Such a good size for them both

I’m doing it, folks. I’ve officially decided to pay money for an editor for this dumb story. Mostly just to see what the editing process is like, but also because I just want to treat myself? (Yeah, I have a weird definition of “treat”.)

I’ll keep yall posted.

This is the end of the “open beta”, though. There’s still probably one more chapter left, and it’s a doozy, but I figure this is a good enough cliffhanger for now.

PART 2

They sat like that for a few long, long minutes before Gray’s tears dried and she felt empty and stiff.

“How did they find out?” Rice asked quietly, thumb stroking her back.

She didn’t say anything for a while because it still felt so far away, now, and if she wasn’t careful then she could almost start to feel like it had never happened at all. Part of her wanted to know what the board said. She checked her watch, had to remind herself that no one was coming to relieve her of her post. This was no post. There was no relief. She shivered.

“Let’s get away from him.” Gray swallowed and looked over to the dead man.

Rice nodded and stood up.

“We’ll walk.”

They walked. In what direction, Gray wasn’t sure, but she told him how it all went down. How he had missed his tracks up on the ridge, how they knew the wound he’d inflicted. How they found his single shell casing.

Then she told him about Kessler, the corpsman from all those months before, and about Wesson beating her. Rice stopped and knelt.

“You never told me you cracked a rib,” he scowled, jerking up her shirt to get a look at the purple, heel-shaped bruise for himself .

Gray winced hard as he gingerly felt the swelling with his fingertips. “It wasn’t this bad the first time.”

“Here.” The giant reached into a pouch at his belt and produced a small pink pill, which he set down on a flat rock. With his tac knife he carefully cut it in half, and handed her both.

“Take one now, the other at sundown.”

“Where are we going?”

“Just follow me. I’ll walk slow.”

They continued. For hours, it seemed like, though at least the pill had kicked in. Rice let Gray take sips of water from the mouthpiece on his shoulder strap, and he let her take his kaffiyeh when they baked in the afternoon sun.

When back out in the open, a pair of wastelanders came up on the horizon at a beating gallop, and the two had to fling themselves behind a rock and some brush to keep from being seen. Gray suspected that the Anak had to do that a lot out here.

Eventually, as the afternoon wore on, Gray began to recognize where they were.

It was the same dry riverbed, the same road where they had planned their ambush. As they came up on the ridge, the view was unmistakable. And there, about 150 yards down the slope, was where the charges had gone off. The pave-mint was cracked and buckled, blackened from char and gunpowder. The place had been picked over, but there were still pieces of metal flung this way and that, the ground still littered with shells.

Gray looked to the giant. “Why are we here?”

His face was harder than it was before, and he scowled deeply before setting off down the embankment. “C’mon.”

She followed for the sheer morbid curiosity of it. The human had no idea what Rice had in mind to show her here of all places, but she remembered Wesson. Maybe he did see something.

They picked their way close to where the charges had been placed, and Rice lit a smokestick as he simply stood and surveyed the scene, distantly rueful. He’d done this before, hadn’t he? Here? He looked over the old wreckage as if he’d been back to visit several times before.

“Look. What do you see?”

Gray scanned the ground. What was she looking for?

“I see junk,” she murmured.

“No. Look.”

And that’s when she saw it.

Peeking out from the sand beside a rock was something round and sun-bleached. As she stepped closer, Gray realized that it was a skull.

A human skull.

Quickly she fell to her knees in the dirt and pulled it up to brush it off.

Something in her still stung from earlier and Gray turned to face him with narrow eyes, emboldened by the pill he’d given her.

“There was a fight here a month ago. Why wouldn’t there be bones?”

“You’re angry, not stupid,” he said with that kind of authority he reserved for his own kind. “Think, Gray. You corpsmen weren’t anywhere near the road. My men were here. I’m not fuckin’ lying to you.”

Grudgingly, she remembered and frowned. When she turned and opened her mouth to say something, Rice spoke from where he now sat on a boulder, looking uncharacteristically tired. She noticed a spray of old blood on the rock behind his calf.

“Those explosives killed 27 humans that night. That’s all we had in those transports. You thought it was weapons, or scrap metal, or something else that would have been of use to you, but all you did was blow up a few dozen people instead. That old man only got it half-right: we don’t literally eat humans, Gray, we farm you for genes. Food we can get anywhere; but it’s good genes that keep us alive. The masters we’re all made from were damaged a long time ago.”

Gray felt like the wind had been knocked from her, again. She could only imagine so much, think so much. But maybe it was better this way; maybe it was all exactly as simple as he made it out to be. What was a gene, anyway? She knew that they had something to do with why children looked like their parents, and could inherit things from them like a good build or bad skin. But he was talking about something else, something much more esoteric. Still, part of what he was saying didn’t quite make sense to her.

“I thought clones didn’t have to worry about any of that?”

“Genes mutate, degrade over time. I know it’s hard for you to understand, but they’re like the Corps manual. Every time one of us is made, we get our own manual, written by hand, copied from a copy of a copy. I’m the 402nd copy of a human man who was once named Elliot Anders Rice. He died in 2067 at the age of 44, in an Algo pairing facility. He was one of the eight original humans that the Algo cloned us all from. All us ‘Naks.”

Gray gently returned the broken skull to the soil, and a blustery wind picked up from the south. She watched it kick up clouds of dust, scatter dry leaves and bits of scorched cloth. A small lizard darted to the top of a rock to give a dominance display.

“Were you… gonna pair with me?” she asked.

Rice smiled bitterly as he flicked some ash into the wind. “No. And we don’t get to pick them anyway… you’re matched to a genetic line. And then sent to to a facility to be used to administer gene therapy for a few years. You’re fed, watered, clothed, just like the Corps. But it’s not a life. I wouldn’t do that to you.”

“Is it better than being in the Corps?”

The enormous man looked at her, holding her gaze as he took a last long drag of his smoke before tossing it away.

“Nothing’s better than anything else here,” he said quietly. “’Nak or human, free or bound. Only way out is to get out.”

Emotion welled up in her as she decided he was, indeed, telling the truth, and had been the whole time. Part of her wanted to cross the small distance to bury her face in his side and be received by his embrace, but it seemed naive and childish. So she hugged herself instead.

“Rice, I’m sorry about what I said… I… Earning my freedom meant so much to me, I’d do anything to get it.” Gray swallowed. “I thought it was real.”

He looked uncomfortable with those words hanging in the air. “It is real. Just not in the Southland.”

“Then I have to leave.”

For the first time since they met, she seemed to catch him truly off-guard, and he looked at her with something that wasn’t even there when she had asked him to kill her.

“Fuckin’… what? And go where?”

