Brother Lost - Sebastian Wolff

[Aaron_Cianci]

//ooRP: For the story of Sebastian's brother, click here and then here.

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Four days. Four days was what Hunter had said. Sitting in front of the console on his desk in a small, unused office on Leipheim, Sebastian ran his long, narrow fingers through his blonde hair as he looked up at the chronograph on the wall. It had been four days, one hour and 8 minutes. Sweat accumulated on the fair skin of Sebastian’s forehead, and he looked back at the console. There was still no message from his brother.

The fear that had been building for the last four or five hours inside Sebastian’s gut had spilled over to the rest of him. His arms, long and gangly on his not-quite-finished-developing 16-year-old frame, were shaking. His fingertips barely managed to force the console to refresh all the comm links for the entire station. But still, there was nothing. “Hunter…what happened to you?” Sebastian not only thought the words but spoke them. But he could not let them linger, though. He tapped the console again.

“Heyo…what’s…Sebastian!?” The bearded man in his late 20s who had appeared on the display was surrounded by shipping boxes. The tone of his voice made it obvious that, whatever was going through Sebastian’s head and heart, it was clearly written all over his face. “Dude…what’s wrong?”

“Hunter…,” Sebastian spat out, barely able to wrap his tongue around his brother’s name. He knew something was wrong. He knew something terrible had to have happened. In 16 years of life, his older brother had never, ever once disappointed him, forgotten about him or hurt him. Hunter had been the man that he wanted to be when he grew up. “Hunter hasn’t sent a comm in over four days.”

Niklas Lehmann, one of the cargo supervisors on Leipheim Base, stopped instantly. “Oh God…,” the older man stammered, suddenly looking a mix between lost and determined. He reached up, trailing his fingers through his beard. Niklas had received an abbreviated version of the same message that Sebastian got. He knew this meant something was wrong. He also knew it meant they had to go. Now.

“Go get your parents. Get Klara. Now. I will get Hannah. Meet me in the cargo storage locker next to Docking Bay 2 in 20 minutes. There’s an old Ragnar off to one side of the bay. That will be our exit.” There was no hesitation, no emotion in Niklas’s voice. He’d been planning for this eventuality since Hunter sent the comm. He knew that young Sebastian, as much as he might want to protect his family, would be far more caught up in his feelings. When the comm link didn’t close, and Sebastian just stood there, shaking, he yelled through the comm. “Sebastian! Go! Right now!”

Sebastian closed the link and was out the door less than five seconds later, heading for his family’s quarters. They were halfway across the base, but that’s why he used that empty office – so nobody would bother him when he was talking to his brother. Despite the distance, however, he managed it in less than five minutes. When he shoved open the door to his family’s cramped quarters, his jaw dropped, and his entire body stiffened as he stared at what was in front of him.

Lying in the middle of a living room barely big enough to fit a loveseat and a coffee table, on top of the wooden shards of the table’s remains, was his father, Dieter Wolff’s, body. There was a bullet hole in his head, and blood dribbling like some thick, disgusting stew down over the sharp wood pieces. His skin was already starting to pale. It was his mother’s scream, however, that broke Sebastian’s concentration, and he noticed her aged, smaller frame, lying across his father’s chest, trying to protect the corpse.

A man Sebastian did not recognize stood in between him and his mother. Emilia, a small woman whose hair had once been the color of sunlight but now was a light grey, was lying across her dead husband’s body, trying to protect it. The man had his back to Sebastian, his hand raised, the weapon in it pointed directly at his mother’s head. There was no time to think, only act. Sebastian launched himself from the door’s threshold toward the intruder.

Even without thinking or aiming, Sebastian’s shoulder slammed into the dead center of the man’s back. The attacker’s arm jerked up and the gun went off, the bullet slamming into the upper part of a metal bulkhead harmlessly. As Sebastian and the other man’s body fell together, there were two hard, rough thudding sounds – one before their bodies hit the ground together, another when they hit the floor. Then, there was nothing but dead silence.

Sebastian couldn’t move on his own right away. He felt something akin to shock, but once again, his mother’s voice broke him out of it. “Sebi!” she cried, scrambling away from her husband’s cooling body and over to her youngest son. She gripped his cheek, pulling him away from the body underneath his own, and ran her fingers through his hair and over his jaw. Her face was frantic but calmed after she investigated and found him uninjured.

The same could not be said for the man beneath him. A second pool of blood was joining the first. The attacker’s head had slammed into the metal frame of the sofa on the way down, and the impact was severe enough that it sliced through his skull. Sebastian could barely process that he’d just killed someone before Emilia grabbed his arm under his shoulder, yanking on it violently until he stood. “Sebastian! Sebi! What is happening!? What is going on!?”

It was then that Sebastian’s mind clicked, and once again action overcame emotion. “Mom, we have to go. Now!” he yelled. He wretched his arm out of his mother’s grip, grabbing her in almost the same way, and pulled her toward the door. Whether it was the look in his eyes or the fear in his voice, Emilia didn’t struggle against her son. By the time they moved into the hallway – empty, thankfully – she had managed to match pace with her 16-year-old and they moved through the passageways and walkways that constituted the Union staff’s quarters on Leipheim.

It was two hallways down and one or two over that they came across their next destination. Sebastian stopped suddenly, feet skidding to a halt on the metal plates of the deck, when he saw Klara’s quarters. The door was hanging wide open, and a feeling of dread filled him. He swallowed hard, his neck bulging slightly as he moved his arm out across his mother’s chest. “Stay here,” he ordered, his young voice gruff and serious in a way she had never heard before. She just nodded.

