Her Cold-Blooded Protector

by Lea Linnett

  3

  They walked through the night.

  It wasn’t easy for Lena to keep up with the levekk’s long stride. Sometimes, when he disappeared behind a rock or crested a large dune, she would even lose sight of him despite the bright full-moon lighting their way. In those moments, she’d strain her ears, listening for the heavy footfalls of the massive alien as he crushed dirt and stones beneath his feet.

  Her own gait was slightly unbalanced now that she only had one sandal, but she kept it on. The dirt was caking between her toes on both feet, but it was at least slightly more bearable with the thin sole protecting her from the sharp rocks that dotted their path.

  She stayed a few feet behind the levekk as they traveled, still unsure of how welcome her presence was. Once he’d set her on her feet and gotten her moving, he’d strode on ahead, going straight back to silently ignoring her again.

  His helping her over the wall was a recurring wrong note in the melody of his behavior so far. He’d been everything from completely uninterested to outright hostile in his interactions with her, and yet he’d picked her up and carried her over the wall as if it was nothing. It had been so obvious that he didn’t want her there, and yet…

  And yet he’d gone out of his way to help her escape. It didn’t make sense to her.

  It continued to not make sense to her when a hand suddenly wrapped tightly around her mouth, and she was yanked down behind a rocky outcropping. She squeaked, wriggling against the arm that held her, even though she could tell from its size that it was only the levekk. She hadn’t even realized he wasn’t in front of her anymore, and she hadn’t heard him approach. She was just about to bite down on his hand to free herself from the unwanted embrace, when the soft whirr of a motor reached her ears.

  She breathed in sharply through her nose, holding back a gasp as the thin cone of light from a headlamp cut through the darkness, moving in a gentle arc over the ground ten or twenty feet in front of where they crouched.

  It was a Prison Sweeper, named not-so-affectionately for the way they hovered over the grounds whenever inmates were allowed outside. It drifted a foot off the ground, its levekk-made motor almost soundless in the night. Lena had been working on transports for years, but this was a piece of machinery she’d never had the opportunity to take apart and study. And she probably never would. This wasn’t the kind of technology that found its way to a Manufacturing District full of sub-species.

  The Sweeper passed by, its muffled buzz slowly moving out of earshot and its small light blinking out. The hand pressed so tightly to Lena’s mouth finally relaxed, and she felt the gentle scrape of soft scales and hard bone against her lips.

  Then the weight behind her back was gone, and the levekk was striding forward again.

  He’d just saved her skin for the second time that night, she realized, getting to her feet. Her breath rattled through her chest as she finally released it. Maybe he thought she’d rat him out if she got caught. Maybe he thought that once they found her, they’d assume he was in the same vicinity and double their efforts to find him. She couldn’t think of any other reason why he would help her again.

  Not that she was complaining. Whether he wanted her there or not, she was going to milk the levekk for all he was worth. He was her ticket back to New Chicago, where Ellie and Augusta were waiting for her.

  But she still muttered a soft, “Thank you,” to the levekk, and in the low light, she thought she saw him incline his head.

  They walked for hours under the pale light of the moon, and the levekk pulled her out of harm’s way twice more as Sweepers slid by them. After that, he only needed to tap her shoulder lightly for her to dive behind a rock, her nerves on high alert.

  They covered a lot of ground that way, pausing only briefly to avoid Sweepers. Once, Lena noticed the vehicle first, it’s headlight winking like a firefly in the distance. She moved in close to the levekk, whispering quickly about her finding, and the grunt she received in acknowledgment nearly sounded positive.

  It was almost dawn when they finally hit civilization, cresting a large, rocky hill silhouetted against a sky covered in shafts of purple light. On the other side, the dusky rays of light revealed a small town—more like a collection of houses and shops built around the highway, really—and Lena and the levekk both ducked down, peering at the discovery from behind some rocks and scrub.

