The hut had only one room and no windows. No furniture, not even a bucket for a toilet. She sat down on the brushed dirt floor, chin on her knees, thinking. Amiri did not join her. He paced, movements aggressive, so tightly coiled she half-expected him to start kicking a hole through the wall.
“What are we going to do?” Rikki asked him.
“I do not know,” he replied tersely. “Escape. Gain control over the phone she mentioned.”
She stood and grabbed his hands. He pulled away from her. “No. I will not go back to that place. I will not let them hurt you.”
“We’ll escape.” Rikki was proud her voice did not waver. She felt light-headed, but a few quick breaths worked wonders to clear her mind; razor sharp, steady as a rock. Amiri, however, seemed to lose yet more of his composure. He began pacing again. Hands clenched into fists, loosening and squeezing; quick, violent.
And then he stopped, directly in front of her. Looming over her body with lethal grace, leaving her breathless and overwhelmed with nothing but his presence, which burned into her skin like fire.
“How did you cope when you were taken?” Amiri asked, voice flat, dull. “How did you control your fear?”
Rikki did not know how to answer. No one had ever asked. “Moment by moment, I suppose. Each breath, every heartbeat. I didn’t think about the future or the past, just the present. Surviving, staying sane, one second after another.”
He nodded, almost to himself. “I was tortured. It was not just experiments. Not only blood tests. They wanted to break me. And in a way, they did. Afterward, I gave up my earlier life. I could not rebuild it. I let fear rule me.” He gave her a piercing look. “But you … you did not. Why is that?”
Again, she felt taken aback. “There was never a choice. I had no home, no family. If I had run, I would have been finished. I would never have owned my life. And I was…I was all I had.”
“So you kept it. You fought for it.” Amiri gave her a faint smile. “I think I envy you, Rikki Kinn.”
“You could still have it back, if that’s what you want.”
“No,” he murmured. “I came to Nairobi with nothing. No friends, not two pennies, hardly an idea of what it meant to live amongst humans. My head was full of stories, and I was too young to know better. But I survived. I made a life. And now…now I have another.”
“Also built from scratch.”
“With friends. This time, friends.”
“You know how to keep your friends. You don’t push them away.”
“Friends who are meant to be do not allow themselves to be pushed. They stick, because they must.”
“Shape-shifter wisdom?”
“Experience.”
“What about family?”
His expression turned impossibly grave. “I never knew my mother. I never knew her name or where she lived. Only that she was human. My father used her to bear a child, nothing more. When I was born he stole me away and had me raised on the teats of a wild cheetah who had lost her cubs. I did not meet another human until I was three.”
Rikki stared. “Those are the best parts?”
“Essentials,” he replied, with a faintly bitter smile. “I have never lived an ordinary life.”
No, she supposed not. “Why did your father keep you in such isolation?”
“Shape-shifter children start changing their shapes at a young age. It happens naturally, without thought. But it makes us vulnerable to discovery. Imagine a human baby sprouting fur in the middle of an airplane or restaurant.” Amiri shook his head. “Isolation is safer.”
“Or having a child with someone you trust.”
Again, bitterness flooded his face. “My father, as you say, was a pragmatist. Far more than either of us. He did not believe in trust. Nor did he see the point in taking the time to learn the worthiness of a mate before convincing her to bear his child. I suppose I cannot fault him entirely. It was how he was raised, as well. Those who run as cheetah are so few, it has not been safe to mate with others of our particular kind for several generations.”
It was like listening to the dry recitation of a nature special on PBS, only far more alien. “Do shape-shifters…only run as cheetahs?”
“No. There are other kinds. Clans, if you will. Crows, leopards, dolphins, more and more that I cannot name. And other creatures that are even farther from humanity than we are.”
“You could have children with them, couldn’t you?”
Amiri hesitated. “With some, perhaps. But shape-shifters who are of different breeds … to take each other as mates…that is forbidden. The children would not be … normal.”
“What do you mean by that? Why normal with humans, but not with other kinds of shape-shifters?”
He shrugged, almost helplessly. “It is taboo.”
“In other words, stop asking?”
He smiled faintly. “What else would you like to know?”
“Do
you
want children?”
She watched him freeze, staring, and her heart ached so deep she had to force herself to breathe.
“Forget it,” she said. “I didn’t mean—”
“Yes,” he replied firmly. “Yes, I would. But I never thought—”
Amiri stopped, looking past her at the curtained flap— the makeshift door. Rikki heard a scuffing sound, and then the material was pushed aside by Mireille. She held a pistol in one hand. In the other, rope.
“Fuck that,” Rikki said immediately. “I’m not getting tied up again.”
The woman tossed the rope at her feet. “Do it or I will kill you.”
“No,” Amiri told her. “No, you will not.”
Mireille’s eyes narrowed. Her finger rubbed the trigger. Safety off. “Orders, from you? Just who
do
you work for? A newspaper? Or with the United Nations?”
Now Amiri was calm, steady as a rock. “Who do
you
work for? Who pays for this? Who keeps you safe?”
Mireille’s eyes flickered. “You talk like you know so much, but to ask these questions …”
“Questions
you
should ask,” Rikki said.
Mireille’s mouth tightened. So did her trigger finger. “I have. I know who I work for.”
“Do you really?” Amiri asked, far too softly. “Do you know everything?”
She made a disgusted sound. “I am not the police. I receive what I need to keep my people safe, and that is all I care about. I do not want to know the rest. Details are irrelevant.”
Rikki wanted to strangle her. “If the men helping you are who we think they are, none of you are safe.”