“Anywhere.” Gray stood up. “And you’re coming with me.”

“No.”

“You want to stay here? You want to keep fighting over nothing? Killing your own over nothing? You’re a bond too, you know.”

He stood and let the silence crackle between them.

A very harsh gust kicked up suddenly, and she shielded her eyes from the blowing dust. When she opened them again, she noticed dark clouds on the southern horizon.

The rains.

“I guess summer’s over,” Gray murmured, staring at the clouds. They looked like they were bubbling up from the earth in the far distance. That’s how they always came, every year. Ominously.

Rice was quiet though, quiet and still, and when she looked up she saw his cutting eyes were fixed not to the south, but to the east, towards the hills. It quickly became obvious what he was staring at: high in the air and slowly arcing down toward the ground on a thread of smoke, was the bright green light of a signal flare. Her heart skipped a beat.

“Fox,” Gray whispered.

Rice cursed loudly and had a warlike look about him, like he’d been roused from a daze.

“What’s going on?” she demanded. “You know, don’t you?”

“They weren’t supposed to start yet!” the giant growled at the sight. “I was supposed to have 24 hours!”

“24 hours? Rice what the f—!“

“I don’t plan attacks, Gray, I see them through. Last night I was told Camp Fox had 24 hours. Then you happened, and I saw an opportunity to make it look like brigs got to you before we did. I would have you on the road and be back in time for… the offensive. But it looks like they want Fox wiped off the map before it starts raining.”

Fighting in the mud and the rain was miserable, and it made guns jam up faster.

“I was going to tell you.”

He grabbed her by the arm with one massive hand and dragged her into something resembling a sprint. It didn’t take long for the little human to stumble on the uneven ground, and Rice only slowed just enough to hoist her up onto his back for her to cling to him and his ruck. Then he took off at a breakneck pace through the rocks.

The corpsman hadn’t said anything more, but when they were underway he must’ve sensed what she wanted to ask.

“320 brownbands,” he said, panting. “Against 1100 corpsmen.”

Rice slowed to a jog, then stopped altogether. Gray wondered if he was winded, but the way he rested his hands on his knees painted a different picture.

“I tried to stop it,” he muttered. “I fucking tried, Gray, you have to believe me. I over-reported your numbers, your battle readiness… But someone else must have reported the real intel from under me. Another Rice.”

Another Rice.

“This is my section!” he continued, yelling in the direction of the flare, which was now being carried by the winds. “And I have another five goddamn years here!”

She slipped off and Gray looked to him, then to the hills, and took off at her own jog.

“Where are you going?” he snapped.

“I need to see it,” she called. “One last time!”

This is… strangely wholesome

That last one gives a whole new meaning to barebacking…

I kind of freakin love this.

@olo Argh it was so hard. I didn’t want to dwell too much on the emotional turmoil because it’s supposed to be the most jarring series of events in the story, and yet… Gray’s world is being ripped away from her forever.

The line with Wesson serves to both establish something like that, and also help set up the other, more accurate version of the revelation that happens soon after this. For all we know, Wesson is told the soylent story, and it serves to explain what he saw in the wreckage of that battle. The soylent story is all the Corps’s officers need to know, after all, and even Gray has a difficult time understanding the real form of “cannibalism” that actually takes place. Rice explains it in very simple terms in pt 2 but the technology is way beyond anything she’s ever known, and likely anyone other than brass too.

Pureed is right!

CHAPTER 15

(Well, most of it.)

Jesus, this was very hard to write. It might be the most intense chapter so far. Still have a bit to go, but this was a decent stopping point and I thought I’d share.

---

She heard them coming up the canyon long before she saw them: a group of five. Four of them were armed, and one of them was carrying an empty duffel bag. They were surprised to see her sitting on a rock in the shade across from Avers’ body, with a smokestick taken from one of the brigs hanging from her mouth.

“Holy shit!” one of the eighth-years remarked. “You’re alive, Gray?”

Gray had pocketed a few things from the dead men worth gambling away, including a nicer tac knife. She watched the group of corpsmen as they kicked at the bodies to get a better look at the faces.

“My gun could shoot more bullets than theirs,” she panned. “Basic fucking math.”

Two of the armed corpsmen searched the brgs while the other two scaled the rock fall to have a look around above. Torres glanced back at Avers, the poor fucker. Then Torres set her pack down and got a gulp of water from her canteen before producing a pair of folding shovels. She handed one to Gray.

“Y’know what they say about F circuit,” Torres said as she began moving dirt. “The F stands for “fuck you”.”

Ah yes, that old joke. Gray snubbed out the last of her smoke, pocketed it, and got to work helping dig a shallow grave for her comrade.

One of the corpsmen who was busy examining a brig turned and made eye contact with Torres.

“Hey, check this out. This is a pretty nasty hole. Big.”

Gray took a glance at the gore from where she stood. The white of his ribs was visible in among the red and purple. She swallowed, looked at her boots. “Kicker can do that too, you know.”

Torres stopped and went to get a look for herself. She poked at the dead brig with the end of her shovel, moving his arm away from the wound on his side.

“’Nak lead if I ever saw it.” She turned back to the seventh-year sentry. “Gray, what happened over here, exactly?”

She shrugged stiffly. “They ambushed me and I made ‘em regret it.”

“One of these men was killed by a 'Nak.”

Gray shrugged again.

“You don’t seem bothered by that.”

Fuck off!

“Yeah, I’m alive thanks to that bullet. Kinda glad I got the help.”

Torres frowned deeply. “Alright, guys, hurry up, help us dig. There might be a ‘Nak nearby and he’s not invited to this funeral.”

* * *

The remnants of water clung to her backside as Gray stood in the shower stall, eyes screwed shut as she held onto the arched neck of the shower head. A rip in the tent canvas threw a long needle of light along her shoulder, which she felt as heat. More often it was used when someone wanted an eyeful of wet skin.

She’d spent two minutes on water, but fifteen minutes in the stall and was already drip-dry by the time she was ready to leave. The corpsman was busy trying to put Rice’s face out of her mind, trying to forget that she’d ever met him. And as she tired, she was realized that he’d done something for her. She didn’t quite understand what it was, but something about her was very different now than before. And that made trying to forget him all the more important.

She whispered a swear and grabbed a towel to dry off.

Later, Gray went to the privacy of her toon tent to look over what she’d lifted from the dead man. The knife, the smokesticks. They were worth something, she knew that, but how much? What might Craft give her for it? A few books, at least. Maybe he’d keep an eye out for a nicer gun.

The tent flap was suddenly pulled aside, and outside stood Torres of all people. Stout and solid, Gray didn’t want to just tell her to go away, especially because of the look in her eye.

“’Cap wants to see you.”

