Chapter 8

EIGHT

" F ucking piece of shit!"

The curse jolted Zed from sleep. He snorted and blinked, trying to orient himself. Hard stone, black sky with three hazy moons—and a tense, holo-illuminated figure getting ready to kick the beacon to the ground.

"Don't break it." Zed levered himself up with his good hand, grunting softly as the movement jarred his bad wrist.

"Wouldn't matter. The fucking thing isn't working." Rather than kick the beacon itself, Flick kicked gravel at it.

"You sure?"

The holo gave off just enough light for Zed to make out the scowl Flick cast in his direction. "Yes, I'm sure. The signal isn't penetrating the upper atmosphere. It's stalling at fifty kilometers up and bouncing back." He waved his holo as though Zed would be able to make out the readings despite the distance.

"Do we need to get higher?"

Flick stabbed at his bracelet and extinguished the holo interface. "We're not going to get enough altitude to make a difference. If we could get airborne, sure, but unless you've been keeping flight capabilities a secret…" He sighed at Zed's snort and made his way over to Zed's side, collapsing ungracefully beside him. "Yeah, didn't think so."

"So we need a new plan." Zed pushed to his feet, trying like hell to keep the discomfort in his wrist to himself. Flick worried too much about him already—he didn't want to exacerbate that. He retrieved his wallet one-handed and shined the limited light on the ground, unwilling to chance missing the edge of the plateau. Thanks to his messed-up brain chemistry, his eyesight wasn't all that good in the dark—without the Zone, his vision interpreted shadows as darker than normal and lights brighter, which made getting around at night tricky at times. The three moons, barely visible through the cloud cover, did little to illuminate the landscape.

Looking down into the ravine, he spotted the light that had been there earlier. More than one, actually. They seemed to dance, but Zed figured it was just the stumpy trees waving their spindly leaves in the slight breeze and interfering. Whether it was a settlement or another downed ship, he had no idea. Lifting his wallet, he tried to calculate distance. The app spit back a stupid number to start—one thousand kilometers, which was bullshit—then something a little more reasonable.

"That light is still there. About ten klicks away."

"The light that might be an unsanctioned experimental laboratory? That one?"

"Hey, why didn't I think it might be dangerous?" Zed rolled his eyes and returned to the spot they'd picked out for sleeping, then lay back down beside Flick. "If we can't get a message out with the beacon, we need to find another way. Right?"

Flick grunted, clearly not willing to go along with his thinking just yet.

"It might not be a settlement. Might be a ship." Flick's snort told him what he thought of that. Not that Zed could disagree—given that the data trail ended here and the fact that the atmosphere didn't seem too friendly to ships, it was probably some sort of base. "Look. Getting into occupied territory was what I did during the war."

"With a full team. Without a broken wrist and head injury."

"I've got you. And my head isn't bugging me too much anymore." Flick arched a brow. After a minute, Zed gave a shrug. "Okay, yes, my wrist is not in the best shape for this. But—" his glare overrode Flick's attempt to say I told you so or something similar "—we don't have a whole lot of choice here."

Flick squirmed and a sound of discomfort left his throat, as though the idea of Zed in danger physically pained him. "We could just wait. Elias will figure out soon that we're in trouble."

"And what if he doesn't? Or what if they're in trouble too?" Zed regretted the words as soon as they left his lips, and he rushed to cover them. "I'm not saying they are—I mean, we're the ones who stepped in it. All I'm saying is that we don't know what's going on out there and therefore we can't depend on help arriving." In time went unspoken.

Things had been relatively easy so far. But they would run out of protein bars in the next day or so. The surface water was potable—with filtering—but God knew if any of the fruit or animals on this planet would be edible. If they didn't get word out soon, things were going to get a lot more serious very quickly.

Lips pressed into a thin line, Flick snuggled closer. "What are you thinking?"

"We'll assume it's a settlement of some sort. Simple recon. If I can identify a comms station, infiltration."

"Simple." Flick huffed. Fear cascaded across their connection.

Zed touched the fingers of his good hand to Felix's crystalline one. "I know. But besides getting a message out, we need to know what's going on down there."

Flick made a noncommittal grunt.

Zed took a deep breath, letting calmness fill him, hoping it would trickle across to Flick. "Remember the big Capture the Flag game we did in senior year? Right before graduation?"

Flick's lips twitched, curving up on one side. "We kicked ass."

