DROP POINT Episode Seventeen: Last Night Kyle, Pt. 1

“Ughhhhhhhh,” Kyle Carter sat up from the cold floor he’d come to terms with in his time on Luna, “wha...?” That was, most likely, the range of his vocabulary while he was still half asleep. “Why do I feel like a hangover?” he mumbled. Behind him, he heard another groan, and twisted around to see Doctor Bradley on the floor, hands covering his face.

It wasn’t until then that he realized he was in Bradley’s lab. Piott was slumped over, half on the floor, half in the Doc’s spinny-chair, hands cocked up from the armrests under his shoulders. Michael was curled up in a ball in the middle of the room. There was food all over the ground. “Oh no,” Kyle groaned, and tried to stand up. His head was spinning, and he tried to make sense of the large golden thing in the middle of the room. It was a thick spherical shell, or the bottom half of one, with metal rods and wires all a-mesh inside. It was smoking. Around it was most of a long, circular thing with one side covered in steel rods that looked like they would fit in the holes that dotted the equator of the shell.

“Bradley, one of your things,” Kyle blurted, unable to finish the sentence. Behind him, Doctor Bradley suddenly shouted, “MY BABY!” and rushed past Kyle to hug the broken machine. “What is it,” Kyle asked, “and did it do this to me?”

“It’s the inhibitor. I was given the funding to build a machine that could impair the enemy’s brain functions in combat, in order to render them completely useless without killing them. This was born. Someone must’ve botched the experiment, which is why you feel like your brain is in a fruit dehydrator.”

“That’s exactly how my brain feels. Do you get hung over often, Doctor?”
“Shut up,” he answered promptly, and groaned. He almost tripped over Michael on his way to Piott, and, angrily, he kicked him. Michael grunted, then turned himself over and fell back asleep, cuddling Bradley’s leg. “Kyle,” he said, “get your friend off my foot.”

“Not my friend, not my problem.” Bradley kicked Michael off, who snapped awake.
Where am I?” he stood up, noticed Kyle and shot him with one of his best hateful glares. “You.”
“Me,” Kyle agreed, sarcastically.
“What did you do to me?” Michael asked angrily.
“More like what did you do to us, kid,” Bradley responded, pointing at something on the shell Kyle hadn’t noticed before. In black marker was a phone number and the words

CALL FOR A GOOD TIME, CARTER SUCKS

“Wow, real mature, Michael,” I deadpanned.
“So you’re saying I blew up that coo-coo’s ray gun? No way, dude.”
“Fine,” Bradley pushed his askew glasses back onto his face the right way, and returned to examining the giant Golden Globe award-looking thing in the center of his lab.
“What’s tha-” he stopped and glanced at the ceiling above his head. A large hose was hanging unsecured from the ceiling, pouring gas into the room. Now that Kyle noticed it, he could hear a quiet hiss. And now that he noticed the gas, he could smell rotten eggs and – was that mint? Michael had smelled the scent laced with the oxygen in the room, and had gone pale. “Aradium,” he said, eyes wide as he glanced over a Kyle.
“Aredawha?”
“Aradium,” Bradley repeated. “It’s an element used in building weapons. Someone sliced this filter clean in half,” he examined. He grabbed some duct tape off the dash- which hadn’t been there before- and pulled the tube down to start taping it up, when something small fell from inside and hit the floor. “What the...” he bent over and picked it up. Kyle recognized it immediately. “It’s a key to one of garages,” he said. Suddenly, the mention of the garage sent him hurtling into his memories.

Kyle, Doc, Piott and Michael were standing in a dark, spacious room. Gravel-like moon rocks scattered under their feet, heading to a large thing that Michael was throwing a big blue tarp over. Real-time Kyle couldn’t tell what was under it. “Ssssshhhhh,” Bradley said, eyes wide, index finger to his lips. “No one can know!” He whispered intensely, waving his hands. Piott nodded rigorously. “If we hide it in here, it’ll be like nothing happened. Seriously!”

Kyle twitched as the strung-out feeling lingered for a few seconds, then went away: it was as if the memory was complete, but broken and irrecoverable. That would be Bradley’s machine’s doing. The Doc was giving him a questioning look. Then he shook his head, waving the thought away.
“Come on, we need to go down to the garage to find out what we hid.”
“What about Piott?” Kyle asked. “Can we just leave him here, with that chemical stuff clogging up this room?”

“You’re right. Way too much is dangerous.” He lifted Piott up off the chair by leaning underneath his shoulder, and Kyle went to his other side. The two stood on either side of the unconscious commander, arms slung over each other like three best friends. The one in the middle was grinning stupidly, completely oblivious to everything that was going on.

“Wait,” Michael said, “it’s going to look so obvious something’s up with him looking like that,” he pointed out, rummaging in his duffle bag, which was slung over in the corner. He pulled out a blue Slamball helmet and wiggled it over Piott’s head. It was a bit too small for the commander’s head, but it covered his closed eyes well.

Michael admired his handiwork. “Nice.”
“Let’s go,” Bradley said, and led Kyle toward the door. Michael stuck his head out, and motioned that the coast was clear. The corridor that the lab was in usually stayed empty. From there, they walked down each hall, with Michael in the lead, making sure no one would spot them. Finally, they made it down to the back garages. Michael took the key from Bradley and clicked the door open. They hefted Piott into the room and closed the door. Bradley walked over and turned on the light. The room was about six by ten feet. In the corner furthest from the door was a big object with a blue tarp over it. “That’s it, that’s the one!” Kyle exclaimed. Michael rolled his eyes as Kyle walked over to it and jerked the tarp off, throwing it to the side. The moon rocks led from the large air-lock door to the large hunk of metal. Commander Piott mumbled and licked his lips behind the visor of the helmet.