“You can tell him I’ll be right there to fill out the debrief sheet.”

“Ain’t that. He wants you now.”

Heat rose to Gray’s face—she knew she was in trouble. Or that Wesson wanted to act like she was in trouble.

Maybe he wants to punish you for surviving that.

Gray mustered her strength and headed out, passing another toon tent, a latrine, and the quad, before coming to Wesson’s square little office made of canvas. She took a deep breath before stopping inside, needing to gather her wits. The promo bastard had something up his sleeve, she knew it. Glancing behind her to see Torres stand, watching from the other side of the quad, was all the evidence she needed.

“Have a seat, Gray,” came that voice of his, commanding and strained.

She did, slowly. What was it going to be this time?

“Torres says you fired your gun, corpsman…”

He spoke like he didn’t know who she was, and between him and her pounding heart she began to grow confused and frustrated.

“Of course I did. I took on three fucking brigs. Was I not supposed to defend myself?”

Wesson chuckled, and behind her someone entered the tent. He waved them in, and it was Torres again, with Gray’s pair of Corps-issued weapons. Torres must’ve slipped into her tent and grabbed them just now, something that would normally get you beat up. But not this time—this was an officer’s errand.

“Do a bullet count,” Wesson ordered, still not having made eye contact with Gray yet.

The seventh-year just sat in her uncomfortable chair, watching the eighth-year in stiff silence as she slipped the magazines out of their respective guns and proceeded to empty them out onto the great wooden desk for counting.

“Sider fired six times,” Torres said. “And kicker fired eight, sir.”

Gray narrowed her eyes and in a mocking voice said: “_Forty-_eight, sir. She must not have seen the two empty mags sitting on my cot waiting to be packed again.”

“Thank you Torres, that’ll be all. She and I need to talk alone.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Torres and Dunn found thirty-nine of your shells out there,” he said once she’d gone.

Gray swallowed, feeling warm under hr shirt collar. To illustrate this, he produced one of the precious little sleeves of brass and set it on the desk.

“And one of these, about 150 yards away.”

Another, altogether different shell was then stood up beside the first: it was several times larger, with a jagged-looking taper in the middle. Gray knew that it was also heavy.

She studied the pair of shells, glancing from one to the other. “There’s ‘Nak casings everywhere in these hills… sir.”

There was no way that what she thought was happening was happening. It wasn’t possible. What case was he going to try and build based on one shell?

Wesson rubbed his chin, still not looking her in the eye. Why didn’t he? Look at me while you do this, you goddamn bastard.

“It was fresh,” he said carefully. “Not a grain of sand in it.”

And then he paused. Gray possibly stopped breathing as he did.

“Know what else was fresh? His prints up on the ridge.”

She tensed as if hit with the pheromone of several scenting giants. Her blood ran like cool water, and all she could think about all of a sudden was his hands on her back, on her breasts, between her legs, and she was coming, coming—

“What are you trying to say, Wesson?”

“I just want to know what happened.”

“I was out there trying to survive the fucking suicide mission you sent me on. I wasn’t making friends, if that’s what you’re asking.”

Wesson turned to swat at the heavy canvas behind him and call through the fabric: “You can come in now, Kessler.”

Kessler.

This was about the moment that Gray’s stomach felt like it dropped to the floor because it all made sense. This was all coming back to finally haunt her.

The young man looked intense when he came in, at once both afraid and angry. Burke never knew about what had happened that evening before the ambush, but Wesson did.

“Holy shit,” was all Gray could stammer.

Wesson said to Torres: “Go get the Commander, please.” And to Kessler: “You, tell me again.”

“There was a ‘Nak with her that day. I remember him… h-he was on top of her. They thought no one was around.”

“On top of her.”

On top of me.

“Y-yes, sir. When I… attacked, he was on top of her.”

“On top like what? Was he trying to kill Gray?”

“No, sir. I don’t know what he w-was doing, sir.” Kessler swallowed. “But she lied, sir. She lied to Burke’s face. She said the ‘Nak was a dog. I knew what I saw. I never forgot.”

Wesson stood up and began to pace.

“What did you tell him?” he asked Gray.

Gray’s mouth was open and it felt like she’d been tied to the chair. Not a sound came out.

Wesson exploded, kicking her to the floor in the rib she’d injured all those weeks ago, and the seventh-year cried out in pain. She hit the floorboards with a hard thud, gasping.

“What did you tell him, Gray?”

He stepped over to her and grabbed her by the collar.

“You traded something for your life, corpsman! Now what was it?”

Wesson shook her or maybe she was shaking or maybe both were happening. Barely recognizing the sound of her own voice as she struggled to say something—anything, idiot!—and with a horrified wheeze, a few words were dragged out.

“We f… f-fucked.”

Gray had no idea if she’d just saved or damned herself to more torture than she could possibly imagine. But the fact was that a lie hadn’t materialized. All she could speak was the truth.

“That’ll be all, Kessler,” Wesson growled from where he was crouched over her like a fox with a vole.

“Sir—”

“I said, that will be all!”

When he was gone, Wesson let her go, but only in time for his hand to go sailing across her face hard enough for blood to spatter.

“You fucking whore,” the captain hissed. “I thought I knew you, Gray. I thought I knew you. You wanted nothing but that freeman’s mark, and you’d be the good corpsman to get one. But now, now…"

Gray lay there on the floor and clutched her side, the pain almost as bad as it had been in the beginning, and all she could take were quick, shallow breaths. It made it hard to think.

But Wesson continued without her. “And you used me, didn’t you? Played me like a fucking fool, getting me to schedule you for all those solitary posts. And all so you could commit treason. Unless…” He paused to take a few rough breaths through flared nostrils, and still all Gray could manage was a wheeze. “It was rape?”

Gray shut her eyes tight, not wanting to even think about answering this question. She focused on trying to breathe.

“Tell me he forced you, Gray. Tell me he put his gigantic hands on you and shoved you to the ground.”

She panted wordlessly, and Wesson stood up again. He watched as she began pulling herself back up into her chair.

“So you’re just a fucking whore,” Wesson whispered. “For years I stuck out my neck for you. I felt bad for you.” His flushed face drew close, and he grabbed her by the chin. “You barely knew how to suck a cock when we first met. You were what, seventeen? New to Fox after spending that first year getting your ass kicked at Camp Jay.”

Wesson drew even closer, and he spoke with a choked, hushed voice.

“What does he have that I don’t, huh? What’s he got on me?"

Gray was seated again, moving carefully as she tried to sit upright in the chair. Her hair was in her eyes but that was fine because there was no sitting up when she hurt this much and no looking him in the eye.

