A man burst from the bush and threw his weight on top of the thrashing animal. Her first feeling was relief that the Orbitos had found her.

The man was trying to pin the writhing beast to the ground.

And that’s when she noticed he wasn’t wearing an Orbito uniform.

Earth human.

Romy left everything, half hopping, quarter sprinting, and the rest limping, in a random direction. The first half of the population died. The second half murdered each other. The tall man wasn’t encumbered like she was with her half-healed ankle. She only had until he dealt with the injured animal to escape.

A second crack echoed through the bush and Romy paused, holding her breath, straining for any hint of his next move.

It wasn’t subtle.

The man’s large body crashed through the bush towards Romy, whipping her into action. She looked around frantically. With a weak ankle, it took a full precious minute to climb far enough up a tree that she was above eye-level.

The crashing stopped.

Bark grazed at her ivory skin, but she worked through the pain, quietly dragging herself farther up.

The bush was still. She had no idea where the man hid, and knew that the lack of sound was a bad thing. Every night since the crash, the creaking insect had starting singing at sunset. It wasn’t singing now.

She lodged herself in a straddling position over a broad branch, facing the tree’s trunk. She hugged the trunk and worked to calm her breathing, ears straining. It would be a perfect time for her knot to appear. With guns. Phobos could take the strange man down. Romy recalled the man’s size against the animal.

Better have Deimos help, too, just to be sure.

Romy pressed her shaking hands against the tree. The man was close. She knew this as surely as her own name.

There was no way Romy was climbing down.

CHAPTER SIX

Romy winced at the pain in her neck as she straightened from hugging the tree. She’d spent the night up there, wedged in the fork between the trunk and a thick branch. It was now dawn and her butt was numb in the worst possible way.

Retrieving her belongings was out of the question. If she were hunting someone and couldn’t find them, that was where she’d wait. She didn’t relish the thought of travelling in her underwear, but surely she could find some kind of shelter at night.

She probably should have slipped off in the night, but the engulfing quiet put her off. Now there was more noise to cover her descent.

Romy gingerly tested a lower branch, slipping down onto it when it proved sturdy. In this fashion, she slid down the tree, forcing her stiff joints into action.

The tree took just as much skin off on the way down as it had on the way up.