I looked over at my car and cursed. Jim had slashed my tires.
Desperate for another vehicle, I darted from car to car in the lot, trying the handles. Surely someone had left theirs unlocked. Jim fired a few more shots at us before giving up, likely going back into the hallway to come downstairs and finish us off. I had to find an unlocked car before that, or at the very least break a window. Anything to get us out of here.
Imagine the irony when the first unlocked car I encountered happened to be Jim’s.
Unfortunately for us, he didn’t leave the keys in the car. I was going to have to hotwire it. While I slid under the steering column and started playing with wires, N’kal got in the passenger side. His eyes burned into the back of my head as I fussed with the wires. Finally, the engine turned over, and I climbed into the driver’s seat and slammed the door shut, throwing the car in reverse and peeling rubber when I gunned the engine to back out of the parking spot.
Guilt weighed heavily on me as I drove away. I knew Jim and his wife were a one-car family, but he didn’t exactly give me much choice in the matter. To soften the blow—and keep the CPD off our trail—I pulled into a grocery store parking lot and swapped cars, stealing an old, rickety bucket of junk and leaving Jim’s car to be found later, when the department tracked it through the LoJack. It was a two-birds-one-stone situation. I would lose any potential tail Jim might send after us, and I alleviated some of my felony-level guilt at stealing Jim’s only source of transportation.
N’kal was oddly quiet for the drive to get out of Chicago. I didn’t trust Jim not to find us if we stayed there, but beyond “out” I really had no plan on where to go. I took the ninety south, the traffic thankfully light at this time of night. N’kal sat staring out the window, and at first I thought he was just enjoying the scenery. Finally, just before we left Chicago proper, he spoke up.
“I was the target, correct? Your partner was not attacking you out of anger?”
I nodded and changed lanes to pass a slow-moving semi. “That’s probably right. As far as I know, I didn’t do anything to piss him off.” I cast a sideways glance at N’kal and saw his sorrowful frown. “But it’s not your fault. He’s likely not even mad at you specifically. I think he might not like Xalanites.”
“Was he harmed by a Xalanite?”
Shaking my head, I swerved around a construction truck. “I don’t think so. One thing about humans that you might want to take note of: The majority of them tend to despise anything that’s different. Xalanites are about as different as they come.”
That little tidbit didn’t seem to improve N’kal’s mood, but I didn’t blame him. Considering the rampant misogyny in the CPD—and in society at large—I almost understood his point of view. It was hard enough as a member of the dominant species,so it must be doubly challenging for a newcomer to our planet, especially one who was supposed to be here on vacation.
“Were you harmed?” he asked quietly.
“By a Xalanite, you mean?”
N’kal shook his head. “No. When we fled. Did your partner harm you, or were you harmed when we jumped?”
His concern was touching, though it made me feel a little bit like an asshole for not asking how he was doing this whole time. He could’ve been hit by a lucky shot, and unless I actually saw the blood, I’d never know.
“I’m okay. How about you?”
He frowned and rolled his shoulder, wincing with the motion. “I was … punctured.”
Chapter 5
Timber
“What?”I nearly ran off the road in shock.
“Yes. When we landed. There was something sharp in the receptacle.”
Keeping half an eye on the road, I turned on the interior light and pulled down the collar of N’kal’s jacket. Sure enough, dark black blood seeped out of a nasty-looking wound. “Shit! We’ve gotta get you to a hospital.”
“Is there a hospital at the intake center?”
I pressed harder on the gas pedal. “Dude, you’re not going to make it that long. We’ve still got another six hours in our drive before we get there. I don’t know how much blood a Xalanite can lose, but given that you’re the same size as a human, I’m guessing it’s roughly equivalent to us, which means you don’t have that much time.” My headlights illuminated the “Welcome to Indiana” sign as we crossed out of Illinois. “Maybe there’s a hospital in Gary. Keep an eye out for a blue sign that says‘hospital.’ I’ll look as well, but traffic is picking up. I have to focus on driving.”
I would’ve used my GPS, but I didn’t want to distract myself with it, and it would have taken too much of my concentration to explain it to N’kal. We were just going to have to find a hospital the old-fashioned way.
Thankfully, Gary was just on the other side of the Illinois-Indiana border from Chicago on the ninety, and it wasn’t too long before N’kal pointed out a road sign for a hospital. I veered off at the exit and followed the signs through Gary, my hands gripping the steering wheel so tightly my knuckles turned white.
I parked near the ER entrance and helped N’kal out of the car. At this point, he had lost so much blood that he’d become shaky, and he wavered on his feet.
“Hang on, N’kal. We’re going to get you taken care of.”
Except I wasn’t sure whether or not I was lying. Even if we could get him stitched up, he’d lost a lot of blood. I doubted the hospital carried Xalanite blood products, and I had zero clue if human blood was compatible with Xalanites. I almost wished he’d told me sooner that he was hurt. I could have done something to staunch the bleeding, could have acted faster.
The check-in at the ER was a hot mess. Once N’kal took off his jacket, the nurses rushed into action to try to triage him, but they were stymied by the fact that, as far as the healthcare system went, he didn’t exist. No Social Security number, no insurance, no address, no phone number … He couldn’t even provide them with a date of birth.