  There was a fair amount of activity in the town already, despite the early hour. Lena spotted a couple of Sweepers winding their way along the streets, and hunkered down further.

  The town was the sort of place that Lena would have expected to perish under levekk control. It was constructed out of old pre-Invasion materials—lots of wood and red-brick—with a few levekk-style constructions woven through. These days, people tended to flock to the mega-cities with their extensive outer districts, so she was surprised that a tiny town like this had anyone living in it at all.

  From where they sat, she could see one larger building. It was just to the east of them, and it blocked the rising sun, casting a long shadow over the smaller buildings surrounding it. It looked like a hotel, made of a mix of levekk metal and human red-brick wrapped around a huge parking lot.

  That’s when it dawned on her. Being the only inhabited spot for miles besides the prison, this place probably acted as a rest-stop for travelers, and as a place to unwind for the prison’s employees.

  Her heart sank. They were about to walk straight into a hornet’s nest.

  But beside her, the levekk was already rising, picking his way down the hill and sending up small clouds of loose dirt in his wake. Lena hesitated, her eyes darting down to the Sweepers again.

  But no, she was probably still safer with the levekk. He’d got her this far, after all. So she peeked out from behind her rock and slid down the hill after him.

  The levekk made a beeline for the nearest house, hunkering down behind the fence and cocking his head, as if listening. There was a car in the driveway—an old human-style vehicle with solar panels strapped to the roof—but he ignored it, vaulting the fence and crossing over to the back door.

  “Isn’t there someone home?” she whispered, following him. He shook his head once, and then slammed his fist down onto the latch, breaking the lock. Lena held her breath, waiting for the inevitable screaming of the house’s occupants.

  But there was nothing. The levekk pushed the door open, stepping in without hesitation. Lena followed close behind, her eyes taking a few moments to adjust to the dark hallway.

  The hallway, like the rest of the house, was small and cozy, meaning it probably housed humans or cicarians or a similar-sized species. The levekk dwarfed the space around him, his head almost brushing the ceiling.

  He nodded to the kitchen beside them. “Grab as much food and water as you need,” he ordered, and his deep voice rumbled throughout the house.

  With that, he disappeared up the stairs, leaving Lena to her own devices. She blinked, trying to gather her wits, and stepped into the kitchen.

  It was small and homely, and Lena felt a small pang at having to steal from whoever lived here. There were pictures on the walls, some of them obviously drawn by children, and Lena worried at her lip.

  But the alien had a point—they needed food. So Lena searched the cupboards, unearthing a few boxes of breakfast bars and cookies from inside. As she did so, she pondered the alien’s phrasing. Grab as much food as she needed? She turned that over and over, her brain ticking. As a child, she’d once seen a snake curl itself up in a pipe for days on end, not moving from its position even once to hunt. And something about the levekk was a little snake-like. Or reptilian, at the very least. Was food something that they could go without? Something they didn’t need as frequently as humans?

  Regardless, Lena preferred to be prepared, and so she found herself pulling down more food than she thought she might need. In other words, everything she could lay her hands on. Depending on how they traveled, it could take days or weeks to ge
t to New Chicago, and she wanted to be as ready as possible for either outcome.

  She found an old backpack hanging on a hook beside the kitchen door and stuffed the dried food into it along with a few apples and oranges from the fruit bowl on the counter. She could hear footsteps over her head, and judging by the lack of screaming, assumed they were the alien’s.

  By the sink, she found a few water bottles of varying shapes and sizes, and she was just filling them with water from the faucet when the sound of sandals slapping on the staircase reached her ears. The levekk appeared in the kitchen doorway, looking slightly disgruntled.

  Something dangled from his fingers, and her eyes widened at what she saw.

  It was a pair of sneakers. Small, human women’s sneakers. “You’ll need these,” the levekk grunted, nodding at Lena’s bare foot and holding the shoes out towards her. Lena reached out and took them, her eyebrows climbing up somewhere near her hairline.

