Hell Hath No Fury
Part 3
Avon opened his eyes, slowly. It was dark. He felt dizzy and sick, and that was even before he moved. When he did, pain exploded all through his head and down his right arm. He fell back, closing his eyes again, but didn’t black out a second time. After a moment, he became aware of somebody else vomiting, and the sound made him want to retch as well.
“It’s all right, it’s all right,” he could hear Vila saying. “He was going to kill you, he was going to kill us all.”
So, Vila was still alive at least, but who was he talking to? Blake? No, wait, there had been somebody else. A girl …
“Look, I’ll get us up to the Liberator, you’ll feel better there,” Vila said. “Vila to Liberator – anybody awake up there?”
The next thing Avon knew, there was a light shining directly in his face and somebody was touching his neck. He jerked upright, grasping instinctively, and caught a hand.
“Avon,” came a calm voice that he knew he should recognize. “It’s Cally. It’s Cally.”
He hesitated, and the same voice came quietly into his head. It’s Cally. Do you remember me?
Telepathy. Auron. Yes. He remembered now. He let go of her and managed to whisper, “Cally?”
“Is he awake?” Someone leaned over him. “I’m really sorry, Avon.”
“Not now, Vila,” Cally said before Avon could ask what Vila was sorry for. “Jenna, bring us up.”
There was a moment of darkness, and then everything was bright. Avon blinked, looking around. He must have been unconscious again; instead of lying in the dirt, or on the floor of the teleport area, he was in a bed in the medical unit of the Liberator. His arm no longer hurt at all, and the pain in his skull had been reduced to a dull ache, but he didn’t trust himself to sit up just yet. Instead, he moved his head very, very carefully and looked around. Blake was flat on his back on the bed next to him, and hooked up to more equipment than Avon had ever seen in use at the same time.
Becoming aware of somebody breathing on his other side, Avon looked to his left. The girl was there, curled up under a sheet so that all he could see of her was her face, and the tranquiliser pad on her forehead. He stared at her for a long time, unable to remember her name.
The door to the medical section opened and Cally came in, smiling when she saw Avon look at her.
“How do you feel?” she asked.
“I’ll survive,” Avon croaked. “How’s Blake?”
“Recovering nicely, according to Zen,” Cally replied. “And so are you. Would you like some water?”
“Yes.” Avon thought he might do better to sit up before drinking, and Cally rushed forward to help him.
“Careful,” she said, and Avon was glad of her steadying hands as a wave of dizziness hit him. “You had a head injury. I’ve used the tissue regenerator on its deepest setting to treat it, but you’ll want to take it easy for a day or two. You probably still have a concussion.”
“Concussion … from what?” Avon asked. The dizziness passed, and he straightened up as Cally went across the room to the sink and filled a cup with water.
“What do you remember?” Cally brought the cup to him and Avon took a cautious sip.
“Travis,” he said. Cally waited. So did Avon, but nothing more came to him. Eventually, Cally went over to the girl.
“I might as well take this off now,” she said, peeling away the tranquiliser pad. The girl stirred, but did not wake.
“What’s wrong with her?” Avon asked.
“Exhaustion, mostly,” Cally said. “And she was a bit upset after killing Travis.”
“She killed Travis?” Avon wished he’d been awake to see that. Then a flash of memory came back to him and he said, “Of course. He destroyed her people … and her computer.”
“What else do you remember?” Cally asked. “Besides computers?”
“What else is there?” Avon asked, and Cally gave him an oddly impatient look. After a moment, she said, “Avon, I want to run some simple neurological tests on you, and then I think you need more rest.”
+++++
Avon hadn’t expected to sleep after he’d returned to his cabin, but he did, and woke hungry. Taking that for a good sign, he walked to the dining area where the food dispensers were. It was early, still some time yet before the ship’s artificial dawn, and he didn’t expect to see anyone else about. But after he’d sat down with breakfast, he heard footsteps in the nearby corridor, and Vila appeared, leading the girl.
