Torian

For the first time since leaving the Lab, I awoke warm. Zal’s big body, spooned behind me, radiated heat like his Sun Stone. This was a new feeling for me altogether. I’d never slept with a partner before. The transactions at the Lab had been restricted to the prescribed hour during regular work shifts. My nights had always been my own.

But this, the comfort of another body—moreover, the body of someone who would never ask for more than I was willing to give—made me want to snuggle in and never arise.

Another thing that close proximity under a double layer of blankets brought to pungent attention, though, was that the two of us had been on the trail for nearly a week, with only minimal opportunities for washing. Not that Zal’s earthy male scent was unpleasant, precisely. It was definitely different from the Lab inhabitants, who all smelled of antiseptic cleansers and formaldehyde.

I wasn’t certain if my own scent would be pleasing to Zal, however, and I desperately wanted to please Zal. Not that way, not now that I knew the cost, but enough to be a desirable trail companion.

I eased out from beneath the blankets, loath to leave Zal’s heat. For once, the big mage had slept beyond the first pinking of the sky. Perhaps he was glad to have someone to generate extra warmth as well. I knew I was good for that, and for the first time, I was pleased about it.

I took the cooking pot and the toweling and made my shivering way to the river. I filled the pot with water and set it on the bank, then stripped, gritting my teeth as gooseflesh rose over every square centimeter of my body. It would be worse once I dumped the frigid water over my head, but I had no choice.

Or do I?

Zal had expelled the solar power stored in his chrysocite to ward off the local fauna and to singe off the village boys’ braids. What was I but a living solar storage unit? Perhaps I could discharge energy as well as absorb and consume it.

I hunkered down next to the pot and thrust in my hands. Cold! Concentrating despite shivering so hard it was a wonder my cybertronic connections didn’t shake loose, I traced the neural pathways to the power cells at my core. If I reversed the input here and redirected the output there… Ah.

The water warmed around my hands, heating until it was almost uncomfortable. I grinned, dipped a corner of the toweling into the water, and scrubbed away the grime of my days on the trail and my time trapped in the cell.

True, it wasn’t the same as the perfectly regulated temperatures of the Lab showers. In a way, though, it was better because I’d managed it myself—altered my programming for a new purpose to suit this new existence.

What else might I be able to do if I questioned a few of my assumptions? Frame your question. Test your hypothesis. Reframe the question. Test again.

By the time I was clean and clear of soap, I had compiled a mental list of my most pressing concerns, chief among them how to say no.

I rubbed myself with the rough toweling, my skin turning an unbecoming shade of pink from the cold and the friction. I wrinkled my nose at my stained and travel-worn clothing. What would it be like to put on freshly laundered clothes again?

I pulled on the shirt, and as my head emerged from the neckband, I caught the white stroke of a com-trail, like a tether linking the ruins of the Lab to the sky.

I froze with one arm through a sleeve. Were the Infomancers still inhabiting the Lab? Had there been other launches that I hadn’t witnessed? Was that an evacuation pod en route to a ship in orbit? Or a contingent of armed personnel coming the other direction, on a mission to eliminate inconvenient loose ends?

Like me.

I scanned the sky, activating my infrared sensors. There. The signature of a cloaked shuttle, coming this way on a landing trajectory—a shuttle that could track my Lab-manufactured implants with pinpoint precision.

I hurried into the rest of my clothes and stumbled up the trail to camp, my bootlaces still untied. Zal was just strapping the bedding to his pack. He looked up with a grin, but his smile faded when he took in my state.

“What is it? What’s wrong?”

“I think… I think the Infomancers may still be here. There’s been a glow in the Lab ruins every night, but I thought it was just the residual energy from the breach in the walls. I thought it would fade eventually, but it hasn’t. And now there’s a ship on its way.”

“A ship? You mean a boat on the river?”

I shook my head impatiently. “No. An airship.”

Zal’s eye widened. “A ship that flies through the air? Now that I’d like to see.”

“No. No you wouldn’t. Because the ship comes with at least one Infomancer. And I think they want me back.”