Chapter 4: The Gift From Stella

Keir limped behind her for six kilometers and complained for five of them.

"Where are you going?"

"To the cluster. The tracker shows your friends by the river."

"Why?"

"Because it's the only water I can count on, and I don't like carrying a man who can't keep up."

"I'm not asking to be carried."

"Then stop asking questions and walk."

He stopped asking, and for a while the only sound was his boots.

At noon a drone swooped down and a message scrolled across its belly in bright letters.

SPONSOR GIFT FOR CONTESTANT OSTROW. WATER CACHE AHEAD, GRID 14. COURTESY OF STELLA OSTROW.

Keir whistled.

"She sent you water," he said. "After everything you said about her. That's Stella."

Thora looked at the drone.

"Did she send you a cache?"

"She sent all of us one. Everyone got a care package on day one."

"Did you drink yours?"

"I drank half. It tasted fine."

Thora thought about that.

Then she walked to grid fourteen and found four plastic jugs beside a boulder, each wrapped in a silver bow.

The drone hovered at her shoulder, filming.

She unscrewed one cap and sniffed the jug.

It smelled of nothing, which was the first thing wrong with it.

Karst water always smelled of stone.

She poured a little into her tin cup and set it on a rock.

Then she took out the iodine and dripped three drops into it, and watched the water turn from clear to a dark, sick green.

"What does that mean?" Keir said.

"Iodine doesn't do that to clean water."

She tipped the cup out on the ground, and the leaves where it landed curled and went brown in a count of ten.

Keir stared at the stain.

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