As ever, they don't belong to me. Finished for the 2016 WIP Big Bang.

Many, many thanks to FlorentineQuill and Cincoflex for betaing and general reassurance! All mistakes are solely mine.

(Due to my own inadequacies, this is being posted in haste. I reserve the right to go back in and make corrections for a while.)

WIP Big Bang fanart by the amazing red_b_rackham! XD Go look, it's wonderful! On the WIP Big Bang LJ, or (shortly, I hope) my LJ.

It would have been simpler if they'd killed him.

It wasn't that Caine would rather have been dead; death was easy to achieve, it was living that was hard. But he had to wonder, sometimes, what irrational, stubborn part of him insisted on survival even when he had absolutely nothing to make life bearable.

But leisure time for philosophizing was rare in the Deadland, and it hurt in a dull way to think about it, so he tried not to. There was plenty else to take his attention; the endless scrabbling for water, for shelter, for what little food there was, for one's own life among the murderous and the cruel. Fortunately for him - if it was fortune - he was well-equipped to survive under the dim little sun that shone on this chilly gray world.

Not thrive - no one did that here, at least for long - but he was still alive and uncaught, wasn't he? Not killed outright, not captured and tortured for fun or pleasure. True, it came at the draining cost of constant alertness, of the willingness to deal brutality or death at need, of the cold pragmatism that meant setting traps for pursuers or looting bodies. There was no other way to survive in the Deadland, save joining one of the rare stable groups of semi-sane fellow-prisoners, and none of them would accept him.

Caine didn't care. He worked best solo anyway.

He'd long since lost track of how long he'd been there. When your sentence is lifelong, you don't count the days.

He crouched in the lee of a rock outcrop, squinting against the dust raised by the wind, and listened for pursuit before slipping out onto the sand to make for the next sheltered spot. There were often pursuers, and even if there weren't, Caine knew someone was always considering him for their next target. He possessed tempting prizes - a torn and filthy coat, and a clumsy axe he'd made out of a sharpened stone and someone's femur - but he knew an attacker would just as quickly kill him for his shirt (what was left of it) or his boots.

Hell, some of them would kill me for dinner. There wasn't any real revulsion at the thought, just a weary acknowledgment that he himself hadn't been pushed that far.

Yet.

The next group of rocks were big enough to form a bit of a maze, and Caine slipped inside without hesitation; his nose and ears told him no one was lurking within. At least - he halted, lidding his eyes to sift the dry scent of stone - no one his size…

He ghosted through the narrow passageway despite the depth of its shadows, listening, testing the air. Just around the next corner -

He whipped around the spur of rock and snatched at movement. A screech, a slice of pain in his hand, a swing of his arm, and the verm's narrow skull crunched against the wall. Caine let out a breath and grinned in triumph; it weighed almost a kilo. Verm were rare, unless you went into the ruins of the old city, and most prisoners who did never came back out. There were a hundred stories as to why, but Caine didn't know which might be true, and he didn't care. He just stayed away from it.

He switched the carcass to his other hand and licked the blood from the bite it had inflicted, still listening hard. The rock had probably muffled the screech, but if it hadn't others would come looking. He could linger and eat, or he could try to find a safer spot.

If I eat now, no one can take it from me. And it had been a long time since he'd had fresh meat.

A smaller rock, honed to a fair edge and carried in his pocket, let him skin the verm quickly and remove what few bits he was unwilling to eat. He consumed the rest as fast as he could, still warm and fresh, snapping the small bones for their marrow. The taste was bitter and gamey, but he'd long since stopped caring.

When he was done, Caine wrapped the remnants in the skin and put the bundle in his pocket, then scrubbed the blood and grease from his hands with sand. The offal could be used to bait a trap for another verm, should he be lucky enough to spot sign of one.

Then he slipped out of the rocks as silently as he'd entered them, heading uphill with the wind at his back. The last time he'd been this way, there had been a good-sized hollow where rainwater had collected. It was worth checking again.

PRISON COLONY WORLD 12-938338EDSK33298

COMMONLY KNOWN AS "THE DEADLAND"

FORMER SITE OF FARMWORLD EDSKED IV, DAISANTO FAMILY LTD.

THIS FARMWORLD SUFFERED CATASTROPHIC FAILURE DUE TO SOCIETAL MISMANAGEMENT. ITS INHABITANTS DEPLOYED A LETHAL BIOWEAPON THAT DESTROYED MOST OF THE PLANET'S SPECIES. THE AEGIS WAS FORCED TO STERILIZE THE BIOSPHERE.