“Here’s the food,” Vila was explaining, and then he stopped. “Avon. I didn’t know you were up.”
The girl came around from behind Vila. He’d obviously already shown her the clothes room and she had changed into a different outfit, more somber than what she’d been wearing before. Although she looked drained and sad, she managed a small smile. “How’s your head, Avon?”
“Much better,” he replied.
“Look, Teyet, here’s the dispenser machine,” Vila put in quickly. “Any food you want.”
Teyet, of course! That was her name. He remembered now.
“Vila hit you quite hard with that shovel. We were all worried,” Teyet went on.
Avon glanced over to Vila, who looked extremely guilty.
“Sorry, Avon,” he said sheepishly. “But I got Travis the second time, though.”
“How very reassuring,” Avon replied.
Vila hastily changed the subject. “So, um, Teyet, what do you want to eat?”
Teyet glanced from Avon to Vila, then went over to study the machine and make her selection. They ate in awkward silence until Vila finally said, “It’s my shift,” cleared his things away, and went out. Teyet had finished eating as well, now she glanced questioningly at Avon.
He looked back, realising only then that she had nowhere else to go. Her home had been destroyed and she was a refugee now. Blake would offer her a place on board the Liberator, of course, especially once he heard about her computer skills, or offer to take her anywhere else in the galaxy that she wanted to go. Would she want to go anywhere? Or would she want to stay with him, the father of her son? Avon hadn’t expected to have anything more to do with her or the child beyond the next morning, but the discovery of Travis had changed everything.
Travis. The name brought back a memory of the man shooting at Teyet, shooting at them all, and Teyet kneeling there in the reddish glow of the burning city, her hand flung up and somehow defending them with nothing more than –
“Telekinesis,” Avon said. “That’s how you kept Travis from killing us, wasn’t it? Telekinesis.”
“We call it the power,” Teyet said.
“What else can you do with it? Can you lift this fork without touching it?” Avon was suddenly more than just curious. ”Stab somebody with this knife?”
“Avon?” It was Cally, coming into the dining area. “What’s going on? Is everything all right?”
She glanced between them, no doubt ready to jump in if either of them were being threatened. Avon leaned back in his chair and explained, “I merely wanted to discover what else Teyet can do with her telekinesis. And if she’s telepathic, like you.”
“I’m not telepathic,” Teyet said.
“You told me the baby was a boy. How did you know?” Avon went on.
Squirming a little, Teyet said, “Because I helped it along. That’s what we do with our power – our telekinesis. We make babies. We reproduce. That’s what it’s there for – what it’s always been there for.”
“You’re telekinetic on a cellular level?” Even Cally sounded astonished.
Avon found it more fascinating than anything else. “Is that how you killed Travis? On a cellular level?”
“Avon!” Cally exclaimed, but to Avon, it was a perfectly legitimate question. Teyet was very still now, and the colour had drained out of her face. Looking away from Avon towards the food dispensers, she said, “No. He was right, you know. I couldn’t have kept it up forever. I didn’t know I could manipulate anything bigger than a few cells, and it was so hard! It was like trying to shift an entire building with just your hands even though I was only concentrating on the muscles in his wrist. I was so frightened that I really would collapse, just like he said. Then you attacked, and Vila got the shovel …”
She paused. Neither Avon nor Cally said anything. After swallowing hard, Teyet said, “He was stunned, he was just laying there. He didn’t even move when Vila pulled you off him. But he was still breathing, and I knew if he got up again, he’d kill us all. So I picked up his gun and I shot him. That’s how I killed him. I shot him.”
Cally slid into the seat next to the younger girl and put an arm around her shoulders. “It’s all right, Teyet, it’s all right. You did what you needed to do to keep yourself alive.”
Teyet said, “But I shot him again and again and again, until Vila came around behind me and hit my arm. That’s not doing what you need to do to keep yourself alive. That’s …”
“Overreaction because of fear and stress,” Cally said. “It’s still all right.”
