had a drink of water in three hours.” Frowning, she passed him a reusable bottle filled to the brim. “You know you can’t do that, not in this heat, especially with the amount of rubble you’re shifting.”
As he took the water, he catalogued his body and realized he’d come perilously close to dehydration. “Thank you.” No one had been concerned about his welfare, except as it impacted their own needs and wants, since he was a child.
“No thanks needed.” Her eyes took in the area in front of him as he drank the water in slow, measured swallows so as not to overload his parched body. “This is bad enough, but I keep waiting for the aftershocks.”
He nodded, lowering the bottle after emptying half of it. “They’re apt to be severe, given the magnitude of the quake. That’s why I have to get the trapped out now—the rubble is too unstable to hold in a major tremor.”
Working without a break for the next four hours—not stopping even when Tazia passed him water and he gulped it down—he got half the trapped out before the world shook again. Screams pierced the air as things crashed and people bled, but his first thought was for Tazia. Reaching out with his mind as he crouched down to ride out the aftershock, he searched for the brilliance that was hers. He didn’t invade her mind to find her—he didn’t have to. Tazia’s mental signature was as unique as a fingerprint to him . . . and there she was.
Safe.
When the shaking finally stopped, he could no longer sense living minds below the closest section of rubble. As, long ago, he’d no longer been able to find his mother or brother, though he’d searched for hours. Until rescue services had arrived and found him wandering barefoot over the debris, his skin cut and bleeding and blood pouring from his nose and ears as he continued to try to shift the entire landslide on his own.
“They’re dead,” a Psy-Med specialist had told him, cold and no-nonsense, the words like stones smashing into his face. “You aren’t strong enough to assist. Sit here and don’t be a nuisance.”
No longer was he a child, but he couldn’t help the dead here, either.
Leaving them, he moved to a section that still held the living, and when Tazia came by again with water, he saw the tear tracks in the dust on her face. His instincts zeroed in on her. “You’re hurt?” He scanned her body to check for injuries.
She shook her head. “There was this little girl—she followed me around all day yesterday, said she wanted to learn what I did. The aftershock . . . She was . . .” Sobs shook her small frame, her face crumpling.
When she would’ve turned away, he stepped close, protecting her from the gaze of others. He knew she needed contact, needed touch, but he hadn’t touched anyone except out of necessity since before the landslide that had ended his childhood, for the Silent did not touch. So he simply stood close, and when her tears ended, he made her drink some of the water she’d brought him.
“I’d better go,” she said, her voice husky. “Don’t forget to eat a nutrition bar.”
The clock had just ticked past midnight when he was forced to stop. Mental muscles strained to the last degree, his uniform hanging on a frame that was burning energy faster than he could replenish it, he made himself walk away from the rubble. Tazia was inside the tent, working on a small component by the light of the solar-powered emergency lantern she’d bought in the same little shop where she’d bought the box of cleansing wipes she’d shared with him.
“There’s not enough electricity to do computronic work after dark,” she murmured absently, then looked up. “Stefan, sit before you fall down.” The words were sharp.
“I’m fine, just low on energy.” But he sat, his body feeling as if it was held together by strings that could snap at any moment.
Digging into his duffel, Tazia pulled out a pack of the high-density nutrition bars he’d brought. She peeled one open and pushed it at him. “Eat.” Watching him to make sure he obeyed the order, she found some water and gave that to him after dosing it with a vitamin and mineral powder. “There’s enough drinking water that we don’t have to ration it. Tankers will be here tomorrow.”
He drank the water, ate another bar when she gave it to him.