Remy
When everyone had scattered, I grabbed Kelsey and ran, following Linette to the barn. To my complete shock and awe, I watched Linette jump on a Baelese male’s back as he cornered two humans, hold on to his waist with her thighs and use her entire upper body and all her weight to snap his neck with a ferocious yell. That’s right. Linette killed an alien with her bare hands. When he crumpled in a heap, she slung his rifle over her head and grabbed a handgun from his waist, sliding it toward me through the dirt.
“Go!” She pointed to the barn.
I squatted, setting down Kelsey to grab the gun, then took the girl by the hand and ran into the barn. I took her to the farthest stall and set Kelsey in a corner filled with hay.
“I need you to sit and be very still and very quiet, okay, sweetie?” As she sat, her back in the corner, I piled hay around her. “It’s going to be like hide-and-seek. You stay hidden until I come get you.”
“Don’t leave me,” she said in her tiny voice.
“I’m going to be right here, keeping watch,” I promised. Then I thought of something. Voice control. I grabbed the edge of my dress, the part of the seam that was about to unravel, and I tore. Small strips ripped off, and I bunched them with my fingers, wetting them with saliva.
“Let’s put these in your ears,” I told her. Kelsey was a good sport. She let me do it, pressing the cloth as far in as I could, and then piling more hay around her.
My whole body was trembling as I finished covering her and went to the stall’s door to watch and listen. I balled up tiny strips of cloth and wet them pushing them into my ears and praying it would work. Through the cloth, I heard muffled running and shouting, and gunfire ringing out, making me jump. When footsteps got too close, I cowered into my stall door, peeking through a crack to see Linette.
“Psst!” I said, waving my arm. She ran over and I gave her to two pieces of cloth, pointing to my ears.
She nodded, grinning wickedly, and grabbed them from me, then went into the stall beside me. I looked down at my gun, checking to make sure the safety was off. I’d never been good with guns. When I was at Dugway, the guys tried to teach me, using blanks in a makeshift underground range. My main issues were that I always closed my eyes in anticipation of the noise as I pulled the trigger, and I couldn’t hold it steady when I shot. My arms always jerked upward. So I never once hit the target. It was laughable.
Almost as laughable as my ability to hear somebody coming.
The stall door beside me suddenly burst open and a female voice yelled, “Freeze!” followed immediately by a shot, and Linette’s shout of pain. A loud clatter sounded as if her rifle had been dropped, then a sliding sound.
I covered my mouth. It was Vahni. Oh, my gosh. She was in Linette’s stall. Had Linette not had time to put her ear plugs in? Mine seemed to be working. I glanced over at Kelsey’s pile of hay, and she was very still. She had to be terrified.
Please, don’t let her make a sound.
In the darkness, I tried to survey what was around me. The stall wall between us went all the way to the ground, but was only about six feet high. Beside me was a water trough, and a wooden bucket for feed. Very slowly, I bent and felt inside the bucket. It was empty.
“I saw you come in here,” Vahni said to Linette. “And I had to follow. Do you know why? Because I admire you. In a society of weakling females, you are strong. A rare find. Both mind and body, very much like a Baelese female. So, tell me. How were you able to communicate with the radio?”
Linette must have been under voice control, because she robotically began to chronicle every detail from when she received the radio. I had to do something. Using painstakingly slow movements, I turned the bucket upside down. I was glad for my soft, slipper-like shoes as I placed them silently on the bucket and stood. Keeping my breathing under control was a feat of its own. I straightened enough to peek over the edge with just my eyes.
Linette was on the ground, leaning against the wall. Blood had soaked her shirt from the shoulder, all the way down. It looked bad. Linette had to see me from where she was, but she never once glanced up at me or did anything to give me away.
Her rifle was close to Vahni, as though the Baelese woman had slid it over with her foot. Vahni was about four feet away, her rifle pointed as Linette spoke.
I’d never shot anyone, or any thing for that matter. But I raised my gun and balanced it on the edge of the wall, pointing it downward and aiming. Not a single part of my body was not shaking. I’d begun to sweat from obscure places, like the backs of my knees.
“Fascinating,” Vahni breathed as Linette concluded. “How could you stomach living among your kind, surrounded by mediocrity? They could not possibly have appreciated you in a society that values feminine frailty.”
“I used to think like that,” Linette whispered. “But you shouldn’t underestimate the soft ones. I did, and I was wrong.”
“Do not be ridiculous,” Vahni said.
“They’re like mama bears,” Linette told her. “When their claws come out—”
I shot. Just like always, my eyes automatically clamped shut at the last second, and I stumbled, nearly falling off the bucket.
Then I heard Linette say, “Took you long enough.”
I pulled myself back to standing and peered over, heart racing. Vahni was on the ground, her head surrounded by a pool of darkness. I let out a shocked whimper as Linette pushed to her feet. She peered up at me, and in the dimness I saw the whites of her teeth as she smiled.
And then she fell.
“Oh, my God!” I jumped from the bucket and rushed out of my stall, running into hers. I leapt over Vahni’s body and knelt next to Linette. She still had a pulse, so she must have passed out. She’d lost a lot of blood, and I had no idea what to do. I reached for the bottom of my dress and tore off a larger strip, then balled it up and pressed it to her wound, holding my hand hard over it.
