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“I wouldn’t if I were you,” a deep voice said.
I turned to find the leader crouched beside a hole in the desert.
He snapped something in his hands that immediately burst into flames and he dropped it in the hole where the fire grew larger.
He poked it with a knife to encourage further growth.
The leader hadn’t raised his eyes and might not have been speaking with me.
But with how the other guards paid him no attention, there couldn’t be anyone else he was talking to.
“The desert is a dangerous place at the best of times,” he said. “Even worse at night when you can’t see much beyond the end of your nose.”
He prodded the fire one last time and it belched like a baby cupped over its mother’s shoulder.
The leader’s armor was strewn with dents from the myriad of fights he must have been through in his day.
His features were covered by his helmet but I felt his eyes on me through his visor.
“I wasn’t going to run,” I said defensively.
“No?” he said. “If I were in your situation, I would have thought about it at least. I doubt there’s a prisoner who wouldn’t.”
“Well, I’m not a prisoner,” I said without much conviction.
Not a prisoner technically but what else did you call it when you were locked up in a room and not allowed to leave?
The leader’s head dropped to my legs and I shied away, nervous to be surrounded by so many men.
I’d gotten used to having eyes on me during the past year but these men were guards.
They had protected me in the past and I thought of them as nothing more than robots going about their business.
To see them surrounding me now when no one would get in the way if they decided to have their way with me, was disconcerting to say the least.
Strange, that they should be my protectors one day and potential villains in the next.
He nodded to my ankles.
“You’re hurt. I have to apologize for my men. They can be a little rough in pursuing their duties.”
He was motioning to the marks on my shins from where the drones had fastened their clasps.
“It wasn’t your men that did it,” I said. “It was the drones.”
He crouched beside me and I shied back.
He reached into his pocket and came out with a small pastel blue vial the shape of a smooth clamshell.
The leader cracked it open and dipped a finger inside it.
He reached for the marks on my legs and I pulled away again.
“It’s a cream for friction burns,” he said. “It’s nothing dangerous.”
He rubbed it over his own skin to demonstrate.
“Sometimes the helmet or armor rubs and it can be sore something fierce.”
