A walled-off room sits in the back right corner, the door that once covered its entrance burned away. The map tells me that Lidia is inside it. Quietly we enter the big room and cross toward the corner. No movement from the dot. Is she waiting there for us? Why doesn’t she just jump if there’s no way out of there?
I hear a wet patter behind me, and jerk around, thinking maybe she’s sneaking up on us. But the sound is only raindrops falling unimpeded onto the floor of the front room.
I stop Scout no more than ten feet from the point the map tells me Lidia is. Finally, this is all but over. Whether she comes out or jumps, it doesn’t matter. We’re too close to her now. We will take her down, and then I’ll start mopping up her mess.
“Come on out,” I say. “It’s over, Lidia. There’s nowhere for you to go.”
Something skitters across the floor inside, small, like a pebble. This is Lidia’s only response, so we move into the doorway.
There aren’t any windows and the roof has escaped damage, so the only light getting in is what flows around Scout and me through the entrance. Someone has filled much of the space with what I’m guessing is the salvageable furniture from the fire — cabinets, both tall and short; a few chairs; and a long thin table turned on its end.
According to the tracker, Lidia should be just behind a tall cabinet directly in front of me.
“Enough, Lidia. Get out here!” My tone isn’t as neutral as it probably should be given her mental state, but I’m tired of playing hide-and-seek. I just want to go someplace where I can rest for a little bit before I start detangling the changes she’s made layer by miserable layer.
Another pebble, but not so much scooting across the floor as bouncing on it. I barely notice the difference, though, as I weave through singed furniture, and circle around the cabinet.
I stop dead and stare, surprised. The only things there are Lidia’s rucksack and beside it my satchel, the chaser clearly inside, both sitting on the floor against the wall.
I barely register this, though, before she jumps off the top of the cabinet and onto my back, tumbling us both to the floor. I try to push up, but she knocks me back down and grinds her knee into my kidney. She starts choking me with one hand while hitting me with the other.
“Get off him!” Scout yells.
I can’t see what’s going on behind me, but I can feel him pulling at her. She stops hitting me, and replaces the hand around my neck with her arm. I hear the two of them struggle, but unlike me and Lidia, Scout has never been in an actual fight before, and soon she’s yanked him to the ground. I twist left then right then left again, and at last succeed in turning enough so that I’m lying on my side instead of my stomach. This finally loosens her hold, and I’m able to suck in some precious oxygen.
With renewed strength, I slam my elbow into her ribs over and over and over until I’m able to roll away.
Lidia then turns her full fury on Scout. He covers his face with his arms to block her blows, but this opens his midsection to a brutal kick that sends him flying backward through the doorway.
My own breaths are still coming hard and fast, my wounds both old and new all screaming for attention, but I know I’m a helpless target if I stay on the ground. I pull myself up with the help of the tall cabinet and then turn to face her onslaught. Instead of coming at me, however, she dives past me.
I turn as she grabs my satchel and sticks her hand inside.
“No!” I yell. I whip back around and lock eyes with Scout. He’s on his elbows a good fifteen feet away. I’ll never get to him in time. “I’m sorry.”
He shakes his head. “It’s my—”
Those are the only words he gets out before Lidia activates her chaser and she and I leave Scout Me behind.
Lidia clearly pre-entered the jump coordinates prior to setting the trap that would separate Scout and me, because she’s chosen our destination well. The trip has taken us to an empty desert that goes as far as the eye can see in every direction, on a journey that was at least as long as the two-century jump that took us away from the dead Mongol messengers.
I arrive a huddled mass of pain. When I hear movement, I pry open my eyelids to thin slits and see Lidia coming at me. The only defense I can mount is to turn my head away and hope I can weather her attack. But though I feel a tug at one of my arms, she doesn’t actually hit me.
I force myself to turn and look at her again. Instead of hovering over me, she’s moved back several dozen feet.
I get up, thinking the whole time she’s going to rush me, but she never moves.
Once I’m standing, she smiles and raises her hand. Dangling from it is the makeshift bag I created to carry the slaved chaser. Reflexively I look down, as if she couldn’t possibly have it, but mine is gone, and she is now in possession of both devices.
It’s a hot day, but the sweat seeping from my forehead is not caused by the sun. One push of the button, and I will be alone here forever.
I guess I should be grateful that if she does leave me, it will be only a matter of days until my death, because there is no way I’ll find water in time. But grateful is not what I feel.
As dire as the situation is, I can’t give up. I won’t give up.
“Don’t do this.”
She snorts. “Do what?”
“I know you have a problem with me. I know that I took the world you knew away. I can accept whatever personal punishment you decide, but everything else you’ve done, all the changes, you’ve been damning billions for the guilt of one person.” I tap my chest. “I’m the responsible party. Just me. I’m the only one who should pay the price.”
“You want to pay the price? Sure, good idea. Let’s start with this.”
She swings her arm so that the burlap bag flies high above her, and then she brings it quickly down again and smashes it into the ground. It’s impossible to miss the crunch of wood and metal. I take a step forward but stop as she swings it up again and repeats the maneuver. Though the machine is surely destroyed by now, she does it again and again and again. After she finally stops, she turns the bag over and dumps the contents on the desert floor. All that falls out are bits and pieces that can never be put back together again.
The only way out of here now is the chaser in my leather satchel, hanging at Lidia’s side.
I run at her without thinking. If she can get to the chaser and disappear before I reach her, so be it, but I’m not going to just stand around and let her wink away without a fight. She makes no play for the bag, though. Instead, she sets her feet and leans slightly forward, anticipating my arrival.
At the last second I duck to the right to go under her arms, but she’s anticipated this and steps farther to my left and shoves me on the back as I fly by.
I lock my knees and skid across the dirt to a stop. When I turn back, I half think she’ll already be gone, but she’s still standing there, grinning at me.
Fighting has always been Lidia’s thing, not mine, but having no other choice I charge again. This time she grabs me, and we twist around in a tense dance of shoving and wrestling as we each try to get the advantage.
“I can smell your desperation,” she whispers in my ear. “That’s the kind of odor you inherit from your parents.”
She flings me away.
“I have to admit, though, I thought you’d have given up jumps ago. All your gutter-dwelling friends would have. I guess I should be impressed, but I can’t seem to muster up the energy.”