“I’m not aware of any flyers but that doesn’t mean much. We’re not allowed to wander away from the central part of the Retreat where we live. There are locked corridors we’re not allowed to enter. We can only go into the enclosed preserve, as I mentioned before, and occasionally do limited maintenance outside under the supervision of the lab techs. The Khagrish hate being outdoors in the cold and have grown lax because we don’t give them any trouble.” She laughed at the memory. “When I set off to escape the first time, I was assigned to do outside maintenance for the week and decided to take off, so I snuck some things I’d need outside with me and left.” She seemed pleased and nonplussed by the simplicity of her escape. “I’m guessing Ashla and Blanggin have tightened the assignments and routines now. Simply walking away won’t work again.”
Gabe paused in his tossing items into the backpack. “Are you a hacker by any chance? I found a few computer stations in the empty wing I think we could power up.”
She shook her head. “We’re only allowed handhelds with minimal information besides the training modules, no access to the facility AI. Palinna has played with the idea of piercing the system by working from the handhelds, but she hasn’t gotten very far.”
He shrugged as if her negative reply wasn’t a surprise. “I didn’t expect any other answer, but I had to ask. Be a shame to go trekking through the mountains if there was an easier solution. Ready to go? We need to move fast, and don’t hesitate once we hit the corridor out there.” He nodded at the barricaded door.
“I’ll be right behind you.” Keshara gripped the stunner tightly and shook off her case of nerves.
Gabe moved aside a few pieces of furniture he’d built his barricade with, took a stance, weapon ready, and keyed the door to open. As soon as the panel slid aside far enough, he was in the corridor, facing away from her, weapon aimed at the opposite end of the hall. She slipped out behind him.
“Door’s to the right. Go.”
Keshara ran in the direction he indicated, where she could see filtered light coming in from a large set of doors leading to the outside. Snow swirled past the glass as she approached. Gabe caught up to her and swiped a card through the slot beside the door, which smoothly opened. He held it for a second before sticking it into an inside pocket. “Slibb must not have missed this yet.”
Laughing at his audacity, she slipped past him, took a moment to orient herself with the few visible landmarks, and headed in the direction of the route away from the lab she’d found before. Gabe caught up easily and they jogged in single file.
“No alarms,” she said over her shoulder. “A good sign.”
Saving her breath to move faster, she didn’t offer any other comments as they progressed along the mountain trail she’d identified on her first escape attempt. The going was treacherous and narrow, the waning storm was sending periodic gusts along the heights, although for the most part it had blown itself out. There was worse terrain ahead.
Gabe grabbed her and held her tight after one particular gust made her stagger sideways, using his body to make a buffer for her against the driving snow. “We should stop a minute and rope together,” he said, speaking close to her ear.
She hunkered down in the lee of the boulders where he’d paused while Gabe pulled the rope from his pack and looped it around her waist, measured out a few feet and tied the cord around himself. Giving the knot a yank to test its security, he signaled for her to move out again.
Keshara hiked as fast as she dared, wanting to put as much distance between themselves and the lab as possible. Weighing on her mind as well was the knowledge they had a particularly challenging trek to make along a cliff face below a snowy overhang, which she wanted to accomplish well before dark. The cave where she planned to stop for the night was some distance beyond that point.
“Any alternate routes?” Gabe asked at the next pause for rest and water in the lee of a rocky outcrop, out of the worst of the biting wind. “I’m assuming Ashla and the others will expect you to use this path again, and she did track you last time.”
Shaking her head, she capped the water bottle and stowed it securely in the pack again. “I didn’t find any other ways down. Do you want to take time to explore?”
“No, I’m following your lead here. Just asking.” He stood aside to let her take point. “Trying to minimize the odds of us being recaptured. If you think Ashla was pissed off before, let me hazard a guess how angry she’ll be this time.”
Keshara gave an exaggerated shiver. “No, we can’t let ourselves be taken, you’re right.”
