#glicht

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The mudder laughed, a dry and humorless sound. It was then that Glicht recognized her gun. It was his gun. He saw with a glance over that Haavra recognized it, by the tightening at the corners of her eyes.

“I was hoping he was your friend,” said the mudder, a familiar woman with a round face and matted, blonde hair. “We found him spying on us. Not a bad technique; must have been following us for days before we noticed.”

Glicht looked at Lohak then, who met his gaze with a fair amount of guilt. He understood how stupid that had been, how much Glicht would have urged him to stay behind for his own safety. He wore a traveler’s duster, stained and dirty from use, and a collection of whitish scarves to keep away the chill.

Why had he done it? Why risk his life all over again, after everything that he and Glicht had done to protect it?

“Where did you get that weapon?” Haavra demanded.

Glicht stiffened, but the mudder glanced at the gun in question, incredulous. “That’s what you want to ask me?”

Haavra cocked her revolver. “Answer the delled question.”

The woman didn’t look at all concerned. Glicht remembered holding that man hostage at the inn, the way she’d shot him without remorse. His shoulders tightened, and he couldn’t help but eye the space between Lohak and what had once been his favorite weapon.

“She ain’t bluffing, Haavra,” he said.

“Neither am I.”

The woman laughed again, making Lohak visibly nervous. Glicht knew they were being surrounded. It wouldn’t be long until her friends reached the dead town and settled in around where they stood. There was some cover; the small stone walls between themselves and Lohak’s captor almost qualified, and there were the overgrown houses and trees behind them. He’d seen a few back doorways that they could use for a fast retreat. He only had six shots before needing to reload, and Haavra had brought her rifle. It could be done, if it needed to be. But what about Lohak?

“I stole it from him,” the woman answered, gesturing to Glicht. Haavra gave him a sharp look, blatant mistrust in her eyes. He was forced to nod, to concede the point before they distracted themselves with an argument.

“What do you want?” Glicht asked.

“We want you to take us to Slonden.”

He narrowed his eyes. Galetka wanted him to lead her men to Slonden? Likely for payback for Slonden’s betrayal at the MEQ site. But what made her think he and Haavra—

Haavra shot her in the head.

There was a ripple of gunfire then, and both Glicht and Haavra threw themselves to the ground on instinct alone. He glanced up to see that Lohak wasn’t standing; he’d done the same. Then he looked to where Haavra lay next to him behind the low wall.

“Why’d you do that?” he hissed. “If she’d shot Lohak—”

“She didn’t,” Haavra said, turning her head to eye him through the tall stalks of grass. “We ain’t leading them anywhere. Slonden’s mine.”

Her words shocked him. That’s what he’d said about Slonden, when the two of them had gone after him. That self-centered bullheadedness was what Haavra had argued against. It’s what had gotten him killed.

Her deep brown eyes had cold anger in them. She rolled away and stood, then made for the relative cover of one of the houses behind them, the rotted-away door that led into the mossy room centered by a clump of trees. A few cracks of gunfire after she vanished into the room told him that she’d found someone in there. They were too close already; the three of them had to run. Up the mountain, likely.

He pushed himself to his feet and quickly crossed the small fenced-in square to where Lohak laid on the other side. “Come with me,” he said, bending down to take Lohak’s arm.

There was a mess of blood seeping through his travel-stained duster, near the square center of his back. His face was contorted in a pained grimace.

Lohak had been shot. Glicht’s heart seized with a cold spike of fear.

“Khala’s face,” he swore. He heard another gunshot from above, near the camouflaged houses farther up the mountain, and slammed his knees into the soil to bend over Lohak. “Burning shadowed father of-! Dawn-”

Get him out of harm’s way. Be careful not to move the spine as much as possible—does he have a spine? I think he must. Be very careful!

The mountain was no longer their destination; that’s where the bullet had come from. They really were surrounded. He shoved his arms under Lohak and lifted with a strength that he was certain he didn’t usually have, and strode resolutely for the house Haavra had disappeared into. He only had to hope she’d cleared it out.

Don’t jostle him. Keep him as still as you possibly can. The man in the mountain is aiming another shot.

Glicht stepped to the side just as another crack sounded from above. He didn’t get hit, so Dawn’s advice must have been helpful. He navigated Lohak into the squat stone building to see Haavra at the opposite doorway, standing astride a dead mudder with a wide-brimmed hat that had fallen over half his face. He didn’t like it; with only two exits, it would be hard to defend. But neither could he carry Lohak through a bulletstorm with this kind of injury.