  “Th-thanks,” she mumbled, but the alien disappeared out the back door before she even finished speaking. She felt a surge of panic. “Where are you going?”

  “Front yard.”

  Lena was left blinking in his wake again, unsure how to proceed. So she dropped to the floor, wiping the dirt and grime from her feet with one hand and pulling the sneakers on. She didn’t have socks, but she was too scared that the levekk might run off without her to take the time to go find any. She finished filling the water bottles and zipped up the backpack, racing out the back door after the levekk.

  She ditched her old sandal in a shrubbery round the side of the house, and got outside just in time to see the levekk smashing in the window of the big land rover parked in the driveway. The sound of it breaking was dull and low, the glass crumbling down in a shower of diamond-like pieces. The impact didn’t seem to bother him at all, but she found herself peering at his elbow in search of an injury nonetheless. The only thing torn was the fabric of his blue prison jumpsuit, which now revealed a sharp, bone-like nub protruding from the alien’s elbow. For a moment, it looked like he’d broken it, the bone sticking through the skin, but she realized quickly that there was no blood (or any other strangely-colored substance that could be blood) to be seen. The nub was external, like the bone plating around his head.

  The levekk had the door open and was staring at the driver’s console, his face hidden. A clicking noise reached her as he tapped his teeth together, obviously frustrated.

  “Problem?” she asked, voice small.

  He turned slightly, but only to look at the ground at her feet rather than her. “No keys upstairs. And this transport’s… old.”

  She peered around him at the console, a smile forming on her face. “Dude, this isn’t a transport—this is a car.” She took a step closer, trying to hold back the familiar ripple of excitement she felt when exploring a new gadget. “It’s an old electric motor modified with solar. There’s a starter module behind the key slot.” She raised a hand, silently asking if she could look at it for him.

  The levekk’s expression remained unchanged, but he did step away from the car. Lena nodded to him, and dropped her backpack to the graveled driveway.

  She pulled herself up into the driver’s side and brushed stray bits of glass from the seat. Leaning down, she pried the plastic panel off the front of the dashboard, revealing the guts of the electronics beneath the steering column. She thought she saw the levekk twitch, as if he might reach out and help her, but she ignored it.

  Without pause, she dug her fingers into the edges of the keyhole, pulling the entire thing from its socket to expose the wires beneath. Her hands moved confidently as she sorted through the wires, feeling as if she were in her element again for the first time in a while.

  In the city outskirts, vehicles weren’t always in perfect working order. Sometimes ID chips went missing, or the occasional key, and hot-wiring transports had become one of many things she had to learn how to do, even just to check whether an engine was working when a software-controlled ignition failed. She’d worked on old transports and new, and while this one was a little older and more custom-built than she was used to, the longer she stared at it, the more the mess of wires began to make sense.

  Following them up into the depths of the car, she was surprised at just how many wires there were. Most transports these days used electromagnetic plugs that could be programmed to wirelessly communicate with other parts of the machine. She’d have to resort to a more old-fashioned tactic for this one.

  She glanced up at the levekk, unfolding herself from the car. “Gimme a sec, I gotta find something sharp.”

  ---

  Kormak watched silently as the little human walked away, disappearing round the side of the house again and returning less than a minute later with a small pair of scissors. She said nothing, just held them up at arm’s length in front of her, as if making it clear she didn’t mean to use them as a weapon.

  Not that she could have injured him with something so tiny anyway.

  She stayed silent as she worked, cutting the wires in two and peeling the plastic coating away, and Kormak was secretly thankful. There was nothing more annoying than the incessant babbling of humans. And it was impossible to make them stop once they’d started short of knocking them unconscious or scaring them.

  But the girl had been blissfully quiet throughout the night. He had to admit that she’d surprised him. She’d looked as soft and weak as the rest of her kind back in the Iso Ward, and he was sure she’d stay cowering in her cell until the wardens came. But then halfway across the disused yard he heard the soft patter of human feet, and it had taken all his willpower not to turn and stare at her.

