Blake led the way into the desert.
The location alone was by no means the strangest place they'd gone. At least if he ignored every specific detail about the trip. But for all the abandoned subway stations and hidden churches and bomb shelters they'd snuck into over the years, none had presented them with such directly hostile factors.
The otherworldly waystation had little in the way of useful camping supplies. Given they had expected to spend the night in a hotel, neither did they. But Blake had been a boy scout, which made him the most informed of any in their little group.
They might be doomed.
But he had some useful ideas, anyway. The other two walking members of their group had excellent night vision, so there was no reason not to flip their waking and sleeping around and do their traveling at night. The only tent they'd found in the old base was fallen to pieces and missing its poles, but they could still drape it across the water-cart at night, pin the corners into the sand for stability, and shelter as best they could against the worst of the heat.
That was the idea, anyway. The reality turned out to be a bit more complicated. No sooner did they drag the cart up a makeshift sand ramp and out into the desert proper than the trouble began.
It started with the cart itself, which was probably older than all their years combined, and looked like something thrown together in the middle ages in terms of sophistication. There were no gears, no suspension—just two loose wheels, and a harness.
Blake was the strongest of their number, the only one who had a hope of pulling the cart on his own. The bug species Ryan had become were a full head smaller than the horses, and also significantly weaker. Jordan had likewise shrunk, on account of being female now. The two of them together had barely enough strength to pull Kaelynn in her cart.
But if they were pulling, that meant him walking ahead to try and lead, the only one who couldn't see in the dark. So more often than not, Blake had a harness around his shoulders, pulling more than his fair share of water and fish.
It was nowhere close to the hardest thing he'd done, at least not for the first day. Urban exploring often meant being awake at odd hours, and pushing his body to the limit to climb down some half-rotten building.
There were no trails through the desert, as of course there couldn't be with such active dunes blowing in constant wind. That meant a horse walking in front of the other two, searching for the easiest path with stable enough soil, and navigating with the ancient map.
"We don't even know there's going to be anything when we get there..." Jordan grunted, near morning on the first night. Despite how little he contributed, Jordan was drenched in sweat, and struggled against the harness as though fighting for survival.
Watching Jordan struggle was a bit like walking into a Pilates class, except that instead of deciding who he would pursue for the evening, he had to remind himself that there was a man in there somewhere. His eyes were very little of that equation—it was easy to just see an alien.
But smells went deeper, and he soon suspected these horse creatures relied on it far more than humans did. The harder they worked, the harder it was not to notice.
The sun finally appearing over the horizon was exactly the relief he needed—at least until he realized they'd all be sharing the same pitiful shelter, and they didn't have the water to wash themselves.
It was impossible to be objective about measurements, when everything they wore and every object they carried had been transformed just as they were. But Blake guessed the cart was about ten feet long and eight feet wide, with all but the rims on either side dominated by the gigantic tank. They hadn't filled it all the way—the old wood had started straining under the weight long before that.
There was no way around the danger they faced if their cart failed. They wouldn't just all die of dehydration, but one of Blake's best friends would die right in front of him, without a damn thing any of them could do to help.
Kaelynn poked her head free of the pot as they unrolled the torn and broken tent for the first time. She had a pair of goggles on over her eyes, paradoxically filled with water rather than air, along with a mask in her mouth that extended clear wings over her neck. Straps pressed the seal against her shiny scales, though water still dribbled out the sides.
They could only be grateful whatever species she became could handle freshwater, or else she probably would've begun their expedition into another world by dying right in front of them.
"How was the trip?" she asked. Her real voice was still in there somewhere. But instead of hearing it directly, Blake heard a distorted, singsong version, projected through the rebreather itself using a speaker.
"Exhausting," Ryan said. Blake nearly shouted at the audacity of it—how dare the one who hadn't pulled the cart complain about the difficulty of the trip?
Yet as he looked, the poor bug looked as weighed down as either of them. His clear wings drooped alongside his body, and his cheeks were shallow and sunken with greenish blood visible just under the skin. Or maybe that was a carapace.
"Thanks for the executive treatment," Kaelynn said. "I'd get out and help in a heartbeat, but..." Something broke the surface of the water behind her, a shiny tail ending in transparent fins the same color as she was. "If you see any extra legs out on the sand, you grab them for me."
"Sure thing," Jordan said, collapsing onto the sand just in front of the cart. After self-consciously turning away whenever someone was behind him, for once he didn't seem to notice where he'd gone, just collapsed onto the ground and breathing heavily. "I'd let you borrow mine if it meant I could swim around in there all day."
