Perdition's Child

Chapter 10

Mehk kept his gaze down, bolting through the streets and alleys without purpose or direction, just needing to get away. He concentrated on the feeling of his pads striking the ground, the way his knee and ankle stretched and bended differently at each point of his lengthy stride, the click of his talons on concrete. He knew he was drawing attention, running in a city, outstripping the sluggish traffic, but it didn't matter because if he ran hard enough he didn't have to think for those dragging minutes.

By the time the stitch in his side forced him, panting, to sag against a filthy graffiti covered wall he was well over a mile from where he'd started and his legs trembled. Aliens looked at him suspiciously; a skithtiri queen shoo'd her young brood all to one side of the walkway to keep herself between he and them.

Free. He was free, no crazy alien mercenaries. He should be ecstatic, so why did he smell his doom hovering over him?

They weren't his friends, they would have disposed of him if it really looked like their supposed doomsday virus couldn't be stopped... And now he'd proven uncooperative, so they'd certainly kill him on sight if they caught him again.

Mehk took a deep breath and slid into survival mode. First, inventory. One useless hacked com, seven of those protein bars he'd taken to carrying around lately, a wallet with the wrong currency for this colony, bank card, drivers license also not valid here, and one cheesy flower hairpin that Quara had snuck into his mane this morning when he hadn't been paying attention. His heart squeezed painfully and he bit his lip until the feeling passed, then shoved the small pile back into his pockets where it belonged.

First step to getting home would be contact, he'd need to call someone back on Lequin he could count on. His mom? No... Sister? He didn't want to risk the merc group somehow tracking them down though. Better stick to Darkrei, this was all his fault anyway.

With slightly more purpose now, Mehk strode along the sidewalk of a street full of businesses. There were alien plants set in grated pits every fifteen feet or so, flimsy things reaching vainly for the artificial sun. He carefully looked up just far enough to look at the signs on the shops until he found an ATM. He inserted his card and it locked down his account. His com chimed with a notification about the suspicious activity, but with it hacked to prevent outgoing messages there was nothing he could do.

Mehk cursed and kicked the machine ineffectually, then forced himself to breath. The ATM had other options, and after navigating the menu for a few minutes he discovered he could exchange the klits he had on hand for the local currency. That was right, hadn't he heard in the news a few years back that there was a human colony that would accept homeworld lellians without a voucher from Wrestis? He hadn't paid much attention at the time, but Gestalt must have been that colony. Wrestis wasn't very happy with this place.

Now he needed to make a call, which he couldn't do while his com was hacked to view-only. He backtracked to the repair shop he'd passed less than a mile back, pausing only once when his eyes had flashed oddly silver in his reflection in a café window. He did a double take, backing up to repeat the motion to see if it would happen again, but it didn't and the group of humans eating at the table by that window were staring at him. He moved on.

The repair shop door jingled obnoxiously when he entered, metallic bells grating out some awful alarm. Mehk tried not to cringe at it too obviously.