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The switch for the solar panels?
Just as he was leaning down to figure out the answer, the tiny light blared into deafening sound.
“Control to Bleeding Heart, do you copy?”
Once his heart had settled, he groped for the radio receiver, a sturdy, fist-sized microphone on one of those long and curly wires. “God, Sandy! You scared me half to death!”
“Hello, my little hiking buddy! I’ve been radioing in for the last hour. Glad you made it in one piece.”
“Barely.”
“That’s the spirit!” There came the rustling of paper over the speaker. “Now, just a few questions before you settle in. Did you get bitten by a snake?”
“What? No. Why?”
“Any crippling heatstroke or hypothermia?”
“Not that I’m aware of.”
“And did you projectile vomit or crap yourself at any point from eating poisonous berries or drinking fouled water?”
“This . . . can’t be a standard checklist?”
“Nope, just tallying up the wagers from the control room.”
Luca stared at the dark microphone. “You took bets on whether I’d get injured?”
“Of course not! That’d be super inappropriate,” she said, alongside the sound of coins being clanged. “And welcome aboard! What do you think of your new digs?”
He looked around, his eyes struggling to stay open. He was exhausted, and thirsty, and sore, and overwhelmed. There was a single shard of moonlight creeping through the open door, but that was it. “It’s pitch black in here.”
“That’ll be the boards. It stops the birds flying into the glass over spring.”
“Is there a light switch in this place?”
“I assume so.”
Luca waited for an answer that never came. “Where, Sandy?”
“How should I know? You’re the one standing there.”
Luca rubbed his face with one hand and reached blindly for the wall with another.
He yelped at the near-immediate jab of some kind of spike.
A rogue corkboard pin?
A stray splinter?
It was impossible to tell.
And you know what? It didn’t matter. Because the only point in finding a light would be staying awake. And right now, none of his limbs would support that plan.
With every step of the mountain now weighing on his eyelids, Luca mumbled a farewell to Sandy, staggered around until he found something bed shaped in the gloom, and was asleep before his head hit the pillow.
Luca woke to something that was so close to perfect.
The face was furry. Salt and pepper—or more accurately, cinnamon sugar, given it was mostly red. The eyes were golden brown, like sparkling topaz. And the gaze suggested a beast who wanted to leap on top of Luca and start nibbling.