Mireille made a hissing noise, pure fury flickering across her face. “What do you know of safety? All of us here have been tortured, thrown away by men and our country. We cannot work, because we might be raped. We cannot farm, because we might be raped. We cannot send our children to
school,
because we might never see them again. You could never understand that kind of fear. Never. But here—
here
—we are armed and fed. And if I have to cut out my soul and bury it, I will do so if it means we stay alive.”
Rikki said nothing. She understood. Had their roles been different, she might have done the same. But that was neither here nor now, and it was
her
ass on the line— hers and Amiri’s. Which, as far as she was concerned, made Mireille fair game.
Amiri shifted, body coiled tight. “We have all been damaged. But what you do—”
“Survival.” Voice rising, high-pitched. “Survival for all of us here. And if you threaten that, I
will
kill you.”
Amiri’s mouth snapped shut, body rolling with tension. But in his eyes, Rikki found compassion, boundless, something so soft she could only marvel that Mireille must be blind. Blind not to see that he understood.
Mireille gaze flickered to Rikki. “Take off your clothing.”
She went cold. “Like hell.”
“Do it now.”
“No fucking way.”
Amiri stepped in front of Rikki. Mireille’s mouth flattened into a hard line. “Well-meaning fools are more dangerous than bullets. I have seen men and women die for talking freely around the wrong people. And I do not trust the circumstances that brought you both here. I want to make certain you are not carrying a recording device.”
“I’m a doctor, not a plant.”
“I believe you are a doctor,” agreed the woman, “but I have not kept the others alive this long through carelessness. Take off your clothes.”
Her scars. She felt the hidden scalpel press against her stomach. Mireille was not close enough for her to grab the gun. She wondered if she could move faster than a trigger finger.
Markovic trained you to leap over small buildings in a single bound.
Yeah. Nothing faster than a motivated gymnast. But this … if Mireille got off a shot and it went wild… if Amiri got in the way…
If Amiri saw her scars…
She looked at him, battling herself. “I don’t want you to see this.”
He regarded her steadily. As if Mireille did not stand there with a gun pointed at their heads. As if they had all the time in the world, just the two of them. As if he knew exactly what she was hiding.
“Do you still give me your trust?” he asked, softly. She had been expecting an offer of closed eyes, a turned back. Not that question. But she answered him, because she had to, because she could not lie, not about that.
“Yes,” she said. “I trust you.”
The very faintest of smiles touched his mouth. “And am I not your friend, Rikki Kinn?”
“My best,” she whispered. Cut to the core by the truth of those words, how easy it felt to say them. Insidious, natural, like breathing.
Which only terrified her more. Because if not now, then never.
Rikki took off her shirt. Quick. Before she could change her mind. Halfway through she heard a hiss—but by the time the cotton touched her chin there was nothing left but stunned silence.
No one said a word. No one breathed. She could not look at them. So she gazed down, at her body. She had seen it enough times not to flinch. To be distant, even calculating. Every scar memorized. Every cut remembered. She was a doctor. She had practice.
But Rikki tried to imagine how Amiri must see her. What he must think of the initials carved deep into her breasts. Numbers and stick figures and bored little marks. Slash marks riding up her ribs, into the soft tissue. Evidence of men. Men who had sawed deep. Who had grown tired of small cuts. Men who had practice removing body parts. Trying so hard to do just that. Laughing. Holding her down. Pissing on her open wounds.
She remembered. She remembered everything. And it could have been worse. She knew that. But it was small comfort.
And here, now, Rikki felt suddenly, profoundly, afraid. What an idiot.
What a fucking idiot.
Showing herself to Amiri. As though he would not care that her body had been turned into a toilet stall, replete with graffiti. As if he would ever,
ever,
look at her the same way again—as a woman, a person. As though she would ever be able to look at
him
without wondering what he was thinking. Disgusted. Full of pity. Afraid to touch her.
And the loss of that, the idea of it, burned so deep that Rikki thought she could have been standing again on the edge of her father’s grave. The pain was the same. Like death. Like losing a part of herself.
Rikki closed her eyes. Clutched her shirt so tight the cloth tore. Felt movement, a wall of heat rush over her naked torso…She held her breath, stricken. Unable to think past the memories, the scream building in her throat.
Hands touched her arms, hot and big and safe. Sliding up her shoulders, her neck, the line of her jaw. Impossibly gentle. Holding her.
“Look at me,” Amiri said.
Rikki opened her eyes. Found him so close all she could see was gold and heat and fire. No grief. No pity. His eyes were bright—not with light—but shimmering and red-rimmed with something so raw, so terrible in its fury, she thought the world moved for a moment, just for him. But she realized that was her, swaying. Leaning into his embrace as he pressed her close. Gentle at first, then tight, hard, crushing her against his body.
“I know you, Rikki Kinn,” he breathed into her ear.
“I know you.”
Tears burned her eyes. Behind him, Mireille made a low sound. Amiri said, in brittle tones, “Are you satisfied?”
“Yes,” she replied, voice strained.
“Then get out.” Quiet. Deadly.
Silence, followed by a faint scuffing sound. Light momentarily flooded the hut’s interior, and then nothing but shadows. Amiri never moved, not until Mireille was gone. But when the curtain fell, he took a deep shuddering breath and stepped back, just enough to see her body. Rikki held herself still, letting him take his fill.
He was silent too long. She could not stand it. “I went to plastic surgeons. They were able to fix… some things. Not all.”
“How could they?” he whispered. “How could they do this to you?”