Here, he doesn’t look like the Skyhunter, the weapon I’d seen sweeping the skies, raining death down on any near him. He doesn’t even look like the cold, suspicious prisoner I’d first met in the arena. He looks young and very human, in danger of breaking if bent too far.
I kneel beside him, then remove my coat. It’s bloodstained, but at least it’s warm. I drape it over his trembling body. As I do, my hand accidentally brushes against the skin of his neck.
He’s burning with fever. I lift my hand, then tentatively touch his shoulder, where the black armor begins. Instantly, I jerk away. It feels so hot that it could scald me. In fact, when I look down at my finger, I see a red mark, as if I’d just pressed it against the stove in my mother’s home.
I stare at Red’s unconscious form in disbelief. Heat like this feels as if it should burn skin—but he seems completely unaffected. I pull my coat off him, wondering if the fabric will catch fire. As I do, something shuffles in his shirt pocket, and moments later his mouse pokes its head out and scampers down his body onto the floor.
The sight of the creature makes me smile in surprise. Had this thing been with him during the entire battle, hanging on for dear life inside his pocket? A survivor. In spite of myself, I reach out to rub its head. It lets me, leaning into my touch with its eyes closed.
Our movements finally make Red stir. His eyes flutter open, and I find myself staring down at the silver slashes in his irises. He looks back, brows furrowed. The mouse rushes up into his pocket.
Immediately, the strange feeling of clarity rushes through my headagain, like the sensation of focusing down a bright, narrow tunnel. I wince instinctively.
Red squints with the same expression.
What I’d felt on the battlefield. The fragments of my memory, the moment when he reached for me and I felt the sear of a bond between us, linking our minds together like a bridge.
He tries to get up. His shackles clank loudly. He yanks on his chains, pulling them taut—a panicked light suddenly appears in his eyes. To my surprise, I can feel a trickle of that panic through our link, as surely as if the emotion were mine, followed by a rush of fragmented thoughts. In them, I think I hear a word or two—but it all sounds like a cacophony of noise.
I reach out to touch his hand, then shake my head at him. He turns wild eyes on me.
“The Federation,” he breathes. “The Federation.” It’s all he can say, so he keeps repeating it at me, the words turning more urgent as he goes.
I squeeze his hand and gesture for him to lie back down. Then I shake my head, smile a little, and point at myself, trying to tell him he’s still in Mara. Still with me.
“Talin,” I sign at myself. “Red.” I point at him. “Friend.”
For an instant, I don’t think he understands me. But his eyes settle on my moving hands as I repeat the words. A flicker of recognition appears on his face at my name. Then he finally sees who I am. His muscles gradually loosen. The wild panic on his face fades into exhaustion, and he collapses back onto his cot.
Perhaps he thought he’d somehow ended up back in his experimental chambers in the Federation. The way he reacted to the chains… maybe they kept him in shackles there.
A moment later, his head turns back toward me. His eyes go to the scarlet stains on my coat.
I give him a wry smile. “Not my blood,” I sign, not expecting him to know what I said. “I’m too good a Striker for that.” A part of me wants to go fetch Jeran and have him translate for us again, although Jeran must be in no mood for our company right now.
A rush of warmth comes through the bond between me and Red. Somehow, Isensehim understand my words. He opens his mouth and responds in Karenese—but at the same time, I hear his response in my mind, something I understand so deeply and instinctively that it feels like I’m reading my own thoughts.
You look different,he’s saying.Without your Striker coat.
I don’t know how it works.
I can’t begin to describe why I understand him without comprehending Karenese.
But through the new bond between us, Iknowwhat he’s saying to me, as if his mind had fused with my own. All I can do is stare back at him, unsure how to react, stunned into complete silence.
“What did you do to me?” I finally manage to sign to him.
He lifts a hand, chains clacking, and taps his temple with a finger.You don’t need to sign to me anymore, he says.Think your words. I can hear you in my mind.
It is his voice, except his lips don’t move at all. Instead of hearing him out loud, his words echo inside my head, a trickle of his emotions accompanying it.
I stare at him, disbelieving. Then I tentatively try to do the same thing.
This is impossible, I think to him, my hands still moving unconsciously to sign the words.
Nothing is impossible, he responds in my mind.
Tears spring unbidden to my eyes.
