by Elin Wyn
I staggered upright, muttering. Void, everything hurt. But that meant I wasn't dead.
Probably.
Missions had gone pear-shaped before, but oddly, this was the first time something had tried to eat me.
Planets. All sort of crazy things happened on planets.
Like disappearing women.
Which probably meant she wasn't real. But the hallucination had made a good point. Beat to hell as I was, I'd rather no one unfriendly found me.
The beach didn't offer many places to hole up, and the cliff looked steeper than I could handle right away.
The world buckled, and I fell to my knees.
Apparently standing was more than I could handle.
Fine.
Ever so carefully I slid the knife back into the remains of the leg sheath and crawled towards where I'd last seen the woman.
My eyes wouldn't focus. It took far too long to pick out her steps in the wet sand. So, she was real after all. Good to know.
In the darkness of the overhang my eyes adjusted, but still, I couldn't pick out details. Now that I was away from the breeze of the sea I could smell her, sweet and tangy, like narla fruit. I could follow her for days, but Void, I hoped I wouldn't need to.
The sand beneath my hands gave way to hard stone, damp from the tide but drying the further I went. The echoes of my breath around me let me know I was in a tunnel of some sort. Maybe this was far enough.
The open wounds on my back and down my leg were screaming where the spines of the sea monster had ripped open the muscles. Surely this was far enough away, I could curl up, sleep until the worst of the pain had passed.
But she wasn't here, so I crawled on.
One, two, three, one. I kept trying to count how far I'd gone but I kept coming back to one.
I lost her scent as the walls of the tunnel opened around me.
“I was beginning to wonder if you’d decided to go back for another swim.” Her footfalls echoed softly as she approached.
I moved towards the sound, but my shaking arms gave out.
Before my shoulder hit the stone floor her arms wrapped around my chest from behind, tugging me upright.
"Come on," she pleaded. “I can't carry you, you've got to know that. Just a little farther, I promise and then you can stop.”
Lucky for her I really liked narla fruit.
I followed where she tugged, up onto a flat smooth stone and then stretched out, aching, no longer caring who found me.
"We need to get this off you, away from your injuries," she said, pulling at what remained of my vest.
I shrugged her away. “It's fine,” I mumbled. “Need to sleep now.”
“It's not fine,” she sighed. “I’m going to use your knife.”
“Not happening.”
“If you think you can stop me, go ahead.”
Sure I could. In just a minute.
By the time I'd made up my mind about it, she'd cut away what was left of my vest from my back. I could feel the cool air across the wounds.
“That doesn't look good.” She lifted my head from the stone a mere micron and slid the folded fabric beneath me.
“It's not much of a pillow, but I'll see what I can get in the morning. I've got to go.” I heard her steps fade then pause.
“Try not to die,” she whispered. “I think I need you.”
Valrea
The twitching in my muscles intensified as I ascended the cliff face in the last light of the day, and not from the effort of the climb.
Two cadets on patrol saw me on the bluff. I nodded and walked on, not waiting for acknowledgment.
Everyone knew I regularly went down to the beach. There wasn't anything to be worried about now that the stranger was tucked away. No one would go down to investigate without a direct order. The threat of being tossed into the ocean had wormed its way too deep in people's minds for them to be comfortable close to the water.
As lights clicked on around the compound, groups of people moved from one shift to another. A squad entered the Armory, another batch of young cadets headed into the barracks.
In the middle of the line, I saw a tall blonde head, heard a familiar laugh. My stomach lurched just a little, but I wrapped my arms around myself and practiced in keeping my face still, unaffected.
I tried to stay in the shadows, but Abril saw me anyway, stepped out of line and gave me a bright wave. Tianna’s daughter, she was only a year younger than me. When we were kids, she’d gone with her mother on shifts after school. It had been fun having a friend my age for a while.
I waved back hesitantly, but a dark-haired girl next to Abril scowled and elbowed her. Abril’s face fell, and she followed the other girl inside without another look back.
Never mind. It didn't really matter.
I kept to the edge of the quad avoiding the steps leading into the front entrance of the Hall, it’s echoing gallery leading to the audience room gaping before me like a trap.
The service entrance at the side at least was built to a more human size. Junior officers passed silently in the hallway, their eyes ghosting over me.
All I wanted was to get to my room, call up a meal, but before I could see what support services had brought over for the day I'd have to do something about the shaking. Every nerve in my arms and legs felt like it was on fire now.
I needed to plan how to get supplies to the stranger. To decide how he could help me. To find out if he was even going to survive.
But instead of turning into my room to figure everything out I continued down the hall to the room that had controlled my life for so long.
I put my hand on the scanned plate and the blank grey door slid open.
“Greetings, Valrea,” the Companion said in its low, grating voice. “Have you come for more information?”
I bit the bile back. When I was little I had loved the Companion. It had been my window to the glorious history of the past, the herald of my place in the future, my teacher. I thought it had been my friend.