NOW USED AS A PENAL COLONY SUITABLE FOR OXYGEN-BREATHING OFFENDERS. CLIMATE ON PRISON CONTINENT IS TEMPERATE DESERT.

FOLLOWS STANDARD PENAL COLONY PROCEDURES: NO CONFINEMENT. REGULAR DROPS OF FOOD AND MEDICINE. PROMPT RETRIEVAL OF PRISONERS WHOSE SENTENCES ARE SERVED IN FULL.

CURRENT POPULATION: APPROXIMATELY 60,000

PRISONERS RETRIEVED DURING LIFE OF COLONY: 22

He was being stalked. It was nothing new, and Caine found it more irritating than alarming, but he kept moving all the same; there was no good cover in this particular stretch of low hills, and no place to attack from, either. He couldn't see his pursuers, but he could hear them, faint on his trail.

Three, maybe four.

The near-constant wind was against him at the moment, but he doubted they possessed senses enhanced enough to pick up his scent. In all the time he'd been in the Deadland, he'd never met another of his kind - any Splice guilty of a crime serious enough to be sent here would usually be executed outright.

The only reason he was here was because Stinger had -

Caine flinched away from the thought, the retreat as habitual as the pain now, and kept going, his pace a steady not-quite-jog. Odds were he could wear his pursuers out; he was in better shape than most of the prisoners for this kind of travel.

But the land was getting rougher, and he found himself with fewer and fewer choices in direction. When the one negotiable path narrowed down into a steep-sided valley, Caine cursed himself for carelessness. They're herding me.

He glared up at the rock walls as he picked up speed. If he'd still had his wings he could have been up and out within seconds. Hell, if my boots still had a charge I could death-drop them.

But if wishes were feathers, he'd still be flying. Caine pulled his axe from the loop that held it on his frayed belt and started looking for a place to make a stand.

There were no good choices, but eventually he found a narrow ledge that was just big enough to hold him and just low enough that he could jump and pull himself up onto it. It was starting to get dark and a surprising number of people never thought to look up, but even if they did spot him he'd at least have the advantage of height.

He didn't have long to wait before they appeared around the last bend. It wasn't four, it was five, one carrying a crude club. And two of them moved with the economic grace of training. Caine scowled, and held still.

They almost passed him by; just as the last man came abreast of his spot, one of them glanced up. Caine didn't hesitate; he dropped from the ledge with the precision of inbred talent, kicking one pursuer in the head and then landing on the shoulders of another like a ton of rock.

The fight was messy and brutal. Caine had heard the crunch of bone when his kick had connected - skull or neck made no difference, the man was down and still - but that left four, and while he'd had worse odds in his career there were no medics here, and no one to watch his back. He traded blows and kicks, ducking some but not others, spinning constantly to keep them from getting him from behind. One blow of his axe caved ribs; as the man reeled away the shortest of them grabbed the haft, yanking desperately. Instead of pulling back, Caine stepped forward, catching the man's hair in his free hand, and jerked his opponent's head to one side so he could tear his throat out.

There was blood everywhere, after that, and he was getting desperately tired; he hadn't had more than a mouthful to eat in three days.

You screwed up, a dispassionate voice said under the split-second judgments and the countermoves, the bursts of pain and the rasp of breath. You should have engaged them sooner.

Caine gave it a mental rude gesture, which was all the attention he had to spare, and was just starting to wonder if his sentence was finally coming to an end when a familiar roar echoed over the valley.

"It's a drop!" one attacker gasped. "Close!"

The tallest one snarled, wavered, and then threw his club directly at Caine's head. Caine managed to block it, barely, and by the time he straightened the two of them were running back the way they'd come, up and over the edge of the valley. The third, whose ribs he'd broken, was limping slowly behind.

Caine didn't follow. Ration drops, even randomized, inevitably became lethal riots, since the delivery ships didn't bother to stealth in. Prisoners would be rushing in from all over, and there would be bodies on the ground before the ship even left atmosphere.

Besides, he was exhausted. Caine spat out blood and wiped his mouth, wishing for water; humans tasted worse than verm.

The two men left behind were both dead, one from his blow to the head and one from his bite. Caine crouched wearily, too inured to pain to notice much, and turned the second one over. He hated using his teeth, particularly after - what had happened - but instinct added it to his arsenal and biting was better than dead.

Slowly, he started searching the bodies.