The Girl Who Fell From The Sky - Rebecca Royce Page 0,5

I’d grasped the severity of my situation here until that very second. I was somewhere foreign, and everyone I’d been with was dead.

My watch! I’d not even considered it before. There was a universal contact button on it. I could reach Brent, and he’d come. Or he’d send people. Wherever I was, my brother would find me. But when I looked at it, I found the watch was cracked. Shattered would be the better word. These things were supposed to be resistant to being destroyed, but I supposed that didn’t apply to falling out of the sky.

“Excuse me, Nox.” My voice shook. “I…I need you to explain to me where I am. Please. Right now.”

He glanced back at me. “I found you in what will be the field of battle, and now you are safe in our City-State. Where else would you be?”

That told me nothing. “No. What planet is this? What is its designation?”

“I’m sorry, Bianco.”

“Bianca,” I corrected him, and he winced.

“Apologies, Bianca. It is a foreign name to me. I apologize, Bianca, I don’t know what a planet is or a designation.”

I was in so much trouble.

“Okay. How about a bigger city? Bigger than this?”

He shook his head. “There aren’t bigger cities. Why would there be such things?”

It was possible he was completely crazy. Or maybe he’d never left this strange corner of his world. If either of those things were true, I had absolutely no idea what to do about it. The vehicle started to bounce on rough terrain, and I held on for dear life, which made my hands start to burn again. Where was that jug he’d mentioned?

“I am going to stop.” He pulled the green scarf off of his mouth for the first time. There was no mirror for me to see him in, but I could finally make out his ear. It was pierced and set with a tiny jewel. Men didn’t do that where I was from. That small detail distracted me temporarily from the pain in my hands.

I wasn’t sure what to say. “Okay…”

He nodded. “I feel we should go see my friend Astor. He is…more versed in things than me. Truth, he is the smartest person I know. I am obligated to bring you straight to Torrin, and I may take a lashing for not doing so, but once you are with Torrin, he will make a decision and that will be that. Better to know what to do with you before we go to him so that we can give him all the information he needs.”

I leaned forward. “This Torrin, is he going to…hurt me?”

Nox was quiet for a long moment. “I hope not.”

My stomach tightened. “Nox…”

“When we get to Astor, do not stare. He is unusual.”

The bright blur beyond my window had darkened, and once Nox lifted the accordion door again, I realized why. He had piloted the whole transport into some sort of hangar, just on the ground. Or maybe underground? It was a poorly lit space, thick with fumes that made me cough when I tried to climb out, but at least there wasn’t any dust in the air.

And it was cool. The change in temperature licked me all over, and I shivered in delight. I hadn’t realized how the heat had aggravated my burns, but being out of it was a relief.

Nox set his pack down again, rummaged for a moment, and pulled out a wad of that green cloth we’d used for masks. The original shape had been small, compressed, but when he shook it out, it could almost have been a rug. He draped it over my shoulders and clasped it at my neck, all without so much as brushing my skin.

“You trembled,” he explained sheepishly.

“No, I’m not—” I started, but he looked so confused and possibly embarrassed that I just forced a smile and said, “Thank you.”

He nodded and indicated that I should follow him, so I did.

Off the main hangar, we took a tunnel whose walls looked like someone had dug them out by hand, maybe with a spoon. Every surface was rough, including the uneven floor, and tiny electric light bulbs had been strung at random-seeming intervals. The farther we got from the hangar, the more breathable the air became. I even got to a point where I wasn’t struggling to pull in breaths, which alerted me that I had, in fact, been struggling, probably since the crash.

I didn’t want to think of what the stress and trauma of the