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Giggling.
“Are you guys hungry already?” Miranda said, her tongue thick with sleep.
How she’d ever fallen to sleep in the first place was a mystery to her. Last night she’d watched Fanian convulse for what’d seemed like forever. Well into the night, the seizing had finally stopped. She’d checked his breathing and found nothing.
Although she’d never stuck around long the times she’s tried to kill him, she was certain, well, almost certain he was truly dead this time. She didn’t notice any great regeneration skills, but then again, there hadn’t been anything outwardly to regenerate. Whatever had happened to him had occurred in his insides.
It would’ve been nice not to have a dead body around her kids, but they were still trapped in the hole, and without access to a pod, her only hope was for someone—preferably a human—to happen by and save them.
Another giggle.
Miranda ran a gloved hand down her face in hopes of wiping away some of the grogginess. Despite being trapped and surrounded by ice, she’d been remarkably warm throughout the night. The sleeping bag was the cause of that. She yawned then reached out, expecting to touch either Adam or Lexi and found emptiness instead. She opened her eyes and only found indentations in the sleeping bag where they should’ve been.
“Is that a true story?” Adam asked with a chuckle.
Any sleepiness still in her system left instantly. She pushed to sit and turned to find Adam sitting in front of Fanian, who held Lexi in his lap and fed her a bottle.
Her heart dropped. He could take them away from me. She let out a harsh breath.
She scrambled from the sleeping bag, tangling her legs in the material, but pushed forward to snatch Lexi by her arm from Fanian’s grasp. “What are you doing?” With her free hand, she pulled Adam from Fanian’s reach.
“The robot Fanian is telling us a story his father used to tell him,” Adam said as if there was nothing remotely dangerous about this situation. “I didn’t even know that robots could have fathers!”
Right. She’d been the one to tell Adam that Fanian was a robot and not an alien who already had a buyer set up for them.
Fanian snickered. “Yes, now let me finish my story, Mishka.”
Miranda narrowed her eyes. “Stay. Away. From. My. Children.”
“Says the female who was sleeping soundly while a...” Fanian turned to Adam. “What am I again?”
“An evil robot who’s trying to keep us from getting to Santa’s workshop!”
Fanian turned back to Miranda. Amusement danced in his eyes. “Ah, yes. I’m a machine in a survivalist game that the children’s father has paid for.”
“Don’t you dare,” she whispered through clenched teeth.
“I’m not a total monster,” he replied. “I just happen to be a robot who knows stories and likes to tell them to human children. Someone had to entertain and feed them while you snored.” He waved blue fingers through the air. “You were doing an abysmal job at protecting your children, Mishka. I could’ve done anything I wanted to them. I could’ve even whisked them away in the dead of night.”
“The only reason that I slept wonderfully was that I thought you were dead for real this time.”
“You of all people should know that I wasn’t.” He tilted his head to the side, revealing a thin scar around his neck. “This one almost did me in, though.”
She looked at the scar and sighed. If only she’d finished the task, she wouldn’t be stuck in an ice hole. “And you of all people should know how far I’ll go to protect my children. I don’t need you judging me because I fell to sleep.”
When she kept her death glare on him, he rolled his black eyes. “Relax. As proven last night, a pod cannot reach us here. It looked like you could use the extra sleep. There was no need to wake you.”
He was right. They weren’t going anywhere at the moment. She released the death grip she had on Adam and loosened her hold on Lexi. Lexi grunted, then her face turned red. Miranda pushed back to where the diaper bag was and gathered the supplies she needed to change her diaper.
“I didn’t think you could survive that. It went on forever.” She unfolded the changing mat and laid Lexi on it. She glanced at Fanian as she undressed Lexi’s bottom half. His skin tone's blueness was dull, and there were age lines etched in his face that weren’t present the day before. “You didn’t come out of it unscathed. You look terrible, by the way.”
Fanian ran a hand down his usually smooth and perfect skin. “Each evening, at the sound of the alarm, the pods find the hunters—wait, are we saying hunters or robots?”
“Robots or hunter robots,” Miranda confirmed.
“Wherever robots are in the arena, the pods find us and take us back to the lodge. If a robot isn’t available, the robot is punished by a shock through the collar until the robot returns to the pod.”
“But it wasn’t your fault that a pod couldn’t reach you. I guess I assumed it was an honor system. That if you couldn’t make it back, you wouldn’t hunt.” Miranda finished cleaning Lexi and wrapped her in a diaper. She only had two left. They needed to leave soon. She put the soiled one in the bag for cleaning later, if there was a later. “I don’t know. It sounds stupid now that I’m saying it out loud.”
“There’s no honor system in The Hunt.” Fanian fingered his collar. “These make sure we obey all rules, or we suffer the consequences.”
“Near-death.”
“Until death. It’s meant to punish until I comply, but since I couldn’t, it stopped when I registered as dead.”
“A girl can only dream.” She sighed. “Yet again, here you are. Not dead.”
“Sorry that I didn’t die. My system did shut down, though. When that happened, the punishment stopped. It took some healing, but once my cells regenerated, I was able to wake up.”
“So that’s it? Now you’re one-hundred percent back?”
“Don’t sound so disappointed,” he laughed but the sound was rough and cracked.
She eyed him carefully. He looked tired and haggard, like he’d been raked over the coals. “I wouldn’t be laughing if I were you. If you can’t get out of here today, you’ll be in for another round of punishment tonight.”
