Evening light streamed through the forest, painting the snow gold and peach and striping it with the long purple shadows of the trees. Kit was fucking freezing.
He hugged himself, Emil’s t-shirt soaked from where he’d fallen into the snow, and tried to stop his teeth from chattering. He took one more wet, bare step into the snow, the cold of it stinging. He had no idea where he was, if it was Earth or some other world, if there were people around, but he knew he was going to die. He didn’t have the energy to make another run, and even if he had, Lange would be waiting in the Nowhere. He’d freeze to death before he found enough food to win his energy back. Maybe he should just lay down in the snow right now and let it happen.
He trudged through the snow instead. Maybe there was a drier, less snowy place to die. Kit knew that didn’t really make sense, but he was miserable and exhausted and he couldn’t hold himself to that kind of standard anymore. Making sense was for people who hadn’t been shoved into other worlds. People with shoes, even.
His whole life, he’d believed that no one was looking out for him. Now it was true.
Zin and Louann weren’t runners. They couldn’t look for him. Laila and Aidan couldn’t possibly come for him in time. Travis wouldn’t. It looked like Lenny had been shot just before Kit had jumped. Those were all the runners who knew he’d left. And Kit had told the one non-runner who might have the dedication to find him don’t look for me. He was well and truly fucked, and it was his own doing.
He wished he’d said goodbye to Zin and Louann. It had been days and he hadn’t even messaged them.
It had been years and he’d never once told them how he really felt. He insisted on paying rent. They needed the money, but it was more than that. It was to keep up one last barrier—if he paid rent, he could tell himself he was their tenant, not their kid. He was nobody’s kid. Never had been. His biological parents had fucked off to who knows where, the Home hadn’t ever lived up to its name, and his foster family had been a joke. Every time he’d wanted to trust someone, to make himself comfortable, he’d been burned. With Zin and Louann, it had been years, and he was still scared that some day they’d lose interest. They’d want his apartment back. They’d ask him to leave and they wouldn’t miss him.
Barefoot in the snow, with his body temperature dropping, he realized he’d been scared of the wrong thing. Zin and Louann were his family. They were home. Here, some unknowable, unbridgeable distance from them, with no way to get back and his death looming, he knew he should have told them so. There was a thing to be scared of: they were never going to know.
He didn’t know how long he’d been walking. It felt like years. The forest all looked the same to him. Pines and more pines. Emil probably could have looked at the trees and learned something from them, like whether this was Earth, but Emil wasn’t here. Kit knew fuck-all about trees.
The forest ran in front of him and behind him as far as he could see, but mountains rose to the left and the right. As the altitude climbed, the trees thinned and the snow thickened. There were a few bald patches, cliff faces too steep to hold snow. Kit looked to either side, searching for anywhere that looked dry and sheltered. A dark spot in the ridge to his right might be a shadow from overhanging rock. It might be a cave.
He turned toward it, hoping he’d have enough energy to get there. More snow had begun to fall while he was walking. It was melting in his hair and trickling down the back of his neck.
Unlike Emil, Kit wasn’t usually more prepared for survival situations. There’d been a backpack full of packaged food and medical supplies on the floor of the secret room and he hadn’t had the presence of mind to grab it before jumping. He should’ve known Lange would be waiting for him. How many times had it happened? Why hadn’t he thought of carrying something with him until he’d seen Caleb and Lenny show up with preparations? Why had he rushed headlong into rescuing Laila and Aidan, not even bothering to put on shoes?
He’d been in such a hurry to get away from Emil. It seemed stupid now. Not his anger—that was justified. But he shouldn’t have let it push him into danger. He should have taken the time to think through the possible consequences.
Kit wasn’t accustomed to living like that. He wasn’t a goddamn soldier. Life was exciting, but rarely dangerous. Until a few days ago, he’d never had any trouble jumping to exactly where he wanted to be. He made money, not plans. Consequences were for other people.
He wanted to silence the voice in his head that reminded him that if he hadn’t pushed Emil away right before jumping, some of this could have been prevented. I had a right to be angry. But Emil would have respected Kit’s anger while still offering calm, distant, professional advice on how to survive, if Kit had let him. He was infuriatingly mature like that, even when he was wrong.
Emil would have apologized, if Kit had let him. He would have done everything in his power to make it right.
Isn’t that exactly what he was doing when he helped you rescue Aidan and Laila?
It didn’t matter. Kit was never going to see Emil again. He stumbled, hardly able to feel his feet. Now that he was closer, he could see the dark spot he’d thought might be a shadow was definitely an opening in the cliff face. Kit walked up to it, feeling the burn in his calves at the slight incline, and then had to get down on hands and knees to see inside. It was a cave. The mouth was smaller than the interior, which was mercifully dry. It was a few degrees warmer inside, out of the wind and the snow, as good a place to die as he was going to find. Kit crawled inside and collapsed.
When he awoke, he wasn’t sure how much time had passed. It took him a moment to recall his circumstances. His body ached and he didn’t fully understand how he was still alive. The cave was impenetrably dark to his right, but to his left, light streamed through the entrance at a different angle. Had he slept all night? Had he woken because it was morning? No. Something else had changed. The scrabbling of animal claws against the loose sediment floor of the cave echoed in the darkness.
Kit wasn’t alone.