Chapter 31 Pick Me,Lose Me
THIRTY-ONE
PICK ME, OR LOSE ME
Julia
Neither one of us really hurries along. It almost seems wrong to do so, and the longer we linger, the more I want to.
At one point, after bathing Krellix’s seed off me in the river and dressing, he suggests we hunt for some food.
Three hours after that, having failed miserably at catching any prey because of my intermittent coughing, we give up.
Krellix leaves me by the side of the river to hunt something for himself. While I wait for him, I eat the last of the rations in my bag.
Afterwards, I hunker down in the thicket, wondering if this is what life would be like if we stayed together.
Breathing in deeply, I try not to cough as the smell of wildflowers wafts into my nose.
All around me, various little blooms grow from the ground and bushes.
I bet there’s no flowers in the encampment.
A small splash sounds from the water, drawing my attention.
Krellix almost comes upon me in surprise as I’m staring hard at the river, waiting to see if I hear another.
But I catch his approach out of the corner of my eye before he can startle me.
Water drips off him as he pushes through the bushes to the patch of grass I’m sitting on.
He must have been the one to make the noise.
My gaze trails down his front, following the rivulets sliding down his skin and scales. When I reach his slit and the large bulge behind it, my eyes shoot to his face and my cheeks heat as I suddenly burn with awareness.
He’s so handsome with his semi-wet hair and his tawny, golden, and brown hues. I blink and stare up at him, not breathing him in, but breathing in the flowers instead and finding that it makes the moment perfect. Simple but perfect.
I might not be a good hunter, yet. But I can practice and I won’t always need to cough.
I could… do this.
I could live out here with him… like this, taking each day one at a time.
I could sacrifice… would sacrifice… for something that’s worth it.
Warming up to the idea, I part my lips to tell him he shouldn’t take me to the encampment today when something loud and mechanical roars in the distance.
I startle, rising to my feet just as Krellix tenses, tilting and lifting his head.
He coils his tail under him and looks off in the direction of the sound as it gets louder.
I cover my ears and move toward him, and together we listen to the spaceship engine die down as it finishes launching.
Leaving Earth behind, the noise eventually fades away into a distant hum.
When it’s gone altogether, I turn to Krellix and his eyes drop to mine. “It is time to go and get you to the encampment.”
I frown at his semi-stern expression. He’s not going to ask me to stay… No matter how much I might want him to. He’s not going to ask me to return with him to Zaku’s with news, and then off to wherever next. He’s not going to because he’s afraid that if something happens to me, it’ll be his fault.
The suggestion of delaying going to the encampment another day falls from my lips. I’m just prolonging the inevitable.
I slowly nod and, taking a moment to stifle the tremble in my hands, zip up my jacket. “Okay. You’re right. We should go.”
A ship just took off, and that's notably strange. It hasn’t seemed like many of them have been doing that since they all came down. Where is it going with The Dreadnaut gone?
We don't speak again as I take up formation behind him and to his right. He goes slow enough to make sure his tail is always beside me despite him leading me by several paces. As we travel deeper into the forest and the sounds of the river fade away, the silence between us only grows. Staring at Krellix’s patterned back and his rolling shoulderblades, I don’t know why I suddenly find it so hard to say anything to him.
Maybe it’s because we’ve said our goodbye… Last night—this morning.
He’s taken what he’s wanted.
Every step forward makes me a little angrier than the last. And it’s not until the sounds of drones flying nearby, the distant buzz of machines, and the shouts of people take over the forest noise that I realize just how close we actually are to the encampment.
Everything sounds far away but the fact that I can hear them at all already throws me off.
My lips stay shut as we move closer and, drifting my gaze away from Krellix, I start to notice a strange but familiar smell in the air. Looking back to him, I don’t seem to be the only one. Sniffling, I reach for a mask I lost days ago and flick my eyes to the forest around me. What is that… ?
Krellix stops. Pausing beside him, I wait for him to tell me what’s up. He looks off to his left, flaring his nostrils, making his next breath a deep one.
“That smell,” I say, realizing where I know it from, “it’s what caused my throat to burn.” I reach up and touch the front of my neck.
That pulls Krellix’s attention fully to me. “What?”
“Before the Boa—Sada—got me, I was trying to hide from him. I found this place that led underground. A back maintenance entrance of sorts. I was trying to wait him out and went deeper, hoping I’d find another exit and get back to you guys, but instead I ended up in this big room…
” I trail off, turning away, not sure if I even want to bring up what I saw to him or not.
“Where?”
“Back where Benjamin and I got split up. There was this standing doorframe—”
“Standing doorframe? I remember the place. I saw it when I came back to look for you.”
“Krellix… what does it mean?” I eye him and his sudden wary alertness.
“I don’t know. The smell is just… familiar…”
“You didn’t smell it before?”
He shakes his head. “My senses were clogged with smoke.”
I nod. “I might have had something to do with that. I found something down there… something I tried to make sure was properly destroyed.”
He tilts his head as his brow pinches, sliding his tail further under him. “What did you find?”
“You,” I blurt out. “Well, your kind, but not your kind. What you might have been at the beginning… They were in giant vats of liquid and they were just left there.” I shudder, recalling the fleshy bodies floating, suspended.
“And you destroyed them?”
“I think so. I’m not quite sure. I targeted the central machine network and the piping coming from it. More explosions went off than I anticipated and I had to run—that’s when Sada got me.”