He set him down carefully in the corner with the lowest visibility, on a bed of moss behind a small bundle of thin, reedy trees.

“Okay,” Glicht said. He heard his own heartbeat thunder in his ears, his muscles tense with panic. “Lohak, you’ll be fine. Dawn’s here, right?”

“Right,” said Lohak, trying to brace his arms against the floor to sit up.

“No, don’t move. Can you do that? Can you breathe?”

“Yeah.”

“Good. Dawn, tell me what to do.”

Glicht, I know next to nothing about the anatomy of these people. You can’t expect-

“Dawn, by the grace of Khala’s shadowed asshole-“

“Who’s Dawn?” Haavra asked.

“Watch the exits,” he said, glancing back to her. “We don’t have a lot of time.”

“You think you can save him? His shell’s cracked, he’s lost a lot of blood.”

He turned around to face her more fully. “Yes, I do. Hold the room for a minute.”

A cloud of anger crossed her face, but it cleared and she nodded. “I’ll see what I can do, but we ain’t got forever.”

“I know.” He turned back to Lohak.

Well, at least stop the bleeding. Get his clothes off to work with the wound directly, but don’t move him.

Glicht didn’t pause to question it. The thing was a doctor, it was time to treat it like one. He took his knife from its sheath and tore into Lohak’s duster, tossing aside stained scarves and collecting the cleaner ones. He cut through Lohak’s shirt and pulled it aside, revealing a pool of hot red blood and a messy spiderweb of cracks. He pressed the scarves gently into the wound.

“Now you… see me with my… clothes off,” said Lohak. “Not how I wanted to…”

“You’ll be fine, Lohak. You leave it to me. Dawn-”

Listen, I was programmed to look after humans. I don’t know the first thing-

“Were you programmed to let a delled innocent man die?

Of course not! But that doesn’t mean-

“What about the nanites?”

I don’t want to give too many of yours away. They can’t replicate on their own.

“Try it.” He placed his free hand against Lohak’s cracked blue-violet shell.

Alright, I’ll spare what I can, but I won’t be able to help you manipulate your senses or reflexes anymore.

“You think I care?”

You might, once Galetka’s men reach you. Take care you don’t crack his shell with your pressure. Try molding the scarf into a tampon shape.

“A what?”

A- never mind. Be careful, but keep pressure on the wound to stop the bleeding.

“Are they working?”

Give me some time, Glicht. Keep your hand on his shell for a moment longer. I’m going to do everything in my power, alright? But I’m flying blind here and I can’t make any guarantees.

He actually saw them this time, for the first time since Dawn had thrown them onto him in the cave beneath the desert. Nanites flowed like a thin, silvery, glistening liquid from his hand, spreading out and disappearing into Lohak’s cracked shell.

“What,” Haavra said, “in the darkest depths of Khala’s ass…”

“Nanites,” Glicht answered without looking up. “Those machines I have. Watch the exits, they’ll be here any moment.”

“Some reason, I never really believed you.”

“You believed me enough to blackmail me.”

“I believed what you could do, not why you could do it.”

He heard a shuffle from outside and looked up abruptly. Haavra reflexively checked the doorway to the avenue, then fired a shot. How many had that been from her? He hadn’t seen her reload.

I’ve sent as many nanites as you can spare, but I can’t promise anything.

“But you’ll do what you can.”

“What?” said Haavra.

I will. It’s out of your hands. You need to help Haavra.

“I ain’t leavin’ him.”

You have to stand up and fight. I’m a doctor, Glicht. You know I don’t want you to be violent, and I don’t want you to get hurt. But even I recognize that you’ll need to shoot your way out of this, and you won’t be able to do that from Lohak’s side. There’s no way you can help his odds. You have to trust me.

“I was…” Lohak grunted. “I was trying to warn you.”

“This ain’t the time.”

“About Galetka’s mudders… got caught before I could…”

“This ain’t the time. Dawn’s got you, and I’ve got to go shoot some guys.”

“Dawn’s got me? Am I going to start hearing it?”

I’m not going to access his brain. Tell him I’m going to take the bullet out. I don’t know the first thing about his pain receptors and we don’t have the time to figure it out, so it will hurt. A lot.

Glicht gritted his teeth and put his hand over Lohak’s, where it gripped into the mossy dirt. “No, saves that right for me. Lohak, Dawn says it has to take the bullet out. Says it’ll hurt like the sun’s own torment, but it’ll keep you from dying.”

“Khala’s shadowed asshole,” Lohak swore, which made Glicht smile despite everything.