“It doesn’t matter how many times you shot Travis, it only matters that he’s dead,” Avon stated, and Teyet put her hand to her mouth as though she were going to be sick. But she took a deep breath instead, and then another one, and finally relaxed.
After a few moments, Cally said, “Oh, I almost forgot why I was here. Blake wanted something to eat.”
“He’s awake?”
“Yes, and doing much better,” Cally said. She squeezed Teyet’s shoulders one last time and got up. At the food dispenser, she glanced over her shoulder. “He said he wanted to see you when you were awake.”
“I’m awake now,” Avon replied, standing up as well. Teyet started to get up, too, then hesitated and sat down again. Cally said, “You can come, too, Teyet, or you can go up to the flight deck and keep Vila company.”
“Keep Vila awake, you mean,” Avon said, but it was a moot point, as Teyet chose to follow him down the corridor to the medical section. Cally had adjusted the bed so that Blake could sit up a little, and he smiled as they came in.
“Avon. And … sorry, I don’t know your name?”
“Teyet,” she replied.
“Teyet,” he repeated, then turned his attention back to Avon. “We need to go back down and get that brain scan.”
“You’re not going anywhere, Blake,” Cally said, coming up from behind with a tray of food. “You still need rest.”
“I’m fine,” Blake told her. Cally found a small table for the tray of food and pushed it into place beside the bed. Always willing to help, Blake reached out, but the movement caused him to wince and fall back. “All right, you and Avon then. Or Avon and Teyet here.”
“I don’t want to go,” Teyet said, sounding very much like a little girl. “I don’t want to see … him. His body.”
“Of course you don’t,” Blake said, taking the cup that Cally held out for him. “I’m sorry. That was thoughtless of me.”
“I think we already know where the grave is,” Avon said. “It’s just a question now of how deep to dig and if the coffin is locked.”
“You can’t dig up the dead!” Teyet exclaimed in sheer horror. “You can’t – that’s against the power!”
“We have to,” Blake told her. “That brain scan has information that we need, and Cilla said they buried it with Lurgen.”
Teyet relaxed a little and said, “Oh. You mean you’re looking for the deadboxes. They’re just under the headstones -- you don’t need to dig up the dead for that!”
“Deadboxes?” It was Cally who asked.
“If we bury something with the dead, we put it in a metal box and bury it just under the headstone,” Teyet explained. “It doesn’t offend the power that way …”
She let her voice trail off, perhaps in embarrassment. Choosing to ignore her last statement, Avon said, “Well now, that will make our job easier. I could even take Vila.”
In the end, however, only Jenna was free to accompany him. Before Cally operated the teleport controls, Avon looked from her to Teyet, who had sat down in the other seat and was watching intently. Well, she might turn out to be useful.
And then they were on the surface, and Avon gazed around in surprise. Had Cally got the wrong coordinates? Nothing looked remotely like he remembered.
“What is this?” Jenna asked, surveying the landscape in dismay. Everything was covered in a thick layer of what appeared to be black snow. No, Avon thought, it was too warm for snow, and it smelled … burnt?
“Ash,” he realised. “It’s ash from the dome.”
Disgusted, Jenna said, “I can’t believe even Travis would destroy an entire city just in the hope of killing off Blake.”
“I can,” Avon stated, looking automatically to where he thought the dome had once been. The ash had stopped falling, but the skies were thick and grey, and he couldn’t see much of anything besides blackened tree shapes.
“And how are we supposed to find Lurgen’s grave in this?” Jenna asked, kicking at the ash with one foot. “Or even that shovel that Travis had?”
The shovel. Avon remembered seeing it, marking the grave, and now he glanced around in the hopes of finding it again. No, wait, Vila had used it to clobber them both. Had he just tossed it away afterwards? There! A few meters away, there was a man-sized bulge under the ash with something long and thin sticking up from it at an odd angle. Avon walked over and used his boot to shake the ash from it. As he’d thought, it was the handle of the shovel.
