Zuran tried to talk me out of accompanying him to Ka-lik’et. He told me I didn’t need to get in trouble if we got caught. He said he would be meeting up with people who were less than respectable. He even went so far as to claim having me with him would be a hindrance because he’d be able to travel faster alone and the “associates” he was going to be seeking probably wouldn’t trust a human. It didn’t matter. Nothing he said swayed me out of my decision. I wasn’t going to let him do this alone.

My determination was due to a number of factors, but the biggest reason was the most emotional. I cared about him. I didn’t want him to get in trouble, and I wanted to make sure he didn’t get caught. Moreover, I was respected by the Elders; they wouldn’t have chosen me to work in the hospital trying to cure the Novai if they didn’t respect me. If the worst happened and the Elders found out about Zuran’s plan, I was a source of validation for his actions. I was like the expert a defense attorney brought in to exonerate his client. Venan was making an uninformed request, and I was the source of information he was lacking.

I admittedly also wanted to go with him because I was curious. Zuran and I had come close enough that I definitely considered us friends, and I was craving to know more about him, even the darker side. I wanted to see the life he led before me, before humans even set foot on Albaterra. Since Kharid’s death, Zuran’s laid-back demeanor had fallen by the wayside most of the time, only to be replaced with a more serious, brooding A’li-uud. I accepted him either way, but I knew the personality change was only because he was distressed, and I hoped his being with friends from a former life would extract the untraumatized part of him still lingering deep down.

It wasn’t until we actually left, though, that I realized a third and completely unexpected benefit to going with him: I was able to get out. I hadn’t acknowledged how cooped up I’d felt until I stepped outside and realized I wasn’t going to have to go back in after a few minutes or hours. I was free until we were either caught or the deed was done.

We left in the middle of the night two days after he first broached the subject with me. He’d spent those two days trying to convince me into staying behind, but he’d been unsuccessful, and we were side-by-side as he closed the door behind us, and we took those first steps toward Ka-lik’et.

“Why do we have to sneak out?” I whispered to him. There wasn’t really a reason to whisper since everyone had been asleep for hours and the resting quarters were on the complete opposite side of the building, but I felt like I needed to be as quiet as I could. “It’s not like nobody knows we’re going.”

Zuran had wanted to keep everything a secret, even our leaving, but I’d insisted that was a bad idea. It wasn’t like people wouldn’t notice we were gone, after all, and that would definitely spike alarm more than if we made up a reasonable explanation. I ended up spinning a story that Zuran had an obligation to check in on the colonists, and I would be going with him to ensure nobody was displaying symptoms of mutacorpathy. Antoinette bought it hook, line, and sinker and even begged me to come along.

“I’m so sick of this place!” she whined. “Please, can’t I come? I just want to see something besides this.”

Dr. Griep hadn’t been so easily convinced. “Maybe a doctor should go,” he suggested. “If there does, in fact, appear to be signs of a breakout, a doctor is better equipped to handle it.”

“I agree with you, Dr. Griep,” I’d told him smoothly, “but I think it’s more important our most knowledgeable members of our team remain here to tend to the Novai who we already know to be ill, don’t you? I mean, nobody in the colony is probably sick anyway, and that would be several days lost without your or another doctor’s expertise here. I’m just going as a precaution, and, that way, you can keep doing what you’re doing without interruption.”

He had still seemed reluctant, but he’d relented. The rest of the human staff was a mixture of indifferent and envious, and the A’li-uud healers appeared not to care at all. By the time we were ready to go, I’d experienced very little suspicion and only the single incident of kickback. We were set.

“We are not sneaking out,” Zuran said. “It is wisest to travel across Dhal’at at night.”

“Because it’s cooler?”

“Yes. And because the guards are not on patrol,” he answered.

I looked at him with wrinkled eyebrows. “You mean, the guards are all sleeping or whatever at night? There’s no security?”

He laughed wryly and shook his head. “I wish that were so,” he remarked sarcastically. “No, there are plenty of guards at night, but they are assigned to single stations rather than a moving patrol. During the day, you can often find warriors in groups of two or three walking the desert, even in the remotest parts. At night, guards are posted around Ka-lik’et, or their respective towns. They do not canvass whole regions.”

“Wouldn’t that make it easier for criminals to do…whatever they do?” I asked. I was picturing policemen driving their cruisers all around Cleveland in the daytime just to gather around City Hall at night.

“Actually, it makes it significantly more difficult to transgress,” he disagreed. “It is easy to learn a guard’s patrol route. Once you know where they will be at any given time, you know when you have the advantage. Smugglers, in particular, are skilled at this. At night, however, they do not move. You cannot work around them. They are stationed on every street, leaving not a single corner of the city unobserved. To sneak by them unseen and engage in any illicit activity requires a great amount of stealth, sense, and, most of all, luck.”

I plodded beside him, my shoes sinking into sand with every step. I could already tell my calves would be killing me by the time we got to our destination because walking through the thickly-massed grains was not much different than walking through water, and it was a heck of a workout. “Well, then it sounds like we definitely shouldn’t be leaving at night,” I declared. “You know, seeing as we’re basically going to Ka-lik’et with the intention of breaking the law.”

“We are not,” he corrected. “We are going to Ka-lik’et to entreat another into breaking the law.”

“That’s the same thing. Like a murder-for-hire. Yeah, the person who does the killing is committing a crime, but so is the person who asked the killer to do it in the first place,” I argued.

He looked down at me. It took my eyes a moment to focus in the ruthless darkness before I could dimly make out his features. His pearly, slanted eyes were squinted into mere slashes with perplexity. “Why would anyone ask another to kill? Why would he not just kill the enemy himself?”

“Because he doesn’t want to get caught, I guess,” I said with a shrug. “I don’t know. I’ve never done that before.”

Zuran grinned, “Of course you have never done such a thing. You have always done what you were told, I am certain.”

I felt a riffle of indignation. Being a “goody-two-shoes,” for lack of a better term, had never bothered me. In a lot of ways, I was proud of the fact that I’d been so diligent in going by the book and following the rules of life to accomplish everything I wanted to accomplish. During high school, I was known as the smart one who always did her homework and raised her hand to answer teachers’ questions and aced tests, and that didn’t bother me. I didn’t have my first drink until I turned twenty-one. I lost my virginity to the college sweetheart I’d thought I would be with forever. Sneaking out, experimenting with drugs or skipping class never even crossed my mind because those behaviors my peers considered normal were only obstacles in the path toward my goals. Hearing it come from Zuran’s mouth, however, was different. For some reason, it mattered to me that he felt that way. His amused tone made me feel plain and unimpressive, and I didn’t like it.

“If that’s the case, then why am I out here in the middle of the night with you on my way to finding one of your criminal friends?” I asked hotly.

He gave me a sidelong smirk and shook his head. I wished I could wipe that look right off his face like a dirt smudge.

“Because you don’t want to do what you’re told anymore,” was his sly answer.

Maybe he was right.