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There was a movement beyond him in the hallway, and I craned my neck to see if it was Sam.
It wasn’t.
“Where is Sam? I wish to see her.”
“Oh boy.” If the disembodied voice of a shuttle could roll its eyes, Pip had done just that. “You two got this part, right? I’ll go play some Solitaire. Bye.”
I frowned at his strange words.
Harb’k let out a sigh that made him sound quite human. “Of course Pip would duck out and make me explain the shitty part. Maybe you can just watch the video replay. Pip was monitoring you, so we knew when you woke.”
He reached over and tapped on the laptop screen, which had been displaying various images of the popular small Earth felines since Pip had gone idle. He pulled up a recording and left it to play while he and Mo discreetly stepped outside.
The video started with me lying on the bed and Sam asleep in the chair next to me in what looked like the most uncomfortable position.
I had several medical units stuck to me, and there were tubes coming from my arm that were attached to bags of liquids. I was in bad shape—or had been, judging by the redness of my skin. It looked like it had been freshly grown.
I looked down at my body for the first time since waking. The extreme redness had faded from the newly grown parts of me, which meant I must have been asleep for some time since. The tubes were gone. I had lost some mass compared to the recording, but not as much as I’d expected after regenerating so much of my body.
Suddenly, I moved on the screen, thrashing about violently, knocking the medical devices off my body, and ripping the tubes out of my arm. But it wasn’t my outburst that had the blood in my veins turning to ice; it was the words I heard repeated back to me in the recording. I remembered saying them, but it hadn’t been to Sam.
I recalled the extremely vivid dream I’d had, one in which I saw Britt again. She hadn’t been there at the hideout even though she’d been the one I’d wanted to face the most, and I’d dreamt of her as a result. I’d said those words toherin my dream. Not to Sam. And in the dream, I’d hit the leader of the nomad group, not Mo.
“No.” The word sounded empty in the room. “No.”
The look of betrayal on Sam’s face as she stumbled out the door made me wish the fire had succeeded in killing me. My chest clenched from the pain. My attempt to reach the door now was no more graceful than hers on screen, my legs threatening to dump me on the floor. I managed to get to my feet and open the door, leaning on it for support.
Mo stood alone outside my room.
“Where’s she? I need to see her now.”
“No way are you seeing her after all that. Just because I’m okay with you being a jerkwad doesn’t mean she is.”
“I demand to see her.”
“No can do, man. Not until she’s ready to see you.”
“I didn’t mean those words.” There was no way of explaining without letting them know my shame, but at this point, I didn’t care. “The words hadn’t been meant for her. I was dreaming. I thought I was saying them to Britt.”
“Who’s Britt?” Mo asked. “That name sounds familiar.”
“She was a female with the ones you call the nomads. They used her to gain my trust. I’d traded with them when I was desperate; they needed use of my medical unit, and I needed food. Britt pretended to care for me, and when I least expected it, they turned on me.”
“Now that you mention it, yeah, I know where I heard that name recently. She was in Pip when he crashed,” Mo said. “The nomads forced him to attack Haax’l’s shuttle while you were still locked up in Albuquerque. We found two bodies when we retrieved Pip from the wreck and brought him here. Britt’s dead.”
So that was how Pip had ended up in this camp. At least Pip got her.
“I thought I was saying all of that to her. I’d never think of Sam like that again. Krux, I never really thought of her like that to begin with. You have to let me talk to her. Where is she?”
Mo sighed. “I believe you. She’s out with Aanya and Haax’l right now. When she returns, she can decide whether she wants to speak to you or not. If she doesn’t, you’ll have to respect her wishes. And if she decides she wants you gone, then I’m sorry, you’re going to have to go find another hunter group.” The unofficial leader of the group handed me the pouch in his hand.
It was filled with high-protein food bars, the type we used to recover after our injuries.
“Thank you.”
“I know some of the others here don’t like you, Kan’n, but we need every hunter we can get, so I hope you patch things up with Sam. She’s a good woman and frankly deserves a lot more than what you’ve given her so far. This is your final get-out-of-jail-free card from me. Fuck up again, and I’ll waste you myself.” Then he turned and left.
Harb’k stepped out from the room across the hall. “Come on, hunter, let’s get you back to your shuttle. I don’t envy you your position. You should’ve told us about the other human female. If Sam had known about that, I think she would have understood.” The other hunter must’ve heard everything from inside the other room.
