August nods, hanging his head.
I close my eyes and calculate, but I can’t think. I can’t count the weeks and months since we found Tucker with a Nahx dart in his spine. It feels like forever ago and yesterday. “S-s-summer?” I splutter. “It was summer? The end of summer?”
August reaches for me. I high-block his arm, hard enough that the crack of his armor echoes across the snow, and the pain of it zings up my arm to my head, blowing the truth up like a firework.
“You killed him, right? You killed the one who killed your girlfriend?” I’m on my feet, backing away.
Stop. Stop.
I look down at the indentation between us, where we curled up together. My brain empties itself of everything except the few bits of information that I need to put together like puzzle pieces. But I can’t make my thoughts obey me. I bend down and hold my head in my hands, moaning as the memory of Topher’s vengeance quest fills me like poison, like a hallucinogen. I feel like I might vomit.
“Have you been following me all this time?”
No. I don’t know.
“How can you not know!?”
He hisses as I turn and take two long strides in the snow, breaking into a run. I think I’m still going in the right direction, though it’s dark and I don’t know where we are. Going in the right direction doesn’t matter anymore, only that I run away from him. Barely conscious of his footsteps crunching in the snow after me, I smash my shins into a rock or something and fall face forward, landing hard on my elbows. I manage to crawl to my feet, blinded by tears, and stumble onward. I veer into the dark, and the ground drops out from under me. Falling, I think of Tucker in his grave.
I land facedown. My chin slams into something hard and I taste blood in my mouth. When I roll over, I feel pain shooting through my ribs. As I struggle to take a breath, I look up and see something dark falling toward me. This time I’m not going to resist, I tell myself. This time I’m going to let him kill me. But when my eyes focus, I see the shackles in his hand.
“No!” I kick out, connecting with his shoulder, knocking him off balance. “Don’t you dare!” I kick his hand, and the shackles fly off into the dark.
He hisses and growls as he leaps for me, and I scramble pathetically away. I can’t escape. He’s too fast, too strong, too determined. He lands on top of me, pinning my legs down.
I’m not even sure how it happens. All I hear is the ring of steel on leather. There is a flash of moonlight and star light on something metal, and my muscles move, coil up, and spring out, seemingly of their own volition. When stillness and silence return, we are locked together, pressing knives into each other’s throats. I’m vaguely aware that I drew first, though only by a millisecond. Somehow I am pushed back against a rock or tree, or ice, pushed back and held in place by a Nahx with a knife.
“Go ahead,” I say. “If that’s what you want.”
The plates on his face pulse, revealing a glimpse of the sharp spikes hidden beneath. He doesn’t move his knife. Neither do I. But he pulls one hand away, making signs so firmly they whistle in the cold night.
Look. Listen!
“How long have you known? How long have you known who I am? Who Tucker was?” I can feel the armor plates on his neck giving under the blade of my knife.
Listen. Please.
“You killed Tucker,” I say into the cloud of mist between us, though of course I know he knows. “He was running away. You could have let him get away.” I don’t even know how I can say this. If it had been the other way around, I would have chased Tucker’s killer until one or both of us collapsed from exhaustion. But I don’t need to chase him. I have him. I have my knife at his throat just like I planned the first moment I met him. If I had known then who he was, I would have done it.
He starts making signs, quickly but clearly, like he’s enunciating as to be sure I understand.
If you kill me, you die. You freeze.
“Maybe it would be worth it.”
I die fast. You die slow.
“I don’t care.”
He puts his hand on his head for a moment, then signs again, now taking his time, his fingers fluid, almost like a dance. But he growls as he signs.
You die fast. I die slow. He takes the knife from my throat and signs with both hands, incorporating the knife into the word somehow, giving it power, presenting it like a challenge as he makes the shape around my outstretched arm and the blade at his own throat. It’s a new word, one I’ve never seen before, but the meaning is clear enough.
Choose.
I’m paralyzed, noting that he doesn’t let go of his knife as his body relaxes out of its defensive stance. That’s because if I choose a fast death for me, he will make it happen. A fast death for me, and a slow, lonely, heartbroken death for him. How long would it take? Would he hurry it along somehow? And if I choose the other, would he let me put the knife through his neck, even though it would mean I freeze out here? I’ve been assuming he would never let me be the architect of my own death, that when it came to it, he would put a stop to any stupid, reckless impulses, but maybe that’s finally changed. Maybe he’s had enough of me, though perhaps not enough to stop doing my bidding, whatever it is.
Please, he signs.
“Please what?”
He lowers himself to his knees, slowly enough that I can keep the knife at his neck. Kneeling, he looks me as he tucks his own knife into a holster in his armor. In his long, mournful sigh, I almost hear another noise, like a whimper, as though he has overcome his muteness with a tiny vocalization, an expression of . . . what . . . surrender? Resignation? I half expect him to tell me I can just walk away. He holds his hands out at his sides for a moment, palms up, then signs.
Please let me give you a life for a life.
“Whose life?”
Your life. Please. Choose.
His hands fall back down to his knees and are still. His shoulders droop, his head tilts to the side. He looks tired, suddenly, exhausted.
“Why were you going to shackle me, before?”
He shrugs. My mind is broken.
Broken, like my arm, my ribs, like all the locks on all the doors in the apartment building. Like the world. Is there a thing left on Earth that isn’t broken? We were friends, August and I, for only a few hours, it seems. Now that’s broken too.
I pull my hand with the knife away from his throat and start talking, with a feeling that his words are actually coming out of my mouth. I might still find my way to the base if I killed him. But I don’t want to kill him. And one day I’ll have to tell Topher why I didn’t do it.
Maybe if he can explain it, I can let it go. “You were walking with her, the girl?” I ask. “Patrolling or hunting, whatever you do?”
He nods, not looking at me. I need to go on. I need to know about Tucker’s last minutes before I take another step of life without him.