"Yeah. The principle is the same." Flick had probably run similar exercises in specialist training—but not as many as Zed had, since Flick's focus had been on ship tech and not ground forces maneuvers. Zed had the experience of practical application of the techniques too. "Go in all sneaky. If there are guards, take one out, grab his weapon, and you're armed."

"And then just avoid all the other bad guys." Flick sucked in a big breath, one that wavered a bit. "Okay. We'll do it. But if we get caught, I'm kicking your ass."

Zed pressed a kiss to the golden blond curls he loved so much. "Yeah, if we do, I'll bend over to make it easier."

As the blush of first dawn colored the sky—Zed wasn't sure if it was in the eastern sky or not, since his wallet still wasn't cooperating—they abandoned the useless beacon and headed downslope into the scraggly forest. The gloom beneath the trees was deep and all but impenetrable to his impaired vision. But Flick could pick his way easily enough, so Zed followed him. They'd learned their lesson the previous day—it was best to put up with some temporary lack of light than lose hours and klicks to the heat of midday.

For the first forty-five minutes or so, Zed concentrated on putting his feet in Flick's path. Tripping would be bad, particularly with one arm still out of commission and strapped to his chest. His head, though much improved, wouldn't appreciate a fall either. As the light strengthened, reaching down into the ravine and through the forest, Zed loosened some of his focus on the ground and looked at their surroundings.

Like the trees they'd encountered closer to the sea, these were short and spindly, no taller than a one-story house—though their bark was less rough, maybe because they were more protected from the elements as a group. The leaves looked something like palm fronds, with fewer leaves on a stalk, but they overlapped enough to provide adequate protection from the blazing suns. The forest floor was nothing like Zed had ever seen before, rocky and bare. It was as if the trees had carved themselves pockets in the bedrock and nothing else could penetrate. Of all the weird things Zed had seen so far on this planet, this was the one that struck him with a jarring sense of wrongness. Forests were supposed to have underbrush, vegetation of varying thicknesses, rich soil underfoot from all the natural decay. Not so here.

Zed skipped over a midsized rock and bit back a hiss as the landing jolted his wrist. He mangled the sound into a hum or something as Flick looked back at him. "So…about what we were talking about."

"Your plan to get into what we hope is an innocent but probably illegal settlement?" Flick snorted. "I don't really want to hash it out until we get a better idea?—"

"No. I mean on the ship." He sucked in a breath and leaped off the metaphorical cliff. "Marriage."

"You want to dig in to that here? Now?"

"You got anything better to do?"

"Yeah. Hiking."

Zed brushed his forearm past his nose, scratching an itch absently and thankful that his thoughts seemed to be less fuzzy than the day before. "This is nothing. A ten-k hike was a daily thing in training. Your brain is free to have a conversation."

Flick grunted. Zed wasn't sure if it was in agreement or his way of indicating that no, actually, he couldn't spare the brainpower to speak. Didn't matter either way.

"You never really said why you were against getting married, just that you were." Zed dodged a tree and got Flick back in sight. "So?"

For a couple of minutes, Zed thought the earlier grunt was the only contribution Flick intended to make to the conversation. But then he blew out a loud breath and cast a look over his shoulder. "You know my parents weren't married, right?"

"No. I didn't know that."

"Yeah, well. Getting a marriage license cost money. So did having a ceremony—or at least getting someone to officially recognize it." Flick shrugged, then stuck out his crystalline hand to help him navigate around a tree. "It wasn't like any of my friends' parents were married, either. Until I met you."

"Huh." Zed really didn't know what else to say. He'd known Flick's family had been barely scraping by, with his dad's disability and his mother's chronic illness—hell, they'd met when Flick lifted his wallet at age eight. But he hadn't really stopped to think about what that meant . Some things had been really obvious, particularly when they'd started at Shepard Academy. Flick's tendency to clear anything he couldn't eat at mealtimes into a disposable container to take back to their room, for instance. School staff hadn't liked it, and it had taken Flick a good three-quarters of a year to break the habit. So yeah, it had been apparent that food had been an issue back on Pontus Station. Zed had never known marriage was as well.

"It didn't change how my dad thought of my mom. Or vice versa. Mom used his name too—not like there was any official documentation on her." Right, she'd been something of an immigrant from another station, one without papers—Zed remembered that coming out during one of their late-night talks as kids. It had been the biggest obstacle preventing her from getting good treatment for her disease. "So I never considered getting married. When I clued in that I liked boys, I reckoned it was completely off the table anyway."

