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heartbeat ate away at her throat. She cried out through the gate, and the cats overhead seemed to surge
like a pack toward the pit. Rain patterns changed. Something hit the rock wall and dropped to splash at
her feet; and Tsia, her lips as rigid as her breath, felt the ripples wash against her legs. Her muscles
tightened along her arm and shoulder, and she screamed in the flash of pain. Above, a watercat batted a
stick under the overhang. It hit Tsia's shoul-ders before falling into the water, but this time, she didn't jerk.
Ruka swatted a bone. The bone came closer. Another stick came closer still. The last stick hit the corner
of the box and knocked it to the lip of its ledge.
Tsia moved until she stood against the wall. Slowly, infini-tesimally slowly, she stretched out her arms to
the pit wall. An-other stick fell against her face and neck, then splashed down to the floor. The next one
hit her face and lodged between her shoulder and the rock.
Waist-high in the water, she waited and breathed. Something would knock the box off. A stick, a
rain-soaked bone& She didn't care. Just that it would fall to her arms if she waited. It was the watercat
that finally did it knocked the r-con down. Grating in a tiny sound, it fell and hit her outstretched arms
and stopped, tilted like the stick, between her arm and the stone.
Her mind clouded with fire, Tsia stared at it without moving. She dared not shift her arm. If she dropped
the box, she would have to bend and search the pool underwater, then bring it up again to turn it off. And
without an enbee, she could never hold her breath long enough to move to find the box. But she had it.
Here, in her arms. And she stared at it blankly.
Overhead, the watercats faded away until only Ruka was left to pace the rim and cast his shadow below.
His eyes gleamed as he glared down into the pit; his fur glistened with rain. And his muscles tensed hers
with his pacing, Tsia screamed at him to stop. He hissed, then crouched at the rim. Like a vulture, his
head hung over.
Pain lessened with her lack of motion, until what was a sear-ing flame became a simple fire. She
regulated her breathing, and tried to calm her heart. Water pressed against her hip. She started to shift
her right arm, to move it toward the left, but Ruka hissed from overhead. Pulling herself further into her
mind, she stretched her biogate.
Behind her, there was another presence. Wren and Bishop to the sides it was not them. Someone else
moved behind her. A biofield that felt wary and eager, as if coldness turned to heat and fear, anticipation.
A biofield she knew with a different flavor. It took her a moment, between the licks of flame, to re-alize
that it was something missing, not changed, that made the field feel strange. She did not turn her head, but
in the corner of her eye, a hand appeared that moved so slowly, it crawled like the growth of mold
toward her sleeve.
Doetzier.
She could feel the strain in his muscles. Her ears registered sound. Her eyes were still locked on the
r-con. As the water rose insidiously, constantly toward her waistline, her body be-gan to sway with the
currents in the pit. The box scraped against the wall. She tried to push herself forward so that she leaned
against the rock. The fire exploded in her head. She could not even gasp.
Doetzier kept creeping forward. The water continued to rise. The lights in the pit disappeared into the
murky pool. Someone must have moved again, because she could hear the strangled scream. Had it been
an hour since she started across the pit? Had the fire burned that long in her nerves? She stared at the
box and felt her eyes blur until she saw it like a tiny devil, crouching on her arm. Red and black, with
winking eyes, now that its controls were visible. Her body shifted again, then trembled, and she realized
that the cold had finally invaded. Each shiver sent a shaft of fire along her legs and back, then radiated it
down her arms.
The creeping hand was at her elbow, and she could not feel relief. The fingers slid along her arm, as if
they took strength or balance from her body. The weathered hand looked gray against the drab shades
of her blunter. The wrinkles in the cloth forced Doetzier to lift his hand three times. But he touched the
box that red-black demon and crept toward the winking lights.
Slow, oh, god, so slowly, as if she burned by millimeters. His fingers did not close around the edges, and
she almost snarled at him to take it from her arms. She shivered, violently this time, and the scream she let
with the motion out rang in her own ears like the squeal of metal on metal. Her eyes went blind. And then
the lock of the r-con on their bodies disap-peared, and her muscles, pressing so hard against the rocks to
hold the box in place, smashed forward. Her cheek struck stone. Her legs gave way. She slid down into
the water.
22
Chill fluid filled her nose and eyes as she straggled back to the surface. Her ears were deaf for a moment
with the water that clogged their canals. Her whole body trembled. The fire was still in her muscles, like a
sunburn that fades only slowly, and she worked her jaw for a moment before any sounds came out.
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