His sentence is cut off as I wrap my arms around him and hug him so tight I feel like I might never be able to let go.
“I thought you were dead!”
“I know. I thought you were too. Then I saw them capture you.”
“You saw that?”
“I had been moving through the wreckage looking for survivors, just like the Vikar had. I was trailing them to avoid detection. And then I saw you running and… I knew I had to rescue you.”
“Thank you so much,” I say. “Is there anyone else alive?”
Thor shakes his head. “I don’t know. They might have gotten away from the wreckage if so. We might never know. We might not find them if they do exist. What I do know is that there were a lot of bodies on that pyre.”
I keep holding onto him. He feels like the one thing in this world that is right. Everything else is so deeply fucking wrong.
“They got me,” I tell him.
“I know. I saw…”
“No, I mean they’ve got a tracking chip in me,” I tell him. “They can find me anywhere. Leave me, or they’ll hunt you down and hurt you before they kill you.”
“I abandoned you once,” he says. “I won’t do it again. Don’t worry about the chip. We’ll deal with it when the time comes. For now, let’s just keep moving. Distance is our friend. From what I can tell, the Vikar are limited to foot travel as well.”
“They shot the ship down, but they don’t have a hoverbike or something?”
“They have defenses,” Thor says. “Because they’re Vikar. But they’re not here to build up tech. They’re not like us.” He squeezes me tight. “I don’t know how you got out of that crashalive. But I’m going to make sure you stay that way. Come on. We need to keep going.”
We move through the night, in which shadows are thrown back and forth like crazed demons as a result of the pyre that burns so bright and so high that even at this distance it can be seen. The souls of the crew I barely knew are being sent off by those who claimed them, and I could not be more sad, or more furious.
“They’re like animals,” I say.
“They’re worse than animals,” he replies. “Because they’re men, and they know what they are doing and they take pleasure in it. Come.”
We keep going for another few minutes. There is great tension in the air, because at any moment Drako may realize I am missing and then a search party would be mobilized. It would be a drunken, stupid search party, but still.
We stop by a river, and we boil water in a little pan Thor has managed to salvage from the ship. I don’t know how he worked out what he needed. I guess I tried the same thing but I was forced to drop it to try to run. The pack on his back is all that separates us from surviving like animals.
He motions to me with a finger to sit down and turn around.
“I’m sorry, baby, but I need to get the chip out,” he says.
“How?” I ask the question, but I already know the answer. There’s only one way to do something like this.
“It can’t stay in there. I have alcohol wipes from the ship, a couple of small first aid kits. We dig it out. Then we put it on or in something. An animal. They can chase that for a good long while.”
I almost ask if it is going to hurt. Then I realize it doesn’t matter. I want that chip out of me no matter what.
I turn around. The mark from where the chip went in is still evident of course.
Thor takes a scalpel, and does what needs to be done. It does not hurt as much as I thought it would. I think my body has been through too much too quickly. I’m not reacting or even sensing the way I usually would. I feel almost numb, or maybe that scalpel is just very sharp. Either way, I don’t really feel anything until there’s a stinging from the alcohol washing the wound he just made.
“Good girl,” he praises me.
I feel a tremor of excitement run through me, a flush of what feels like joy but might just be the first positive thing that I have experienced in a while. Pain is a weird thing. You’re supposed to escape it, but so many times in life you just have to fucking endure it. And sometimes, you can be praised for that and then it’s quite the heady cocktail.
“There,” he says. “It’s out.”
He puts a butterfly clasp over the incision he made, then follows it up with a small bandage.
