15 Penny #2
But I didn’t win the fight. Not entirely.
There was a knife protruding from the side of my waist and every breath told me it was lodged deep, grinding on my bottom rib. The air was knocked out of me for a split second. I groaned, trying to kick the remains of the nozun off my legs, and rolled to my hands and knees.
I wanted to pull the knife out so badly, but I knew it would make things worse. So, I pushed onto my feet and I stumbled out of there, keeping the other blade in my blood-slickened hand.
I was so screwed.
The lights were blinking again, about to go out entirely and leave me blind. There was gunfire in all directions. I didn’t know which hall to go down or which direction was safer. All I knew was that I had to move.
When I came to a turn, I nearly crashed into another guard as he rushed around the corner.
In a panic, I raised the blade, but he smacked it out of my grip with ease.
Then he shoved me back against the wall, pressing his rifle across my neck.
My body reacted before my brain could tell me there was a smarter move to make and I pulled the knife from my side, raising it up and jamming it into his neck.
Pain lanced across my whole body like fire.
The guard stumbled back, pulling the knife out immediately and letting his blood spurt out all around him as he shuffled for purchase.
Shit.
He started to wobble away, holding his bleeding neck, and I quickly swiped the knife back up off the ground. Only now I had a gushing wound of my own. Tears stung my eyes. Frustrated tears. Tears from the adrenaline. Tears from pain I used to think I was good at handling.
I used the wall for balance and continued on, leaving streaks of blood along the metal.
I managed to get to a door that exited into a large space with high ceilings.
There were more large containers stacked floor to rafters, and the smell of hot metal filled my nose.
I recognized that smell. It was the same smell a ship had when its engines were warming up.
Maybe, by sheer luck, I was getting somewhere.
But I was also getting lightheaded. My entire left leg was wet enough for the fabric of my dress to stick to my thigh and as soon as I looked down, I regretted it. I was bleeding far too much.
I heard a deep voice echo from behind me, using words I recognized, but didn’t understand.
“Thilar,” I panted.
What were the odds that he was close enough to hear me?
Slim to none, but I was out of options and even more so out of my mind.
My legs wouldn’t carry me much further, especially if I was wandering in the wrong direction.
Perhaps I should have tried to get back to the cells.
Maybe he was still down there, locked inside.
Then again, if I got out of my cell, he, of all people, could get out of his.
He promised he'd look for me in the games.
Somehow, despite everything, I wanted to believe he was looking for me now.
Stupid. Dangerous. It was the kind of foolish hope that got people killed.
But as my vision blurred and my knees threatened to buckle, I found myself clinging to it anyway.
"Thilar!" I called.
The sound came out weak and breathless. I could have been drawing a nozun to me. Or one of Pek-Tol's men. Or any of the countless monsters prowling the station.
I didn't care. I just wanted it to be him.
My legs finally started to give out. I stumbled against the wall as darkness crowded the edges of my vision.
I was about to just fall over and pray when I heard it.
"Penny!"
Relief hit me so hard my eyes stung.
It was like a dream. Not just because I was dizzy, but because I didn’t expect him to answer me.
I whipped my head to the right to see Thilar skidding to a stop around the corner.
He was dressed in the same strange suit as the other soldiers I saw outside my cell, but he didn’t dawn the mask.
He had two blades in his hands, both painted with gore, and he had a ferocious look on his face until he noticed the way I was holding my side and slumping against the wall.
Suddenly, the blades disappeared, absorbed into his suit somehow like magic.
He ran to me and I did everything in my power to keep my shit together, but inside, I was so relieved to see him.
I was so damn thankful that if I was going to die of blood loss, I wouldn’t be alone in the dark bowels of that hell hole.
“You are wounded,” he stated.
I nodded. There was no covering up the truth. If I didn’t get help, I was going to bleed to death.
Thilar wasted no time. He crouched, gripping the hem of my dress and tearing a good portion of the fabric off.
I didn’t even care that my already short dress was shorter now.
When he stood, he wrapped the material around my waist and tied it painfully tight with the knot over my wound like a cork.
I winced, fully knowing it was the only option we had.
I tried to take a step forward when a group of those same soldiers flooded the hangar.
“Nit tal!” one shouted at us, his voice deepened by the mask he wore over his nose and mouth.
Thilar turned and pointed as if to indicate something important. “Tur hosh kaal.”
The others nodded and started moving in that direction. When I tried to take another step, he slid an arm behind me, scooping me off the ground.
Under any other circumstances, I would have insisted I could walk on my own, but the moment I wasn’t holding myself up, the world tilted violently sideways.
My head fell back, barely able to stay upright. Thilar shifted me carefully until I rested against his shoulder, but I still couldn’t quite find my balance on him. I was all weight and weakness in his arms.
He was steady. Unshakable. He carried me as if I weighed nothing at all, and something in me loosened at the realization that I wasn’t a burden to him. That he was simply carrying me out of that place.
I didn’t care where we were going. I just needed it all gone.
Finally, I managed to hook an arm around his neck, gritting my teeth as he moved us through the commotion. He wasn’t running, but he was moving fast enough that the world blurred past in broken fragments.
There was no gentleness left in the moment. No space for questions. No room to understand anything except the simple fact that I was alive, and he was carrying me out.