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Chapter IX: The Third Dimension

"Amanda!" Victor exclaimed back at her. "Oh, thank--"

"Stop!" barked a Two before they could catch up. "Hands up, mouths shut!"

"Uh, sir," another, most likely lower-ranking Two said. "The other one, the new one, wasn't there. At the battle."

"No?" he said. He looked back at Amanda. "Hmph. Well. I guess we don't have any incriminating evidence against you. You may go."

"Battle? Incrim... Victor, what did you do?"

"Nothing," he said, turning back to the Twos. "I didn't do anything to anyone."

"My corporal says he saw you at the battle!"

"But I didn't kill anyone!" Victor shouted. "I... I was present, but I didn't participate. I didn't do anything 'incriminating.'"

"The One he was with was throwing tomahawks at us!"

"Hey, that was him, not me!"

"But that's enough to convict you as an accomplice," the general, or so Victor assumed, said. "You're coming with us."

"Whoa, whoa!" Victor said. "I wasn't--"

"This, uh, One, must've been acting of his own accord,"Amanda said. "Victor, this human, couldn't have forseen what he was going to do."

"He might've stopped him!" the corporal jabbed.

"How? The One had all the weapons, remember?"

Amanda was beating them. The general thought deeply about this, but managed to come up with another argument. "He seems to have a lot of weapons now."

"So do the fractions down there," Victor said. "That's where I got these. That's why I need them."

After another few moments, the general finally brought the crossbow to his side. "Fine. You've made your case. Men, go back to watching the forest, make sure no Ones are coming." The Twos walked off, and the pair of humans did the same.

"Let's get to an Adder's," Amanda said.

"Can we eat first?" Victor asked. "I just realized that I'm really hungry."

"That's why we're going to an Adder's," Amanda said. "Are you saying you haven't eaten this entire time?"

"Yeah. What's an Adder's?"

"Just walk with me," Amanda said. "Learn by demonstration."

It took them a while, as the Second Empire was a bit bigger than Uni, but Amanda's sense of direction guided them to it in a dozen minutes. They walked in, sat at the counter, and Amanda showed him how to eat. She ordered a 0.06 for him (since it had been a few hours since he had eaten). Victor was taken aback by the instant fullness he felt, but Amanda demanded his attention.

"What happened, Victor? Why were they trying to arrest you?"

He told her everything. All about his journey up the hill to Uni with Odin, the sentry, and walking through Uni to the zipline, and the battle that took place there.

"I didn't see a zipline when I left Uni," she said. He explained why.

He continued, going on about the zipline's proneness to disputes, being that it was an avenue for Ones to flood the Second Empire. How he nearly got killed getting to the line, how the other side was dug up, causing him and Odin to fall-- whereupon Odin was killed.

"Oh. Christ, Victor, I'm.... Wow. Are you okay after that?"

"Not really, no. We didn't like each other all that much, but he guided me. And seeing him die made me think I was dead. I still think that. What if I'm killed?"