Double shit.
That would be a fun development.
And then the darkness seemed to move, and a whole new level of fear was unlocked.
Fee pressed herself up against the wall and tried to get her breathing under control.
If she hyperventilated and passed out, she would be easy prey.
Maybe it wasn’t the grahudi. She hadn’t actually seen it.
But then she did.
It came out of the darkness like a death wraith, and she locked her jaw closed to stop herself from making a sound.
Bunny sat sentinel on her shoulder, keeping watch as the creature edged along the opposite side of the passage.
It looked different.
It had been injured in the explosion, she could see now. One of its six limbs had been blown off, and was now a stump, hanging uselessly at its side.
There had been damage to its back and shoulder, healed now, almost a year later, but she could see the scarring and patches where its fur hadn’t grown back.
It stopped directly opposite her and hunkered down, and not wanting it to see her as a threat, she lowered herself to the floor.
She looked into its slitted eyes.
She had once shielded the grahudi from a second shockgun shot during a chaotic escape attempt—not to save the grahudi but to save Hal, but the outcome had been the same.
Could the fact that it wasn’t automatically on the attack now mean it remembered the incident?
They had eyed each other afterward, and then gone their separate ways, and she’d never seen it again. Until now.
It was thinner than it had been. Mangy. Life since the base exploded had not been kind.
Imogen, who’d lived in a cage next to it for months, had found out that the grahudi were close to higher sentience, due to some illegal tweaks the Fitali had made to their planet. Their intelligence level was a dark secret the Fitali had tried to hide, and the Tecran had used to blackmail them.
Knowing that, and with it simply staring at her now, it didn’t exude the same menace it had before. It looked . . . diminished. Sad.
And most compelling of all, Bunny was not attacking it. He seemed content to observe, and that meant he didn’t think it was a threat.
“Do you remember me?” she whispered.
It made no sound, and she realized it never had. Not once had she ever heard it make a noise.
There was a slithering sound to her left, and the frien came into view.
There would be no reasoning with that.
Fee pushed her back against the wall and levered herself up, silver rod out.
Bunny ran down her arm, and leaped forward, and the frien, confused, lifted its front feet, about to rise up as it had when she’d come across one in the desert, using its tail and back legs for balance.
Bunny was quick. So quick he’d freaked the Grih out when they first encountered him. Before she could work out what her role needed to be, Bunny’d jumped up, slashed the frien’s underbelly, and then disappeared behind it.
It began to thrash, twisting as it fell, and Bunny appeared on the top of its head and plunged a razor sharp foreleg into its eye.
Alrighty, then.
