I had one shot, and not much time to prepare. My hiding spot—a rocky outcropping—was decent, but it wasn’t going to last long against a serious search. At the same time, to rush forward would accomplish nothing. Maybe if I was fast I could get to Tersine and end her before the wolves piled on top of me, but then how would I get out? How would I make sure Ikamja survived, seeing as she was only bullet-resistant rather than bulletproof? The clock was ticking on my decision.
My one advantage was that I held karth-a-tempar. The sharp bladed edge and jutting point would be more than enough to instantly take down an unarmored, unmodified human like Tersine, assuming that I could get in close and get one strong hit on her, preferably with the piercing karth. I measured out the distance between us over and over again; how quickly could I cross it? One second? A second and a half? How quickly could Tersine’s defenders react?
The Cassandran soldiers divided up into small squads of four, while the wolves split roughly in half, one group remaining behind to guard Tersine and Falem, the other scattering off individually. I barely even noticed them: my eyes were locked on Tersine, waiting for the moment when the straight line between me and her was no longer occupied by any soldiers, any defenders who could possibly interpose between us. There were multiple false starts. I would see Tersine in her desert leathers, unobstructed, and lurch forward, only to realize just in time that there was a wolf standing slightly to the side, or one of the patrolling soldier squads was moving at the wrong angle, or or or…
Never stop moving forward. That was who I was, that was what had kept me alive. There wasn’t going to be a perfect opportunity, so I was going to have to make one. Just as the footsteps of the Cassandran soldiers started circling around the rock behind me, I gave it one last glance, picked my angle, and ran.
What followed was probably the most eventful four seconds of my life. Definitely one of the top five four-second periods, at least. I dashed ahead at full tilt, small size and powerful muscles lending me speed above that of the greatest human sprinters. The human soldiers barely even comprehended who I was or what I was doing; the werewolves were smarter, and seeing as most of them had fought me before at one point or another, they definitely knew who I was. But they didn’t have the reaction time, and they definitely didn’t have the speed.
One wolf was almost perfectly between me and Tersine, just off the exact line. My plan was to make use of my agility, literally jumping up and off of its body to propel myself past it and closer to Tersine. That plan failed. Not because of anything I did, of course, but because the wolf did something unexpected: she moved away from me, not towards. It was a strange movement, not quite a flinch and not quite a deliberate retreat, but it let me close the distance.
At the time, I didn’t think about it. I didn’t really have the time to think about anything at all, that’s how quickly it was all going down. I kept rushing forward at full tilt, drawing my karth and tempar, flying over the cracked and broken ground. Tersine turned, glacially slow compared to my own rapid progress, adrenaline allowing me to totally outmatch her. All around, people were collapsing inward; the wolves were turning, crouching down, claws and teeth bared while low growls arose in a dozen throats. Shouts of alarm came up from the soldiers, turning to look at me as I ran, grips tightening around clockwork rifles that would not be ready to fire until far, far too late.
Falem was the most dangerous threat. The tall, slender automaton had armored skin thick enough to deflect bullets, hydraulic muscles capable of crushing bone with barely a thought, and legs that could propel her into impossible leaps. Alonhall had described her as the most dangerous combatant she had ever faced, and considering how badly she had brutalized my girlfriend, I was inclined to believe Alonhall on that. She stood barely ten feet from Tersine. As I passed by her, I gave the blank steel mask she wore over her insect-like face the briefest glance. Falem glanced back. She pivoted to follow me, stepping in closer at what felt like a leisurely pace compared to my own, while placing one hand on the hilt of her sword. It didn’t feel like she was moving to stop me. It felt like she wanted to see where I was going with this.
And then Tersine was right in front of me. I had to slow down from my dead sprint in order to get control over myself. One solid strike with the karth, aimed properly and with proper force, would punch through the ribcage and pierce the lungs, leading to massive bleeding and death within minutes. I went for an upward back-hand strike. Tersine was looking right at me, reaching for the pistol at her belt, but her movements were jerky with fear, slipping at the leather of the holster.