And like everything else, that was a lie.
“No,” I said harshly. “I need another dose.”
The black helmeted face said nothing. Revealed nothing.
No twitch or fidget through the plain black uniform. I could have asked about the weather or ordered a sandwich.
And now I’d find out if Stanton had reported me to my father, made up some lie.
Or if for some random reason my father had decided I should be punished. Chances were good I wouldn’t know why, wouldn't be told.
The Companion waited without responding and dread coiled through my chest.
I could do this. I'd done it before, ridden out the shakes and the fire and the vomiting until the pills had been authorized.
But this time was different. This time someone was waiting for me.
“The dose has been authorized.” The Companion opened the panel in the wall. I'd never seen the combination, didn't know if there was one.
Usually, by the time I forced myself to come here, I couldn’t focus enough to tell.
I swallowed the pill dry, not even waiting for the glass of water the Companion always offered.
It must've only been in my mind, but I would've sworn the nausea and tremors began to fade immediately.
As soon as my head was clear I turned to leave the room.
“Valrea”, the Companion said. “There are more things to learn.”
“I'm done with your lessons.” I walked out the door, swearing like I did every time that this would be the last time.
In my room, I called for dinner, waited for the unfortunate junior cadet who had been assigned a rotation for this week to bring it, ate at the small table by the window without noticing what was on the tray and thought.
I put the tray outside the door to be picked up, went back inside and got ready for bed. It was early, but I needed to plan and think, and I could do that as easily in the dark, without the cameras seeing me.
As I crawled into
bed I let my eyes slide over the far corner of the room, the one place the cameras didn't cover.
That was where I used to hide when father and the Companion’s lessons had become too terrible. Where I had found the notes my sisters had left for me. Where I'd scribbled my own notes in the margins, hoping they'd never be read.
Whoever the man was in the cave, did I really think that just because he'd survived the sea, he could defeat father and all of his machinations?
I shook my head. That wasn't the right way to think of things. If nothing else, I'd learned to be dispassionate about things, logical.
He didn't have to defeat father or the troops. I simply needed him to get me into one room.
One step at a time. I could handle that.
The eldest Princess tied the rope loop by loop to her sisters’ waists, then climbed through the arched window and down the stone tower.
“Fear not,” she called to her sisters waiting above, as they anchored her. “I will find a way for you.” They watched as she headed into the forest clutching her small bag of food.
The deeper she penetrated into the woods the more hushed the sounds of bird calls and small creatures in the underbrush became, silencing as if the world were wrapped in a thick quilt.
She followed the path carefully but soon lost the way in the green-lit gloom. She searched for the slightest indication of the trail but found nothing.
"Are you lost?" a deep voice rasped. "I can help you if you give me your food."
The eldest Princess spun around frantically, her eyes fixed on a large black raven perched on a rotting tree trunk.
She clutched her arms around herself, shivering in fear.
“I'm fine, thank you.”
She ran ahead without looking back and soon became hopelessly lost in the forest.
Days passed.
Her sisters waited a long time.
The next eldest sister prepared to climb down the tower.
“Why don't they all leave, stupid to stay trapped.”
I flicked the book off and slid it into my jacket pocket.
Over the last three days, the man's wounds had healed almost entirely, leaving only a tangle of thin white scars.
Maybe that was normal; no one had ever come back from the sea.
I perched on the ledge next to him and brushed his dark hair back. This morning when I came to check, he no longer felt burning to the touch, had taken a trickle of the water I snuck out of the hall without fighting me.
When I offered him another sip, he grabbed my hand, golden eyes blazing.
"Where are we?" he demanded.
“Same place we've been every time you've asked.” I waited, trembling for him to release me.
He’d fallen back to sleep, until now.
This time he didn't let go as quickly as before.
“Cave, in the cave not eaten by a squid. Right.”
He turned my hand back and forth in his own, his fingers engulfing mine.
I pulled away, firmly. "Are you hungry yet?"
"Have a hell of a craving for narla fruit, actually." He looked up at me with a mischievous grin, revealing slightly pointed teeth.
Well. That was certainly different.
“I don't know what that is.” I eased back and pulled out the wrapped dinners not eaten, smuggled out of the Hall in my pockets, stacked on a thin ledge that served as a shelf.
“This is what we've got.”
The stranger pushed up to a sitting position and ate without complaining. “What’s that you’ve been reading?”
“Just a book of old stories; you weren't much of a conversationalist for a while.”
As he finished the last bite, I wished I'd brought more food, but my access to the kitchens would have been noticed. Besides, the small emergency kit with wound sealant and water seemed more important.
“Where’s my knife?”
I pointed to the shelf where the meals had been. After I'd used it to cut away the tatters of his vest, I'd been uncertain of what to do with it. Too sharp to leave lying around where he could reach it while delirious, I couldn't risk taking it to the Hall.
