Earth Thirst (The Arcadian Conflict) - By Mark Teppo Page 0,66
and press it firmly over her face. Using her own gun, I put a round through the fluffy layer between us.
After she falls down, I go through her pockets and take what I find.
The closet door doesn't latch, but it closes enough that no one will notice the broken jamb unless they are actually trying to open the door.
As I take the stairs up to the fourth floor, where our room is, I examine her phone. In the photo log, there's a grainy picture, pulled from some security feed somewhere. My face.
Secutores knows who they're looking for.
* * *
Mere is standing in the bathroom of the hotel room, wrapped in one of the complementary robes. She is bent over the sink, her hair still wet from a shower, and she looks up as I come in, her eyes cataloguing the objects in my hands.
“Where did you get that?” she says, eyeing the pistol. Her fingers are probing behind her left ear, and she winces as she finds something tender.
“We're being watched,” I say, as I enter the bathroom and dump my collection on the counter.
“It's Secutores, isn't it?” she says. “Shit, I knew it.” She drops her head, pulling her hair to the side. “When I was showering, I felt a weird bump,” she says, showing me what she's been trying to feel. Behind her ear, near her hairline, there is a tiny scabbed ridge. The surrounding skin is red and irritated since she's been worrying it.
“They chipped me, didn't they?” she says.
I run my thumb across the bump, nodding. “That would explain a few things, wouldn't it?”
“Yeah, it definitely would.”
One of the items I took from the Secutores agent had been a folding tactical knife. Rifling through the pile, I retrieve it and flip it open. “This is going to hurt a bit,” I say.
She grips the edge of the counter. “I know.”
Blood wells out as I make a tiny incision. I catch the rivulet with my thumb, and my teeth snap together, grinding against one another as I hold myself in check. Her breath hisses, and I grab a washcloth to apply pressure against the cut. “Sorry,” I mumble. Her blood is all over my thumb.
“It's—Silas,” she says sharply. She stands up, snatching the washcloth out of my slack hand. She presses it against her neck with one hand, while grabbing my wrist with her other. “Silas!”
“What?” I say dumbly, still staring at my thumb. My tongue has forced its way through my clenched teeth, and I'm breathing heavily.
“Look at me, you knuckle-dragger!”
“That's—” I snarl, and as I tear my attention away from the glistening crimson coating my thumb, I snap out of my hyper-focus.
She is still holding on to my wrist. “Lower your arm, Silas,” she says. “Look at my face.”
I do, though my gaze flickers toward her neck when she lowers the washcloth. There's a smear of blood across the side of her neck, and it is almost too much.
“Eyes on me,” she snaps. “Focus.”
A growl rises in my chest as I comply, forcing myself to look away from her neck. My shoulders are twitching.
“As long as I have this thing in me, Secutores knows where we are,” she says. “We have to get it out. Now. You have to focus.”
I move my arm and her fingers tighten. “Okay,” I say, effortlessly pulling free of her grip. “I hear you. Let me do it.” Taking a deep breath and marshalling my restraint, I indicate she should turn so that I can do what needs to be done. She nods and holds her hair out of the way again. I place my thumbs on either side of the cut and massage her skin, feeling the shape of a foreign body. When I squeeze my thumbs together, more blood flows but a tiny cylinder floats up and protrudes from the slit in her skin. I tug it free and step back. It's a small transmitter, slippery with blood, and I drop it on the counter.
Grabbing a larger towel from the nearby rack, I move away until my back is against the bathroom wall. Focusing on her reflection in the mirror, I keep my attention away from what my hands are doing. They're turning and twisting over each other, trying to get the blood off before I lose control.
Mere glances at the blood-stained counter and the tiny transmitter as she presses the bloody washcloth against her neck. “What sort of range does this thing have?”