This is very strange. I’m lucky to be alive three times over. First, I was lucky that he didn’t kill me in my apartment. Then I was lucky to survive the scum strike. Now he still wants to keep me in one piece. Weird. I feel as though I am living on borrowed time, somehow staying free from inevitable pain. Bu I am still his bounty, and he is still treating me as one. I look around again and turn about. There is much to see, like the shuttle steaming gently behind us.
“It’s hard to believe we survived that,” I remark. There is a huge hole in the fuselage. Metal and composite material is curled around like a tin can with a bullet hole in it. By all rights, we should both be dead. By all odds. By all everything.
“That’s not a ship anymore. That’s scrap.”
“I’ve never heard of scum having that kind of fire power. How would they ever launch anything that large? That must have been a korabi missile.”
“Silence, bounty. You know nothing.” He is gruff. And he is wrong.
I do know something. I know someone wanted Rath dead. Someone who could see a cloaked shuttle. Someone who had the authority and funds to launch a missile at Rath K’zar himself.
“Why do they want to kill you?”
“Why do they want to kill you?” He asks the question in turn.
“I was algo’d. It happens. All the time. Humans are killed because a series of calculations deems them killable. It is not fair, but it is how things are. I did my job as well as I could, and in the end it didn’t matter at all.”
“You were a good admin.”
“Yes. I was.”
We fall silent. I can’t see any point in pleading my case to him, and whatever is happening to him he does not care to share.
He’s watchful, casting his gaze over the trees and through the shadows as the day begins to darken. It’s never really night in Megaris. Sure, the sun slides away, but then a thousand new sources of light take over. The streets of Megaris are brighter at night than they are during the day. The buildings all glow with a myriad of hues, flashing advertisements and entertaining all those fortunate enough to have a pair of compatible augs on their face. Out here, nothing glows besides the stars and the moon. They are so far away.
“Come here,” Rath growls as the light fades. He glows in the night too, though not in the same way. I can see his augmentations faintly, their various connections trammeling his muscles beneath his skin. He grabs me with one big hand and draws me toward him.
“I don’t want you out of my touch,” he says. “I want you close.”
That’s a line from a dream I had once, I think. Maybe I did die when that shuttle went down. Maybe I became one with my dreams. Maybe…
He does not ask me if I want to be held. He pulls me close, and I feel his body against mine. His muscular chest against my back. The heat of his flesh pulsing through mine. There is intimacy in his grip. He is making me feel as though I am his.
I close my eyes and I let the feeling sink in. I may meet my death soon, perhaps at these very hands, but for the moment I am kept safe in the arms of the one who hunts me.
I stir when Rath stirs. It is dark. Darker than I have ever experienced before. Shadows are all around us, enveloping us with unseen horrors. With my eyes wide open, I see nothing at all besides the glow from Rath’s body. His augmentations are giving off an eerie aura, the only light in sight.
At first I don't know what roused me. Then I hear a low throbbing hum coming from somewhere nearby. It takes some time for light to be shed from the sky.
It’s another shuttle.
We are being rescued.
I feel a swell of hope, followed by the reminder of despair. I have been found guilty of a crime by algorithm, and the punishment must surely be death. When we are rescued, I will be taken to be deconstructed. The body I have become so comfortable inhabiting will be broken down to its composite parts and my consciousness will cease to exist.
Rath lets out a growl, grabs me up, and throws me over his shoulder. The air is knocked out of me with his rough handling, too much to protest. He runs as fast as he can away from the shuttle.
I am confused and concerned, branches whipping by us, slapping across the sides of my body. We are running away from the shuttle. I thought he would stand up and wave, call out, set off flares, anything to return to Megaris where he rules supreme.