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“Oh.”
“Oh. Yes.”
“Well, still enough time to fake my death, yeah?”
“Yes,” he says. “If Tyvian has had enough time, that is no doubt what he will do. Of course, he will now have to produce two bodies, and I will have to be taken off-grid.”
It’s hard to feel sympathy for him when I am still so angry. But I try, because why not. He is trying to save me, apparently. He has been trying to save me for a very long time.
“Can you be taken off-grid?”
“Most of my augmentations draw their power from my food sources, the same way my organs do.”
“So yes.”
“Yes. Now be quiet. This tunnel may be discovered if we argue the entire time we are attempting to flee through it.”
I grab him by the chest harness, my eyes filled with tears. He just keeps rescuing me, even when I don’t deserve it. I can’t do this anymore. I can’t run and hide. I just want to give into what seems to be a well-deserved end. It would be so much easier.
“I don’t want to survive this, Rath. It’s too much. The memories are…”
“What happened was bad. But there is much yet to be embraced. I could not tell you the complete truth in the presence of potential surveillance. If you can just wait until we are out of here, I will show you how very much worth living your life still is…”
“I don’t want to go, Rath!”
“I don’t care what you want,” he snarls. “This tunnel will be detonated in a matter of minutes, if not seconds, and I do not intend to be inside it when it caves in.”
He drags me onwards, holding my flailing, wailing body in his massive clawed hands. I cannot stop crying for all I have lost and all I have ruined. I don’t deserve him. He doesn’t deserve me. Happiness is not made for creatures like us. This mountain would make the perfect tomb.
* * *
BOOM!
* * *
A fireball erupts somewhere behind us. The ground shakes and the tunnel starts to un-tunnel itself very quickly. I am perilously close to getting my wish for oblivion as the rock walls become shale and shingle and start sliding down around us in a way that is very disconcerting. Rath holds me close, protecting me with his body as rocks bounce off his back, head, and neck.
Somehow we emerge from the shaking realm of destruction out into the green. The tunnel has not only led out of the palace, but out of Megaris entirely.
Rath always seemed more comfortable here than anywhere else. In the middle of nothing, with an absence of anything, he expects us to somehow survive.
“That was stupid.” Rath turns on me, ready to lecture me, as if he has any right or authority to do so.
“I don’t think so. I think it was time to stop hiding and own what and who we are. You are the one who was responsible for the murder of my family. And I am the one who was responsible for half-killing you. We are enemies, Rath. Both by the nature of our birth, and the merit of our actions. Sometimes it is right to die.”
“Shut up,” he growls. “Do not ever speak those words again. Do not dare think them. Many have sacrificed for you, and they did not do so so that you could feel sorry for yourself and give up when you were on the precipice of being saved.”
“Is this what is happening? Am I saved? It looks to me as I am in the grip of an enemy in an empty mass of weeds.”
Rath grabs hold of me and slaps my ass. Hard. His palm ignites the pain from the previous day’s punishment, but I do not care. Pain is meaningless to me now. I expect it. I revel in it. I…
“Listen to me!” He snarls. “We are not enemies. I forgave you for the assault on me a long time ago. We have both hurt one another terribly, and perhaps unforgivably. If you want to loathe me for all time, I would respect that.”
“I don’t want to loathe you. I have no choice. There were babies there, Rath. They killed mothers, and children.”
“I know. That is why I wear these scars and accept these augmentations. It is why I saved you, even though you were arguably the source of my own pain. It is why I have sworn to spend the rest of my days saving humans…”
“You murdered more humans than anybody I know at Gettem. You never brought a bounty in alive. Don’t pretend you became some great lover of humans, Rath. You’re the most brutal beast in Megaris…”
“Actually, I never brought a bounty in. I would find a body scheduled for destruction, fake the sample using synthetic DNA, and turn it in. I couldn’t bring anybody in alive, because I let them all go.”