His face twisted and he rubbed the back of his neck. “While it didn’t kill me, I don’t want to have a repeat of that experience. It was...painful.”
She let out a hard breath. “So have you figured out how to get us out of here?”
He turned his attention back to her. “Us?”
“Yes, us. You’re still planning to take us to your buyer, right? Or did you give up, and now every man is for himself?”
His eyebrows pulled together. “You’re not a man.”
“It’s an Earth saying. It means everyone is taking care of themselves.”
“But you have children to take care of,” he said slowly as if she was a dunce. “You’re not going to leave them to fend for themselves, are you?”
“What? No. Jesus. Did you come up with a plan to get us out of here or not? That’s the question. Focus on that.”
He eyed her cautiously. “Why are you now in such a hurry to be given to Az’ud?”
She waved her hand around. “Look at my choices, Fanian. We could stay here, eventually run out of food, water, and die, or we can get out and take our chances with this Az’ud guy. I choose the latter against the certain death scenario.”
He nodded. “I have to admit I’m surprised you finally understand that you can no longer run from your fate.”
“I understand it’s unavoidable, and if it means saving my kids, I will do anything to keep them safe.” Even lie.
“Anything?”
She glared at him. “I have my limits. I’m willing to go to your buyer, but if you want me to perform some deviant sexual act, I will kill you, and if you come back to life, I’ll be sitting over your body waiting to kill you again.”
“Mishka, believe me, if I wanted you for a deviant sexual act, you would be a more than willing participant,” he drawled in a voice that sent a plethora of pleasure down her spine. “But no, that’s not what I’m getting at.”
She straightened her back, trying not to think of his words. “Then tell me what you meant by your ominous, ‘anything’ comment?”
“I have a plan to save us, but I need to drink some of your blood.”
She reared away. “Say what now?”
Fanian expected the horrified reaction. It was the same reaction most would have after he asked to drink their blood. Not that he ever had before. Givveks had lived off synthetic blood for as far back as even his father could remember. Changing the practice had gone from others viewing them as hungry parasites, to strong leaders in their sector.
After he’d awakened from being tortured due to the broken rule, he’d known he couldn’t spend another night in such pain again. It had been unimaginable. It hadn’t killed him, but he’d been dangerously close to death. Too close for comfort.
He could go five days without feeding under normal circumstances, but after any kind of near-death experience, his body needed sustenance to repair fully. As weak as he was now, he wouldn’t survive another punishment.
Since waking, he’d run every escape scenario through his mind and came up with one, but it required the nourishment he lacked. Without a food processor, there was only one other way to get what he needed, straight from the source. He could’ve taken what he needed from Miranda or the children. It would have been easy to drink while they slept. But that act of cowardice seemed reprehensible. Despite what others thought of contract hunters, he wasn’t an animal or a monster.
So he’d waited patiently for Miranda to wake. He went over what he’d planned to say, thinking of the different scenarios and reactions, and role-played them in his head. He needed her to go along with this plan because he didn’t have another option.
Miranda reached inside the bag and tossed him a protein bar. “Take this because it’s all you’re getting from me, buddy.”
He caught it mid-air and tossed it back to her. “I can’t eat that. My digestive system isn’t like yours. I need blood to live.”
“You’re serious?”
“Very.”
She pushed a pink tongue between her lips. Had her tongue always been so delectable? “Gross. So you run around like some kind of alien vampire drinking blood at night? Now I understand the whole hard to kill, and regeneration thing. So cliché.”
He shook his head, trying to dislodge thoughts about her tongue and suddenly wanting to taste it from his thoughts. “I don’t know what a vampire is, and I don’t run around. I use the food processor to order my food like any other hunter—er, robot.”
She folded her arms across her chest. “No.”
“You would rather we die, your children included, than to give me some of your blood? Because at the evening alarm, I will die. Without the needed sustenance to repair last night’s damage, I won’t survive tonight. That information might make you gleefully happy, but know this. There aren’t as many hunters in Level Two as there were in Level One.
It costs hunters more to follow prey to this Level, and with most of the humans still in Level One, there’s no need to come here just yet. The odds of another human or hunter finding you before you run out of protein bars and water are not in your favor.”
She sighed then let her head fall back to watch the sky. “I hate even to admit it, but you’re right. We could spend a few more days here and be miserable for sure, and after that...” She straightened and shook her head. “I don’t want to think about it. Putting my trust in you is like a bad dream. But what choice do I have?”
He nodded in her direction. “Understandable.”
“You drink my blood, then what? That keeps you living, but how do we get out of here?”
“With my energy returned, I can climb the wall.”
She ran her hand across the wall nearest her. “It’s too slippery and too steep. Unless you can punch through thick ice, which you can’t because you would’ve done that last night to get to the pod, we’re stuck.”
“I can use your sharp weapons to help me scale the wall. It’ll take a long time, a lot of effort, and I’ll have to make two trips with you and the kids, but I can do it.”
“Why didn’t you do this yesterday, then?”
“First, I was sure the evening pod would reach me, and secondly, would you have allowed me to rescue you and your children in two separate trips?”
If Fanian had approached her with his idea, she might’ve laughed in his face and tried to shank him again.
“Great points.” She eyed the wall and chewed on her lower lip. There was really only one option if they wanted to escape. “How much blood do you need?”