Page 69 of Challenged

“It really had a one hundred percent mortality rate, just for the women? That’s not… diseases don’t work like that.”

“There are things that human women are more vulnerable to than men. Osteoporosis.”

“Yes, but that’s to do with hormonal changes that women go through. And it’s a physical condition, not viral or bacterial infection, like this sickness must have been.”

“Could hormonal differences still not be responsible? Or other biological differences we have?”

“Maybe if the difference was something like twenty percent. But all of them dead? It…”

It doesn’t make sense. How many times have I said that in the last two days?

Unease burns at the back of my throat.

“Anyway,” Deborah says. “We probably shouldn’t hide down here all day. I’m going to head up to the fire. Help with the cooking. Keeping busy will keep me distracted.”

I know I should go with her, but the disquiet I feel keeps growing and growing. It’s like the itch of this new unanswered question has reignited all the others, all of them now clawing at me, impossible to ignore. I glance at Farrow’s computer. Feel a twitch in my fingers towards the keyboard.

“I’ll join you in a bit, okay?”

I catch a glimpse of disappointment in Deborah’s expression as she leaves the room without me.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Rardek

The evening is giving way to night when the path we are following takes a steep turn upwards. Maldek stops, bending double a moment to catch his breath, before looking up at the path ahead of us.

“I do not think the camping will be so comfortable up there,” he says, looking at the rockiness of the ground. “What do you think, make camp here and continue in the morning, or take the risk and keep going?”

I grimace. A tent pitched on uneven, rocky ground is not going to grant us a good night’s sleep, and I dearly wish to be comfortable to maximise my time with my Angie. But the thought of stopping before the light has fully gone, before my energy is truly spent, chafes at my spirit.

“I think we have already travelled further than little human legs would be able to comfortably walk. Our destination cannotbe far. Poisons that keep away the predators would not make me sleep easy in a tent if I was human-sized.”

“You think we travel to another hut?”

“I think whatever else we find, there will be some kind of outpost here. A place to rest.”

“A proper bed?”

“A proper bed for our feet to stick out of the end of.”

Maldek laughs. “Better than a rocky floor. Push on?”

I nod. “Push on.”

We walk, rather than run. The ground is uneven with rocks and quickly grows steeper. The trees were always going to be thin in a place like this, but the rot has only made that worse. I do not trust any of the branches ahead of us to take our weight, so we scramble, keeping our bodies low and using our hands to aid us. It is slow going, and for a little while I wonder if we will shortly be descending all the way back down again in worse light. But then things level off, the ground opening up before us, revealing a small hut and another tall structure next to it.

The hut looks very much like the other Mercenia hut, but raskarran hut sized. It has the same unnatural straight walls, made from the same grey material. The other structure is entirely different, and I cannot begin to guess what its purpose is.

It is certainly not a building made for living in. It has no walls. Just sharp bones that jut upwards, climbing as high as a tree. Atop it, several circular things are dotted about it, pointing in different directions. Much like with thepods,there are lights on it that flash every so often, all of them an angry red.

“Have you ever seen a thing so unsettling to the spirit?” Maldek says, his eyebrows raised.

“I wonder if it is the thing our linashas are expecting.”

“We will be able to ask them soon enough.”

The door to the small hut is locked, but it does not take much to barge it open. It is immediately obvious that no one has been inside the building before us for a very long time. The air smells stale. Dust has settled on every surface. There is no mark - on the floor or elsewhere - of another being having passed through.

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