The first grey light of dawn found Eva already awake, a knot of anxiety tightening in her stomach. The deal was struck, but the details were terrifyingly vague. Where were they? Where would they go? They needed a plan, and the architect of their fragile future had seemingly vanished.
She scanned the camp. Derek was on watch, Leo was snoring loudly, and Maya was unnervingly still. No Wolfen.
A flicker of movement near the tree line caught her eye. There, sitting with his back against a gnarled pine as if he'd been there all night, was the man himself. He looked… pensive.
Eva marched over, the morning dew soaking her boots. "We need to talk. We need a direction. We can't just—"
"Eva," he interrupted, his voice uncharacteristically faint. He looked up at her, his pale face drawn. "I'm dying."
The world screeched to a halt. Dying? The man who could punch through dimensions, who had vaporized Zane and laughed while doing it? A cold dread, entirely different from the fear of the Architects, washed over her.
"Wha— What do you mean, dying?" she stammered, her mind racing through possibilities—a hidden wound, a delayed reaction to Zane's venom, some fatal flaw in his augmented biology.
He let out a long, pathetic sigh. "I'm hungry. I couldn't find anything to eat. Not a single berry. It's a culinary wasteland."
The switch from cosmic terror to utter absurdity was so violent Eva felt dizzy. The knot in her stomach dissolved into pure, incandescent rage. She stared at him, her hands clenching into fists at her sides. In all her life, through all the horrors she had witnessed and endured, she had never, ever felt an anger this pristine and focused.
He looked at her with what she could only describe as hopeful desperation. "Hmm. Do you have anything to eat?"
"We have to know where we are first!" she snapped, her voice tight.
"I know where we are," he said casually.
"You what? How?"
"I saw a Tibetan Mastiff. With some dudes."
The information landed, and then the implication detonated. Eva's eyes widened. "PEOPLE?! You saw people and you didn't think to lead with that last night?!"
He shrugged, a masterpiece of nonchalance. "I was bored."
Eva saw red. A string of expletives, vile and creative enough to make a veteran soldier blush, fought their way up her throat. She barely managed to choke them down, settling for a seething, guttural sound. "You...! Language, please," he chided mildly, which only made her want to strangle him with his own smugness.
She took a deep, shuddering breath, trying to wrestle her fury back into its cage. "Fine. Where are they?"
Wolfen lifted a languid hand and pointed vaguely northeast. "Hmm. I think they are in that direction."
"You think?"
"It was yesterday. The dog was very distracting. Fluffy."
Eva pinched the bridge of her nose, a headache blooming behind her eyes. They were lost in the Himalayas, being hunted by a clandestine organization of mad scientists, traveling with a volatile predator, and their only guide was a functionally immortal, universe-level power who was currently brought low by a lack of breakfast and an appreciation for fluffy dogs.
"Fine," she gritted out, the word tasting like ash. "We'll go there. So you can find something to eat."
A beatific smile spread across Wolfen's face, all traces of his near-death experience gone. "Excellent."