They rested in shifts in a hastily made nest, nigh-invisible from the outside, as they ate MREs from the go bag and drank some lake water run through a filter, also from the go bag. A few times, they heard voices from the patrols, but thankfully no one found them or the ATV. The time dragged on like a crej, and he wished that they could have talked in the interim, but the risk of discovery was too great.
Instead, while she snoozed, Thyathyrec watched Yrakc in the dim nautical twilight. It felt comforting just having her near, rather than on the other side of a locked barrier. He could barely make out her hands, with tiny claws instead of fingernails—probably what made it easy for her to hang from the walls when she didn't want to cooperate with the tests.
"Let's go," he whispered, shaking Yrakc awake shortly before the sun rose. She seemed to fight to wake up, which surprised him. "Did you not rest enough?"
Yrakc grumbled. "Your stupid planet and its short days!" she complained. "I'm missing like a whole ten hours every night! Even in space I had an easier time adjusting!"
That surprised Thyathyrec. "Dhallyųelly gets a longer day? I'm a little jealous." Ten hours of extra time every day sounded amazing! Then again, he realised he had never before gotten to see Yrakc first thing in the morning—that might've definitely affected the study, if every morning they woke her up far too early. "Anyway, we should get going now while we can see without draining the ATV battery."
"Fine."
Still, Thyathyrec struggled with walking, especially without his staff, left behind in the escape.
"You should find a stick to use as a cane."
"It's a STAFF."
Yrakc rolled her eyes. "It's a CANE, old man."
He glowered at her, regardless of her cute little mischievous face. Thyathyrec scratched his chin absentmindedly, noticing his stubble coming in. "Wish I could shave," he complained.
"I meant to ask about that," Yrakc noted, peering at his face. "Why do you grow whiskers so young?"
"Eh?"
"Only old people grow whiskers like you're doing. I was joking, but are you really that old?"
He furrowed his brow at her. "Sounds convenient. No, I'm 21 in Elď years. Human men start growing thick facial hair starting in puberty, which normally starts from around ten years younger than I am. We shave it off if we want to have smooth faces, or grow it out if we want fuzzy ones."
Yrakc raised her eyebrows at this information. "So this is fuzzy?" She reached out to touch his face and jumped back upon touching his stubble. "It's pointy!"
Thyathyrec laughed. "Yeah, mine grows in like that after it's been shaved. Generally hair will grow in soft only if it's thin hair, or new hair."
She seemed to pout. "So your face will be prickly now?"
"Until I shave, or if I let it grow out enough that the hair has enough length to bend."
"And you like that?"
"Sure don't. If I could be rid if all this face hair, I'd be happy."
Yrakc squinted slightly, raising her hand. Suddenly, Thyathyrec's face felt – different.
"What did you do?"
She touched his face again, which gave him the chills this time. "Ooh, nice," she purred.
Blinking, he did the same, marvelling at how smooth his skin felt. "You have that degree of control over it?"
Yrakc shrugged. "It's not too different from using tools. With some practice, I can do most things with precision, including this."
"Practice? Did you not always have this ability?"
"No..." she admitted, "and I thought I had lost it..."
"How so?"
She shook her head. "Not worth thinking about. Let's go."
He still felt scared of her power, but his admiration went up further all the same.
Then, as dawn broke, he heard a rustling noise from above. Raising his eyebrows, he pointed to a ckualer in one of the trees and smiled. "Hey, that's your cousin."
"What?" Yrakc looked at him with indignation. "What is THAT creepy thing?"
"Creepy? That's a ckualer, like you."
"I'm not one of those!"
"You have the same ears and tail!"
"But it's a little... What is it?"
"You don't have non-dominant species on your planet like those?"
"We have..." Yrakc seemed confused. "Our livestock and pets are birds and fish and bugs. There's nothing like – THAT on my planet!"
Thyathyrec grinned at her, amused by her reaction. "Why is it so strange to you?"
"EUGH!" she blurted, shuddering. "I'll have all kinds of weird body horror dreams now..."
He supposed he felt a little bad about teasing her. It would probably evoke the same reaction from him if he saw a tiny deformed human in a tree like that. He also noted that she didn't have fur like a ckualer did, but smooth skin and head hair like a human's—the only reason the false nose tactic had worked.
They proceeded on to the tunnel connecting the colony to the adjoining province. Thyathyrec casually worried it would make the relationship between the two factions worse, but they didn't have many options left if they wanted to retain their fleeting freedom. Also, maybe it would help stop the spies? "Can you collapse the tunnel entrance?"
Yrakc seemed hesitant. "If you think it's a good idea..."
"You must." Thyathyrec heard voices from behind them. "Hurry!"
She shrugged and gestured in the direction of the tunnel, the structure falling to pieces as though from a targeted earthquake.
"Hide!" he whispered, shuffling for cover.
After several tense moments, the voices grew louder.
"This way!"
"Are you sure they went this way?"
"They spent a good deal of effort stopping us if they didn't!"
"Where else would they have gone, then?"
"Did you not just hear that rumbling sound just now?"
"Look," IЪel snapped, pointing to their fresh footprints in the mud. "Their trail gets older going backwards, meaning they came this way. If they had doubled back, their tracks would be more clear as they went away. There are no other tracks leading away from here and no other way through this area. They have to be on the other side!"
"How are we getting to the other side?" Saic asked. "The next tunnel is five kilometres away!"
"Guess that's where we're going," IЪel barked. "Go!"
After several more tense moments, Thyathyrec and Yrakc slipped out from behind a tree, the ground blanketed in leaves covering their trail.
"That's still a neat trick."
