“What?” I ask.
“Nothing.” But the smile doesn’t fade.
We travel in silence for a while. The rhythm of his movement becomes familiar, the steady march, the way he adjusts his grip when the terrain shifts, the slight tensing of his arms when he navigates a tricky section. I find myself relaxing into it, trusting his body to carry us both.
“How bad are your feet?”
The question catches me off guard. Direct. No pretense. That’s Jonus — I remember that from our calls. He never danced around difficult topics. “They’re fine,” I say automatically. “I wrapped them in fabric from my shirt.”
“The fabric that fell off two kilometers ago?”
Damn. He noticed.
The truth is, my feet are destroyed. I know it. I’ve been trying not to think about it, focusing on the surreal fact of being rescued instead of the very real pain shooting up my legs every time he shifts his grip. The soles are shredded from twelve days barefoot in that pit and then running through the jungle. I don’t even want to know what they look like, but admitting it feels like weakness. “I’ve had worse,” I try.
“Have you?”
“...No. But I’ll survive.”
“When we get to the helicopter, there’s a med kit. We’ll clean them, wrap them properly.”
“It can wait until we get back to?—”
“It can’t.” His voice is firm. “Open wounds in this environment are dangerous. You need medical care as soon as we’re out of here.” He looks down at me, and there’s something in his dark eyes that brooks no argument. “That’s not negotiable, Sloane.”
Genuine concern wrapped in practical action. I like this orc so much. No one has worried about me like this in a long time. Maybe ever.
I don’t argue further.
Time blurs together after that. I drift in and out, exhaustion pulling at me despite my best efforts to stay alert. Sometimes I wake to find the terrain has changed — dense jungle giving way to slightly clearer paths, then back to thick undergrowth. The sky is slowly lightening through the canopy. Dawn is approaching.
“When we get to the extraction point, the rest of the team will join us,” Jonus says at some point, his voice pulling me back to full consciousness. “I don’t want you to be alarmed when you see the four other team members.”
“Who exactly came with you? Is it all orcs?”
“My cousins are here.” He navigates around a massive fallen tree as he talks. “Kelt is former military, he planned this whole operation. Aldar is the tech expert. He runs the drone, handles communications.”
I file the names away. Kelt. Aldar. More Irontrees.
“There are also two humans. Cole and Martinez. Former Navy SEALs. They’re professionals — they’ve done extractions like this before.”
“You hired two Navy SEALs?” The words come out slightly incredulous.
“I hired the best people I could find to get you out.” He says it simply, like hiring ex-special forces operators to rescue a journalist he’s never met in person is just what anyone would do.
“Jonus...”
“They’re good men. They came because the mission was right, not just for the money.” He glances down at me. “Everyone on this team volunteered to be here, Sloane. They all wanted to help.”
I don’t know what to say to that. So I change the subject.
“The story I was working on. Aldridge and the cartel connection…”
“What about it?”
“When they kidnapped me they also took my laptop.” I say, watching his expression. “But they couldn’t take what I’d already learned. I memorized everything before I left. The shell companies, the wire transfers, the real estate purchases. It’s all still here.” I tap my temple. “But I also saved everything in thecloud so the hardware didn’t matter so much. I was ready in case something happened.”
“Of course you were.”