And then I swung. The karth went in, I felt bone scraping against the metal tip, pushing through muscle and fat and skin and clothing, neither elation nor regret but only the practical facts of the moment coursing through my mind. It was done, I thought as I kept moving. The karth refused to follow me, Tersine’s body refusing to allow it to go, and as I stepped past her the handle slipped from my grasp. I turned, raising the tempar into a rough guard stance, as time resumed.
Tersine mumbled something in her native language, staggering back and forth while she clawed at the pick sticking fully out of the side of her torso. A faint red stain formed in her clothing, the blood stanched by the metal object blocking its path. My attention went elsewhere, turning to Falem and to the wolves charging in. I figured I’d stay and fight for only a short while, just long enough to give Ikamja a chance to see what I’d done and make a retreat.
Then Tersine collapsed to the ground, which was apparently the signal for the soldiers to open fire. I couldn’t even tell you how many bullets went through my body in the fraction of a second before I collapsed, mostly because I wasn’t conscious. One of the bullets went through my head; lights out.
Well, okay. Not entirely true. There were flashes of experience, moments where I drifted awake for a few seconds at a time. It felt like each one was days apart, days spent in a total absence of existence, though later information told me it must have been only minutes or hours. A lot of them were visions from Earth, visions of a silent, dark bedroom. Other flashes came from Selene.
“Gather up the pieces,” said a strained, thickly-accented voice. “I want to know…”
I thrashed against powerful metal limbs, watching the world sway from a dizzying height.
Sharp metal probes pierced my limbs, running alongside the long bones of my arms and legs.
When I awoke again, I was lying face down on a surface that felt a bit like a gigantic bicycle seat, which was to say that was not a surface which was comfortable to lie face down on. Fortunately for me, I didn’t give a shit. I was floating, drifting on a sea of bliss, my limbs heavy and the thought of moving or going anywhere coming across as utterly pointless. There was the echo of pain in the back of my head, but it was distant, unimportant. Also unimportant were the sounds around me, sounds of movement and of women talking in low voices. I knew I had definitely been drugged, but eh, who cares, right?
Eventually, the sounds faded away, the people all around me walking off and taking that faint suggestion of pain with them. Thanks, guys! Er, ladies! Because this was Selene. Hell yeah.
The last woman to leave did me a final favor: picking me up and flipping me over so that I could lie on my back, with a brief stop halfway through for her to do… something. Not sure what. Then she was gone, and I was left to open my eyes and look at where I was: a hospital room. But not a fancy, modern hospital room: Selene’s medical technology left much to be desired, with metal and leather surfaces all around and poor antiseptic practice.
A long while passed while my slow brain tried to figure out why I was in a hospital. Eventually I was able to piece together that this wasn’t a hospital at all, but the infirmary aboard Tersine’s airship, and that the doctors must have been piecing my skull back together after I’d gotten shot.
I’d been shot before, so that was fine. Not sure why I needed to go to a hospital, though. I didn’t really like hospitals. The last time I’d been in a hospital had been about six months ago when I’d returned to Earth, waking up trapped in a disgusting body, barely able to move, entirely reliant on nurses to sustain myself. Even through the drugs, I didn’t like that thought one bit. I looked down at myself to make sure I was still me, and found that I was, but also that there was a tube sticking directly into the crook of my left elbow, secured in place with bandages.
Despite the general pain and numbness, my spine tingled with disgust at the thought of having another fucking cannula inside of me for even one second longer. Slowly, weakly, I reached across my body to begin picking at the bandages. With how slow I was and how often I got distracted, it must have taken eons, but eventually the bandage was peeled down.
