Page 34 of Condemned

She’d been asked a question by Zo, an incomplete one. Whatever it was he meant, she was sure she did not want to answer it. He’d expected something of her, and she’d surprised him? This could not be good.

As if he knew she needed another distraction, Nibbles shot from the undergrowth of low grasses, did a quick zigzag, and paused before Gia. Whiskers twitching, the two seemed to exchange some communication, though likely that was her imagining.

Gia rolled onto her side and extended her injured paw. It wavered in the air near the mouse-bot. Nose to paw, Nibbles appeared to do something, reaching out, perhaps, with his forelimbs. There was a blurred scrabble of white and gray and the mouse-bot backed away, with a thorn in its teeth.

Mouth agape, flashlight on and sweeping light over the scene, Kondio stopped in mid-stride.

Nibbles fled and Gia sat up and licked at her paw again.

“What the fook happened?”

From where he sat, legs spread on the blanket, Timin drawled, “The fookin’ bot thing extracted whatever was in her paw and fooked off. Right? Told you it was tech-y.” He bent to the disassembled rifle he’d been studying and poked it with a tool. “Magic. Pfft.”

“Yup.” Zo pursed his lips, smiled at her then at Kondio. “That’s about it. Except we still can’t exclude magic.”

Timin blew another raspberry.

“Uh.” Gia’s master kneeled before her. “The thorn has gone.” He looked about. “Where’d that smart lick-ass little gadget get to?”

None of them could find it and she wasn’t saying which patch of twigs the bot had zoomed into. It... he had helped the enemy, and she’d thought Nibbles was on her side. Was he a healer-bot? If there was such a thing.

What interested her more was what Timin was up to. He seemed less angry tonight. More contemplative.

After helping to wash the few dishes in a creek nearby, she wandered over to where he sat under a powered lamp he’d hung from a tree. She squatted.

A fire roared a few yards away too and the heat beat at her face.

“Stay back. Touch anything, any weapon ...” He looked at her from beneath his brow, through the curls of tawny mane that swung over his forehead. “And I will cut off that hand.”

Swallowing would be a telltale sign of fear. She held it in and grinned then raised her manacled wrists. The chain swung, reflecting the light. “I’m not going to do anything. Just curious. I see Nibbles is curious too.”

The bot had arrived first and was near the weapon Timin worked on. Between the Y of his legs, the blanket was covered in gears and wires, power packs and telescopic sights, and sundry other things she didn’t understand.

“It’s not set a paw wrong. It’s small and I trust it more than you.”

He shouldn’t, she decided. The mouse-bot was a huge unknown.

“Ask me how to put that back together.” She unfolded a finger toward a pistol. “And I’ll be clueless.”

“Good.” He slotted a magazine to the frame of the weapon, slapped it home. “Stay that way.”

“So, I can watch?”

He said nothing but she took it as permission and sat down carefully with a florse blanket about her shoulders and her legs crooked to the side. She arranged the dress tunic so none of her skin showed except a peek of her belly. The side split had accidentally fallen awry. She might lull Timin into thinking her harmless and leaned over to let cleavage show too.

The sky might fall before he calmed, she realized after a half an hour passed and he remained vigilant and suspicious.

When something soft nudged at her arm, she looked down and was surprised to see the scythefox. Gia padded forward and lay next to her, half on the blanket—close enough that Avalon could feel her warmth and see the rise and fall of her chest and the ruffle of fur. Hesitantly, she reached out and stroked her head then continued down her flank. Though her tail flicked, Gia lay even flatter and seemed content. Her fur was extraordinarily soft. Patting her was comforting, like a piece of quietness in the midst of these violent and grumpy mauleons.

Timin kept working.

Then she noted a tremble in his fingers and a muscle tic on his face.

The mauleon shuddered, his fingers shook harder, and when she looked carefully, she saw he was staring into the darkness around them, unaware of anything. Sightless.

This was a seizure and she recalled his head wound had caused a brain injury. Only a small patch of bald scalp above one eye showed where that had happened. She looked around and no one was watching them. Zo was snoozing, hands bunched under his neck like a baby. Kondio was reading something with his flashlight. If these guys were at war, this lit-up camp would show for a long way.

But they weren’t at war, were they? They might not be at war; however, she was.