The Retreat (The After Trilogy Book 1) (9 page)

“Thrym!” she screamed. Romy tore through the sand, running to him, only seeing
him.

He reached for Romy and swung her high. The weight threw them both to the sand, and the pair rose to their knees, clutching at each other, making desperate, furtive touches to reassure themselves the other was there.

Romy could barely see him through her thick tears. Both trembled.

“Thrym,” she choked.

He held her to his chest, rocking her. “I can’t believe I found you. Romy, I thought. . . .”

“The others?” she asked fearfully, holding him at arm’s distance.

“Deimos, Phobos, and Elara are alive,” he said.

The dam inside her broke. Romy covered her face with both hands and cried as though her heart were breaking.

Thrym stroked her hair. “They’re all alive.”

But his tone was off.

Romy lowered her hands.

“What does that mean?” she asked quietly.

“Deimos is badly hurt. His nanobytes aren’t healing him.” Thrym couldn’t meet her eyes. He choked, “Ro, I’m not sure he has much longer.”

Romy was on her feet. “We have to go quickly. Atlas might be able to help.” She looked behind her, stomach dropping when she found the beach empty. Where was he?

“The man you were with?” Thrym asked curiously, but she wasn’t listening. She pulled Thrym with her, back to their camp.

Atlas was still there, packing his things. He looked up as she slowed her pace.

“I turned around, and you w-weren’t there,” she stuttered.

“I thought I should pack up.” He sounded tense. Something was wrong.

She began to pack up her own shelter. “Our knot mate is very sick. He needs help.” She paused, waiting for him to reassure her. When it didn’t come, she muttered, “The others are alive.”

Atlas nodded. He was either unsurprised or didn’t care.

“You should go and be with them,” he said.

Romy paused her packing and settled back on her heels. “You’re not coming?”

Cloud-grey eyes studied her. It might be her imagination, but she no longer thought them hard, even if she couldn’t understand why he was acting so strangely.

His eyes flickered over her shoulder.

“No. I’m not,” he said, hefting his pack into position.

She’d just found her friends. Romy should be ecstatic, not crushed. She studied the set of his jaw and wondered how it was he’d been laughing just ten minutes before.

“How will I find you?” she asked calmly. Thrym came forwards to stand by her side. She ignored him for the time being.

Atlas rose, extending his palm. In the middle sat a single eucalyptus leaf.

“Goodbye, Rosemary,” he said.

She took the leaf and he turned away. Her mind raced over their conversation.

“Atlas,” she called. “You haven’t told me how to find you.”

He didn’t answer or slow as he strode back in the direction they’d come from.

Romy started after him. But a hand latched on to her wrist. With a start, she remembered Thrym’s presence.

“Romy, leave him,” Thrym said. “He looks dangerous. And we need to go. Dei needs us.”

She was torn and couldn’t believe it. Deimos was
family.
But the thought of never seeing Atlas again was somehow unbearable.

Romy lifted the leaf to her nose and inhaled the sharp clearness it brought.

She turned her back on the bush. “Lead the way.”

“E
lara and I have been taking a different direction each day to find you. We’re not far away. I’d only just left,” Thrym explained as they ran down the beach. Running in sand was a lot different to running on a treadmill. Her calf muscles were on fire.

“What happened to you guys?” she panted. She’d filled him in on what happened to her already.

“Elara and I were the only ones who didn’t lose consciousness during re-entry,” he puffed. “She deployed the parachutes and said we were slowing down. That everything seemed as all right as it could be.”

“Then?” Romy prodded.

The pair reached a stretch of rock pools.

Thrym picked his way across, Romy following in his footsteps.

“Then the ship tore in two. There was no warning—your part just disappeared.” His voice was shaking. “I’ve never felt so crazy in my life. We were strapped to our chairs and couldn’t even see where you’d gone. It was terrible.

Romy squeezed his arm.

He smiled down at her. “The parachutes did their job, but three of them were ripped away with you, leaving us with only one. We wouldn’t have survived if we hadn’t crashed into the ocean.”

Romy shook her head. “Why didn’t you drown?”

Thrym gave her a tight smile. “We had our suits on, remember? We had oxygen.”

“Of course,” she echoed softly.

“We had to go back for Deimos. He was stuck between his seat and the wall of the craft. It wasn’t easy. We’ve tried to strip the battler of everything useful. But we’ve run out of oxygen.”

If Thrym said it wasn’t easy, it must have been horrific.

They rounded the corner and Romy felt her legs give way for a second.

And then she was leaving Thrym in her dust as she flew towards Phobos, who stood at the edge of the tree line.

Phobos turned at her pounding footsteps and she only caught his widened eyes before she wrapped herself around him. She held on, determined to never let go of her friends again.

