Romy’s mouth spoke the word, “Fine,” before she turned away from Elara. How could she tell them that the ringing was still there? That the only time it lessened was when she moved, or ran.

They thought she was losing her mind.

She thought she was losing her mind.

And it happened when she killed Lucas. When she let her mind slip back to the sound of the knife slicing across his throat, an odd floating feeling came over her. With every passing second, she had to fight the urge to slip away in nothingness.

She was deathly afraid.

Thrym looked up at the sky through a patch of the dense bush they were trekking through. The sun was low on the horizon. “I say we stop for the night.”

“No, I can keep going,” Dei objected.

A surge of anger came over her. Romy dropped her pack in the shrubs and forced Deimos back to the ground. Defiant green eyes blinked up at her.

“If you collapse in two days when we’re being chased, because you didn’t take the offer of rest when it was given, I will feed you to a crocodile,” she snarled.

Romy glared at the others. Thrym instantly looked away and Romy bit down on a fresh rush of irritation.

Blood. Bright red blood. Romy squeezed her eyes shut.

“You heard her, Dei.” Phobos tried to cover the awkwardness with a joke.

Deimos relaxed underneath her. Romy forced her eyelids apart and found his green eyes were already falling into slow blinks. Shaking ever so slightly, Romy rose and picked up her pack, laying it to one side.

Elara was rolling out her lightweight swag. It was a mix between a sleeping bag and a tent. Deimos and Phobos had found them in the soldiers’ supply room.

“You guys sleep. I’ll take first watch,” Romy offered.

The others shared a look. But she turned away before they could object.

Romy wedged her back against a tree and watched as her knot mates slipped into their swags and sank into an exhausted sleep. This was when the ringing was the worst. When she stopped moving; when her heart rate slowed. When it was quiet.

Romy climbed to her feet, opting to pace around the campsite instead. She knew her body could only be pushed so far, even with the nanotech, but until that happened she’d do anything to keep the ringing at bay.

Hours later, she rustled Elara’s swag to wake her. It wasn’t that Romy was tired; no, she just didn’t want the knot to become warier of her than they’d already become.

“I went walking,” she whispered to the half-asleep girl. “There’s a waterfall a couple of hundred metres away.”

Elara groaned and Phobos’s swag shifted. “I’m having a bath tomorrow morning, I don’t care who’s chasing us.”