“Was your idea to follow me. You’re in good hands.” His heart beat rapidly in his ears; there was just something immeasurably wrong about leaving him there. “I’ve got to get us a way out of here.”

“I—might start screaming, is that alright?”

“No harm in it, they already know where we are.”

“Okay. Good. I’ll—be fine. Now go shoot the guys.”

Glicht nodded and stood, then turned toward Haavra. She nodded toward the far wall and spoke quietly.

“Heard someone goin’ down the alley. We’ve only got a few moments.”

“Where are they?”

“Two in the street, comin’ from either side, one approaching from the front. The one in the alley’s heading around back, and I heard a rifle shot from farther up the mountain.”

“As did I. Back first?”

Haavra took the rifle from her back. “Draw the rifle’s fire and I’ll take him out.”

“Ready.”

“Ready.”

He turned and headed out the back door without hesitating a moment longer. He dove to the side elbow-first and managed to surprise the attacker waiting there; he heard a crack from the mountainside and a near-simultaneous thwack of a bullet hitting the stone wall by the door, rustling the vine leaves. He had to stay in motion, in sight of the rifleman, and he had to move fast before the folks in the avenue could get too close to Lohak. Glicht tangled his arms in the attacker’s, found the man’s gun and threw it aside.

Lohak screamed then. It wasn’t a particularly special scream; Glicht had heard a fair amount of them in his day, and Lohak’s was about average for the shell ones. But because it was Lohak—because what Glicht heard was a scream of pain, and it was unquestionably in Lohak’s voice—it speared into his heart the way none of the others ever had. He shoved his weapon in between himself and the attacker and pulled the trigger with no regard to his own proximity to the blowback.

He felt a jolt white-hot on his stomach, but the mudder doubled over and collapsed to the grassy floor. A second crack of gunfire made him duck, and he glanced over to Haavra’s setup, where she had the barrel of her rifle resting on one of the short walls. He saw her shoulders relax slightly, a rise in the corner of her mouth. She’d struck the rifleman.

Lohak screamed again and Glicht went tense. “He alright?” he had to ask.

It does pain me to cause anyone suffering, said Dawn. I’m moving as quickly as I can.

Glicht nodded. “Front,” he called to Haavra, and turned to rush through the back opening of the next house over. There were no trees in this one, but there was another series of indecipherable symbols carved into the wall. He didn’t hesitate long enough to allow Dawn to read them. He put his back against the wall by the open doorway and glanced out.

The one on the left had dark brown skin and a well-kept shotgun, and he couldn’t see the one on the right. They might have been hugging the walls, to quickly turn into the doorway behind which Lohak was hiding. He had to take them out before they could get close enough. The one on the left likely saw him peeking out, so he had to take him out first.

What Haavra had said she’d seen in the alley across the avenue was one attacker, approaching from the front. She’d been mistaken. It was two mudders, carrying a wooden box between them. It was possible Glicht was reading too much into it, but it seemed to him that that box was big enough to hold that wheel that Dawn had called a generator. If they had the EMP hooked up to it, then it was not only Glicht’s life on the line, but Lohak’s as well.

He dove out of the doorway and shot to his left before he even had the chance to aim, hoping to put the shotgunner on defense as quickly as possible. Then he aimed for and shot one of the two carrying the box, though they were both hunched over and attempting to use the trees as cover. He kept running until he reached one of the buildings across the way, and before he took shelter, he was able to glance over and see a woman with stringy red hair duck into the house where Lohak was hiding.

He tensed at the sound of gunshots, where he stood in the corner of this centuries-old home.

Lohak wasn’t struck, said Dawn.

Glicht let out a breath.

You do care for him a lot, don’t you? It was phrased more as an observation than a question.

“He’s a better man than me. He don’t deserve to die like this.”

If he does, it wouldn’t be your fault.

His grip tightened on his revolver. “Don’t talk to me like that. Don’t think you know me.”

I have a direct connection with your brain. If I don’t know you, then who does?

There was a footstep directly outside the house he was hiding in. Reflexively, Glicht cocked his gun, turned into the doorway, and fired on the approaching mudder.

The shotgunner fired at the same time. His aim was a little wide, but Glicht felt the pierce of shot in his arm. Glicht’s aim, however, was perfect, and the mudder collapsed on the spot.

Damn it, Glicht, try not to get injured! You only have so many nanites left, and they’re already busy trying to keep you alive.

Glicht hesitated at the sight of the dead man. He’d shot him square between the eyes. The way the bones of the man’s face contorted, rippling unnaturally out from the impact, was strikingly familiar. Something crept up his spine at the sight of it, an uncomfortable feeling that seemed almost to hollow out his heart.

