Page 47 of The Inheritance
I cleaned my hands as best I could, cupped them, and brought some water to my mouth. It tasted clean and cold.
I filled both canteens, filled my hat, and poured it over my coveralls, trying to wash the dried blood from the Magnaprene. It took forever. Finally, I straightened. Bear lay next to the water, twitching her left ear.
“We drank, we showered, it’s time for a feast.”
I walked over to the stalker’s corpse, crouched, shifted my sword into a knife, and paused. Bear had been eating them along the way every chance she got, and so far she didn’t have any shivers.
Mmm, raw alien meat.
I didn’t have any choice. If we had found some plants or fruits that were safe, I would have eaten that, but the caves offered mostly fungi. They were conveniently glowing and hellishly poisonous.
“Stalker. It’s what’s for dinner.”
Bear panted.
I stabbed the stalker and gutted it. I was never a hunter. The only skinning I had ever done was limited to removing the skin from chicken thighs I bought at a grocery store. Getting the pelt off took a while. Finally, I cut a ham free and tossed it to Bear. The shepherd chomped on it.
I carved a paper-thin slice from the other leg and sniffed it. It smelled kind of gamey. Disgusting. It smelled disgusting. Back home, I bought a special composite cutting board just for raw chicken, because I could put it through the dishwasher. All of my wooden cutting boards were scrubbed after each use, and all of my meat was cooked to the correct temperature. I owned three cooking thermometers.
This meat was raw. Not rare. Just raw.
“Tacos would be so nice right now. Or shepherd’s pie. I make really good shepherd’s pie, with creamy mashed potatoes and a crust of melted cheese on top.”
Bear chewed on the stalker ham.
“You know what my favorite dessert is? Sometimes, when life’s too hard, I go to Dairy Queen and get a Turtle Pecan Cluster Blizzard. It has pecans and little bits of chocolate. I don’t really like pecans, and I’m not much of a chocoholic, but there is something about that Blizzard. It’s like happiness in a cup. I could so use one right now.”
My stomach was begging for calories. If I counted from the moment Bear and I left the mining site, I’d been hiking for days and between the hikes I’d been fighting for my life. My body kept healing my wounds, and all that regeneration had to have a caloric cost.
I was starving. Everything ached. If I flexed right now, the meat would be bright red. I had to eat, or I would become someone else’s dinner. I couldn’t afford weakness.
I surrendered to my fate and bit into the thin slice.
No flash of pain. No broken glass. It tasted vile and it stank, but it was meat. I was squatting by the river in a breach and eating raw meat. I’d gone completely feral.
I would make it out of this cave, and then I would never think of this again. I would erase this from my memories.
I chewed the meat and tried to think of something else. Luckily for me, I had plenty to ponder.
When we crossed the stone bridge out of that small cave, I sensed something. It was far in the distance, hidden behind countless cave walls and solid stone, a knot of… something. I couldn’t quite describe it. It felt almost like a hot magnet. It pulled on me, but not in a pleasant way. It was more like a psychic ache, like a splinter that got stuck in my awareness.
The stalkers and other creatures had kept me busy, so I mostly noted it and kept moving. But right now, with no distractions, it nagged at me. It could’ve been anything, but the most plausible explanation was usually the right one.
I’d become aware of the anchor.
Most of the gate divers didn’t feel the anchor until they were right on top of it. The distant awareness usually came with extraordinary power particular to top-tier Talents. Not all the powerful guild members could feel the anchor from far away, but everyone who did was in the upper layer of the talent pool.
I leaned over the stream and tried to look at my reflection. I couldn’t really see myself. The light was too diffused. My arms and legs didn’t look that different, but then I was wearing coveralls.
I would have to find a reflective surface somewhere. I didn’t want to dwell on it. As long as I still looked enough like myself to be recognized, I would be fine. I’d been checking my blood through the lens of my talent, and I was reasonably sure that I would pass the DDC blood tests. My regeneration ability lay far deeper, on a cellular level.
The bigger problem was the anchor. It was closer now than when we started. We were walking toward it. I didn’t want to go toward the anchor. I wanted to go toward the gate and the exit. But right now, I didn’t have much choice. Even if I wanted to backtrack, I couldn’t. We had threaded the labyrinth of the tunnels like a needle, and I didn’t remember the way back.
The assault team had taken a route to the anchor that led away from the mining site. In theory, if I found the anchor chamber, I could try to find that route and use it to reach the gate. However, the closer you got to the anchor, the more difficult the fights became.
I had two choices: to wander aimlessly in these caves or to head for the anchor. Even if I failed to find the route the first assault team had taken, eventually Cold Chaos would send in the second-strike team. Joining up with them would be too dangerous. There was a solid chance that Cold Chaos wanted me dead to avoid the massive PR storm and sanctions that would result from admitting that London abandoned me. So running into the embrace of the Cold Chaos assault team wouldn’t be smart. But I could retrace their steps or follow them to the gate, staying out of sight. I’d gotten very good at moving quietly.
The anchor was the only logical choice. I would have to chance it. At least I had a direction now.