“A… backbone…”

There was a flash in his eye, brief but unmistakable, before he lifted his leg and kicked her again. This time she went tumbling across the floor along with the chair.

While Gray was busy trying to breathe steadily and keep herself from vomiting, Hitch had stormed in with a pair of armed ninth-years in tow. It took a few seconds for her to be able to sense the world outside of that pain.

“Get her to the med tent. We’ll keep her there until she can be picked up.”

“Picked up? But s-sir this is treason. She… she…”

“Captain Rhyd Wesson, it’s time you learned what retraining is.”

* * *

The captain’s liquor had tasted so sweet on her lips, and she’d fallen so neatly into that silky stupor that she was gone before she knew it. The pain went away, it seemed, and Gray was at least able to take deep breaths. She couldn’t quite see straight, but that was fine, she wanted to sleep, anyway.

Where was she? The cot didn’t belong to her, and how did it get so clean?

“A couple morph should do the trick,” a shadowy figure said.

“Jesus, Bauer, we’re not trying to kill her.”

“Alright, just one morph, then.”

Gray opened her mouth to speak, but found it very dry. “Wh… ere am I?”

“Shit, she’s awake.”

“Did the commander say she wasn’t allowed to remember this?”

“Well, no. But it would sure as hell make our job easier.”

“…W-what’s going… going on?”

The pair turned to her, and Gray could barely keep her eyes open to see them through the haze. “Whatever it is, it’s between you and Hitch,” one of them said. “I’m just here to medicate.”

Something small and chalky was stuck into her mouth, then, and she struggled with it for a few seconds. Then a few beats later and Gray fell into a dead sleep.

* * *

The next thing Gray knew for sure was happening was being woken up from a tent somewhere, filled with several unwashed bodies. Her hands were bound in front of her, there was a length of fabric tied around her head as a gag, and some kind of bag over her head prevented her from seeing anything. She felt woozy and hoped that she wouldn’t puke, or it would have nowhere to go.

“Up, up, everyone up,” came a voice. “We leave for the trade-off point in twenty minutes.”

There was groaning and shuffling, all of it sad.

Gray still sat on the hard ground, feeling stiff and tender as she pieced together that she, too, was to get up. She tried and failed, not quite finding her balance yet.

“You too,” said the same voice, now much closer. The seventh-year jumped when a big hand grabbed her by the arm to hoist her up and out of the tent. And it added in a very low voice: “Traitor.”

It all came back to her, now—Wesson, the shell casings, the beating—and the nausea roiling her stomach redoubled. She swallowed bile as black fear overcame her, and tried to speak: I’m not a traitor! I didn’t tell him anything he didn’t already know!

But all that came out was muffled grunts.

Outside, she was shoved and herded and instructed to stand still for a while, and she listened through the pounding in her head, the pounding in her chest, to the sounds going on around her. Orienting herself was almost impossible, but she acted like her life depended on it.

Nearby there was shuffling, the gathering of rope, the saddling of horses. A man barked orders at someone, and in the meantime she heard tack and leathers in several places to her left, and hushed murmurs to her right. In the distance were the sounds of camp—she was not far, and the idea of trying to escape briefly crossed her mind, but it hit her then, really hit her, that there was no going back.

This was it.

The Corps was through with her.

At least, for now.

She remembered Hitch mention retraining: where was she being taken? A bullet-packing line? The ponds where the base for rations were grown? Was she being taken to a bond market?

Almost eight years. All gone.

Gone.

Washed away like dust in the rain.

Gray stood there, shaking, hands cold, and waited for whatever fate was in store for her. It seemed like a long time. But it was only the twenty minutes before she was shoved again from behind, situated into place, and someone began fastening something to the rope around her wrists—a line.

“If you stumble, catch yourself. If you fall, get up. Nobody’s slowing down for you until you get to the trade-off. Got it?”

It was Wesson, and his voice cut her to the bone.

But he was gone, too.

She tried inflecting the wordless groaning she was able to make to get something more from him. But he ignored her.

“Never taken a retrainee,” one of them said. “I’m surprised the camp isn’t gawkin’.”

“Camp won’t miss her.”

Those were her old friend’s last parting words before she heard the clicking of tongues and the jangling of bridles as they got underway, and the line tied to her wrists tugged her roughly forward through the glow of pre-dawn.

Gray was 16 years old again, except this time she was being led back to the caravan.

* * *

Once they were out of sight of camp, the bag was taken from her and she was finally permitted to see where they were going. Gray blinked, the knot in her stomach loosening from nothing else but exhaustion as she took in her surrounds: the rope tied her to a line of eight corpsmen, and she recognized them all as being those rejected from service during the inspections. They were a ragged bunch, limping along and lead by a man on horseback. Ahead of him were two more riders, each heavily armed.

It was several hours of hard walking in the baking sun, going on in pensive, defeated, anxious silence, before anything changed. Before the exhaustion settled into her bones and the wind pulled from her sails. It wasn’t that she wasn’t terrified, it was that she had no fight left in her. And that was part of what changed now.

They stopped, and Gray, too tired to even continue imagining the worst anymore, assumed that this was the destination. The riders dismounted, and people spoke in hushed voices so that Gray could barely hear.

The trade was happening, and between the trembling, the thoughts broken and scattered by fatigue, and the ghost of yesterday’s drugs, Gray couldn’t make much more sense than that. They must have been the rejected prospects, being dumped on somebody else in exchange for… for whatever. Paper. Light bulbs. Canvas. Anything but more useless humans.

She didn’t dare wonder what their fates would be, instead sitting still and anxious on the dirt, waiting for a hand to drag her to her feet so that she, too, could be sold to the wasteland.

Hoofbeats disappeared down the road along with the shuffle of bonds. Eventually, Gray was alone with the three Corps riders.

“Who they savin’ her for?” one of the men grunted.

“The next client,” another snapped. “Due at dusk.”

“How much does a trained bondie like her go for these days, anyways? Those eight we just got rid of were barely fit to dig a ditch.”

“Goes for more than you think. Now you two get goin’, I do the rest of this job alone.”

A gun cocked, and Gray stiffened.

“You sure?”

“You’re damn right, I’m sure,” he said in a low voice. _“_This the goddamn protocol. Now get.”

Two of the men mounted their horses, and after a few more mumbled sentiments exchanged, they too faded into the distance. After a minute, all she could hear were locusts.

She sat like that for another five, ten minutes, as her unseen companion walked a slow, steady circle in the dirt, not saying a word. Gray was thirsty, but dared not bring attention to herself.

Eventually, those footsteps came to a stop nearby, and she could feel him standing close. So close that she almost jumped when he spoke.

“You’re not gonna like your new holders,” he said quietly, voice raspy from smoking. “They don’t do things like we do.”