“Romy,” he said, disbelief colouring his voice. He squeezed her arms as though checking she were real. “You’re alive?”

“I am.” She choked on a sob. “Are you?”

“Still figuring it out,” he said truthfully, resting his head atop of hers. “My little Romy is alive.”

“I’m here. And you’re here. And I love you.” Romy kissed his cheek. “Please take me to Deimos.”

A shadow flickered across his eyes. A foreign expression for him.

She didn’t even want to ask. “He’s not. . . ?”

“Not yet.”

She shivered at the despair in his voice. Phobos had given up hope.

The shelter the rest of her knot had erected was much larger and more permanent than her own tent. They had salvaged large pieces of aluminium and even four seats from the battler, now decorating the rudimentary home. It was no parachute on sticks.

A rattling sound drew her attention to one corner. Thrym was leaning over someone.
Deimos!
She rushed across the shelter and sank to her knees beside him.

She gasped, pressing a hand to her mouth as nausea threatened to overwhelm her at the sight of her frail knot mate. His skin was stark white, utterly devoid of blood. Deimos lay as still as death. Other than the shuddering rise of his chest, there was little sign that he was alive.

“What’s his injury?” she whispered.

“A jagged piece of wreckage stabbed him in the side on landing. It’s definitely injured his lungs, but we don’t know the severity.” Each soldier possessed decent medical training for small wounds, and Thrym was fairly knowledgeable, always having held a stronger interest in this area than the others.

Romy stood angrily. “Why aren’t his nanos working?”

Phobos slumped visibly. “You know they only work to a certain severity, Ro.”

She refused to believe Deimos was going to die. “What have you tried?”

“We wash the wound daily, but we’re running low on water.”

“I know where a river is.”

“Romy. . . .”

“It’s not harmful. I’ve been drinking it for the last four days. And . . . Atlas has lived here for five years.”

Phobos and Thrym both turned to her, jaws dropped.

She nodded and spread her arms wide and spun in a slow circle.

“The man you were with appeared healthy, too,” Thrym mused. “I assumed the ocean water didn’t affect us because we had the suits on. Are you sure you’re okay? I’ll check you after Deimos.”

Usually Romy would poke fun at his overprotective tendencies. But just hearing his voice, she didn’t have the courage to because at any second it could all be ripped away.

“Wait, wait, wait. What man?” Phobos looked between them. “There’s someone else here on Earth?”

Romy dropped her pack against the tent wall, averting her face. “Yes, but he’s gone now.”

* * *

A
s the wind began to steadily rise, Elara returned.

She sprinted to where Romy still kept vigil at Deimos’s side. The girls embraced, resting their foreheads together and exchanging stories in hushed voices.

Elara sagged in her arms. It was strange; when Romy had imagined this moment, she’d been the one leaning on Elara. Romy tightened her hold on the pixie-featured girl.

“Is he okay?” Romy asked.

Elara cast a worried glance at Phobos, whispering. “His breathing seems worse.”

Thrym eyed the sides of the shelter with distrust. “Phobos, come help me outside. The wind is growing stronger.”

Phobos knelt beside Deimos, his head bent. Romy didn’t know if he’d heard Thrym at all.

“I’ll come,” she said softly.

Phobos and Deimos were closest to each other. This was terrible for her, but even worse for Phobos.

She circled the shelter with Thrym, wiping at the sweat dripping from her chin. The air had grown thick with water.

The buckling of the aluminium and the howling of the air was loud enough that Thrym had to raise his voice to be heard. “I think if we stack everything against the wall on the inside, at least the walls won’t cave in during the night.”

Romy nodded in agreement. The main danger was the sharp aluminium hitting them. “Let’s place some wooden bracers on either side and set them into the sand,” she shouted back.

She peeked up at the sky and hoped it would be enough. The ugly bruised clouds were a radical change from the calm serenity Atlas had shown her this morning. Her stomach twisted. Why was he so set on leaving? He’d been alone for five years. She’d told him she wouldn’t tell the Orbitos about him. Didn’t he trust her?

The convenience of their exit point on the beach, five minutes from her knot, hadn’t escaped her notice for a second. Atlas had known her knot was there. But then, why lead her to them when he so obviously wanted to be alone?

She recalled the loneliness in his eyes and rubbed her forehead. Stupid man made no sense, she thought. And what did she care? Odds were she’d never see him again. Her eyes burned as the wind whipped around her face.

“You gonna help?”

Romy started and flashed Thrym an apologetic smile.

They began searching for sturdy limbs to fortify their holding.

“So what was with that guy?” Thrym asked after a while. “When did he crash here?”

She looked up. “How did you know he crashed here?”

Thrym shrugged. “He looked like a soldier. And, well, he would have to be one of us, wouldn’t he?”