As they continued their slow descent from the heights where the Retreat was situated, she savored the feeling of being part of a team. She’d been terrified when she made her solo trek, but it was beyond reassuring to have Gabe’s strong hand to help her across the narrow crevasses and to receive his occasional compliments for her climbing abilities and her endurance. His open appreciation for her daring in making a break for freedom and blazing this trail the first time was pleasurable to hear.
She tried not to think ahead to tonight when she and Gabe would be denned in a cozy cave and would have time to talk. Curiosity about this male, not only about what he knew of Badari and Khagrish, but also about his own life before coming to this world, kept her mind busy as she worked her way down the rocky slope.
They’d successfully navigated the tricky terrain under the snow overhang, which took hours, and were half way across a snow blanketed meadow, Keshara now following Gabe so she could step into his deep footprints, when she heard an odd sound echoing across the valley. It sounded as if someone had dropped a heavy pack a few feet, sort of a hollow thump. Gabe whipped around and yelled, “Avalanche, run for your life!” He grabbed her and broke into a sprint, pulling her along so quickly she was challenged to stay on her feet, stumbling. The next thing she knew a huge wind lifted her like a leaf and she was swimming in a world of white, disoriented, knocked about this way and that, pummeled with rocks and branches and other debris.
When the mad assault ended she lay dazed, partially buried in snow, at the edge of a huge mass of snow that hadn’t been there only moments before. Keshara gazed at the sky with detached, befuddled curiosity. Why am I lying here? If this is a dream, it’s very odd.
The sensation of deadly cold was seeping through her garments and, around her legs the snow was hardening. Realization of the continuing jeopardy she was in snapped her out of her daze. She wriggled and dug with her talons extended and was able to get free. The broken rope flapped against her thigh and she stared at the vast, unbroken snowfield in disbelief. She was having trouble focusing her attention on any one thing but a persistent thought surfaced.
Gabe’s buried under there.
Driven by the horrific knowledge, she threw her pack aside and took a deep breath of the frigid air to calm and center herself. I can do this. Badari have exceptional hearing and sense of smell. I can find him. I have to find him. Breathing a prayer to the goddess, she started a search grid in her immediate vicinity, hoping the rope might have held them together until close to the end of the fall, although she had no clear memory of Gabe in the wild maelstrom engulfing her.
Nothing.
Terror coursed through her veins over the idea she might not be able to locate him at all, or even more cruel to contemplate, she might not find him in time to save him. How long could a human survive being buried under tons of snow? How long had she stood in a daze after the avalanche stopped?
But if I panic now he has no chance at all. He’s counting on me.
Raising her head to the sky, she drew in deep lungfuls of the crisp mountain air. There! A faint hint of Gabe’s masculine scent, like nothing she’d ever encountered before she met him such a short time ago. Enticing, with a hint of muskiness that had given her delightfully sensual ideas under other circumstances.
Keshara followed the tiny scent trail upslope about ten feet then she began to hear a steady thumping under the snow, barely perceptible on the o
Dropping to her knees, she deployed her iron hard black talons and excavated in great scooping motions. The snow had hardened once the avalanche slid to a halt, but was no match for the power of her claws and her Badari strength. She couldn’t maintain this level of performance for long, but if she didn’t find him right away, he’d be dead. Driven by the urgency, she redoubled her efforts.
A shadow appeared in the snow under her last scoop. Catching her breath as a fresh wave of adrenaline shot through her body, she dug more carefully, unburying the tips of his fingers. Please be alive, goddess, please let him have survived. The desperate prayer filled her mind as she touched his chilled flesh. Gabe must have shoved his arm over his head at the last second. Working with continued intensity but more cautiously, she removed the next few feet of snow and came into a cavity he’d apparently created in front of his face. The space was small but she hoped it was enough to have kept him alive while she’d been searching.
His eyes were closed, his lips blue. Snow and ice clung to his face.
“Gabe?” No answer.
