, but not ravenous like he would normally be. Not only is his metabolism much slower without his transgenic abilities, but he's not unskilled at surviving in this terrain and circumstance. He was able to find them water, to hunt a small bit, to gather as they went. If he'd been by himself, he would have barely noticed.

But he wasn't, so he sits back when Lark tells him to, he huddles into that blanket, and he doesn't try to say anything until he's finished the broth - largely because he's not interested in talking past chattering teeth.

"I'm okay," he insists again. Although: "Another night out there was going to be a problem, so I pushed us today."

"You're okay," Lark agrees. If both their assessments are that Alec isn't going to die right here, then it's accurate. "But you'll be more okay once we warm you up. Tell me what's out there--animals, people?"

"Just us as far as people go," he answers, meaning barge passengers. He sets the bowl aside and huddles more tightly into the blanket.

"Plenty of animals. I'd have been fine if I had either my speed or more time to set trap lines, but we couldn't stop. There's something wrong out there though. Some of the people I saw weren't... Acting right."

"Aggressive?" It's going to take a few hours, he thinks, to stop speaking in the radio-induced staccato.

"Mm," Alec stalls, because it's not wrong, but for the encounter he's thinking of, not right either.

"Yes. But not like people are aggressive. Not quite." Honestly it reminded him of the anomalies, but he doesn't ever bring that up lightly, and he hates what it probably means if he's right.

Lark gives him a long look. "Meaning they can't be reasoned with?"

"Like they were sizing me up and decided I wasn't worth the effort." Humans as predators think differently than oh, say, wolves as predators. Real wolves.

"Like maybe they weren't desperate enough yet to try me but might if I stuck around."

"Wild animals, then." He closes his eyes, just for a second dreading things and gathering himself. "All right. We've got a fence, we have people on patrol. For the moment things are steady here."

"What is here?" Alec asks, because if anyone could get people back to camp alive without supplies it's Alec, but if anyone can figure out what the purpose of an abandoned camp in the Arctic wilderness is, it's Lark.

He massages his feet while he listens, checking like he has been obsessively for any signs of frostbite. His boots are sturdy and well made but they're not insulated for these temperatures.

He gestures around them. "Basically what you can see from right here. Shelter is the most important thing. I haven't been able to make heads or tails of what they were doing here."

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