She pressed her lips together, unwilling to share information about Atlas without his permission. “You don’t think it’s strange that we’re able to breathe? And drink the water here?”

Thrym thought about it. “There are only three teams. They’ve probably just missed it.”

She’d thought so, too. But Atlas had been here five years. . . .

Romy didn’t know what to think.

She frowned at the ground.

“Romy,” Thrym started. She turned at the hitch in his soothing voice.

“You should just be careful if he comes back. I didn’t like the way he looked at you.”

She studied her knot mate. “Like what?”

Thrym shook his head, frowning. “I don’t know. It just made me angry.”

Romy looked down at her hand as a splash of rain appeared on the same palm, which earlier held a eucalyptus leaf. “I don’t think he’s coming back.”

Thrym cupped the side of her face with a gentle hand. “It’s about to start raining. Let’s get inside.”

Romy tilted her head back to stare up at the sky and the angry clouds wrung out their water from far above her. It was breathtaking.

She untangled her arm from Thrym’s and stood in front of the shelter, letting the rain wash over her skin. The raindrops were warm and refreshing. She pulled her fingers through her hair, letting the water run through.

“Romy, get inside, you’ll get soaked,” Elara shouted. “Trust me, it’s cool the first time—until you have to sleep in wet clothes.”

Romy stayed where she was for another minute, riveted by the sight, and then ducked inside.

* * *

R
omy was glad she’d listened to Elara. The rain showed no signs of abating over the next two days. Their flimsy shelter threatened to collapse upon them every second as the wind battered the structure from all sides. Elara said it was a superstorm, a result of global warming forcing too much energy into the weather systems. It was like five pre-global-warming storms put together.

Deimos somehow clung to life, his nanotech doing everything it could to tether him to this world. But his breathing had turned from rattling to stuttering that morning and he hadn’t regained consciousness at all since she’d found the knot.

Phobos spent most of the time staring at his dark-haired counterpart. He hardly spoke, didn’t sleep—just stared at the struggling body of his brother. It was the best and worst part of belonging to a knot. Living together was joy, but for one part to be ripped away was torture. Romy herself felt like her insides were being cut into shreds. And she wasn’t sure Phobos could make it without his twin.

“If Elara hadn’t flown into K4 we would have never crashed.” Phobos’s voice was hoarse from disuse. “Deimos wouldn’t be lying here like this.”

It was the first time he’d spoken in two days.

Romy shared an uncertain look with Thrym. Phobos was upset and lashing out. But she caught a glimpse of the distraught expression on Elara’s face and couldn’t let it slide.

“We can’t think that way, Pho,” she said quietly. “We were one of the last knots to get to the docks. We got the worst ship.”

“Because of Elara,” he said bitterly.

It was true, Elara always took the longest to prepare, but. . . .

Thrym shook his head. “We’re in a crappy situation. It’s not fair to point fingers. If we thought that way then it could be said that the blame is on you and Deimos. If you hadn’t landed us kitchen duty, we wouldn’t have been so tired and would have been more likely to wake at the first alarm. Maybe it’s Deimos’s fault he’s here like this.”

Phobos fixed Thrym with a murderous stare. “Did you just blame Dei for his own
death
?” he shouted, eyes red with lack of sleep.

Thrym held up his hands, coming to his feet. “No, I was just illustrating the futility of thinking that way.”

Phobos leapt up and took a single step in the other man’s direction. “How about I illustrate the futility with my foot up your arse.”

Romy winced, quickly rising in a hurry to stretch out her arms between them. “Wait! Just sit down and we’ll talk about it. Everyone’s upset.”

“Get out of the way, Romy. This is overdue. He’s not thinking straight,” Thrym ordered.

Romy looked at Elara as the young woman stood, tears streaming down her face in a steady torrent. “It
is
my fault. All of this,” she sobbed.

There was a mighty roar and Phobos bore down on Thrym in the tight space. Thrym pushed Romy to the sand. Elara screamed and rushed in to grab Phobos’s swinging arm, but he knocked her back, causing her to trip over a propped branch.

Romy watched the scene from the ground in disbelief. They’d never fought like this in their lives.

She started as hands gripped her waist and lifted her up. She looked over her shoulder and up.

Atlas.
Her mouth formed the word.

Atlas peered down at her for a beat, checking she was okay, and then strode into the middle of the tent.

“Stop. Now,” he commanded.

Romy’s chin all but dropped to the sand when it worked. Even Elara stopped crying. Thrym was the least affected, probably because he’d seen Atlas before.

Her knot stared at the stranger in their tent. All she could feel was overwhelming relief he was here. He’d followed them after all.

Atlas crossed the shelter and dropped to his knees beside Deimos, picking up a limp wrist. He checked the wound with his other hand. The grimace told Romy all she needed to know.