"It always freaked you out before."
"What?"
"...nevermind. Where now?"
Thyathyrec considered the location of the mysterious cave based on the photos he'd seen. He felt drawn to it, as though resonating with him. "There's a place, I'm not sure precisely where, that I think we need to find." He thought on the matter for a moment. "First, though, we need to stop somewhere I would rather not go."
Yrakc twitched her ears in curiosity. "Why, or – why not?"
"I promised Lyiyn. It should be fast, at least, then we can focus on finding the other place."
She shrugged. "Anywhere out here, I am freer than I was, and you know your land better than I do."
Thyathyrec directed the ATV—to his unending delight—to the very edge of the colony, deeper than where most of the colonists had even known the boundaries extended. There stood an abandoned building, three stories tall, that at one time served as a special area reserved for specific functions that even Thyathyrec didn't know about but in more recent years had housed a group of colonists who had been infected, before they had finally perished.
The soldiers—or scholars, he wasn't sure which—had emptied the building after Dhyròc's death as the threat of infection no longer remained, the precious things that Thyathyrec and Lyiyn had come to retrieve long confiscated by the colony. He had at least been allowed the chance to work on what he had once attempted to steal, as the reason for his intrusion remained uninvestigated, but it felt like much too little, much too late.
He pulled a pencil and notepad out of the go bag, scribbling hastily before tearing off the top page and tucking it under a rock beneath the broken window at the front of the building. He then dabbed the rock with some mud and drew his initial on it.
"What did you write?" Yrakc asked.
"The file name and records for something Lyiyn will need. I don't know whether Ahfiamiďiec will make good on his threat to punish my few remaining loved ones for misbehaviour on my part, but this will at least give Lyiyn and Piaròmine a fighting chance at protecting themselves."
Yrakc stared up at the building. "I get a very strong sense from you that something bad happened here. Is it about your injuries?"
He cringed. "You're quite perceptive. This spot is where I broke my leg. It healed badly, and while I can still walk, it hurts me immensely."
"And your other injuries?" She glanced at him, reading the room. "I don't mean to pry, if it hurts too much."
"No, you should absolutely know," he stated without hesitation, letting out an exasperated sigh as the painful memories came flooding back. "Three and a half years ago, when one of our colonists lived here, Lyiyn and I tried to break in to steal something of his. I was hardheaded and bold, thinking that Dhyròc wouldn't notice, and we didn't ask because I already knew he would refuse."
Thyathyrec pointed to the window above. "I tried to climb in that way with a ladder. Lyiyn stayed down here to hold the ladder while I snuck into Dhyròc's lab. I heard later from Lyiyn that he had gotten spooked when he heard Dhyròc on the ground level and pulled the ladder away to hide. In the meantime, I was trapped up in the lab, and Dhyròc was returning, fast.
"Dhyròc had a cluttered workspace, so not only did I not find what I was looking for, but I had nowhere to hide. Dhyròc found me and quickly subdued me, knocking me out with a taser. I finally came to to find he had stripped and restrained me by tying both my arms and suspending me so I was fully exposed, front and back. He started flaying me with a whip, getting some kind of sadistic pleasure from exacting what I guess he thought was revenge on me, like I represented the colony that had banished him.
"I don't know how long I was out of it, but maybe Lyiyn heard my screams and went for help. I guess he explained it as being curious when I had wandered off and he had followed me to see where I was going, so his involvement was also never questioned, but help didn't arrive fast enough for me. Dhyròc eventually got bored of just whipping me and pulled out a knife. He cut my lip as I fought to get free, and he cut me – elsewhere to really hurt me, as though I hadn't been hurt enough before. He even made sure to infect me with his bodily fluids, to try to curse me the way he had been cursed."
Yrakc seemed to take in his story calmly for what he'd expected. "Is this also familiar?" he asked.
"After a sense," she agreed, to his dismay. He didn't know what was worse—reliving the nightmare, or it being a repeat.
"At any rate, I managed to break free of my ties when he slipped with the knife. I hit him with my first free hand and quickly broke my bonds once he dropped the knife. It was a bit of a blur what happened next between the exchanging of blows, but it ended with me pushing both of us through the window. Dhyròc died after I landed on his windpipe, crushing it with my arm. I escaped with only a broken leg from the fall, but I still lost consciousness from my other injuries.
"I came to in sick bay, with Lyiyn loyally waiting by my side and Yackrahfiec stitching up my lip. It scared me. My body was ruined forever, doomed to die young from Dhyròc's tainted blood—even if I didn't know for CERTAIN at the time—and I couldn't imagine living anymore. When they weren't looking, I grabbed a scalpel from Yackrahfiec's tools and cut both my wrists. I had just started on my neck when Lyiyn saw me and grabbed my hand holding the scalpel.
"At that point I promptly passed out again and don't remember anything until I came to later, after they had sewn up my fresh injuries and restrained me so I couldn't hurt myself again, but Lyiyn told me that at that time I had blacked out – another me told him not to let me die yet."
"Another you?"
"If what you're telling me is true, then that was the other me, the one you were searching for."
Her eyes teared up at the idea. "He stopped you."
"Maybe." Thyathyrec felt a chill as he remembered. "Lyiyn then said, once I stabilised, I also told him to take care of me, since, quote, 'He will need your support when she arrives.'"
Yrakc's eyes widened. "'She' as in – me?"
Thyathyrec didn't respond immediately.
"Then where is he?" she whispered.
He looked around with disgust. "Wherever he is, it's definitely not here." Giving the site of Dhyròc's last breaths a final look, Thyathyrec spat at the building in contempt before getting back on the ATV.
