“Then what’s the point of the shoes?” I jest.
He scans our surroundings. “Protection,” he answers me dismissively, ignorant of my teasing. An orb comes up to hover beside him. “Are there predators nearby?” he asks it.
The orb does its thing and we wait. Bears, a coyote this time, a snake, and pigs. Always pigs. My stomach sickens.
“What snake?” he asks.
The orb hums, and a hologram appears. It twinkles in the sunlight, making it hard to see the image. But something appears, a familiar broken tail and scarred face.
“I thought he was dead,” I whisper.
Vruksha hisses, holds me closer, and goes silent for a time, watching Zhallaix. “I always think that too, but he never is. As long as he keeps away, he can live with the pain of his wounds for as long as he likes.” And at breakneck speed, Vruksha surges forward.
My hair flies as he slips us through the airport’s ruined orchard and into the thicker forest. I grip his hand that’s cradled around my arm. “Slow down. Your tail is still healing.” But my words are lost in the wind.
He doesn’t stop.
The day was already halfway over when we left the bunker. Vruksha needs nothing but his spear, but I’m not so easy. He packed two day’s worth of rations. He’s not planning to search for Daisy long.
I turn from the glinting scales on his chest to the blurry landscape. I know it well enough now that it’ll become less flat as we get closer. But when the trees close in and the overgrowth thickens, I’m not prepared for the fear that wells up in me.
Sooner than expected we reach the area where the pigs were, where I almost died. Where I ate raw fish…
Vruksha slows down, working his way through the foliage, careful not to let any branch, leaf, or twig touch me.
I can still hear the snorts and snuffs of the hogs like a ghost in my ears, reminding me how close I came to being eaten alive.
“Don’t stop,” I whisper. “Not here.”
Vruksha pulls me into his chest, and I close my eyes, turning to press my brow to him.
“They’re dead,” he says as if he knows. “I killed every last one the drone missed. Do not be afraid.”
He makes me feel safe.
For a time, I lose myself in the swaying of his arms, feeling the air on my skin. I wake from a fitful doze when he sets me on my feet sometime later.
He’s taken me inside the ruin of an old building. One without a roof, with half-crumbled walls and metal piping sticking out everywhere. He sets me under a large slat of cement, leaning against one of the sides, forming a small alcove. I rub my eyes. Vruksha fills up the entire entrance, trapping me within.
“Why have we stopped?”
“Night will be upon us soon, and you need to eat and drink. I want to check your feet,” he mutters, clearly still unhappy with me. It bothers me. A lot. I feel like I let him down.
But time is precious.
I knew it was a long shot, but I can’t help worrying. I know we’re vaguely headed for the facility, but it feels like we’re wandering aimlessly, a skiff could travel anywhere…
My heart thrums as we stare at each other. The ache between my legs hasn’t gone away, and I crave him. He doesn’t judge me, and I never realized how much I’ve been holding back all these years, fearing judgment.
My chest tightens.
Vruksha curls his tail under him, and he settles just under the opening of our alcove, placing his spear nearby. He reaches for my legs, and I give them to him. In the waning daylight, he unravels my bandages, checks my wounds. Most are nothing more than red blotches now, scabs, and yellowish-green bruises, but he’s adamantly keeping track of how fast they’re healing.
I lean against the side of the building as his hands prod my skin, aware of how they linger and inch up my legs.
“If I’d been hurt like this on The Dreadnaut, I would’ve opted for the pod,” I laugh.
“Pod?” Vruksha lifts my foot and begins wrapping it back up.
“It’s a medical thing,” I say to fill the silence. “It eliminates the need for so many doctors and nurses since they’re all needed on the frontlines. And so the rest of us get the cold love of a health pod. It’s an oval-shaped device humans lie in when they’re sick or injured, and the pod—which runs through AI software—heals you. They also put you under, stabilizing you for long distances of travel.”
“Ah, yes. I know what you’re talking about.”
I peek at him as he sets my freshly bandaged feet aside. “You do?”
“I’ve seen something like it, once, where a—I think it’s called hospital—used to be.”
“I didn’t think we had tech like that back then.” We lost a lot in the centuries following the end of Earth.
“It was broken. There were human bones all around it.”
Silence falls between us as the shadows give way to full darkness, and the only light comes from the moon rising through the trees. It would be peaceful if it wasn’t for Vruksha’s brooding, blocking much of my view. I reach for the bag slumped off his shoulder and dig out a ration.
His eyes never leave me.
I take a shy nibble, suddenly feeling like nothing has happened over the past two weeks and this is our first night together in his bunker all over again.
“Tomorrow…” I start then stop.
Vruksha continues to stare at me.
My fingers tangle. “Tomorrow, we should head for the facility and start there.”
“No. Tomorrow, we’ll get close and I’ll check out the facility, search for her tracks. We are not entering the facility’s grounds.”
“She…won’t have any tracks. She stole the skiff. And what if Peter and the others found her? They’ll take her back to the facility.”
“She hit the trees, breaking them. I can climb to the tops and know which direction she went in, and