“Is that Travis?” Jenna had come up from behind him. Avon cleared some of the ash away from the body so that they could make a positive identification. It was not a pretty sight.
“Urgh,” Jenna said. “No wonder Teyet was hysterical when we brought her on board.”
Not remembering that part, Avon changed the subject. “Travis was close to the grave when we found him. Let’s start here and work our way outwards. The headstone shouldn’t take too long to find.”
He began sweeping the ash away with the blade of the shovel. Jenna watched him for a moment, then walked over to the nearest tree and blasted off one of the leafier branches with her gun. Using the branch as a makeshift broom, she started work on the other side of the body. They worked in silence until Jenna finally asked, “Is this it?”
Avon had reached the other body, the one of the woman who had been searching for Travis, and was about to pull her aside to read the headstone she’d fallen onto. Now he straightened up, and a wave of dizziness hit him, bringing a headache with it. He hesitated for a moment, regaining his balance, and was annoyed to see Jenna looking concernedly at him.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
“I’m fine,” he replied.
“Vila said he practically took your head off with that shovel,” Jenna remarked, watching him carefully as he made his way over to see the headstone she’d uncovered.
“You know how Vila exaggerates,” Avon said, trying not to snarl. The headstone was engraved only with Lurgen’s name and the date of his death.
“I also know how serious head injuries can be.” Jenna reached out and took the shovel from his unresisting hand. “Here, give me that. I’ll do the digging.”
The deadbox was indeed directly under the headstone, and Jenna easily lifted it out. It wasn’t even locked; she opened the lid then held the box out at an angle so that Avon could also see. The brain scan was the only thing in it.
“Well, that was quick and easy,” Jenna said, reaching in to pick it up. “Let’s just hope it has the information on it that Blake wants, because there’s nobody left now to ask.”
“Yes,” Avon said, and lifted his teleport bracelet to his mouth. “This is Avon. Cally, you can bring us up now.”
And the now-grey landscape of Ferron disappeared forever from around him.
Part 4
“It’s all right, it’s all right,” he could hear Vila saying. “He was going to kill you, he was going to kill us all.”
So, Vila was still alive at least, but who was he talking to? Blake? No, wait, there had been somebody else. A girl …
“Look, I’ll get us up to the Liberator, you’ll feel better there,” Vila said. “Vila to Liberator – anybody awake up there?”
The next thing Avon knew, there was a light shining directly in his face and somebody was touching his neck. He jerked upright, grasping instinctively, and caught a hand.
“Avon,” came a calm voice that he knew he should recognize. “It’s Cally. It’s Cally.”
He hesitated, and the same voice came quietly into his head. It’s Cally. Do you remember me?
Telepathy. Auron. Yes. He remembered now. He let go of her and managed to whisper, “Cally?”
“Is he awake?” Someone leaned over him. “I’m really sorry, Avon.”
“Not now, Vila,” Cally said before Avon could ask what Vila was sorry for. “Jenna, bring us up.”
There was a moment of darkness, and then everything was bright. Avon blinked, looking around. He must have been unconscious again; instead of lying in the dirt, or on the floor of the teleport area, he was in a bed in the medical unit of the Liberator. His arm no longer hurt at all, and the pain in his skull had been reduced to a dull ache, but he didn’t trust himself to sit up just yet. Instead, he moved his head very, very carefully and looked around. Blake was flat on his back on the bed next to him, and hooked up to more equipment than Avon had ever seen in use at the same time.
Becoming aware of somebody breathing on his other side, Avon looked to his left. The girl was there, curled up under a sheet so that all he could see of her was her face, and the tranquiliser pad on her forehead. He stared at her for a long time, unable to remember her name.
The door to the medical section opened and Cally came in, smiling when she saw Avon look at her.
“How do you feel?” she asked.