He reaches out and drifts the tips of his claws over my neck where I touched it moments ago. I swallow thickly and lean into him; he quickly pulls his hand back and turns away. “We should go.”
Confused, I plant my boots into the ground. “You have nothing else to say? Isn’t it weird that we’re smelling the same chemicals in the air now that were down in the vats?” I peer around at the trees.
It is weird isn’t it? Or am I just being paranoid?
“The scent got swept up in a breeze, that is all. There have been many unusual smellssss of late.”
Without waiting for me to respond, he slips deeper into the forest, only pausing to look back at me when I don’t immediately follow.
I take a reluctant step forward, watching his expression. It’s harder, and more distant than before. I barely have time to think about it when he abruptly grabs my arm, hauling me to his side.
“Whoa, what’s wrong now?” I ask, pushing against him to catch my footing, surprised.
“I hear the hissing of another naga. Stay close to me and try not to cough. We are close to the encampment. I do not expect they will try anything with me by your side but there is always a chance. There are always a few naga lingering around here, watching the humans from the safety of the forest. I know because I have done so myself.”
“Right,” I say before shutting my mouth again.
It’s clear the time for conversation between us has come to an end.
He keeps me close and, at a slower pace than before to make as little noise as possible, we slowly emerge from the dense forest into a sparsely cut down lane of piled dirt and wood.
Rows of turned up roots and rock line the space ahead of us for at least a quarter of a mile.
At the end is a large group of spaceships of varying sizes.
Mostly military and civilian vessels, nothing as big as a commercial freighter amongst them, which are some of the largest transport ships.
I wonder where those could be. The Dreadnaut definitely had some.
Covering my face when a waft of engine smoke drifts by, I peer up to see the exhaust trail of the spaceship Krellix and I heard by the river still drifting up into the sky.
Spotting people in the distance, I note a wooden barricade beyond the ships with numerous smoke trails rising behind it. Between us and that are intermittent rows of dirt and terra waste and several large log piles. Machines lift and sort them.
At the threshold of the forest, Krellix and I are already nearly out in the open. A few more more steps and we won’t have coverage all the way to the spaceships. It won’t take long before we’re spotted.
I shift my gun behind me and glance at him but he’s facing forward, not paying attention to me at all.
“Krellix? Maybe I should do this part alone…”
His hand still grips my arm. With a tug, he leads us out from the trees and enters the lanes of dirt, and takes us right to the center.
“Krellix, wait.” I try to pull my arm from his grasp but it doesn’t work. “Krellix! They might shoot at you.”
He doesn’t look at me. “You have to go,” he says, his face blank. “You’ll be safe with your kind.”
“Yeah—” I tug my arm some more “—but it doesn’t have to be like this! Stop! Geez, stop!”
He spins on me, rising higher on his tail, his voice cold. “It doessss have to be like this. This is the deal. You are here now and that is it! I have gotten what I wanted from you and now it is time for you to go.”
I finally yank my arm free and curl it against my chest. “So that’s it is it? You’re going to play this card.” For being an alien, he’s coming across very human right now.
His jaw clamps as he looms down at me.
Suddenly there are drones around us and shouting coming from the distance.
I stumble away from Krellix to put space between us, only for a thin, sleek military robot to fly directly into it and hover threateningly.
The shouting loudens, getting closer, and I glance over my shoulder to see a group of armed soldiers running toward us.
“Go!” I tell Krellix. “Before they hurt you!”
He ignores me as he faces the men despite their guns lifting to aim at him as they approach.
I step between them and raise my own rifle. “Shoot him and you’re dead,” I warn.
“Put down the gun!” one of the soldiers, a tall one with a bandage over his cheek, shouts.
“We’re here to help,” another one says. “Step away from the woman, naga!”
There are four in all, along with three drones, all pointing their weapons at Krellix. And not to my surprise, all four look as exhausted and unkempt as I feel.
“Go to them,” Krellix hisses behind me. “And do as they say.”
Keeping my aim steady, my eyes narrow. “So that’s how you want to do this, huh?
Fuck you, Krellix,” I half-yell, half-whisper over my shoulder.
But I lower my rifle and let it hang limp at my side, hurt that he would risk his life to ensure I go.
I peer back at him and shake my head, my lips flattening as my frustration flares to true anger.
He doesn’t want a goodbye?
He wants a sharp split?
Then so be it.
Ignoring what the soldiers are saying, I walk forward—then straight past them to the new group already heading our way. I don’t look back as I stomp my way to the second wave and allow them to surround me. One takes my weapon as another reads the label on my jacket.
“You’re a soldier, too? What squad?” he asks, and I nod sharply.
“A dead squad and I was. I don’t know what I am anymore.
” And as the words leave my mouth, they taste bitter with honesty.
They can try to force me to work for them but as far as I’m concerned, my military contract burnt up over six months ago when that same squad left me to rot with the Winged Ransom’s crew.
“Come this way. We’ll get you to the infirmary and looked over. Did it hurt you?” The soldier, a young man with curly red hair glances past me, assumingly at Krellix.
Does a broken heart count?
Without sparing a single glance back myself to see him one last time, I stride past the last of the log piles and mounds of dirt, past the spaceships and towards the barricade wall.
Once I’m inside it, I may never get the chance to see him again. But it isn’t me who chose this. It was him.