As he reached for it, he recoiled. “I really need to wash.”
I glanced down the tunnel towards the sea. “I didn't bring that much water, and I don't think you should go for a swim again quite yet.”
His nose twitched as he slid the blade back into the leg sheath. “There's fresh water back that way. How far is it?”
I shook my head. “No, there’s not. It’s just the back of the cave.”
He stood up, held out his hand. “Further than that. I can smell it, even over me. Trust me?”
I ignored his hand but followed him as he led me into the dark.
We headed further back than I'd ever explored before, well out of reach of those thin shafts of light that defined the cavern for me. I pulled from the pocket of my coat the small light that had been in the emergency kit.
"You've never come back this far?"
I shook my head, but of course, since I was behind him he couldn't see. "No way for me to see, besides just being down here was all the privacy I needed."
I stumbled on a loose slide of rock and faster than I could have imagined a wounded man could move, he caught my elbow.
This time he didn't keep hold when I pulled away, just turned back and kept going, slower now.
“The water should be just up this way; the scent is too strong for it to be far.”
“How did you know this tunnel was here?”
“I didn't. But I knew the water was. Couldn’t have the scent without airflow.”
We walked in silence for a few more steps.
"I suppose it could be lava tubes or erosion from a long-gone river." He ran one hand across the smooth side of the passageway. "I don't know enough about geology to make a reasonable guess. Nixie would know.”
“Is Nixie your friend?”
He snorted. “Not likely. She knows a lot of stuff. Useful at least.”
I thought of the Companion. “I know someone with a lot of information as well. Not a friend either.”
As we walked through the darkness I thought of all the questions I'd wondered about while he lay sleeping. Now that he was awake, the impossibility of talking to a stranger tangled my tongue.
Just start with the basics. One step at a time.
"Who are you? Where are you from?”
“My name’s Geir. What's yours?”
“I'm Val. Valrea, but only when people are mad at me.”
"That's a shame, it's pretty. Valrea."
We followed a twist in the passage, then another before he spoke again
"Are people often mad at you?"
That was funnier than it should have been. Maybe I should have eaten more of my dinners the last few days myself.
“They’d like to be. But that doesn't tell me why you're here.”
Geir sighed. "I'll make you a deal. Obviously, I owe you a lot. Answers are likely to be the least of it. Let me clean up, feel like something besides a half-dead fish that washed up on the beach and I'll tell you all about it.”
“You did wash up on the shore.”
“Trust me, I’m not going to forget anytime soon.”
The tunnel opened into a smaller cavern. Panning the light before us revealed three openings leading off into the dark.
I tried to imagine where we were under the Compound. It felt like we had been walking up a slight incline, but curving, turning back on ourselves. I couldn't tell if we were under the Armory or somewhere completely different.
"This way." Geir headed towards the left-hand tunnel, but as I followed him the ground jolted under my feet. Then came a low rumble that I heard in my bones before my ears.
"Get down!" The light spun from my hand as I leaped for him, and then the world went dark.
Geir
I whirled as Valrea jumped at me, my body automatically going into a defensive position until I realized she was trying to push m
e away.
With a crack and a rumble, the tunnel we had been in collapsed, blocking our way back towards the sea.
It was my own damn fault. I'd been so focused on figuring out what to tell her, how to phrase my mission that I hadn't paid attention to the warning signs.
None of that mattered now.
What mattered was Valrea, laying in my arms, her face covered in blood from where the falling rocks had cut her scalp.
Carefully I ran my fingers through her hair, checking for injuries, but didn't find anything serious.
Or at least, anything I’d consider serious.
I'd never been particularly concerned about the frailty of full humans before.
Holding her body, I could hear her heartbeat, watch the pulse in her throat strong and even. Could smell her bewitching scent. Could feel her enticing curves.
What the hell was I thinking? If she was a member of the Compound, once I gained the codes to lower the dome and the Pack attacked, she'd be a target.
Just like anyone who had been responsible for the attack on the Daedalus, the carnage on the Star.
Even if I didn't want her to be involved, she was here, seemed to have the freedom to come and go.
She had to be involved.
With a slight moan, her eyelids fluttered. Seeing me she scrambled away, wrapping the long brown coat, now grey with dust, tightly around her.
“Why do you keep touching me?” she gasped, then shoved her hair back from her face, wincing at the cut. She turned her head, searching until her eyes fixed on the small handheld light she had carried.
It had fallen too far for her to reach but when she stood to retrieve it she wobbled, would've crashed if I hadn't caught her again.
“Right now, don't think of it as me touching you, but as keeping your ass from hitting the ground.”
But I sat her down carefully, went to retrieve the light and handed it to her.
“I know. Thank you," she said quietly. "Just, no one touches me. I'm not used to it."
“What the hell are you talking about?” I dropped down next to her. Maybe she'd been hit on the head harder than I realized.
“It's nothing, I'm just not used to it.”
