“You okay?” she asked.
Cavalon stood, knees wobbling beneath him. He wanted to spit out the overwhelming metallic taste, but his lips and mouth had gone dry. He ran his hands over his chest and willed his senses to function again—to tell him if he’d sustained any injuries. Other than exhaustion and his frantic, rapid breaths, he seemed to be functioning normally.
“Fine,” he managed. “Yes … fine.”
She looked down at the body at his feet, then back up at him. “You sure?”
His gaze floated to the ground, and he clenched his jaw. She didn’t mean physically okay.
He stared at the spattering of crimson staining the backs of his hands. He never saw himself as a particularly sheltered person. But there was something uniquely disturbing about watching the life dissolve out of something while its hot blood spilled onto you until it became silent and unmoving and gone forever … Even if it was only a Drudger.
The boy wasn’t supposed to be a killer.
He had to ask himself—why were they doing this again? In anticipation that the Drudgers would have done the same to them, in a heartbeat. And they would have. Under no provocation, they’d have killed the Sentinels, simply to take whatever meager supplies they had, or so they could declare themselves the victors, or whatever.
But the Drudgers would have lost. If the Sentinels’ single most useful fighter and single most useless fighter could take so many of them out, then the entirety of the group would have been just fine. So he told himself they’d have died either way. Because they would have.
“It’s only a Drudger,” he said, trying to sound like he believed himself, but his voice came out weak.
“It doesn’t matter. Taking a life is never easy.” She gripped his shoulder, face creasing into a concerned grimace. “I shouldn’t have let you come.”
“I’m fine,” he said, surprised by the hardness in his tone. “Really. Let’s keep going.”
She assessed him cautiously, then nodded. “Let’s find out where the rest are.”
She crossed to the bank of terminals against the opposite wall. Cavalon followed and stood over her shoulder as she brought up the scanners. Three blips showed on the holographic overhead of the ship—all located in what appeared to be the cockpit.
“Only three?” he asked.
She shook her head. “There should be fifteen or twenty more, at least.”
“Maybe Jackin’s scan was off?”
“By almost half?”
“They were gone for a few hours—maybe they dropped a few off somewhere else,” he suggested.
“Dropped them off where?” she asked, but it was rhetorical. Obviously Cavalon had no idea, and she didn’t either.
Rake dismissed the menu, then stepped over to the Drudger Cavalon had killed. His stomach fluttered as she yanked his knife from its chest.
She swept the flat of the blade across her pant leg, wiping the blood clean, then handed it back to him, hilt-first. “Ready?”
He hesitated, then sucked in a breath. He took the knife and re-sheathed it. “Yes, sir.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
To Cavalon’s surprise, instead of slipping into another vent system, Rake simply strode into the hallway. They’d been so stealthy up to this point, it felt odd to just waltz out into the open, but he tentatively followed. He didn’t have to worry for long, when a couple of meters down, Rake stopped at another vent, similar in size and structure to the first. She pulled off the grate and climbed through, and Cavalon trailed after.
A minute later, they came to a dead end capped by another grate, hard light streaming in from the other side. Rake paused, holding a finger to her lips. As if she had to remind him to be quiet just in case he’d forgotten he was in mortal danger.