“I’m fine.”
He gave me a narrowed look, right eye twitching. “Lucky is an entirely unfitting nickname for you.”
There were more moments in my life that agreed with him than not. However, I pushed off Roys to discover we fell next to a stalagmite that could have impaled us. Also, the water canister fell in with us. He saw that, too.
I grinned. “The name is entirely fitting.”
I tinkered with the broken commlink on my wrist. The jagged screen didn’t cause the kind of interference that would block SOS signals. Somehow, we were cut off from the world above.
Above. I shifted my weight from one foot to the other. We were buried.Just like they were.
“My calls won’t go through. What about yours?” I removed my visor while making my way toward the water pack. The bag was intact, albeit scuffed.
“My comm isn’t working either.” Roys struggled to sit upright. He used the flashlight on his visor to illuminate the cavern. To our horror, we were nestled under the heart-like structure that caused the fiasco. My hand fell on the flamethrower that, also to my horror, was missing.
Right. I lost it up there.
“We move, and we move slowly,” Roys said. Attempting to stand resulted in him falling to a knee. Sweat dripped from his temple, and his knuckles quivered in the dirt. He was injured. He would drag me down, but I didn’t know how to get out… and if I needed to outrun something later, he’d make for good bait.
“I expect not to be lectured for at least a week after this.” Turning on my flashlight, I knelt by him where I got a decent look at his injury.
Whatever that liquid was tore through his exoskin and our secondary layer of clothes beneath to leave a wicked burn. Blisters formed across his back, some busted and oozing. His shirt was torn apart, hanging on by a half-ripped collar and a few string strands on his right sleeve. The exoskin flickered along the torn edges, broken pieces falling away. The exoskins were meant for light travel and equally light attacks. A hit from those vines would have stunned us but not left much of a mark. The acid, however, proved far too much to shield against.
“You deserve to be lectured forat leasta week, considering what happened.” Roys didn’t mention how I abandoned him up there. He just hissed when I locked an arm around his waist.
We marched backward. His attention never strayed from the flora. Mine shifted between our front and back. The root system dug an enormous cavern. There were multiple tunnels branching off of this one. Itried not to think of the dark, of dead end after dead end, of our bodies broken and defeated, left alone to rot.
The flora wiggled, and I took the closest tunnel exit.
“How did that not get us down here? We’ve been out for,” I checked my comm that still showed the time, “An hour.”
Roys didn’t answer. He spent his energy on moving, fixating on the path ahead. Over our shoulder, the flora slept. Perhaps the damned devil spent its energy and required rest. I didn’t want to stick around and find out.
The tunnel led further in. My head brushed the ceiling. Roys was fine, being about two inches shorter. The root system twisted through the path, traveling above and below. However, those roots thinned, yet the tunnel remained, and that raised the question; was it the flora that dug the tunnel or something else?
With the vines dissipating, a pattern emerged — ridges on the soil. Roys grunted when I stopped to investigate. He settled against my side, panting, eyes half-mast. My fingers danced over the soil, feeling the ridges, perfectly apart. Something dug the tunnel, and it wasn’t the flora. As frightening as it was to think of a creature alive down there, that also led to the conclusion that there should be a way out. An exit out of the deep dark.
“I need a break.” Roys’ legs gave out.
I wasn’t expecting it, and he fell to his knees. He tugged off his visor and set it in his lap. I wanted to get further, but Roys required medical attention, and nothing had proved a danger thus far. He needed the cradle, but the best wehad was med spray.
“I need what remains of your shirt.” I tapped on his exoskin.
He was too out of it to care, letting me tug the upper half off. His veins were dark on his arms, nearing black. Many had the same marks at the Colony. I delivered a lot of the shit they took to get those scars. Moira, no doubt, a type of synthetic that brought on practically maddening euphoria, and incredibly addictive. I never thought Roys would be a user. He was too much of a stick in the mud.
I ripped the ends of the shirt off. “I suggest you bite down on this and lie on your stomach.”
Roys’ eyes fluttered open, his breathing less labored. “You are enjoying this.”
“Immensely, though I admit I would enjoy it even better if there were less clothes, blood, and pus involved.”
Roys shoved the ruined shirt in his mouth and laid on his stomach. His back was awful. I used my canteen to wash the debris off. He groaned, and muscles flexed. Though the tunnel was cooler than the jungle, he continued to sweat, more from pain than heat.
“Here comes the spray.”
Pointing the spray at his back, I moved slowly from side to side. The shirt did nothing to cover his pained noises. The spray fell over him in a thin film, a liquid that clung to his injuries like living organisms.
“Done.” I tucked the near-empty canister in my pack.