"Men have been allowed to marry other men since the fucking twenty-first century, Flick," Zed growled. "Why would you think it was off the table?"

"How many guys go dreaming of their wedding day, huh? I didn't. Didn't think anyone I'd end up with would, either."

"I never dreamed about my wedding day."

"Bullshit."

"I didn't!"

"Yeah, you did." Flick tossed him a wicked grin. "C'mon, 'fess up. You sat in your room as a kid and dreamed about what you'd wear."

Heat rose in Zed's cheeks. "Fuck off."

Flick chuckled.

Zed rumbled, but the low, dangerous noise didn't deter Flick.

"Did you have the location all picked out? The flowers? How old were you?"

"Fuck," Zed muttered, swiping his good hand through his damp hair. The heat was starting to kick up. "I was ten. There was a holo series with these two guys who fell in love and wanted to get married—and one of them was a wedding planner or something—but there were all these obstacles…" Softly, as though it absolved him, he added, "Maddox watched it."

"Wait, you watched a series about two guys in a romantic relationship and you didn't figure out you were bisexual?"

"I was ten!"

Flick considered that. "Yeah, okay, fair enough."

"So no, I didn't have any elaborate plans or anything, but…yeah, you know. I thought about it. I wanted it. Then Brennan got married, and Maddox…and I…I want that, Flick."

He could picture it. His mother sitting in the front row with tears in her eyes, his father beaming with pride, his brothers standing beside him, with Elias, Ness and Qek standing with Flick. The ceremony, Flick in his best formal wear—which they'd have to buy for this occasion, and that would make it even more special. Smiles and laughter as they exchanged their vows. He wanted it all. But what he longed for most was the sense of recognition of their commitment—from family, friends, the government.

"It won't change anything about how we feel about each other. It's just a lot of pomp and?—"

"What's so wrong with standing up in front of everyone we know and saying, publicly, that we're together? That we're it for each other?"

"Everyone we know already knows that."

Zed stopped, his good hand on his hip, and stared at the ground, counting. This conversation—this argument—was a circle, a circle he couldn't see a way to break out of.

"You okay?"

Flick drew nearer and Zed shifted away, unwilling to look at him directly just yet. He was angry, annoyed, exasperated—and he didn't want it bubbling up into Flick's face. "I'm frustrated," he said in a low, rough voice. "I mean, I get what you're saying, I honestly do. I just don't understand why you're so adamant when there are so many benefits to getting married. It's not like your parents—we have the money for a license. It won't be a hardship. And it would take care of so much."

Flick moved away, his steps crunching on the scree scattered about the rocky floor. "That's what you said on the ship, that you wanted to take care of— what the fuck! "

Spinning, Zed jerked forward toward Flick, spurred on by the panic in his voice. Flick leaned on his left leg and shook his right, as if something had gotten up his pant leg.

"Get it off me!" His voice was high-pitched, frantic.

"Get what off you?" Zed moved forward, good hand extended, then froze as he saw what Flick was talking about.

A tentacle. A fucking tentacle coming right out of the rock, wrapped around Flick's boot.

The thing sprouting from the rock coiled around his calf like rope—sinuous, fleshy, moving-all-by-its-fucking-self rope. Knowing he was making pathetic whimpering noises—and not particularly caring—Felix shook his leg in an attempt to dislodge it, the thing, the?—

Did he dare touch it?

A tickle around his other calf alerted him to the fact fleshy had a friend. "Fuck, Zed, stop staring and get this thing off me."

Another backward step had him falling on his ass. Felix hit the rock hard, air exploding from his lungs in another yell. The hazy light caught and flashed from his crystalline arm, reminding him he had an appendage not made of flesh.

"Wait!" He waved Zed back and…hesitated.

His arm wasn't skin and bone. Maybe the rock monster wouldn't recognize it as part of its prey. Sucking in a squeaking breath, Felix extended his shiny fingers toward one of the tentacle things. The tip waved up off his leg as if sniffing the air. Then it struck his hand and wrapped tightly around his crystal skin. It did not feel good. Warm and clinging and strong. The toes of his trapped leg had started to tingle.

"Okay, now you can get it off me!"

Oh, what the fuck was that?