“I’ll survive,” Avon croaked. “How’s Blake?”
“Recovering nicely, according to Zen,” Cally replied. “And so are you. Would you like some water?”
“Yes.” Avon thought he might do better to sit up before drinking, and Cally rushed forward to help him.
“Careful,” she said, and Avon was glad of her steadying hands as a wave of dizziness hit him. “You had a head injury. I’ve used the tissue regenerator on its deepest setting to treat it, but you’ll want to take it easy for a day or two. You probably still have a concussion.”
“Concussion … from what?” Avon asked. The dizziness passed, and he straightened up as Cally went across the room to the sink and filled a cup with water.
“What do you remember?” Cally brought the cup to him and Avon took a cautious sip.
“Travis,” he said. Cally waited. So did Avon, but nothing more came to him. Eventually, Cally went over to the girl.
“I might as well take this off now,” she said, peeling away the tranquiliser pad. The girl stirred, but did not wake.
“What’s wrong with her?” Avon asked.
“Exhaustion, mostly,” Cally said. “And she was a bit upset after killing Travis.”
“She killed Travis?” Avon wished he’d been awake to see that. Then a flash of memory came back to him and he said, “Of course. He destroyed her people … and her computer.”
“What else do you remember?” Cally asked. “Besides computers?”
“What else is there?” Avon asked, and Cally gave him an oddly impatient look. After a moment, she said, “Avon, I want to run some simple neurological tests on you, and then I think you need more rest.”
+++++
Avon hadn’t expected to sleep after he’d returned to his cabin, but he did, and woke hungry. Taking that for a good sign, he walked to the dining area where the food dispensers were. It was early, still some time yet before the ship’s artificial dawn, and he didn’t expect to see anyone else about. But after he’d sat down with breakfast, he heard footsteps in the nearby corridor, and Vila appeared, leading the girl.
“Here’s the food,” Vila was explaining, and then he stopped. “Avon. I didn’t know you were up.”
The girl came around from behind Vila. He’d obviously already shown her the clothes room and she had changed into a different outfit, more somber than what she’d been wearing before. Although she looked drained and sad, she managed a small smile. “How’s your head, Avon?”
“Much better,” he replied.
“Look, Teyet, here’s the dispenser machine,” Vila put in quickly. “Any food you want.”
Teyet, of course! That was her name. He remembered now.
“Vila hit you quite hard with that shovel. We were all worried,” Teyet went on.
Avon glanced over to Vila, who looked extremely guilty.
“Sorry, Avon,” he said sheepishly. “But I got Travis the second time, though.”
“How very reassuring,” Avon replied.
Vila hastily changed the subject. “So, um, Teyet, what do you want to eat?”
Teyet glanced from Avon to Vila, then went over to study the machine and make her selection. They ate in awkward silence until Vila finally said, “It’s my shift,” cleared his things away, and went out. Teyet had finished eating as well, now she glanced questioningly at Avon.
He looked back, realising only then that she had nowhere else to go. Her home had been destroyed and she was a refugee now. Blake would offer her a place on board the Liberator, of course, especially once he heard about her computer skills, or offer to take her anywhere else in the galaxy that she wanted to go. Would she want to go anywhere? Or would she want to stay with him, the father of her son? Avon hadn’t expected to have anything more to do with her or the child beyond the next morning, but the discovery of Travis had changed everything.
Travis. The name brought back a memory of the man shooting at Teyet, shooting at them all, and Teyet kneeling there in the reddish glow of the burning city, her hand flung up and somehow defending them with nothing more than –
“Telekinesis,” Avon said. “That’s how you kept Travis from killing us, wasn’t it? Telekinesis.”
“We call it the power,” Teyet said.
“What else can you do with it? Can you lift this fork without touching it?” Avon was suddenly more than just curious. ”Stab somebody with this knife?”
“Avon?” It was Cally, coming into the dining area. “What’s going on? Is everything all right?”