  He’d barely believed it when she climbed up the wall after him. The humans he’d met were terrified of anything even slightly bigger than themselves, and there she was, scaling a thirty-foot wall at a solid pace.

  He still couldn’t quite explain to himself why he’d helped her over the wall and it irked him. She would have been the perfect distraction to keep the guards busy while he ran. And yet once he was over the lip, hanging by his fingers and readying himself for the drop, he’d paused. When he looked back over she was still climbing, eyes glued to the wall a few inches above her, reaching for the handholds like a machine. He would have thought she’d freeze once the floodlights overtook her, but she did no such thing.

  It was… impressive.

  But not so impressive that he had to take her with him, and that was the part that needled at him. She was a liability. Her skin was thin, her constitution weak. She would need to stop to eat more often than himself and she had no protection against predators. It was entirely ludicrous to bring her along and yet he’d put out his hand and helped her. More than once.

  His lips thinned as he watched her.

  He’d been surprised yet again at how hot her skin was when he reached out to help her. He could practically feel the adrenaline coursing through her, her heart beating in her wrist.

  “How far is it to New Chicago?”

  Kormak blinked down at the girl, almost missing the question. “On wheels?” She nodded, eyes on her work. “Less than three days.”

  A small smile broke out on her face as she carefully held up two stripped wires in front of her. “Awesome.” She glanced at him just once, fleetingly checking his expression, and then slid from the transport. “…Can your skin withstand an electric current?”

  Kormak’s brow plate shifted into a frown, and he eyed the girl. “I guess so.”

  She nodded to the wires. “Twist these together for me?”

  Kormak looked carefully from her to the wire. It was unlikely that either of them would be shocked from it, and doubly so for him. His skin was tougher than a human’s, so if she intended to take him out with this, she’d have no such luck. He took the wires from her soft hands, ignoring the strange feeling her skin left behind when it brushed his. He thought he caught a glimpse of gold on her fingertips, but decided it must be the reflection of the golden wire
ends, stripped of their plastic coating.

  He turned his gaze to her face, waiting for her signal, and she ducked her head. “Go ahead.”

  He pushed the wires together, feeling the sharp bite of static in the air despite the lack of any dangerous charge. The vehicle rumbled into life, and he quickly twisted the wires together, stuffing them back into the keyhole at the girl’s gesture.

  They paused for a moment, both unsure what to do next. He glanced at her, and she smiled wryly, her eyes downcast as she threw her hands out weakly at her sides. “Ta-daaa…”

  He blinked once, and looked away. The girl’s face fell.

  He could leave her here. This was his last chance. If he simply got in the transport and closed the door on her, he could have a quiet trip back to the city, with no distractions and no unknown elements. He wouldn’t have to worry about her somehow attracting attention. He wouldn’t have to deal with the unending stream of chatter that would no doubt begin as soon as she became comfortable with her situation.

  …But she’d been quiet so far. And he wouldn’t have a vehicle at all right now if it weren’t for her.

  Even now, she was simply watching him, silently waiting to hear his response. Not pressing. Not assuming.

  He bent and picked up the backpack she’d left on the gravel, chucking it into the space between the passenger’s seat and the dashboard. He turned to the girl, who watched him carefully.

  “You getting in?” he finally asked, standing with one foot on the step and his head tilted towards the transport. “This… car is big enough to hold a passenger.”

  The girl’s eyes lit up, her mouth opening into a disbelieving smile. “Sure,” she said, circling around the front and climbing up into the passenger’s side once Kormak leaned over to unlock it.

  Kormak frowned as he put the car into gear, ignoring the tiny part of him that noticed how her smile transformed her face, her dark blue eyes brightening.

  Both silent, they pulled out of the driveway and down the short street, making a beeline for the highway and the freedom of the desert beyond.