Soon we were all warming up against the big purple body, me pressed against him and the cats on his chest. Despite the warmth emanating from him, it didn’t feel like a feverish kind of heat. His head was warm but not burning. The rest of his body, however, was even warmer.
This had to be the result of the accelerated healing.
I must’ve drifted off for a second, because I was startled awake by the buzz of his communicator in my lap. Her Highness and the kittens were exactly where I’d left them, snoozing. I picked it up, hoping I was pressing the right button and not hanging up on whoever was calling.
Kaj’k’s face filled the screen.
“Dottie!” Alice shoved her way into the frame. “You’re okay!”
“Alice!”
Relief flooded me as I launched into a disjointed retelling of our story.
Then, I turned the communicator over to show the other hunter Ror’k’s state. Nervously, I scanned the phone over his injuries and finally to the crack in his horns.
“A whole litter of kittens and mother cat too!” Alice exclaimed as I moved them out of the way to show the extent of his injuries.
“Yes, but what about Ror’k?” I fretted.
“He will survive.” Kaj’k didn’t even look one bit worried. “He is already healing. Our bodies know when it’s safe enough to direct all energy to the healing process. I am glad you have found somewhere secure. His ship did not suffer the same fate.”
“What happened?”
“According to its position on the map, it is sticking out of the side of the building Tilly used to live in,” Alice said.
“The Olde Factory Lofts!”
“It has suffered mild damage,” Kaj’k continued, listing out parts of the ship that meant diddly squat to me. “They are easy to fix. But you may face some difficulty getting back into the shuttle.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Well,” Alice said, looking amused, “it’s currently upside down, and the door is pretty far out from the building. If you need help, get Ror’k to call us back when he wakes. Otherwise, we are supposed to find and retrieve Shawn and Kai.”
“What if he doesn’t wake? Or if we can’t get out? The building was coming down on us when we ran down here. His communicator won’t react to me. And I’m not sure how long this flashlight will last.”
It was Kaj’k who answered. “He will wake. Ror’k was our overseer. He is the most capable hunter on the mothership. He trained an entire generation of warriors. I have no doubts that he’d need no help.”
“Just in case,” Alice said, “we’ll call you back if we don’t hear from you.”
I relaxed. “Thank you.” That made me feel better. If, on the off chance that Ror’k was injured worse than Kaj’k thought and needed medical attention, I wanted to know that someone would be here to help him.
“Oh, and if you need some food and water while you figure out how to free that shuttle, go check out Tilly’s old place. They moved the lightweight freeze-dried food over to the hunters’ compound, but they left some of the heavier cans. They are hidden inside the dressers, behind the drawers. She promised that she deactivated all the booby traps.”
How convenient! Tilly’s prepper instincts kept coming in handy even years after the initial collapse. I, for one, would never roll my eyes at a prepper again! They knew what was up when the rest of us were too busy trusting the system.
“Thank you.”
Then, with nothing to do, I took his sunglasses out of my bag and opened the toolbox I’d found when cleaning up the basement. With pliers in hand, I got to work.
Chapter 22: Ror’k
I woke up to Dottie leaning against me and all of the kittens sleeping on my body.
I blinked as I took stock of my situation. I must have been asleep for a while, because many of the surface lacerations had already healed. My hair was also mostly dried, though I’d noticed that our wiry strands tended to dry much faster than human hair.
My head still pounded, and everything still hurt, but I was alive. I was thirsty, and hunger twisted my gut, demanding to be satiated. My body had used up its stores of energy healing my wounds, and now it needed to eat.
My communicator was in Dottie’s hand, and the screen was flashing in the dark with a missed message from Kaj’k. Taking it carefully from her, I saw that it was a report on my shuttle, which had gotten itself impaled into the side of a nearby building. According to the readout, the hull had sustained some damage and would need to be rebuilt, but the shuttle was still in flying condition. But just barely.
