Getting up took longer than Adrian wanted it to.
His first attempt ended with one hand against the exposed roots and his legs refusing to straighten properly.
He stopped.
Breathed.
Tried again.
The forest worker waited.
He didn't offer a hand.
Adrian was grateful for that.
On the second attempt, he made it upright.
Mostly.
His knees remained slightly bent, and one hand stayed against the roots until the ground stopped feeling as though it were moving beneath him.
The coat immediately tried to fall open.
Adrian caught it with his free hand.
That created a new problem.
Walking apparently required balance.
Balance required arms.
Keeping himself covered required one of those arms.
He stood there for several seconds trying to solve something that shouldn't have been complicated.
The man looked away.
Adrian pulled the coat tighter across his chest.
“Ready?”
Adrian wasn't.
“Yes.”
The man nodded and started walking.
Slowly.
Adrian noticed that almost immediately.
The pace wasn't natural for him. The man took two normal steps, seemed to remember Adrian was behind him, and shortened the next few.
Adrian followed.
The first twenty metres were awful.
His body had improved since the laboratory.
Or maybe he had.
He could walk now.
That didn't mean he was good at it.
The forest floor didn't help.
Roots crossed the ground beneath wet leaves. Stones shifted under his bare feet. Mud collected between his toes.
Every few steps his balance moved somewhere he didn't expect.
His tail corrected some of it automatically.
The rest required concentration.
His side hurt.
His shoulder hurt.
His palms hurt enough that using trees for support wasn't much better.
And he was cold.
The man glanced back.
Adrian straightened slightly.
A mistake.
Pain pulled through his side.
He stopped.
“You all right?”
Adrian waited for it to pass.
“Yes.”
The man looked unconvinced.
He didn't say anything.
They continued.
Adrian made it another minute before his foot slid sideways on a wet root.
His body caught the mistake before his mind did.
His knees bent sharply. One hand touched the ground. His tail moved behind him.
He didn't fall.
The position was familiar now.
Four limbs.
Lower centre of gravity.
Stable.
He could move faster like this.
Much faster.
He knew that.
The forest worker was looking at him.
Not strangely.
Just waiting.
Adrian stood again.
Walking would do.
They continued.
The decision wasn't entirely rational.
Yesterday he'd crossed half a forest on all fours without caring because something might have been following him.
Now there was another person present and suddenly it mattered.
Adrian wasn't sure why.
Maybe because being seen made everything real in a different way.
The man had called him Aniel.
He had looked at Adrian and seen a young woman sitting beneath a tree.
He had looked away when the coat opened.
Adrian tightened his grip on the fabric.
They walked in silence.
Orange markings appeared every so often on the trees.
Some fresh.
Some older.
The man had probably spent his morning doing exactly what Adrian had guessed.
Marking trees.
A normal job.
A normal day.
Then he'd found Adrian.
The thought should have been reassuring.
It was.
Mostly.
The man stepped over a fallen branch.
Adrian went around it.
His eyes settled briefly on the knife at the man's belt.
It hadn't moved.
The man hadn't touched it once.
There was no reason to care about it.
Adrian cared anyway.
He looked at the man's shoulders.
Then his arms.
The thickness of the jacket made it difficult to judge much, but the man clearly worked physically.
He was taller than Adrian.
Not enormously.
Enough.
Adrian tried to remember how tall he'd been before.
Around one eighty-five.
The man might have been similar.
Maybe slightly shorter.
Before, Adrian would have looked at him more or less straight across.
Now he had to look up.
It shouldn't have mattered.
It did.
The man wasn't threatening him.
He wasn't walking too close.
If anything, he was making a point of doing the opposite.
Whenever the path narrowed, he went first.
Whenever Adrian slowed, he waited ahead instead of coming back.
He hadn't tried to touch him.
Hadn't asked for an explanation.
Hadn't even asked his name.
And still Adrian found himself measuring the distance between them.
Four metres.
Sometimes five.
Sometimes three.
How quickly could the man cross that?
The thought appeared before Adrian could stop it.
His stomach tightened.
He looked away.
This was ridiculous.
Except it wasn't.
That was the part Adrian disliked.
If the man decided to grab him, what exactly would Adrian do?
Run?
Probably.
He remembered the forest after leaving the facility.
The sudden bursts of speed.
The way this body had found its footing over roots and broken ground before he consciously knew where to put his hands or feet.
It was fast.
Faster than Adrian had any right to expect from something so much smaller than his old body.
But that had been hours ago.
Now he was injured.
Exhausted.
Barefoot.
And he still couldn't reliably walk without thinking about it.
Fight?
Adrian looked at his hands.
Smaller than they had been.
Cuts across both palms.
He curled them experimentally.
There was strength there.
How much, he had no idea.
Enough?
He doubted it.
The man was carrying a knife.
Adrian had nothing.
The realization sat heavily in his stomach.
Not because the man had done anything.
Because he could.
That was new.
