Page 26 of From the Noblest Motives
The tiny drone zipped up and soared high above the prison, at first showing them nothing but featureless walls and a flat roof. There were no windows. No doors except the massive metal entrance in the front.
"Awful place." Damien's shudder telegraphed to Blaze even though they were barely touching, his imagination no doubt supplying him with vivid claustrophobic dread.
"Yeah, it's a fucking gulag. Stay with me, though. You're not inside there. I don't see any breaks in the walls. Those explosions didn't reach the perimeter."
Damien tipped his head and frowned at something on the display. "Go back. To the back wall."
"It's not damaged, Twitch. There's—"
"No." Damien cut him off, suddenly foxhound tense. "Past the wall. Toward the trees. Lower."
"There's, um, a pile of dirt?"
"Blaze." Damien moved farther back into the trees so he could stand without any prison cameras seeing him. "I need to get back there."
He didn't wait for Blaze to agree. Just took off through the trees. Cursing softly, keeping half an eye on his drone display, Blaze stumbled after him. The outside of the prison had little perimeter security beyond cameras and an imposing fence, so no issues with running into patrols. Still, he wished Damien wouldn't do that, charging off without checking his surroundings.
When he caught up, Blaze froze, his brain shorting out. Damien stood in a clearing, his shirt already stripped off, his head tipped back, and his arms flung wide to better feel the flows of life he followed. The light sparked in the gold bits of his nut-brown hair and glowed against his pale skin—a forest god caught in the ecstasy of accepting worship—and Blaze couldn't move, couldn't breathe, his heart crumbling to pieces at the sight.
I wish I was enough for you to trust. In yourself. In us. Oh, Damien. I can't just walk away again. Don't ask me to.
Shudder walking away from him after that last bitter argument at school. Damien leaving them both without a look back in Shade's Valley. Him skimming away from the Redoubt as Shudder stood below without any promises that he'd ever come back. There'd been too much leaving. Too many times it had felt like the last—with Damien, with Shudder— and his heart wouldn't hold up through any more of them. For either of them. For both of them.
He managed to catch himself with one painful, shaky breath, then another, and to will the tears back from his eyes. Damien and Shudder both needed him to be present, here, now. No time to fall the fuck apart. Instead, he recalled his drone and waited for Damien to come back to himself and relinquish his godhood.
Two minutes later, Damien lowered his arms and reached out to steady himself against a sapling, struggling to catch his breath. His eyes squeezed shut, possibly because of a sudden headache, his features no less beautiful but suddenly human again.
"You get something?"
"Yes." Damien held up a finger to ask for a moment. When he straightened and retrieved his shirt, he went on. "Shudder went through here. He somehow dug his way out. That pile of dirt closer to the fence was him emerging. Blaze… he got out."
"Huh. Not the first time."
Damien raised an eyebrow at him. "Not the first time he's escaped prison?"
"Not the first time he's tunneled to get somewhere. It's not his favorite thing, but he can."
"I don't think he tunneled very far. From there, he seems to be earth surfing."
"Right. I see some of his trail now. Looks like he was trying to cover it. Put the dirt back. But doing a piss-poor job."
"He was—" Damien swallowed hard. "There's so much pain."
"All right. We're coming, Shuds." Blaze took a quick glance around the clearing, taking note of its location in regard to the prison. "You wanna stay here while I run back to the truck for our stuff? Keep an eye on the trail?"
"I have it now." A bitter smile tugged at one corner of Damien's mouth. "I couldn't lose it if I tried."
Blaze thought about being more direct and telling Damien he should stay and rest, but he didn't want to make Damien feel less capable, either. Sometimes, communication with a certain locator got complicated. They both trudged back to the mechanic's yard, retrieved packs and hover platform, and made it back to Shudder's tunnel exit without running into anyone. He wasn't sure if that was incompetence on the part of the prison staff. Someone should've been out here when they couldn't find Shudder.
But maybe they couldn't conceive of anyone getting out of their escape-proof prison.
Once Blaze set the hover platform flat and pressed the controls, it folded open to its full three-by-four shape and began to hum. Bit of a tight fit, but he didn't think Damien would mind standing close, especially when he was tired. The more exhausted Damien was, the snugglier he got.
Not a word. Is it? Fuck it.
Blaze flipped up the control handle, and they both climbed on, with Damien hooking his fingers in Blaze's belt loops to steady himself. The platform wasn't the fastest way to get around, but in places where a flyer or a truck wouldn't fit, it was better than walking. Tripping over roots and barging through thorn bushes was always miserable. Skimming above them saved a lot of time and pieces of skin.
The trail headed due south, in as straight a line as Shudder could manage through the trees, straight enough that Damien hardly needed to suggest any course corrections. The quality of Shudder's surfing ranged from incredibly sloppy, where the dirt looked like a giant gopher had plowed through at fifty kilometers an hour, to meticulously neat, where the disturbed earth was tamped back down. Leaves and moss were already settling to cover any traces.
