Page 45 of Meteor Storm

He started to wobble away, holding his bleeding neck, and I quickly swiped the knife back up off the ground. Only now I had a gushing wound of my own. Tears stung my eyes. Frustrated tears. Tears from the adrenaline. Tears from pain I used to think I was good at handling.

I used the wall for balance and continued on, leaving streaks of blood along the metal.

I managed to get to a door that exited into a large space with high ceilings. There were more large containers stacked floor to rafters, and the smell of hot metal filled my nose. I recognized that smell. It was the same smell a ship had when its engines were warming up. Maybe, by sheer luck, I was getting somewhere.

But I was also getting lightheaded. My entire left leg was wet enough for the fabric of my dress to stick to my thigh and as soon as I looked down, I regretted it. I was bleeding far too much.

I heard a deep voice echo from behind me, using words I recognized, but didn’t understand.

“Thilar,” I panted.

What were the odds that he was close enough to hear me? Slim to none, but I was out of options and even more so out of my mind. My legs wouldn’t carry me much further, especially if I was wandering in the wrong direction. Perhaps I should have tried to get back to the cells. Maybe he was still down there, locked inside.

Then again, if I got out of my cell, he, of all people, could get out of his.

He promised he'd look for me in the games.

Somehow, despite everything, I wanted to believe he was looking for me now.

Stupid. Dangerous. It was the kind of foolish hope that got people killed.

But as my vision blurred and my knees threatened to buckle, I found myself clinging to it anyway.

"Thilar!" I called.

The sound came out weak and breathless. I could have been drawing a nozun to me. Or one of Pek-Tol's men. Or any of the countless monsters prowling the station.

I didn't care. I just wanted it to be him.

My legs finally started to give out. I stumbled against the wall as darkness crowded the edges of my vision.

I was about to just fall over and pray when I heard it.

"Penny!"

Relief hit me so hard my eyes stung.

It was like a dream. Not just because I was dizzy, but because I didn’t expect him to answer me. I whipped my head to the right to see Thilar skidding to a stop around the corner. He was dressed in the same strange suit as the other soldiers I saw outside my cell, but he didn’t dawn the mask. He had two blades in his hands, both painted with gore, and he had a ferocious look on his face until he noticed the way I was holding my side and slumping against the wall.

Suddenly, the blades disappeared, absorbed into his suit somehow like magic. He ran to me and I did everything in my power to keep my shit together, but inside, I was so relieved to see him. I was so damn thankful that if I was going to die of blood loss, I wouldn’t be alone in the dark bowels of that hell hole.

“You are wounded,” he stated.

I nodded. There was no covering up the truth. If I didn’t get help, I was going to bleed to death.

Thilar wasted no time. He crouched, gripping the hem of my dress and tearing a good portion of the fabric off. I didn’t even care that my already short dress was shorter now. When he stood, he wrapped the material around my waist and tied it painfully tight with the knot over my wound like a cork. I winced, fully knowing it was the only option we had.

I tried to take a step forward when a group of those same soldiers flooded the hangar.

“Nit tal!” one shouted at us, his voice deepened by the mask he wore over his nose and mouth.

Thilar turned and pointed as if to indicate something important. “Tur hosh kaal.”

The others nodded and started moving in that direction. When I tried to take another step, he slid an arm behind me, scooping me off the ground.

Under any other circumstances, I would have insisted I could walk on my own, but the moment I wasn’t holding myself up, the world tilted violently sideways.

My head fell back, barely able to stay upright. Thilar shifted me carefully until I rested against his shoulder, but I still couldn’t quite find my balance on him. I was all weight and weakness in his arms.