Page 68 of Katya and the Young God

There’s a buzz in the background, so similar to what she heard under the mountain that it brings a lump to her throat. “Katya, you’re okay?”

She takes a moment, before evaluating. “Well, I’m in a stolen car, I’ve slept on hard rock for the last three nights, I’ve had two cave ins on top of me, I’ve hiked about seven miles today, and I was cuffed last night,” she says, her mind racing for something, anything, that’s not as dire. “I have that dog with me now, though.”

“What the fuck?”

Katya leans her head against the car seat, and Stepan sticks his face into hers. “I’m just calling to let you know I’m safe,” she says, getting her professional voice back. “I’m not sure what else I can tell you at this moment, but I’m physically okay. Beat up, but okay.”

There’s a pause, and the technical buzzing is loud, tugging at tears in her eyes. “Do you...need something?” Miri asks, tentative, despite the thousands of miles apart. “Not-Thomas still isn’t tracking you, but if you tell him where you are, I’m sure we can get close.”

The idea of having a friend close in the face of her failure is overwhelming. “No, I should be fine.” As if punctuating her words, Stepan licks the side of her face, and it’s very close to gross. “Miri, I failed.”

There’s a quick intake of breath on the other side of the line. “Don’t say that,” Miri snaps. “I don’t know what it is, but there’s always another chance.”

At the words, tears bubble over in her eyes, but she refuses to even sniffle, instead taking a moment to look at the drizzle in the forest, at the trees that stretch so far up into the clouds. “I’ll tell you what I can later,” Katya says, wanting anything to get out of the conversation. “I haven’t had a shower in five days, and I’m almost back to the cabin, and this is dire.”

“Katya...”

Before her friend can protest, she jabs at the button, ending the call, and she exhales out in one long motion, before looking over at the smiling dog. “That was a disaster,” she says, but Stepan appears nonplused. “Could not have gone worse.”

Of course, the dog doesn’t respond, so she pulls back out onto the dirt road.

* * *

The momentshe gets into the cabin, after dropping her bag on the threadbare entry rug, she forces herself to do a quick security sweep. She finds nothing, but it’s there, the idea that someone’s been in there, that she just can’t shake.

So she checks again, checks all her small little tells, all her little traps, where she could tell if people crossed a barrier or searched her drawers or anything, but...nothing.

After her third obsessive check, she sits on the floor of the middle of her cabin, and the dog pads over to her, sitting next to her, expectant.

“I can’t speak dog,” she tells him, but he just sticks his nose in her face until she pets him, before climbing to her feet, pouring some of the kibble into the food bowl.

Of course, the dog scarfs it down, and she’s going to have to do research, Google, talk to a vet, whatever, to figure out how often she should be feeding him, and she adds that to her mental list of things to do, a list that seems wholly surreal and wholly impossible to complete.

So she draws herself a bath, easing herself in, and the water quickly turns dirty after the first scrub of her skin, so she drains it, refilling it, and scrubbing again. But the five days of accumulated grime, of white dust with the cave in, the blood from the scrapes and Selene, provide too much, and she has to draw the bath two more times before the water remains even a little bit clear while she lays in it.

And lay in it she does, her phone only a few inches away, there for her to take and absorb more information, catch up on everything that happened in the world, read more reports, anything, but she leaves it on the tile floor next to the bath. Instead, she leans her head against the porcelain, and lets herself stare up at the tile ceiling, not blinking, until the pattern swirls and distorts in her eyes.

* * *

She wakesup the next morning in her over-large bed with the giant dog laying with his head on her stomach, and only lets herself despair for a well measured fifteen minutes before making herself stand up.

She’s sore, and she stretches out slowly as she putters around her kitchen, making too-strong of coffee and a simple breakfast, ignoring her phone and emails until she sits out on the front porch with her laptop.

Stepan immediately stretches out in the sunbeam, and his obvious contentment almost tugs a smile onto Katya’s face.

She should find Pieter’s cabin, if it’s so close that the dog can easily walk there, see what sort of food he has, any medical supplies, anything that could give her hints of the life he leads. Of why he would go with the other team, leaving her there to stay with the dog. Of what his motives are, of what he’s trying to accomplish. If she can trust him to have Selene’s best interests in mind, or if he’s just acting for himself.

If she can trust the strange softness she saw in him under the mountain, or if it was all an act designed to prey on her niceness and sympathy.

K (8:33 AM): I know you’re somewhere without signal, but when you get back, give me a call. I have some questions about your brother in law.

K (8:34 AM): Also I’m alive.

KA (8:36 AM): Also if Iakov has any input on how actual gods act when they’re children and not adults, let me know.

She idly checks her email, in the way that one does when they’re not paying too much attention, like it’s the email that belongs to a different person, like it’s a task that holds no emotional weight.

She activates the tracking and audio bugs she put into everyone’s packs, but wherever they are, the signal is weak, giving her only the greater northern Colorado area.

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