Gray shifted herself to face in his direction, trying to make out his silhouette through the burlap weave. He snorted.

“S’funny to me that after all these years, they still don’t tell you enlisteds anything. Not like knowin’ changes things. In fact, knowin’ would just make you more scared of ‘em. You know what they do, corpsman?”

She sat motionless, tense, listening.

“They eat humans,” he said. “They take us, grind us up, turn us into wet ration. That’s the real reason we fight ‘em. ‘Naks don’t grow nothin’, don’t raise nothin’. They farmin’ us, though.”

No, it couldn’t be true. It couldn’t be. Gray made a noise through her gag and shook her head. The man laughed bitterly.

“It’s true! You think they raid the caravans for pencils and indigo? C’mon, bondie, you can’t tell me you really believe we survive ‘em because we’re just that good. Humans are just resourceful and plucky enough. No… they let us win. They let us live our lives, be fruitful and multiply. We bargained for it, kid. S’where you’re goin’.”

She imagined it, the picture terrified her. She saw blood and gore, bones being turned to pinkish paste. This was her fate? This… this is what retraining was? Fuck the Corps, fuck the Corps, fuck the Corps…

Liars, all of them. Finch was right, who cared if General Pierce was ever real, that wasn’t the myth that the entire fucked place was based on. Since childhood, she knew the Corps helped hold the line against a shadowy and distant enemy, a race created to be human, but better.

And then, for the past seven years, Gray learned all the ways that the Corps did what it did. How the telegraph lines were laid to keep the camps connected. How their power and reputation gave them access to some of the best weapons deals available in the Southland, and how Corps-packed bullets were known to be the most reliable on the market. How they were the only organization in the waste—no, maybe the whole state—that freely and expertly trained bonds for more than menial labor.

How they were the only ones to eventually free them.

Gray wanted so badly to hate the Corps. But she couldn’t.

She couldn’t and it hurt because everything she knew was being taken from her, and as she thought about ‘Naks eating people again she remembered the liquid pumped into Rice’s side, and it all made sense, such horrible sense—

CRACK.

Thupt.

“Hk—!”

Crash, thud.

Gray gasped through the gag and froze.

Shot, shot, h-he’s been shot—

Gray shuffled herself backward until she collided with a rock and then threw herself to the ground, blood running cold with sheer panic. She couldn’t get hold of her breathing, her chest felt like it was going to explode and tears stung her eyes.

It took everything she had not to moan in despair when she heard the sound of boots approaching. Death approaching. Death was approaching. He shifted, turning on his heel. Searching. Didn’t have to search long.

She was grabbed, lifted to her feet, and the bag was ripped away. She cried out at the suddenness of it, the fact that there was no chance whoever had her now had any better intentions than a ‘Nak or a brig. In the span of a single morning, Gray had been kicked down to the lowest rungs of the social order. Carrion, ripe for the poaching. She screwed her eyes shut, not wanting to look him in the eye.

The gag was taken from her too, and the cry that escaped was long and agonized as her body pitched, ready to run.

“No! No, let me go!” she sobbed.

“Gray, it’s me! It’s me.”

A pair of arms surrounded her, the ground fell away.

It was him.

But he was a ‘Nak.

“No, no, no, stop, stop—“

“Gray!”

He crushed her to him, and he grabbed her by the wrists to hold her still, so still. She fought him, her human’s strength against his.

“Gray.”

Life left her, and next all she could do was sob into his dusty, armored shoulder. Cry tears she’d been holding back for seven years. This was… this was grief.

She grieved for her short, miserable life. She grieved for her species, for doing this to itself. She grieved for the eight bonds from earlier, for the countless rejects she’d seen during her time with the Corps. She grieved for Finch and Wesson and their friendship. She grieved for once having been sure of anything in life.

The giant just held her tight and stroked her hair.

When the tears dried and all that was left of the corpsman named Gray was an exhausted, empty husk draped over Rice’s shoulder, he loosened his grip and sat on the ground. Girl in lap, safe within the fortress of his body.

“Tell me you don’t do it,” she whispered. “Please. I need to hear it from you.”

“I don’t do what,” he murmured.

“You e-eat us.”

He hesitated and her heart shuddered.

“Let me go, let me fucking go!”

His massive hands were on her arms now, holding her still in a completely different way. Their eyes met, his hard blue ones and her agonized brown.

“Let me show you something.”

“Rice, Rice, please… just let me go. Let this be over.”

He shook her. “Gray, it’s not what you think. I have to show you.”

She trembled.

“Gray, please. I’ll explain.”

“Ellis,” she whispered.

“What?”

“Ellis! My name is Ellis!”

“…Ellis Gray.”

Rice said it slowly, trying it out. But hearing it brought her to tears again, stirring something old and worn and fragile in her, and she buried her face in his shoulder once more.

“It’s going to be OK, Ellis. It’s going to be OK.”

There are lots of us! Like, I pretty much only write stories about giants who consentually negotiate their own sizekink now lol.

@sloppy_amy Small enough to sleep down there

@olo

Yeah, creek water makes for lousy lube.

I… try not to think hard about it.

Rice, in particular, doesn’t seem to like not knowing the lay of the land.

Bingo! He puts himself out there only when he feels like he’s going to get the pre-planned outcome. Gotta love that humble pie.

I’m still not relaxing around Finch.

First draft, she was much more of a victim and Gray wanted to save her - and not doing it very well of course - but this time, Finch is turning out much more chilling in her own right.

---

In other news… I think one more chapter will do it, then I’ll be penning the rest away in cloistered secrecy! I hope to make it one helluva cliffhanger.

CHAPTER 14

Ch–chak.

The brig took a shortcut, sliding down the hillside and making a damned racket, kicking up dust. The barrel of a gun, still hot, pressed to the back of her head, and she swallowed sharply. Gray knew better than to turn around at this point. It would be better not to see it coming.

“I know you’re gonna pull that trigger,” she said quietly, trying to muster a chuckle, “But if you could do me a favor and promise me that you’ll shoot my CO too someday?”

The voice that answered was a rough and rocky baritone, though. Too baritone to be human.

“Might be able to work something out.”

Gray spun around and found herself face–to–face with Rice’s lowered 50–cal gun.

“Y–you son of a bitch,” she barked, and the giant just erupted into smug laughter. “Fuck you!”

He lowered the cloth from his face and flashed a fine set of teeth. Gray went straight back to the flask and choked down half of it, still muttering curses.

“It’s called gallows humor,” he said when she was done.

“Very funny,” Gray murmured.

She looked around again, trying to put together what had just happened. A silence passed between them and after a beat she realized that she was still shaking. With a groan, Gray sat down on a large rock. The flask she flung away.