Or perhaps it had always been true in some abstract sense.
People could hurt other people.
Adrian wasn't stupid.
He'd known that at thirty-eight just as he'd known it at eighteen.
But knowing something and having to account for it were apparently different things.
Before, a stranger being larger than him had been information.
Now it felt like a factor.
Adrian didn't like that at all.
The man glanced over his shoulder.
Adrian immediately looked toward the trees.
“You need a break?”
“No.”
“You sure?”
Adrian nodded.
The man accepted it.
They kept walking.
A few minutes later, the terrain became easier.
The trees thinned slightly, and the ground beneath them changed from untouched forest to something resembling an old service track.
Two shallow tyre grooves ran through the mud.
Adrian's ears shifted.
He heard something beyond the trees.
Not an engine.
Water dripping from branches.
Birds.
The distant rush of tyres.
The road.
Relief came before he could stop it.
They were close.
The forest worker noticed Adrian looking ahead.
“Not far.”
Adrian nodded.
The track widened.
Walking became easier without roots constantly trying to catch his feet.
His legs still trembled.
He ignored them.
Then the trees opened.
The truck sat in a gravel turnout beside the forest road.
It was exactly what Adrian should have expected.
A forestry truck.
Dark paint under layers of dried mud. High suspension. Equipment in the rear. A forestry emblem on the door.
Completely ordinary.
Adrian stopped anyway.
The man took several more steps before noticing.
He turned.
Adrian stared at the truck.
For one moment he saw white instead of dark.
A sliding door.
The inside of a van.
The woman beside him.
Don't worry.
You're exactly what we need.
His breathing shortened.
The forest worker looked from Adrian to the truck.
Understanding crossed his face.
Not the whole truth.
Enough.
“It's just the truck.”
Adrian said nothing.
The man seemed to realize how useless that sentence was.
He rubbed the back of his neck.
Then he walked toward the vehicle.
Adrian stayed where he was.
The man went around to the rear.
A latch clicked.
Adrian took one step backward.
The rear door opened.
His body reacted before the thought formed.
Another step.
His weight shifted.
Ready to move.
The man looked up.
Stopped.
For a moment they stared at each other.
Then he looked at the open rear compartment.
“Oh.”
He reached inside slowly.
Adrian watched his hands.
The man pulled out a folded grey blanket.
Nothing else.
He closed the rear door again.
The latch clicked.
Adrian's shoulders loosened slightly.
The man walked halfway toward him.
Stopped.
Then held out the blanket.
Adrian didn't move.
The man looked at him.
Then at the distance between them.
He seemed to reconsider.
He placed the blanket on the hood instead.
“There.”
He stepped away.
Adrian waited.
Nothing happened.
The man moved toward the driver's side.
Adrian approached the truck.
Slowly.
The blanket was thick.
Dry.
He touched it.
Warm wasn't the right word.
It had been sitting in a cold vehicle.
But compared to the soaked lab coat, it felt almost impossibly comfortable.
Adrian picked it up and wrapped it around his shoulders.
The effect was immediate.
Not warmth.
Not yet.
But the wind disappeared.
Adrian closed his eyes for a second.
He hadn't realized how much energy he'd been spending simply being cold.
He pulled the blanket tighter.
For the first time since waking in the laboratory, most of his body was covered.
That helped too.
More than he expected.
The forest worker had opened the driver's door.
He paused before getting in.
“You can sit wherever you want.”
Adrian looked at the truck.
Front passenger seat.
Too close.
The rear.
More distance.
He opened the back door.
The man didn't comment.
Adrian climbed in awkwardly.
His body still hadn't worked out how to enter a vehicle at this height. His knee hit the edge of the seat, and his tail ended up somewhere deeply inconvenient until he shifted it aside.
He pulled the blanket around himself again.
The door remained open.
Adrian looked at it.
Then at the handle.
He could reach it.
Good.
He pulled the door closed.
The man got into the driver's seat.
Adrian sat diagonally behind him.
Enough distance to see the man's hands.
Enough angle to see part of the road ahead.
His eyes moved through the interior.
Work gloves on the dashboard.
A thermos.
Paperwork.
A high-visibility vest.
An ice scraper tucked beside the centre console.
A short metal tool on the floor behind the passenger seat.
Adrian's eyes stopped there.
Heavy enough.
Close enough.
If he needed it.
He hated the thought.
He remembered where the tool was anyway.
The engine started.
Adrian flinched.
Only slightly.
The man either didn't notice or pretended not to.
He adjusted the mirror.
Their eyes met in it.
For half a second, Adrian wondered whether the man had noticed where he'd chosen to sit.
Whether he'd noticed Adrian checking the doors.
The tools.
His hands.
If he had, he said nothing.
He simply put the truck into gear.
Adrian pulled the blanket tighter around himself.
Outside, the forest began to move past the window.
For the first time since the van stopped beside him, Adrian was in a car with a stranger.
This time, he had chosen to get in.