She glanced between them, no doubt ready to jump in if either of them were being threatened. Avon leaned back in his chair and explained, “I merely wanted to discover what else Teyet can do with her telekinesis. And if she’s telepathic, like you.”
“I’m not telepathic,” Teyet said.
“You told me the baby was a boy. How did you know?” Avon went on.
Squirming a little, Teyet said, “Because I helped it along. That’s what we do with our power – our telekinesis. We make babies. We reproduce. That’s what it’s there for – what it’s always been there for.”
“You’re telekinetic on a cellular level?” Even Cally sounded astonished.
Avon found it more fascinating than anything else. “Is that how you killed Travis? On a cellular level?”
“Avon!” Cally exclaimed, but to Avon, it was a perfectly legitimate question. Teyet was very still now, and the colour had drained out of her face. Looking away from Avon towards the food dispensers, she said, “No. He was right, you know. I couldn’t have kept it up forever. I didn’t know I could manipulate anything bigger than a few cells, and it was so hard! It was like trying to shift an entire building with just your hands even though I was only concentrating on the muscles in his wrist. I was so frightened that I really would collapse, just like he said. Then you attacked, and Vila got the shovel …”
She paused. Neither Avon nor Cally said anything. After swallowing hard, Teyet said, “He was stunned, he was just laying there. He didn’t even move when Vila pulled you off him. But he was still breathing, and I knew if he got up again, he’d kill us all. So I picked up his gun and I shot him. That’s how I killed him. I shot him.”
Cally slid into the seat next to the younger girl and put an arm around her shoulders. “It’s all right, Teyet, it’s all right. You did what you needed to do to keep yourself alive.”
Teyet said, “But I shot him again and again and again, until Vila came around behind me and hit my arm. That’s not doing what you need to do to keep yourself alive. That’s …”
“Overreaction because of fear and stress,” Cally said. “It’s still all right.”
“It doesn’t matter how many times you shot Travis, it only matters that he’s dead,” Avon stated, and Teyet put her hand to her mouth as though she were going to be sick. But she took a deep breath instead, and then another one, and finally relaxed.
After a few moments, Cally said, “Oh, I almost forgot why I was here. Blake wanted something to eat.”
“He’s awake?”
“Yes, and doing much better,” Cally said. She squeezed Teyet’s shoulders one last time and got up. At the food dispenser, she glanced over her shoulder. “He said he wanted to see you when you were awake.”
“I’m awake now,” Avon replied, standing up as well. Teyet started to get up, too, then hesitated and sat down again. Cally said, “You can come, too, Teyet, or you can go up to the flight deck and keep Vila company.”
“Keep Vila awake, you mean,” Avon said, but it was a moot point, as Teyet chose to follow him down the corridor to the medical section. Cally had adjusted the bed so that Blake could sit up a little, and he smiled as they came in.
“Avon. And … sorry, I don’t know your name?”
“Teyet,” she replied.
“Teyet,” he repeated, then turned his attention back to Avon. “We need to go back down and get that brain scan.”
“You’re not going anywhere, Blake,” Cally said, coming up from behind with a tray of food. “You still need rest.”
“I’m fine,” Blake told her. Cally found a small table for the tray of food and pushed it into place beside the bed. Always willing to help, Blake reached out, but the movement caused him to wince and fall back. “All right, you and Avon then. Or Avon and Teyet here.”
“I don’t want to go,” Teyet said, sounding very much like a little girl. “I don’t want to see … him. His body.”
“Of course you don’t,” Blake said, taking the cup that Cally held out for him. “I’m sorry. That was thoughtless of me.”
“I think we already know where the grave is,” Avon said. “It’s just a question now of how deep to dig and if the coffin is locked.”
“You can’t dig up the dead!” Teyet exclaimed in sheer horror. “You can’t – that’s against the power!”
“We have to,” Blake told her. “That brain scan has information that we need, and Cilla said they buried it with Lurgen.”