A rubber tube interfaced gently with my flesh. I grabbed it limply between index finger and thumb and started to pull. It wasn’t easy, partly because of the drugs and partly because the tube was being squeezed as my flesh tried to regenerate, but fraction by fraction I eased it out through the skin. All of a sudden, it was out; the wound healed shut immediately, and I collapsed, exhausted, back onto the platform, suddenly feeling much better about myself.
I laid there on the platform for a while, placidly trying and failing to fall asleep for a nap. Slowly but surely, the haze moved away. Slowly but surely, I remembered how exactly I’d gotten onto the airship, and who it was that was holding me there. Those motherfuckers must have drugged me! My biology was too resilient for a one-off injection, so they’d needed to keep a continuous drip directly into my bloodstream, hence the IV… assholes. I levered myself up and took a look around the chamber.
It was a small hospital, eight beds all in a row. Despite the steel spike I’d put directly into her chest, Tersine wasn’t anywhere in evidence; all of the beds were empty except for one, occupied with a Cassandran soldier who’d had one of her arms hacked off by some sort of blade. I could make a guess about who had been responsible.
More importantly was the way out. Singular. A lone door, closed and probably locked, with a vague figure visible through the frosted glass window. I rolled off of the bed, eyes flitting around the room for something I could use to break the window. Looking through all the surgical tools, I found exactly what I was looking for: a heavy serrated arc of a blade, a heavy wooden handle. Presumably a bone saw. With that in hand, I crept over to the door, holding the bone saw in a fist grip. After a moment to plan out the attack, and another moment spent hesitating with fear, I went for it.
The glass exploded outward. I lunged through, grabbing the guard by her hair and yanking her against the door with all of my strength and a solid chunk of my body weight. She screamed, so I clapped a hand over her mouth.
“Give me the fucking keys or you’re going to die,” I said, pressing the saw against her neck.
The guard thrashed and moaned through my fingers, trying to reach around to grab me. I didn’t need that kind of difficulty, and my moral compunctions only went as far as not killing her outright, so I let the blade do its work, sliding across her jawbone with a spray of blood.
“The keys. Give me. The fucking. Keys.”
I held onto her for several seconds longer, giving her some time to let the words percolate through all the terror. I felt bad, but only a little. Then, the clever bastard, she tossed the keys backward through the window to clatter across the floor of the hospital room. The worst part was that I had no choice but to fall for it. I rushed to grab the keys, and by the time I had unlocked the door, the guard was long gone, presumably going to get reinforcements.
Which meant that I was alone on an airship owned by the enemy and patrolled by dozens of now-alerted soldiers. I had nothing to defend myself but a slightly dull saw. In what would have been an absolute miracle for the Emma of less than a year earlier, I didn’t panic. Instead, I started moving.
There were, the way I thought about it, a few different places in the airship that I could have gone. An engine chamber could have let me take the whole thing hostage. An armory would give me a better fighting chance against the soldiers. If Tersine’s personal chamber was marked, I could make a break for that and try to finish her off, assuming she was still alive. But I needed options, which meant needing to know where anything was. So my first objective was to find an intersection that had a map. Easier said than done.
The sound of Cassandran soldiers arming themselves and mobilizing echoed throughout the tight space. Surely at any moment I would be met by a squad rushing down to meet me. But luck was on my side, recompense for the artillery bombardment from earlier, and I had a brief minute of freedom, long enough to make my way to an intersection between two major pedestrian arteries of the airship’s body. There was a map on the wall; the rooms were all labelled in Rochathan.
I only had a few seconds to scan through everything. The armory was marked out, but by that point I was sure it was well-guarded. Instead, another room label popped out at me immediately: the brig. Ikamja had still been alive the last time I saw her, so was it possible that I could meet up with her? I ran my eyes over the map two, three, four more times, memorizing the route. Two was better than one, I had to take the chance.
I turned around to leave and found myself face-to-face with a Cassandran soldier with a pistol aimed at my midsection. “Don’t move or I’ll shoot,” she said.