The sentinel’s blue eyes were hard and impenetrable when she finally looked back toward him.

“How’d you know I was here?”

He reached up and pulled the device from his ear. So the rumors were true, they were easy targets for eavesdropping.

Rice turned his attention toward the fallen brigs, then up toward where the other pair lay. Without a word he adjusted the strap on his boomer, and climbed the rock fall with ease— it was, after all, less than chest–high for him. He picked his footing up on the ridge, and then kicked down the other two. They rolled and flopped over each other with a discomforting irreverence, then came to a stop in a pile of tangled limbs at the bottom of the gulch. Rice slid down again like he had before: an eerily boyish thing to do given the circumstances.

Gray sat there and stared blankly at the dead men.

“I’m sick of this shit,” she murmured. “Fucking sick of it.”

Rice cocked his head and took a step closer.

“Part of me wishes you would’ve pulled that trigger on me just now.”

Did Gray really mean that?

There was a pause as he seemed to think this over, before he closed the gap between them and with a quiet, practiced motion, had his sidearm pressed to her skull. She remembered what he looked like pointing it at that brownband, and wondered if he was the same now. No, not the same. There was no pheromone, and no fear.

“Still wishin’ for it?” he asked calmly, quietly.

She turned her head and looked down the black hole at the end of that gun, then her eyes fell back to her knees. Gray didn’t want to think about it right now. Not this trio of wasteland scum, not Avers. Not Finch or the captain.

“I don’t know anymore.” Gray possibly wanted to cry, but felt like she didn’t remember how. It’d been years, and instead her throat just tightened.

When the Anak fired above her head, she just about jumped right out of her skin. They listened to the sharp crack echo down the gulch and give way to the ringing in her ears again.

“I think you do, soldier,” he said.

A whisper. “All I know is what I need right now.”

When she met his gaze, there was a look of interest there, a little predatory, but very human. Rice sized her up briefly, evaluating like the apex predator he was designed to be.

“Can I… can you stop suppressing?”

He looked at her a little harder. What kind of request was that? Where did it come from? Did she actually want him to scent? Did she want that fear? Want to play with it? Yes. Because it wasn’t the same fear she had of the Corps now. Fear on the battlefield was honest, but at camp it was the dirtiest weapon of all.

“You really want that, don’t you?”

Gray swallowed.

I want… something raw.

She wanted him to be like the sun, hot and searingly bright. She wanted him to immolate her. Because maybe then there was a chance she could be remade into something else.

The giant stooped steeply to kiss her on the mouth, grabbing her under her jaw to lift her face skyward. Already she felt enveloped, at the mercy of the wall of this man-like creature and she wanted so badly for him to whisk her away like the hero in one of her Westies. The kiss was salty, smoky, warm, and firm. And it made a promise.

“Just follow me,” he said, rising up again and adjusting the kerchief around his face.

No, she wouldn’t be carried off into the sunset. But having the earth under her feet was almost better.

Taking one last look at the four bodies strewn about the head of the canyon, she hoisted up her own gear and hastened when it became clear that Rice would not be slowing down for her.

* * *

Where the path back along the circuit made a left, Rice made a right, up a narrow track of stones that hid his 24–inch–long bootprints. They followed that trail for a few minutes as it wound its way back toward civilization, sweeping up an easy hill. On the other side, she discovered, was the grounds of some ruined estate. They descended down into it.

It was a large brick and concrete pad, to the south of which was the bones of an impressive structure, rising up from charred rubble. Trees and greenery of all sorts grew out of the cracks in the pad, rustling and throwing them into mottled shade as they crossed the property. But perhaps the most astonishing part was the swimming pool beside them, full of water.

A small stream came out of the hills behind the house, its water flowing into a ditch created by the rent concrete and guided like a canal into the old pool. Its bottom was damaged, and half-filled in with rocks and dirt, but there was still more than enough room for several people – humans, that is – to submerge and swim. Gray gawked.

“What is this place?”

The Anak threw down his ruck and walked past her to the edge of the pool where he knelt and threw water on his dusty face.

“Rest for the weary.”

He undressed. Gear and shirt formed a neat pile on the ground, which were soon joined by his boots. She heard the jangling of a belt as he began to work off his pants. Gray shivered, remembering their night in the storage room. Then she remembered all the thoughts she ever had about him, actually. All the fantasies, the hopes, the wonderings. Then she remembered the bullet he put in that soldier’s head. The Tobins.

Maybe the Grays were more trouble than they were worth, too.

She sucked in a ragged breath.

Before long he was completely naked, and Gray realized that she hadn’t yet seen him bare from head to toe. Rice looked so much like a man—every muscle and tendon, the placement of every hair… it was all an exact copy of the real thing. Except for the fact that he was grown in a vat and just short of twice her height.

His knees, she immediately saw, were not original. The skin there was different: was it real, or something artificial? It was the same, too, for his ankles and toes. Surely that wasn’t the extent of it. She could only begin to imagine what his insides looked like. His brain.

Rice sunk into the pool in a way that made her want to follow. For him, it was shallow, but its cool, clean water was more than anyone in these parched hills could ask for. Her muscles almost relaxed at the sight, and soon she was naked too, staring at her feet in the water as she stepped into it.

Rice, sitting cross–legged, pulled her into his lap and maneuvered her to sit square on his dick. He firmed.

Then Gray thought of Wesson. She didn’t want to, but his face kept appearing in her mind with that cold, unsettling look in his eyes. She suddenly recalled another memory from that night: the smell of leather and exotic smokesticks. She could almost taste the vomit in her mouth.

“Hey. Eyes up here.”

Gray must’ve given herself away because Rice was holding very still all of a sudden, her delicate shoulders under his enormous hands. She just looked at him, struggling to focus because staring into those eyes was suddenly so difficult.

“I need… help,” she said.

The giant reached down between his legs and began to stroke himself, rubbing his hardening shaft between her thighs. The point of contact was electric, drawing her attention like lightning to a tent pole. She didn’t have to look at him, now. It was OK. She could just feel.

He stiffened quickly, and when that was done he pushed her into the water and began to rub her down. She’d already bathed that morning, but it still felt as if he were taking off weeks’ worth of dust and sweat and grime. But the idea of being coddled like a goddamn infant sickened her.

When Gray was back in his lap, thick shaft pressing up against her cunt as she ran her fingers down his finely muscled chest, the tightness was still in her throat.

“Don’t give me your pity,” she whispered, staring at the place between his abs where a bellybutton should have been. “And don’t give me your pity fuck.”

Rice grabbed her hair and jerked her head back to expose her neck. “You should know me better than that by now?”

