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Weeee!
That is not the sound of my joy at being whisked around new territory. That is the whistle of something heading toward us very fast.
I hear Rath curse. I have never heard him curse. Not even in the most challenging of circumstances, or on the most vicious of his tapes.
A moment later, there is a roaring sound and an impact so sudden and violent I am thrown against the wall. Blackness follows, a darkness so complete I am aware of sinking into it, but I am not afraid.
Five
Claimed
I open my eyes. I have a sense of time having passed with great speed. Or maybe distance. Time. Distance. Basically the same thing. A lot of both seem to have swept by according to my addled, disordered senses.
Rath is sitting next to me. His hair is a mess, falling over his shoulders in a way I can only describe as strikingly feral. He is inspecting me, his hand on my shoulder. His fingers are long, strong, and warm. His claws have been retracted in an effort to avoid hurting me. It is a wonderfully strange, tender moment I could not have anticipated ever happening in reality and yet I feel the ache of what are probably injuries, proving that it is very much real.
“You are alive,” he says, his voice containing a surprising amount of relief, and a disconcerting amount of surprise. Whatever has just happened must have been quite horrific. I am glad I missed it.
“I am.”
I sit up slowly, in case something has cracked or burst deep inside me. I am not inside the shuttle anymore. I don’t know where I am. There is a blooming, buzzing confusion both inside and outside my head which prevents me from really taking my surroundings in right now.
“What happened?”
“A scum missile hit us. Almost brought us down. I had to fight with the controls, but we managed to land safely. How many fingers am I holding up?”
“Why is everything so green?”
We’ve landed outside Megaris.”
“Outside?” My heart pounds at the mere mention of that word. Outside Megaris. There is no outside Megaris. Megaris is Megaris. It is everything. “How is that possible?”
“How many fingers am I holding up?”
I continue to look around. We are surrounded by organic structures, some of them towering so far above our heads I cannot see the tops of them. They rise on big brown and gray stilts, from which green fronds emerge seemingly at random, but with great order.
“What are they?”
“Trees,” he says impatiently. “How many fingers…”
“Trees. I’ve seen pictures of trees. I never knew they grew like this. There’s so many of them! There must be thousands. Tens of thousands!”
He takes my face in one hand, very carefully, but so I can feel the power in his long, strong fingers. I look into his eyes because I have to. Gold. Black. Silver dot. He’s so strange and so perfect. I find myself staring at him with as much wonder as I was just staring at the trees.
“You’re beautiful.”
He lets out a soft growl upon hearing my compliment.
“How many fingers am I holding up, bounty?”
“Three,” I say.
“Good.” He releases my chin. I miss his touch immediately. He is hot. Not just in appearance, but physically hot. When his hand leaves my face, I feel the cool wind against my cheek, a harsh breeze sweeping away the temporary warmth he imparted.
The air smells different out here. It smells clean, but not empty. The air in the Gettem offices was hyper-filtered. There was nothing in it. Out here, I can smell earth and sky and dirt. None of those things are clean, and yet this smells like the cleanest place in creation. Outside the Gettem offices and my apartment, Megaris always smelled like people clustered together. Sweat and filthy waste not quite processed. Even my apartment used to smell like me a little too much more than I was comfortable with. Out here, my scent is a minor note in a much grander symphony.
“We’ll have to walk back,” he says. “It will take us a week at least. Tonight, we stay with the wreckage of the shuttle. Tomorrow, we take stock of supplies and begin the journey home. When we arrive in Megaris, I will turn you in.”
He still intends to claim his bounty. My heart sinks because I was holding onto some hope that now makes little sense at all. Of course he’s going to claim the bounty on me. He’s probably glad I’m alive because that means he doesn’t have to deal with my deadweight.
“What do you care if I know how many fingers you’re holding up? Why don’t you do what you usually do and just kill me. Take an essential body part to confirm the kill. My heart or brain. Whatever.”
He gives me a growling stare complete with chest reverberating verbal correction. “Do not question me, human. We will return to Megaris, and you will remain alive.”
