Good night, Aleks

Week 1, Day 0, Evening

I froze.

Beside me, Daisuke stiffened, jaw dropping.

Down at the fire, Nikita was already moving, closing fast on the elves with a shout of "Get the hell away from him!" Every one of them turned toward him. For a second, nobody was looking at us at all.

I shot a glance at Daisuke. "Shit. We have to do something."

"Yeah."

"Can you fight?"

"Hell no. You?"

"Hell no."

"They're gonna demolish us."

"...Yeah."

We looked at each other for one more second.

"Fuck it."

We dropped the bundles of sticks we'd hauled all the way back and ran, both of us, full speed.

Nikita was already deep in it, blocking a swing and countering with a hook that caught one elf square in the jaw. Four on one was still too much for him alone.

"About time," Nikita barked when he saw us. "Get in here."

I didn't have time to think about how bad an idea this was. One elf came straight at me. My block was clumsy, and his fist still clipped my jaw. Pain flashed white behind my eyes. I swung back on instinct and caught his shoulder.

Beside me, Daisuke moved fast, ducking under a swing and driving his shoulder into someone's gut. "Let's go, bro!" he yelled, and somehow he was grinning through the whole thing.

We didn't fight as badly as I expected, a few hits taken on our side, sure, but more landed on theirs.

That theory held up when Nikita found his opening and landed a clean hook on one of the elves, knocking him flat. The others hauled him up between them and started backing off.

"Why the fuck are you protecting one of them?" one of them shouted at Nikita.

"Told you humans are dumb," another added.

Their voices faded as they went, and then they were gone into the trees. Cealith was still on the ground where he'd fallen, not moving.

"Help me," Nikita said.

The three of us got him up, his arms slung over our shoulders. He was lighter than I expected. We started back toward the shelter.

Amina looked up from the fire, and her face went from confusion to shock the second she saw Cealith slung between us.

"Oh my God, why did they do that to him?"

"He'll have to tell us when he wakes up," Nikita said.

Amina's gaze moved to Daisuke and me. "You're finally here. What took you so long, we were worried." Her eyes went past us, to our empty hands. "And where's the wood you were supposed to bring back?"

Daisuke and I looked at each other.

"We dropped it when we saw Cealith getting jumped," he said. "Yeah, we'll go grab it, we'll be right back."

"Already moving," I said, and turned to go.

"Seriously?" Amina called after us.

We just kept walking.

"Okay," Daisuke muttered once we were clear, "we need a solid excuse. Otherwise we're explaining why we were at the archway."

I shrugged. "Tell her squirrels attacked us."

"Or a bear."

"A bear?"

He grinned. "Way cooler. Although, do bears even exist on this planet? If they don't, that's gonna sound insane."

"Whatever."

When we came back with the wood, he dropped it by the fire without a flicker of guilt on his face. "A bear got us in the woods, that's why we took so long," he said, casual as anything.

Amina's eyebrows shot up. Then she started laughing. "You two are idiots."

"Yeah." Honestly, fair.

The mood eased off after that. Nikita showed Amina how to bank a campfire so it would hold through the night. Daisuke tried to talk to Carmen in what he clearly thought was a subtle way, and everyone within twenty feet could hear him doing it. Carmen smiled at him, polite, and gave him nothing to work with. Cealith lay resting with his head against a log, eyes half-closed.

I drifted off toward the edge of camp, where the firelight thinned into shadow. The sky had gone orange at the edges, the sun dropping low behind the trees.

I used to think most people were garbage. Years of getting shoved around and laughed at will do that to you. But sitting there, with people who'd just run straight into a fight for someone they barely knew, that thought didn't fit anymore.

I sat with that for a while, trying to sort through the whole day, until a voice reached me from behind.

"Hey."

I turned. Carmen was standing there, looking down at me.

"Mind if I sit?"

I nodded, and she lowered herself down beside me, close enough that her shoulder brushed mine.

"You still don't think this is real, do you?" she asked quietly.

"I don't know," I admitted.

She leaned back on her hands, looking up at the sky. "Remember that summer we tried to camp in your backyard? And it rained so hard your mom made us sleep inside?"

I snorted. "Yeah. You kept saying we could tough it out in the tent, and the whole time you were shivering."