She shivered at that. A good shiver. This was the kind of danger she wanted, Gray realized. There was a sense to it that seemed to pull all her loose threads together, even if it was just for a short while in the scheme of things.

“I’m gonna fuck you like the human you are.” He turned them around and her ass was on broken concrete. It was rough and uncomfortable.

Gray stared past him, into the trees. “No. Fuck me like a bond.”

He didn’t need an explanation. Her back was against the hard edge of the pool suddenly, and she hissed in pain when one of his thick fingers entered her, lubricated only by the waist–deep water.

Rice thrust in and out of her until whimpering pants were squeezed from her lungs. The friction was too much, too soon. But it was the wrongness of it that was good right now.

His free hand grabbed her chest and pushed her harder into the pavers around the edge of the pool. He had more than enough breadth for him to squeeze both tender swells at the same time, and he did so with terrible roughness. The skin burned and reddened under his hard ministrations, but her nipples puckered and she arched into it like the sick bliss it was.

Fuck you, Wes.

“Bonds like it rough,” Rice said.

Gray moaned.

“Seen some bonds fucked black and blue.”

His voice dropped even lower, deeper.

“Break something. Set the bone. Then break it again. They love the pain.”

Gray panted, reaching for the wrist between her thighs. She needed something to hold on to. But a swift, wet, slap to the face startled her.

“You’re a slave, Gray. You move when I tell you to fuckin’ move.”

She nodded quickly, blinking away wetness in one eye.

“Good.”

Rice bent down and covered her mouth with his. It was hardly a kiss—it was more a storm of huge tongue and teeth that left her with raw lips and a surge of moisture down south. Sensing something in her, he curled his finger and rubbed an entirely different spot inside, filling her with sticky-sweet heat.

Gray moaned at the intense sensation. She wanted to press herself harder against him, wanted to grab him, wanted to do something. But her stinging cheek reminded her not to.

After a few moments he stopped thrusting altogether and settled for simply rubbing at that spot inside of her, which created the most intense sensation of all.

The corpsman whined, trying to hold still, but it was so hard to.

The giant said nothing more as she clenched and writhed underneath him, almost trying to fight the building pleasure. But it was a losing battle. With a loud, ugly cry, she came, clutching at the pool’s edge. He looked on in that way of his, not covering her mouth this time, letting her scream it out. But this wasn’t like her other orgasms; this one kept going, and he didn’t stop rubbing until she was crawling from the stimulation, trying to get away from him.

Rice withdrew his finger when he deemed that she’d had enough, leaving her to slump there while she caught her breath and stilled the tremors still passing through her.

But he wasn’t done yet.

Without a word the giant rose up from his kneel and aligned his hips with her face as he stooped over with one foot planted firmly on the pool’s edge. Water sloshed. He parted his legs and steadied his aim.

She reached out for him, though, pawing at that immense cock with both hands and almost started at the warmth. The Anakim ran hot, maybe. He rolled his hips at her experimentally, and Gray quickly caught on that she was to encircle him with her hands and keep in time with his movements.

A rumbling bubbled deep inside of him and with a more forceful thrust than before, the end of his dick pressed against her face, demanding more attention. At the same time, something prickled in the air, and Gray recognized the sensation. She closed her eyes for a moment and breathed deeply, greedy for it.

The squeeze.

This wasn’t just a fuck, it never was, and they both knew it.

Rice smeared his big cockhead along one cheek, then across her chin, and along the other. Slowly, methodically. She could feel his eyes on her, burning. Her skin tingled and she felt awake.

“You really do love it, don’t you?”

Gray just sucked in a shaking breath, trying to lose herself in it. This was familiar, comforting. It was everything else that was inexplicable.

Pre–cum glistened on her face and her heart beat faster and she opened her mouth wide to take as much of him as would fit. Teeth grazed the folds of his uncut flesh, pulling it back so that little pucker on the underside of the head was crushed against her tongue.

Gray’s heart went from beating to pounding, and panic convulsed in her before steadying again.

Nostrils flared. She breathed heavy, giving herself to the choreographed wrongness of it. The sentinel was so strong before her, around her, so capable. So effective. Who was she before this thing? He was like the land: undeniable, smart in ways she could only guess at, vast. Yes, there was a vastness to Rice, and a sharpness, too. Like the way the whole desert could be found in a cactus spine. What did the desert think of the little human called Gray?

The throbbing heat of his shaft stretching open her mouth like it had stretched open her core was absurd and dangerous in just the right way. It was right because she wanted it, pheromone and all, and that wanting, Gray was learning, meant all the difference in the world.

Like a knurled oak he bent over her, and the giant watched intently as he slipped himself into her very human mouth. The muscles in his hips flexed. His chest, still glistening with water, swelled when he took in air. The pheromone made him seem like a beast, huge and heaving and made of pure sex.

I’m still safe.

“Told you you’d be sucking my cock eventually,” he rumbled, those teeth now framed by a wicked smile.

True to his word, his hand slid back along her scalp to palm her head, bracing her for a thrust that hit the back of her throat and made her body jerk and gag. Fuck! Rice pulled out only a little, waiting for her to suck in a gulp of air before forcing himself back in again. Gray reeled and hands went to his thighs.

“Didn’t say you’d like it, corpsman.”

He seemed to get bigger, heavier. Rice continued to thrust into her mouth, holding her head in place with a fistful of hair.

“Mgh!”

“You know…”

He squinted down at her in a strange way, then.

“Humans make me sick,” he ground out suddenly. Gray shivered, alert to his subtle change in tone. But it was difficult—between the cock invading her mouth, the sting in her scalp from his rough grip, his pheromone thick in the air…

Rice continued with a dark look in his eye. “You’re weak, you’re slow… loud…”

He timed his thrusts now with his words.

“Petty.”

Gray gagged again, finding it hard to breathe.

“Arrogant.” He thrust faster and she sputtered around him. “But you know what? Unh. You give us something to do. Whether we’re fucking you… or killing you.”

Gray’s head swam and the squeeze was tight. She choked on his massive tool, and started trying to push him away, but it was no use. He held firm, and jerked her head to remind her who was in control.

“Mmgh!”

Rice didn’t yield.

She fought him harder, kicked her legs in the water until it was muddy.

That’s when he pulled out, and Gray gasped loudly for air, panting against the concrete. After a moment, she looked up to him, to his hard, cunning face and its distinguished contours. God damn he was big.

“You didn’t bite,” he panted, a little something in his eye.

“You meant that, didn’t you?”

“Little bit.”

“Well it’s true.”

She grabbed his girth and stroked. Bold, for a little human.

But the pheromone, in a weird way, egged her on. Already she wanted more: deep down she knew she was safe, the squeeze was a chemical lie. Would he hurt her? Could he, like her instincts were telling her he could?

