Return to Eden by Kaitlyn O'Connor

examined it and then leaned down to put one end in the
water.
    Anya was torn as she watched him. She
hadn’t had more than a few sips of water in hours and hours—she
didn’t even know anymore. But as thirsty as she was, she was still
very reluctant to drink from the mud puddle.
    Especially since she’d pissed down the
tunnel a little ways.
    She was desperate enough, she began
trying to convince herself that she really didn’t have to worry
about the urine. It wasn’t as if either of them had produced enough
to flow this far! It had probably just seeped into the
concrete.
    She certainly didn’t recall walking
through it.
    Aidan handed her the tube. She examined
it as he had, discovering that it was some kind of filtration
device—not merely a tube.
    Closing her mind to the possible
origins of the water and/or anything it might have run over or
through on its way to this spot, she drank as much as she could
hold and then passed the straw back to Aidan. He leaned down to
drink more and then offered her the device. She considered it and
decided to top her tank off since there was no telling when they
might find water again. While she was working on trying to make
like a camel and fill her storage tank, Aidan got up and explored
the ledge that ran around the pool.
    “ Here! Dis
ting!”
    Anya peered through the gloom and saw
he’d discovered an access ladder. She looked up as he flicked his
light toward the ceiling. He had highlighted a hole the ladder
disappeared into, she saw, but it was too dark beyond to see
anything.
    She was willing to bet the ladder
didn’t go much higher than what she could see, though. She got up
reluctantly. “You know those damned things y’all sent here probably
ate the ladder,” she said crossly. “Just how do you think we’re
going to get out when we run out of ladder?”
    He summoned her imperiously with a
gesture. She contemplated shooting him a bird and refusing, but he
didn’t seem to have lost his determination to hang on to her and
she wasn’t up to trying to outrun him.
    In fact, she was feeling less up to it
as time went on. She refused to consider the dependency she’d
rapidly developed—for an alien who also happened to be an enemy!
Physically, she was just done in. She’d always considered that she
was in pretty damned good shape, but she’d hardly had any sleep,
anything to eat or drink, and she’d been moving almost
constantly—in spurts of running for her life! The uneasy sense that
she wasn’t actually very well equipped for survival swamped her
abruptly. She tried to shake it, but it was as hard to ignore as
her aches and pains.
    Aidan waited until she’d reached him
and began climbing. As she’d predicted they ran out of ladder
shortly after they passed into the shaft. “I hate to say I told you
so,” she muttered.
    Instead of heading back down as she’d
expected, however, the alien surveyed the dirt shaft leading up
moved to the very last rung and then carefully positioned himself
so that he was braced against the sides with his arms and legs.
Anya studied him doubtfully, fully expecting him to come down on
top of her. Instead, he began to inch his way upward.
    “ I can’t do that,” she
said flatly.
    “ Yes.”
    “ No!” she said more
forcefully.
    He glared down at her, braced himself
carefully and then reached down. “Yes!”
    “ My arms and legs aren’t
long enough, damn it!”
    She could see he was determined,
though.
    After debating, briefly, whether she
should just take her chances with the sewer and hope that somewhere
there was an access to the surface that she had a better chance of
navigating, she yielded to his determination and struggled up. He
pulled her between his spread legs, settled her briefly on his lap,
and then lifted.
    “ Oh shit!”
    With a lot of grunting,
straining, and cussing, she managed to inch her way up a few feet.
The opening at the top still seemed impossibly far away, but every
time she stopped to rest, Aidan