"I wasn't shivering."

"Uh-huh."

She laughed, soft, and then leaned into me a little, her head coming to rest against my shoulder. My face went hot.

Neither of us said anything for a minute. Just the fire cracking somewhere behind us. I wanted the moment to last longer than it was going to.

"Hey! You two!"

I looked up. Daisuke stood a few meters off. "Beds are ready."

Carmen got up, brushing off her pants. "Coming." She glanced down at me once before she turned back toward camp.

Daisuke stayed where he was, arms crossed, watching me with a look sharp enough to cut.

"You asshole." He said it flatly. "Told me you didn't like her, and now you're out here alone with her?"

"Chill. It's not what it looks like."

He stared at me for a second. "I hope for your sake you're telling the truth."

No answer came out of me. We walked back to the shelter together without saying anything else, the firelight getting brighter with every step. My jaw still ached from the hit earlier, and my ribs pulsed with a dull sting that got worse the closer we got. I just wanted to lie down and stop moving. The second we ducked inside, Daisuke started up again. "I have a question."

Oh. So that was his name. Daisuke. I filed it away and kept my face still.

"Yeah, shoot," Amina said.

Daisuke turned back toward me, ready to keep going, but his eyes swept the shelter first. "How exactly are we all fitting in here tonight?"

Nobody answered right away. Just the fire, crackling low between us.

"I'll take night watch," Nikita said from the far side, voice low and flat. "Gives the rest of you more room."

"I can do it," Daisuke jumped in, his head tilting toward Carmen, not subtle about it at all.

Nikita didn't even look up at first. Then he let out a short snort. "You're a twig. Doesn't matter if you're in here or not. You take up about as much space as a backpack."

Daisuke's head snapped around. "What did you just say?"

"You heard me."

It went downhill fast, both of them leaning in, trading jabs low but loud enough that the rest of us caught every word of it.

"Enough!" Carmen's voice cut clean through both of them.

Daisuke straightened up fast. "...Fine." He pushed his glasses up and looked anywhere but at her.

Nikita smirked. "Thought so."

We got ourselves arranged for the night. Cealith went on the far left, still out cold but breathing steady. Daisuke lay down next to him, then me, then Carmen, with Amina on the far right. Nikita took the entrance, sitting with his back against it, on guard.

I turned onto my side to face Daisuke. His eyes were still open, locked on mine, and it made my skin crawl.

"You said you didn't like her," he whispered, voice flat and pointed. "Now you're sleeping next to her?"

I held his stare for a second, but the look on his face said everything it needed to. Rolling over fast, I turned toward Carmen instead.

She was already asleep, breathing soft and even. I caught myself watching her a moment longer than I should have before I shut my eyes. Half gone already, I heard her voice come, quiet, close enough to send a small shock through me.

"Good night, Aleks."

It was almost too soft to catch. But I caught it. My mouth twitched into a stupid grin before I could stop it, and after that I don't remember falling asleep at all.

I woke to someone shaking my shoulder hard.

"Aleks! Wake up!"

My eyes snapped open. Nikita's face hung over mine, sharp and tense. All around me people were stirring, voices low and urgent. Amina's eyes were wide, both hands gripping the edge of her blanket. Outside, muffled screams cut through the dark, and under them, heavy footsteps, pounding somewhere close.

"What's happening," I started, but Nikita already had my arm and was pulling me down before I could finish.

"Stay low. Don't go out there," he hissed.

My heart was slamming so hard it hurt. The footsteps outside slowed to almost nothing. Whatever was making them was breathing hard, uneven, stopping every few seconds and going still before it moved again. Then, through the narrow slit in the wall, I saw it pass.

A massive shape blotted out the firelight for a moment as it went by. My stomach clenched instantly. One of them, the same kind that had hunted us back on Earth. We stayed perfectly still, nobody daring to breathe loud, every muscle in my body locked tight, my ears straining for any sign it was leaving.

Then, behind me, a voice broke the silence.

"What... happened?"

Cealith.

The words weren't even loud. They didn't need to be.

The creature stopped.

I could hear the shift of its weight, the slow turn of its whole body toward us. Then it started moving, one step at a time, straight for the shelter.