Keshara kept digging, trying to ignore the panicky feeling in her gut. “Gabe? Talk to me.”
He moaned, which she took as a positive sign, and his body twitched.
Carefully, she removed the snow encasing his lower body. He slumped forward and groaned as his face met the cold snow. Eyes flickering, he inhaled with a huge gasp, like a man who’d been drowning.
“Are you ok?” she asked, clutching his arm and lifting him away from the clinging snow. “Any broken bones?”
“Keshara?”
Reassured he’d recognized her immediately, she took a deep breath. “Yes. We need to get you out of this hole now. Can you climb with my help?”
He seemed disoriented for a minute, blinking. “Noth—nothing broken.”
Retracting her claws, she scrambled out of the way, leaving the cavity she’d dug, sank to her knees and grabbed his hands. “I’ve got you, now plant your feet and work your way out with my help.”
Gabe responded to her sharply delivered order and, the higher he climbed, the more fluid his movements became. At length she collapsed on the snow, Gabe on top of her, as he finally reached freedom.
“Sorry,” he muttered as he rolled off her and got shakily to his feet. Extending a hand to help her rise, he said, “Thank you for saving my life again. How in the seven hells did you pull it off?”
She flashed her talons, curious to see if he’d be repulsed by them, knifelike daggers on a female hand, but he only grinned.
“Yeah, those come in handy all right. I have days I almost wish we humans had them too.” He reached for her hand, took it and raised it to his lips, kissing first the curled claws then unfurling them to kiss her palm. “I owe you more than I can ever repay, but I’ll sure as hell try.”
Pleased by his gesture, she retracted the claws, hiding them inside her fingertips by whatever DNA sorcery the Khagrish had wrought. “We’d better get off this snow field, into the tree line. It’s another hour’s trek at least to the cave I was planning to shelter in tonight. Can you walk?”
He stretched as if taking stock of his entire body, so recently healed from the flyer crash. “Sure, gotta do what we gotta do. You’re probably pretty shook up too, not to mention all the work you did digging me out. Any injuries need attention right now?”
Wincing, she shook her head. “Bumps, bruises, probably, nothing serious. We Badari heal fast.”
“Good. I’m jealous of those healing capabilities for sure.” He glanced at the hole where he’d been buried. “I never climbed out of my own grave before.”
Keshara slapped him on the back. “Well, it wasn’t your grave, not today. Time to move out, soldier.”
His pack was gone, lost under the vast snowfield somewhere, the straps having broken during the buffeting by the force of the avalanche, so he insisted on shouldering hers. Leaning on each other, they made their way slowly into the trees.
“I’d wanted us to locate another spot for the night,” he said, “Make it harder for the Khagrish to find us if they’re tracking. But I think we’re both on our last legs, literally. We need to rest, have a fire for warmth, and eat.”
“My feelings exactly.” She ached all over from the pummeling she’d taken, not to mention the effort digging him out, but she was buoyed by happiness and relief he’d survived thanks to her efforts. “Almost there.”
The cave was small. After insisting she rest while he took his turn taking care of both of them, Gabe gathered firewood from the surrounding forest and got a fire blazing. Keshara voiced only a token argument because she was aching all over, and she sensed it was important to him to do his part. Then he set about camouflaging the entrance as best he could before re-entering their refuge with a satisfied expression. “From the way the sky is darkening, the storm may blow again tonight, which will help obscure the tracks and our hideout.”
He shed his outer layer of clothing as Keshara had already done once the small space warmed. She handed him a ration bar and the nutrient flask. “Sorry there’s no better meal to be had.”
“I’m grateful to be out of the lab and to have survived the avalanche,” he said. “Any meal is a banquet tonight, and the company is exceptional.” His smile was wide and gave her butterflies with its warmth.
“How did you know what to do?” she asked. “I mean, sticking your arm up to make you easier to find and clearing a space to breathe. Do soldiers in your world encounter avalanches often?”
