I opened my eyes, and the first thing I noticed was a scent. Instead of the sterile, dry air of ventilation shafts or the heavy, oily stench of workshops, I smelled damp earth.
To anyone else, it would have been a miracle, but to me... it felt like coming home. In that past life of mine—even though I spent days on end stuck in a lab—the only time I ever truly felt alive was when I had soil and roots beneath my feet, not concrete and metal.
But the idyll shattered the exact moment I tried to take a deep breath.
"You son of a..." I rasped, nearly coughing up my lungs from a sharp spike of pain.
"Back with us?" Zeno’s voice drifted down from somewhere above.
He was sitting on a fallen trunk about five meters away, checking his knives.
"Something like that," I muttered, trying to sit up, but the world instantly tilted and spun. "How long was I... out?"
"A couple of hours. We haven't gotten as far as I'd like, but you started getting delirious, so I had to call a halt."
I swallowed hard, my throat feeling completely raw. Even though I had already died once before back there, right now, I was genuinely terrified. It felt as if a gaze were hiding behind every tree, lurking in every shadow. Like Richter was still watching me through some invisible lens.
"Zeno..." I finally managed to hitch myself up into a sitting position, leaning my back against a tree. "We ruined it ourselves, didn't we?"
Zeno stopped sharpening his knife and slowly raised his eyes to meet mine. "What are you talking about?"
"About us talking. About my skill, how it works, the 'tissue rebuilding'... We laid it all out for him ourselves, didn't we? There's no way Richter could have gotten his hands on that data unless he was eavesdropping on our conversation..."
I closed my eyes, a sickening knot tightening in my stomach at the realization of my own sheer stupidity. The phrase walls have ears was taking on a brutally literal meaning.
Zeno didn't answer, merely gesturing toward the sky with a brief nod.
It had darkened unnaturally fast. Storm clouds, I thought.
The first drop fell right onto my forehead. Then another hit my blistered palm. And then, a torrential downpour slammed into the forest with such force that the trees just a few meters away vanished behind a solid wall of water. The roar of rain striking the leaves instantly drowned out every other sound. I tilted my head back, letting the torrent wash over my face, and for the first time in twenty-four hours, I felt something relax inside me.
"Hey, kid!" Zeno yelled over the roar of the water. "Get up, move! Everything's about to wash out."
I didn't budge. In my past life, heavy rain had been my favorite time. When everyone else ran to huddle under storefront awnings or frantically opened their umbrellas, I would just slow my pace. I loved walking down the deserted streets, letting the water run down my collar, while the city felt clean and, at long last, quiet.
"Iron, do you hear me?!" Zeno yanked my shoulder, forcing me up.
"I hear you..." I stood with great difficulty, leaning heavily against the tree trunk.
"We need a place," I rasped, wiping water from my eyes. "Shelter. What about your cabin? Can we make it there?"
"You're a smart kid, Iron, I'll give you that," Zeno's voice turned dry and sharp, "but sometimes you can be incredibly stupid."
"What's wrong with it?"
"What's wrong is that the entire Order knows about my cabin! Every damn patrol within a fifty-mile radius. Did you think I was hiding from them there?"
I frowned, trying to wrap my head around it.
"Has it still not clicked yet?" Zeno stepped in close, his face just inches from mine. "I work for them. From time to time. They need to know where I am so they can send a runner with information or orders for the next job."
The realization that Zeno didn't have a "secret hideout" just didn't compute.
"Richter isn't an idiot. He would've sent men there first thing."
"So we have nothing?" I asked.
"We have this godforsaken forest, at the very least," Zeno muttered, catching me by the elbow. "Let's move. We head in the opposite direction. We'll figure out where to go on the way."
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