"We'll see if you make that trade when the sun comes up," Kaelynn replied. "I'd appreciate it if you guys get the canopy up before I'm in full sunlight. We don't exactly have a way of cooling this water down. I don't want to be fish soup today."
They obeyed, though the process was another flavor of hell without hands or the ability to stand up on two legs. Persistence could work as its own decent imitation of competence.
Kaelynn didn't speak to them for long, not when she had to rely on her rebreather just to spend a few minutes out of the water. Unless the population on this side had advanced tremendously since the records stored in Paris, it didn't seem likely they'd be getting their hands on any better local-made versions.
With the canopy over their heads, they did their best to seal the sides with sand, giving them somewhere relatively dark to eat dinner/breakfast and unroll the half-decayed rags they were using to sleep on. But at least we can sleep on something at all, and we aren't alone in a jar.
"You should eat," Blake said, pushing one of the cans towards Ryan, after demolishing several with Jordan. "Seriously, you had to walk as far as we did. You look like shit."
"I don't think I... can," Ryan said. His voice was distant and strained, every bit as weak as Blake thought he was. "I know I need to eat. I'm starving. So hungry you... can't even imagine." He glanced towards the tank. Blake didn't want to think about what kind of food he thought he would find there. "I can't digest whatever's in there. I puked back up the beans I ate the first night. It was... really bad."
Blake ran through the mental math on that process in a few grim seconds. It was possible for a healthy human being to survive three weeks without food, if they had low activity demands, got very lucky, and had a hospital waiting for them. Based on their slow pace that day, it felt like the city was two weeks away.
Could alien bug-horses live that long?
"Did you try looking through the other cans?" Jordan asked. Unlike the bug, he'd recovered a great deal after eating and getting some water in him. He still looked like he was on the edge of exhaustion—but Blake knew that feeling too. "They had labels stamped on the lids."
"I know!" Ryan snapped. "I looked. But it's all vegetarian, every single can. I think I might be..." He trailed off. "Carnivore. Hopefully that's all it is."
"We can carry you on the wagon if you get too weak," Blake said. "I don't want to lose you out here either. You don't weigh much, but... we won't have a scout. If we hit one rock a little too hard, or twist the harness..."
He didn't have to finish the sentence. They all looked back towards the tank, and Kaelynn swimming nervous circles inside.
"I'm having... strange thoughts," Ryan finally said, nudging the edge of the can. "I don't know if I can explain it to you. But I guess you deserve to know. I'm pretty sure I'm like Deanna Troi. I know how you're feeling without even looking at you. No, I'm not going to prove it Blake, I know you don't believe me."
Of course he had felt a surge of doubt at the patently absurd declaration. But that would also be easy to predict. "That's not all it is. I feel like I have eaten, little... scraps, here and there. I don't know how, but I know when." He glanced back at the tank, then took the mostly-full can of fruit chunks and carried it over.
"Kaelynn must want breakfast too." He hopped up onto the edge, wings buzzing as he jumped. He didn't actually fly, though. But two of us do have wings. They can't possibly be big enough to get them airborne, can they?
If he asked, Jordan would just quote Bee Movie again, so Blake didn't voice his concerns.
Blake had his back to the cart, but he felt as Kaelynn swam around within, and heard a brief splash as something dropped into the water.
And she has to live with all that. They had given her privacy to hang her tail over the edge and not piss into the water they all had to drink from at least once that day. Even so, the longer Blake thought about it, the more grateful he was that he wasn't the one who lived in there.
Ryan hopped back down with the empty can a few minutes later. Blake stared, taking a second to process what he was seeing. It was hard to make guesses about a kind of animal so different from the ones he knew. But it looked like Ryan had improved in just a few seconds. There wasn't as much green lurking under his face, and he was actually smiling.
"What just happened?" he asked.
Ryan's ears flattened at the question, and he dropped the can from his lips. "I don't know. It's happened a few times with her before. Does it make sense that... I don't feel hungry after someone is nice to me? I know, it sounds stupid. It probably is stupid. You can't eat being nice."
"It sounds stupid," Jordan agreed. His usual sarcasm was gone. "I'm pretty sure I met a real person in my dreams last night. Is that stupid?"
No one answered. Blake would've answered in the affirmative without hesitation only three days ago. But now—what did they know?
"We're out of our depth," Blake finally said. "Maybe you're losing your mind, or maybe you're right. We'll need to bring both of those things into the real world to test them. Easier with Ryan—we'll just have to try to be nice to you. Won't we, Jordan?"
"Sure," he said. His new voice granted his sarcasm depths few could aspire to reach. "I'll be downright saintly."