Another tentacle shot up out of a fissure in the rock behind Zed. Yelling, Zed leaped aside with the speed of the Zone. Then there were points waving everywhere—rising, flexing and coiling. A forest of dusky flesh.

Scrambling backward on his ass, Felix yanked his legs in an attempt to pull them from the tentacles' grasp.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck!" Zed continued to swear as he zipped back and forth across the rocky ground, his enhanced speed apparently confusing the waving appendages. Felix reached for his boot, biting his lip as his wrist brushed the back of a tentacle, and pulled out the knife he kept sheathed against his ankle. He hefted the grip to make sure he had a good hold and slashed at the tentacle wrapped around his left arm.

A high-pitched screech ripped through the air. All the tentacles froze in place for a second, and then a wave seemed to ripple through them, causing every one to undulate in rhythm.

"What did you do?" Zed paused in front of him. His outline blurred as he caught a tentacle midcurl and flung it away.

"I cut it." Felix slashed at the tentacle again and the screeching rose up, the volume of it pushing at his eardrums. He hacked and slashed until he'd sawed through the thing around his arm. Before he could tend to his legs, something thumped him in the back. Then another something—at a guess, another fucking tentacle—circled his throat.

"Oh no. No, no, no." Felix grabbed at it with his crystal fingers, tucking them under the fleshy rope starting to choke him. "Zed!"

Zed crouched, wrapped his good arm around Felix's torso and yanked him backward. The grip of the tentacle about his throat loosened slightly, but his legs were still caught fast.

"I don't think we can just pull free. Try squeezing the fuckers or something." The tentacle tightened again. Oh for the love of…Felix waved his knife backward. "Or cut them," he wheezed.

The tentacle at his throat pulled his crystal hand up against his neck where he managed to do little more than bruise his own flesh. Black spots danced lazily at the edges of his vision, bobbing up and down, widening and thinning. Vaguely, he was aware of something slithering up under his utility pants. His skin twitched under the weird and clingy touch. Felix kicked his legs out and tried to rock backward.

Zed plucked the knife from his grasp and began cutting in wide slashes, each interspersed by a trip across the rocks and back. Only continuous and erratic movement seemed to keep him from being caught. Felix felt the binding around his throat give way, then one of his legs was released. Gasping for breath, he put his hands down and tried to push upward. He needed to stand. He needed to run.

Another cut and his other leg was free. Zed caught him around the torso and everything blurred. Zed had Zoned again. Bile shot up the back of Felix's throat as the world moved past him way too fast. Then the ground became the sky or vice versa and they were falling—skidding, bouncing off tree trunks and rolling in between. Zed must have tripped. Trees whacked him across the back and legs. Rocks skittered before them, clacking downslope. He attempted to grab the next tree, nails scraping across the weirdly smooth bark as the weight of Zed tugged him free. He grabbed at another and got a good enough hold to wrap both arms around it. The weight of Zed nearly yanked them free. Felix held on tight and they both fell against the hard, rocky ground. Zed let go.

Shaking his head only made his vision swim faster, but Felix wasn't going to rest until he checked the rock for cracks and waving tentacles. "Can't stay here." His throat was as dry as the dusty haze swirling around them. "Zed?"

Felix plucked his arms away from the trunk and curled around. Zed was behind him, sprawled faceup across the rocks, one arm and both legs at straight angles, thank all those useless gods. Felix crawled to his side and brushed the hair away from his face. Pale skin, damp brow, closed eyes. Felix patted his cheek. "Zed!"

Zed's eyes cracked open. "I'm alive, jus' resting my eyes."

Felix answered with a vague whimper. Sitting back on his heels, he quickly surveyed the terrain. The good news was they were halfway down the ravine. Better news would be an apparent lack of broken bones. He hurt all over, but in a bruised and winded kind of way. Even better news was the absence of flying tentacles. Best news of all was the trickle of water close by. His canteen was empty.

Felix activated the medical application on his bracelet.

Zed groaned. "I can tell you what hurts. My head and my wrist. And I think your knife shaved my ankle."

"What?"

"I tucked it into my boot."

Felix didn't know whether to grin or grumble. Choosing neither, he bent forward and nosed Zed's cheek. "If it hurts, you're alive and that's all that matters."

"Are we away from the tentacles?"

"I think so."

"Good, because I don't even want to think about moving right now."