Teyet relaxed a little and said, “Oh. You mean you’re looking for the deadboxes. They’re just under the headstones -- you don’t need to dig up the dead for that!”
“Deadboxes?” It was Cally who asked.
“If we bury something with the dead, we put it in a metal box and bury it just under the headstone,” Teyet explained. “It doesn’t offend the power that way …”
She let her voice trail off, perhaps in embarrassment. Choosing to ignore her last statement, Avon said, “Well now, that will make our job easier. I could even take Vila.”
In the end, however, only Jenna was free to accompany him. Before Cally operated the teleport controls, Avon looked from her to Teyet, who had sat down in the other seat and was watching intently. Well, she might turn out to be useful.
And then they were on the surface, and Avon gazed around in surprise. Had Cally got the wrong coordinates? Nothing looked remotely like he remembered.
“What is this?” Jenna asked, surveying the landscape in dismay. Everything was covered in a thick layer of what appeared to be black snow. No, Avon thought, it was too warm for snow, and it smelled … burnt?
“Ash,” he realised. “It’s ash from the dome.”
Disgusted, Jenna said, “I can’t believe even Travis would destroy an entire city just in the hope of killing off Blake.”
“I can,” Avon stated, looking automatically to where he thought the dome had once been. The ash had stopped falling, but the skies were thick and grey, and he couldn’t see much of anything besides blackened tree shapes.
“And how are we supposed to find Lurgen’s grave in this?” Jenna asked, kicking at the ash with one foot. “Or even that shovel that Travis had?”
The shovel. Avon remembered seeing it, marking the grave, and now he glanced around in the hopes of finding it again. No, wait, Vila had used it to clobber them both. Had he just tossed it away afterwards? There! A few meters away, there was a man-sized bulge under the ash with something long and thin sticking up from it at an odd angle. Avon walked over and used his boot to shake the ash from it. As he’d thought, it was the handle of the shovel.
“Is that Travis?” Jenna had come up from behind him. Avon cleared some of the ash away from the body so that they could make a positive identification. It was not a pretty sight.
“Urgh,” Jenna said. “No wonder Teyet was hysterical when we brought her on board.”
Not remembering that part, Avon changed the subject. “Travis was close to the grave when we found him. Let’s start here and work our way outwards. The headstone shouldn’t take too long to find.”
He began sweeping the ash away with the blade of the shovel. Jenna watched him for a moment, then walked over to the nearest tree and blasted off one of the leafier branches with her gun. Using the branch as a makeshift broom, she started work on the other side of the body. They worked in silence until Jenna finally asked, “Is this it?”
Avon had reached the other body, the one of the woman who had been searching for Travis, and was about to pull her aside to read the headstone she’d fallen onto. Now he straightened up, and a wave of dizziness hit him, bringing a headache with it. He hesitated for a moment, regaining his balance, and was annoyed to see Jenna looking concernedly at him.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
“I’m fine,” he replied.
“Vila said he practically took your head off with that shovel,” Jenna remarked, watching him carefully as he made his way over to see the headstone she’d uncovered.
“You know how Vila exaggerates,” Avon said, trying not to snarl. The headstone was engraved only with Lurgen’s name and the date of his death.
“I also know how serious head injuries can be.” Jenna reached out and took the shovel from his unresisting hand. “Here, give me that. I’ll do the digging.”
The deadbox was indeed directly under the headstone, and Jenna easily lifted it out. It wasn’t even locked; she opened the lid then held the box out at an angle so that Avon could also see. The brain scan was the only thing in it.
“Well, that was quick and easy,” Jenna said, reaching in to pick it up. “Let’s just hope it has the information on it that Blake wants, because there’s nobody left now to ask.”
“Yes,” Avon said, and lifted his teleport bracelet to his mouth. “This is Avon. Cally, you can bring us up now.”
And the now-grey landscape of Ferron disappeared forever from around him.
Part 4