He shook his head, sitting cross legged next to her and munching on the bar. “I did a stint on a place called Taychelle’s Planet years ago. Nothing but snow. We had special training to serve there, and I was in a couple of smaller avalanches. Dug a few guys out. Some lived, others less fortunate didn’t. It’s really a matter of luck. And the skill of your companion.” He lifted the drink in her direction as if in tribute then took a long swallow. “What generation are you, if I may ask?”
“Generation?” She was confused by the question. “I’m a Second Daughter. Ashla is the only surviving First Daughter. There’s no other designation I’m aware of.”
“The pack I’m embedded with is Generation 8, led by an Alpha named Aydarr,” he said. “They tell me the Khagrish have been experimenting on the Badari here for at least 800 years since creating them. We have generations 9, 10 and 11 safe with us in the sanctuary valley as well, rescued from the labs. All males. The 9’s are cadets, already soldiers in training, starting to integrate into the pack on missions. The 10’s and 11’s are trying to learn to be kids now, after being raised in the labs by the Khagrish.” He poked at the fire to make it blaze with renewed energy. “I hate the Khagrish, you know? Anyone who could treat children the way the young Badari were handled, to say nothing of the torture and abuse of the adults. The bastards have no redeeming virtues in my eyes.”
Blinking, mind a haze of shocked thought fragments, Keshara stared at him, too astounded to frame words. Hand at her throat, she swallowed hard, took a deep breath and fought for an adequate response to the bombshells he’d dropped. “I—I can barely make sense of what you’re saying. I have no fondness for the Director or the others on her staff, but I had no idea of the scope of what her people had done elsewhere. And you said there are no other Badari women?”
“Not according to the guys I work with. In fact, our human doctor even heard a couple high level Khagrish scientists themselves say once there were no females. The customer wanted only males, right from the beginning.” He reached out his hand and took hers in a warm grasp. “You did know your people were created by the Khagrish, right?”
She nodded. “But it’s confusing because my sisters and I have vague memories, as if we’d lived before, somewhere else. We have our own language, which all of us can speak from the day of first awareness, and we know the goddess watches over us.” Keshara tapped her chest over her heart. “I know it here.”
“Right, my pack says the same. Their theory postulates a unique kind of ancestral memory attached to the humanoid DNA the scientists used as a base for their experiments.” He studied her face, the expression on his concerned. “If this conversation is distressing you, we don’t have to talk about it anymore tonight.”
She squeezed his hand and let go, rising to pace the length of the cave. Her emotions were all mixed up, with fear of what else he might be able to tell her about herself and her sisters making her stomach ache. Yet she wanted to know more, especially about the other pack. The idea of more Badari was exciting. Would this Aydarr and his men see themselves as brothers to her group? “I don’t have any memories of a childhood. I remember my day of first awakening, in my bed, in my quarters, exactly as I am now. That was maybe twenty five years ago. I guess to be honest I’ve aged a few years in my physical appearance, but we Badari don’t show the passage of time much.” This conversation was disturbing, making her face unsettling questions and doubts she and the others had buried deep, discussed only tentatively amongst themselves.
Gabe rose and come to give her a hug, pulling her close to him. “No one knows how the Khagrish go about forming an individual Badari, which is the term my friends use. But in the labs, they start as young children and grow into adulthood. Sounds like at the Retreat Dr. Farahnnim decided to move straight to the mature individuals, bypass dealing with kids. We destroyed the lab my pack came from and made sure those scientists can’t create any more Badari. From the way she was talking, I don’t think Farahnnim can create any more of you here either.”
She studied his face in the firelight. “You have a mother and a father?”
“Yes, I do, although both have passed on in recent years. I have a brother and sister as well.”
“So you’re real?”
“Hey.” Eyes narrowed, he cupped her chin. “You’re real, Keshara. You’re just as much a person as I am, as any member of the pack is. You’re very real to me.” Moving slowly, as if to give her time to protest, he lowered his head and kissed her on the lips.
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