Then it was both her hands. She wrapped them around his heat and bent forward to tongue his slit, rubbing him from base to head. The corpsman made sure to leave behind dripping trails of saliva. Rice muttered a swear.

“Look good down there,” he rasped in that clipped way of his, muscles tightening in his belly. Then he noticed something about her, and he went from gazing to reading.

“You need more, don’t you?”

Gray licked her lips, not even intending to look good doing it. But Rice’s eyes, already dark, narrowed, and a crease appeared between his brows. He stopped, staring at her as he slowly licked his lip, and there it was.

A sheen of sweat formed on his forehead from the effort.

His face grew meaner, and his hard look turned into a scowl. The air felt hot and the light felt bright and the slate behind her cut into her back.

Bold. She had been so bold a moment ago.

“Rice?”

He moved. Like a massive, bulging man, scarred and hungry he moved. His hands were on her thighs, lifting them, her, parting them. And then she was on her back on the ground, and his finger was massaging her asshole—

“R-Rice…”

“What’d he do to you?” came the dark, growling voice at her ear.

Gray just breathed, shaking, hands holding onto the Anak’s tree-trunk arms.

My god, I wanted this? Who was he? Really? Who was Rice? Was this, this superhuman menace, underneath that veneer? Or was this an act like the one he played for the other Anakim? Who are you?

“You want him dead. Tell me why I should kill him.”

There was pressure at her hole and she whimpered.

“Tell me.”

With a growl he was in.

“…He—a-ah!—used m-me.”

Gray was stretched so tightly around him that it almost hurt, almost, and why wasn’t she dead yet?

Why am I turned on?

The corpsman was hot—sweating now herself, shaking with adrenaline, body clutching greedily at that invading tool. So much of her wanted him to run her down like an animal, her body language was begging for it, Gray very distantly realized. She was. She was prone on her back, spread wide open for him, pinned. Her nipples strained in the air, wanting to be touched. Every inch of skin was on fire for the giant fucking her.

Let the ‘Naks take over, part of her was saying. This is where humans belong. We were made to be owned!

Rice didn’t say anything else for the next short while. He covered her with his body as he worked himself in, almost to the hilt, then he paused to catch his breath and position himself. The rest of his thrusts came fast and heavy. Neither of them had a chance to speak, there was no point bothering with words. Or at least, that’s what it felt like to Gray—she was sore by the second stroke, and he filled her so completely that every time he drove in he brought her to the breaking point, forcing a muffled moan. Rice grit his teeth and soon clutched her to him, the sheer pressure inside and the stimulation from his dark hairs tickling her aching clit. Panting, grunting, gasping—they came together.

He lifted away from her, still inside, and propped himself up. Neck bent, he could look down and into her eyes, which felt moist when she blinked.She listened to him breathe.

“Are you going to kill him?” Gray said, barely above a whisper.

Curling as much as he could, he managed to reach her much smaller lips.

“I’d like to.”

He pulled out and she winced, feeling suddenly both empty and vulnerable. Anak cum dripped out of her, and she wished it could mark her somehow.

But it didn’t, and she had to get ready to leave. Rice knew this and he dunked his head in the water before stepping out of the pool.

She followed him with her eyes as she slipped back in to wash the sex off. Gray had no idea if he was still scenting, or if he was doing it as strongly as before. She decided it didn’t matter. She had managed to keep hold of a thread running through it all—safety—and Gray realized that it would take a lot more than pheromone to make her afraid. It was just a chemical after all—real fear needed malice.

It wasn’t long before Rice fished out a cigarette, so small for him, and lit it up.

“What else does that machine pick up on?” she asked, tilting her head in the direction of his pack.

“A lot of static,” he said. “Some bands have voices that read out numbers.” The cigarette went out and he lit it again. “Sometimes I hear music.”

Gray thought about it for a moment, wondering what music was there, invisible in the air all around her. She wanted him to show her, she wanted to know his favorite song. But then she stopped, and Gray suddenly felt very tired.

“Didn’t think it was like you to want to die like that,” he said. “With a gun to your back.”

She frowned deeply and stood up, going over to her clothes. “You don’t know what I’m like, Rice,” she said. “You don’t know anything about me.”

The Anak turned to get a good, careful look at her. She paused to glance up when he drew nearer, looming like a naked god as he crossed his arms across that broad, scarred chest. Smoke curled from his nostrils.

“The hell does that mean?”

“It means you don’t know anything about being a corpsman.”

She grunted and shoved her foot into a boot and began lacing it.

“And being a corpsman means bending over and taking it up the ass because that’s what surviving looks like.”

“You didn’t have to—“

“I’m not talking about you, dammit!” Gray snapped. There it was, the lump in her throat again. “You know what, just forget it.”

Rice looked at her for a long moment as she dressed. Then he narrowed his eyes at her, like something had occurred to him.

“You want out. But you won’t defect.”

“’Course not. It’s only a matter of time before someone catches you with your pants down, mark-less, and you’ve got a rope around your neck. Again.”

He looked away, keeping the smokestick close to his mouth.

“Things are easy right now,” the giant soldier said, almost muttering. “But it won’t be that way forever. You and I will see combat again.”

Gray hadn’t thought about that nearly as much as she should have. He was right.

“And when we do… I’ll be happy to miss my target.”

She drew her lips into a tight line. “I don’t know if I can say the same.”

There was a stunned silence.

“So that’s how you really feel,” the sentinel spat.

“Goddammit, Rice, you have your freedom already!”

Gray’s chest burned and her throat clenched and her hands shook. But she didn’t get a chance to finish her thought because he already knew what it was.

“…And you’d kill me to get yours.”

The corpsman wanted to so badly to tell him that he had it all wrong.

But he didn’t.

“I hate it, Rice. I hate it more than anything. I hate it more than ‘Naks, the Algo, the fucking wars that ripped this place apart. I…”

“You should get going,” he growled, reaching for his own pile of gear. “There’s Corps activity in the area I might have to report.”

Gray was out of words. And as she glanced at her watch, she was out of time too. This wasn’t how this was supposed to end, but she had to get back to Avers’ body before anyone else arrived. Shrugging on her pack and with gun in hand, she took one last look at the tall, lean, Anak sentinel. There was still so much about him that she didn’t know, and would never know now.

Gray stepped onto the dirt with the sun behind her, heading up and over the hill, and was back in the gulch not twenty minutes later. Silently, she grabbed a sheaf of grass and got to work erasing his bootprints.

This chapter, last chapter, and next are all part of a trio that will need some srs business editing. At least I get to look forward to some wacky shit going down in chapter 16.