Sebastian knew what he would see as soon as he reached the door but allowing his body to step forward and turning his head to investigate the room confirmed it. Klara was there, just like his father had been, a single gunshot to the head and blood pooling beneath her. He just shook his head, moisture filling his eyes for a moment. Klara had been Hunter’s girlfriend. They were going to get married and have children someday. He’d always hoped to call her sister, eventually.

Emilia’s shriek as she moved in behind her son, seeing what he saw, yanked him out of his emotional reverie for a third time. Her fingers felt like claws on his shoulder and the middle of his side where she clutched to him. “Mom, stop,” he said, having to struggle harder to get out of her grasp. “This is not the time. We HAVE to go!” he said, raising his voice as much as he dared. He didn’t know if the man who killed Klara was the same as attacked his parents or not, but he couldn’t risk that others were close.

Moments later, they were on the move again. Both kept quiet, but gripped one another’s hand for reassurance, fingers intertwined. Mother and son moved surprisingly quickly through the halls, neither talking, but both minds filled with unanswered questions, both hearts filled with fear and terror.

Rounding a last corner, Sebastian could see Niklas and Hannah, his wife, standing at the end of it, just outside the stock room that Niklas had asked them to meet at. What shocked Sebastian to see was his boyfriend, Thomas Keller, also standing there. Emotions ripped through the young Rheinlander, but at the top of them was relief. At least the boy he loved was safe. Man. Such was the privilege of being in love at his age – the terms were interchangeable.

Hannah, several months pregnant, was clearly struggling just to stand upright, her stomach not huge but beginning to show. Niklas coddled her and Thomas helped, but at the sight of Sebastian, Niklas and Thomas both breathed a loud sigh of relief. “Finally! Where have you two been!? Where the hell are Dieter and Klara?” Niklas asked.

Sebastian and Emilia didn’t need to answer. The looks on their faces, once they finally got close enough for Niklas and Thomas to clearly see them, made it obvious. Niklas choked for a moment, swallowing hard. He had been a family friend to the Wolffs since he was a toddler. But, he couldn’t process that loss right now. He had to fulfill his best friend’s wish – possibly his final one. “I’m sorry,” was all he could say, reaching out to squeeze Sebastian and Emilia’s shoulders, before turning away from them.

“I wasn’t letting you leave without me,” Thomas said, staring at Sebastian meaningfully. The older boy reached out to pull Sebastian into his arms. Sebastian would have fallen into his boyfriend’s arms and cried, but Niklas’s next words and their ferocity prevented him from doing so.

“We need to move. There’s an old Ragnar across the deck. We need to get in it and go, now.” Hannah, Sebastian and Emilia seemed to have no energy to fight Niklas’s orders, and they obliged him. Thomas followed willingly and made sure everyone was able to keep up. The two Wollfs and the pregnant woman followed Niklas out of the hallway, onto the landing bay deck. Sebastian took over supporting Hannah when they neared it, allowing Niklas and Thomas to check the ship over, conducting what may have been the fastest pre-flight inspection in Union history.

Once all five were aboard the vessel, Niklas took the pilot’s chair. As he tapped at the controls, the engine warming, he pointed and looked at the co-pilot’s seat. Sebastian had come near it after helping Thomas get Hannah, Emilia and himself into the seats behind them but had stopped short of anything else. “I’m going to need some help, Sebastian. And Hunter trusted you to do this. I know you can.” Niklas’s voice, despite everything that was happening, was brimming full of confidence.

Sebastian could only nod, squaring his shoulders and setting his jaw as he fell into the seat. His parents were ship designers. He’d been on test flights with them hundreds of times. He knew how to pilot this ship. He worked with Niklas quickly, and they got through the pre-flight checks. As the ship lifted off the deck and the landing bay doors opened, the ship’s aged metal groaned and creaked, but didn’t falter.

“I wonder why nobody is chasing us…,” Sebastian let out as the Ragnar flew past the barrier between the inside of the base and open space. The Ragnar had barely moved 100 meters further when suddenly Leipheim’s turrets opened fire, scattering energy shots across the viewing shield of the front of the vessel, and causing it to rock violently when one hit. “Damnit!” Sebastian yelled.

“What the hell is happening up there? Are we under attack?” Thomas’s voice came from the back. It wasn’t fearful but was clearly urgent. It was ignored by the two men at the controls.

“We got this!” Niklas said, faking confidence. He banked the ship hard to one side, throwing out what few countermeasures were still sitting in their mounting system, and dropped the nose of the ship. Sebastian moved in sync with him, bringing up a shielding system that wouldn’t protect them from more than one or two hits, tops. “We will make it, Sebastian. I promise!” A moment later, a yell from Emilia in the back, and then Hannah mumbled something.

“We’re fine! Just go!” Hannah screamed a moment later, when Sebastian looked like he was about to jump out of his chair. He renewed his focus.

It took less than two minutes, but eventually all fire stopped. They hadn’t even had time to look at sensors to see if any fighters had been dispatched, but the anomalies and density of the Alps Clouds protected them now. Sebastian and Niklas both paused, looking out the glass in front of them, watching the particles of space dust. Sebastian sighed, and suddenly trembled, and tears leaked from the corners of his eyes, as he struggled not to sob. Thomas came up behind him, resting his hand on the younger boy’s shoulder and squeezing gently. He said nothing.

Niklas pretended not to notice. Babying Sebastian wouldn’t help, even if he had just likely lost his older brother. He had lost his father. If Thomas decided to baby him instead, so be it, but Niklas wouldn’t do that. Glancing to his right for just a moment, Niklas took in Sebastian out of the corner of his eye, then looked forward again out of respect. “What do we do now?” he asked. Hunter’s wishes had made clear that Sebastian was the man of the Wolff family if something happened, and Niklas was going to respect that, despite him being significantly older and more experienced.

“Now…,” Sebastian said, through a heaving, difficult breath. “Now, we find my brother.”

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