Guilt? But these people were trying to kill him. They were trying to kill Lohak.

Like he’d been trying to kill Slonden. No—that was different, wasn’t it? Glicht ripped his gaze away from the dead man and locked it onto the box out in the forested avenue. They’d set it on the ground. The mudder he’d shot was struggling to stand, and the second one hurried to slide the top of the box away.

He strode toward her. He had two shots left, but he’d try not to need them. She was a short, burly woman, and when she saw him approaching from between the thin trees, she reached into the box. He saw the top rim of a copper wheel.

The generator? Dawn asked, surprised.

Lohak!

He rushed the rest of the way and tackled her to the ground, grunting as the wound in his arm flared in pain. He tried to reach into the box, but she grappled his pained arm and rolled him away from it. What followed was doubtless a fight, an oddly quiet one, a wrestle where they each tried to keep their necks safe from the other’s hands and forearms.

They wrenched to the side again and came in contact with a mossy stone wall. He glanced up into the quiet forest and saw Haavra standing in the doorway, watching him between the trees.

“Haavra,” he called. “The EMP!”

He created enough of an opening for the woman to grab his head and shove it against the wall. The jolt disoriented him, sending waves of dull pain through his head and down into his shoulders. He pulled out of her grip by headbutting her, and tried to pull their grapple away from the wall. Unfortunately, that put him underneath her, and she broke through his grip to lean a forearm onto his throat. He felt something crush beneath her arm and gasped uselessly for breath.

A gunshot tore from somewhere behind him, and he saw the woman’s green-brown eyes haze over in shock, then illucidity, as pools of blood crawled down her forehead and dripped onto Glicht’s mask, beading through into his left eye. Her strength gave out and she collapsed onto him.

He forced himself to take a deep breath, though it tore like serrated knives through his throat, then shoved her off of him and pushed himself to his feet. The world spun a little and he coughed, leaning over to steady himself against his own knees, rubbing the blood from his eye.

That was all of them, wasn’t it? They did it. He and Haavra had killed them all. Galetka had hired a team of kidnappers to take out two experienced killers, and they hadn’t stood a chance. He saw, for a moment, the dark-skinned shotgunner he’d shot in the face, the way his bones had shattered, rearranged themsleves in a familiar way.

I can’t get to the gunshot wound right now, but I can get your windpipe for you.

Glicht nodded. Breathing was hard enough, he could only imagine how much it would hurt to speak.

He felt hands on his shoulders then, and someone lifted him back upright. He blinked at Haavra, whose face had its usual stoicism, but he could see something in her eyes. It looked like anger. Was she angry at him for running into the avenue fight without having outlined a plan? If-

She ripped the mask off of him. He felt himself locked in place as she stared at him, inspecting his face from up close. The anger only grew in her gaze, piercing through her calculated features, as she recognized him.

How had she known? How could she have guessed?

Her punch landed square on his cheek and forced him back a few steps. His heel hit the dead woman behind him and he spilled to the floor, hitting his back against a small bundle of trees, his legs tangled in the body’s clothing and limbs.

“Haavra,” he said. It surprised him that it didn’t hurt to say, and it no longer hurt to breathe; Dawn had already healed his throat. He also noticed that it was his voice, not Lake’s. He thought back through the fight and realized that his voice hadn’t been Lake’s for a while now. Since he’d given his spare nanites to Lohak.

“You lied to me,” she said. She didn’t need to raise her voice for it to be powerful, filling the space left behind in the wake of the gunfight. “You gave me a fake name. After everything we’ve been through together, you couldn’t trust me.”

“That ain’t it.” He leaned heavily against the tree as he pulled himself to his feet again. “That ain’t it, Haavra. I trust you like I trust my own hands.”

“Why else would you lie to me? Why else try to make me hate you?”

“It weren’t about you, it-”

“It was about you?”

“Yes.” He met her gaze, then gestured out at the corpse-strewn forest. Even the one on the other side of the box, the one he’d only shot in the leg, was dead now. Haavra must have seen to him. “I knew this’d happen again. I knew we’d be outnumbered, and my stupidity would near get us killed.”

“I wasn’t anywhere near killed,” Haavra said, “and it ain’t stupidity to do what’s right.”

He paused. 'What’s right'? None of this was what was right, wasn’t it?

Lohak’s body is rejecting the nanites, Dawn said urgently. Get back in there now and take them back from him!

His eyes flicked to the house where Lohak was hiding. “I gotta help Lohak,” he said, and pushed past her to head toward the house.

She grabbed his arm. “I ain’t finished-”