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GWEN
It took me a lot longer to stop sobbing than I thought it should. Until the moment one of those creepy vines had lashed out, wrapped itself around my mouth to cut off my scream, and several others had dragged me off the path, I guess some part of me still believed this wasn’t really happening. That I couldn’t die on some alien planet far in my own future.
But once that carnivorous plant had shoved itself down my windpipe, I believed.
And now I was terrified. Kaio held me in his lap, one arm wrapped around me and the other occasionally flashing out to slice away an approaching vine as he continued comforting me, rocking me and murmuring, “It’s all right. You’re safe, you’re going to be okay.”
I finally managed to pull myself together, dragging the back of my hand across my eyes and wiping away the tears. “Get me the hell out of here, please.”
“Absolutely.” Kaio helped me to my feet and stood up himself. “Your samples case is still on the trail behind us. Do you want to go back and get it?”
I almost said no. After all, how likely was I to need anything in it?
But I had fought hard to keep my shoes, and Kaio’s guard had brought the case to me. Besides, it was my last tie to my life back home. “Yes,” I said. “I want to go back for it.”
Kaio simply hefted his own pack onto his shoulder and led the way.
Halfway back to the path we’d originally been following, though, Kaio stopped, his expression going perfectly still for a long moment, and then he turned around in a complete circle staring up at the canyon walls on either side of us—fully visible for the first time now that the poisonous mist seemed to have cleared.
He reached up to take off his face coverings, but when I started to follow his lead, he put out one hand to stop me. “Wait. Let me check this first.”
Part of me wanted to argue with him. Why should he get to remove his suffocating facemask when I had to keep mine on? But I forced myself to resist that urge. After all, he was the one who understood how this world—or this universe, anyway—worked. So instead, I simply watched as he removed both face coverings and tilted his nose up into the air, sniffing.
The noise inside my own head—the clamor of my terror—had quieted down enough that if I concentrated, I could read what Kaio was thinking.
Is that another way out? Would Bloodworm really set us out on a path that went the wrong direction?
Of course he would.
Can Gwen make it up that cliff face?
I followed the line of his gaze to what looked like a perfectly sheer rock on one side of the canyon.
Glack. The mist isn’t gone—it’s just turned invisible. Another way to try to trick us into dying.
We will just have to see what kind of handholds those are.
His thoughts were jumbled, firing so fast I could barely follow them. But I did get the gist of it. This entire course was designed to kill us.
Then he shook his head and replaced his face-coverings.
“What’s the problem?” I asked.
“The path we’ve been following is designed to keep us in this valley indefinitely,” Kaio replied. “Although it started out taking us across the valley, it’s been slowly curving, so that the section we’re on now runs parallel to any exit. If we stayed long enough to get caught down here after dark, there’s a good chance we would die. Either the vines would get us, or the poisonous air would overwhelm our ability to filter it out.”
“So how do we get out?”
“That cliff has handholds. We should be able to scale it fairly easily.” He pointed at the sheer rock face he’d been examining earlier.
“Handholds? How can you tell?” I squinted, but it looked completely unmarked from here.
“Is human eyesight really that bad?”
I rolled my eyes. “Do aliens really have bionic vision?”
He sighed, and I heard him thinking, Patience. Have patience. This is all new to her.
I propped my hands on my hips. “Maybe I’m the one who needs to have patience. You know all this stuff. Hell, you volunteered to be here. I was dragged away from a perfectly pleasant lunch and plans for an exciting work afternoon. I didn’t agree to any of this shit!”
