Preface: Drain

My whole body trembled from head to toe.

Exhausted, I tried to stand but only stumbled and collapsed to my hands and knees again, breathless and gasping. Adrenaline coursed through my veins, hot and heavy, but it was starting to filter out, leaving me shaking like a leaf.

Creature walked over, still on-edge as well, and watched the corpse with suspicion. I blocked it out and stared at the dirt beneath me.

Somehow, I had won.

Blood coated my arms and stained my fingertips, bright green against my tan skin.

I sat back, my throat tight, and forced myself to swallow my saliva. Drops of blood dripped to the ground and slid down my elbows, shaken loose from my trembling.

And I couldn't stop staring.

Finally, though I still could not stand, I reached over and grabbed the broad yellow leaf of a nearby plant and used it to wipe my hands clean.

When they barely managed to smear off, I rubbed dirt all over my arms, using it to absorb the blood until, instead of my opponent's life, it was just mud clinging to my arm.

The corpse nearby was a dark shadow in my peripheral vision, weighing down on me as I tried to come to terms with the events that led to my victory.

The killing blows I'd delivered in a last-ditch attempt to just survive the encounter and him . . . throwing himself at me in order to die with some dignity even as he bled out like a stuck pig.

As he summoned the last of his strength to go out with a bang because of my dirty street fighting.

/"Do whatever you can to live."/ Those had been Wolf's parting words to me even as we were being wrenched apart by these criminals.

I clenched my eyes shut against the guilt and focused on attuning to my body—figuring out what was wrong and what I COULD fix.

Because I couldn't fix what I'd done. I couldn't fix him. I wouldn't want to even if I could. I had lived, he had not, and that was what I had to understand.

I'd wrenched victory from the claws of defeat, though it still tasted bittersweet.

Everything ached. My head, my body, my limbs, my heart.

Taking a breath, I managed to shift to my knees with my hands on my lap, smearing green-tinged mud all over my thighs.

"It is fine," I said to Creature. "He has no vital signs."

The insectoid alien gave the body one last look, then came to my side.

The pool of blood beneath the body was slowly spreading all over, soaking the dirt. It wasn't flowing as heavily has it had been before, now that there was no more heartbeat to circulate it.

He leaned down so he could look at me through those strange, multi-faceted, red eyes of his and he canted his head to the side. He offered me a claw.

I hesitated, still trying to catch my breath.

"Are you badly injured?" I asked, indicating to the deep gouges in his exoskeleton.

Creature clicked his pincers and examined himself.

While he did that, I shifted my attention to the prone corpse, face down in the dirt, only feet away from us. I sucked in a sterile breath of air through my mask and closed my eyes again. I couldn't shake the feeling that I had been cheating, but I'd had no other choice.

These people were criminals. The underbelly of society. They weren't here to fight me fairly and Wolf had given me permission to win.

/"Do whatever you can to live."/

We weren't on a hunt anymore. I was fighting for my life and Wolf's, and the honor code didn't apply to badbloods because they would not abide.

We were the prey, so we were allowed to struggle with all our hearts. And if there was one thing I was good at, it was struggling with everything I was just to keep going.

Eventually, Creature finished checking his injuries and answered. "Me am well."

Once more, he extended his claw to me, and this time I took it. He helped me to my feet. I steadied myself, and, slowly but surely, the shaking was starting to wear off.

"Then . . . Let's go find Wolf."