The screamers keep jumping, but Aldit is clear. He rolls onto the ledge and lies on his back, his chest lifting as he sucks in air. His eyes are closed, and his markings are dark, which probably means he’s safe to touch. I’m only going to touch him because his shoulder is bleeding all over the place.
Below, not nearly far enough below, the pack of screamers is chirping. I’m guessing they aren’t doing any kind of happy dance. If anything, they seem to be annoyed that we got away. I glance up at the rock wall. It’s not a sheer face, but it’s steep and climbing it will be dangerous.
Going down doesn’t seem like an option.
I don’t know how long we’ll need to wait until they become bored, and even then, retracing our steps will be risky.
“Pass me an agur.” Aldit lifts his hand. Like mine, they are cut from the scramble. While I broke nails, he broke claws.
“Agur?”
“The fruit.”
“Oh.” I move the bag around to my front and pull one out. There’s only two left, plus the three cloud-seekers which we can’t cook because on this side of the mountain there are no trees except for the one growing out of a crack farther along the rock wall.
We’re fucked.
Being lost is one thing. Being chase up a cliff by screamers is another. He’s prolonged my life at the expense of his own. “I’m sorry.”
“For what?” he says around a mouthful of agur.
“For escaping and running.”
He grins. “I expected no less. Though I thought you’d wait until we were sleeping.”
“So you’d have been up and waiting?”
“Yes.”
Any escape attempt would’ve been thwarted by him, which is reassuring in a strange kind of way. “If I hadn’t taken off, we wouldn’t be here.”
Why couldn’t I have been more like Sabine? She seemed curious about the whole thing, while Bridget and Mia were scared. I don’t like being scared. Even now I don’t want to give into the terror. If I do, then I won’t be able to keep going.
I need to stay mad.
But the only anger I feel is at myself for getting into this situation in the first place. Both back in the clearing, and for this failed escape attempt. When the fighting stopped and drones dropped out of the sky, I should’ve stayed where I was instead of pressing on. But at the time, being recaptured was the worst thing in my mind.
How wrong I was.
No training prepared me for surviving alone. We were taught to stay with our team. We had our weapons and our tech. Aldit is right about humans. We are not made for this world. Without our technology, we are weak and defenseless.
Though even he struggles with the screamers.
“You’d have tried at some point.” He pushes himself up to sitting and hands me what is left of the agur. “Enjoy it as from here on, we are rationing.”
I nod. I’m aware of how little we have. “Plan?”
He stares at the screamers. “Not at the moment. You?”
I point up at the rocks behind us.
“That’s quite a climb. A fall would be fatal.”
“Yeah.” Even if I skidded all the way to the bottom, I’d lose a lot of skin in the process. “I’ve got an emergency medical kit in my pocket. Want me to patch your shoulder?”
It’s looking rather gruesome. It’s not a cut, it’s a proper deep gash that should be cleaned and stitched. I can’t stitch it, but I can throw on some antiseptic wound sealer and a bandage. I don’t have enough to cover it all, plus shoulders move a lot. But it’s better than nothing.
His forehead furrows as if he’s processing what I said. The device is smart, but not that smart and it’s dealing with an alien language. I pull the little kit out of the pocket in my pants. I also have spare rounds, which would be useful if I had a gun. In the vest they took from me, I had a few other supplies. Some food and water purification tablets. Batteries for the comms. A rain poncho. Shit, that might be useful now.
