It was six exactly when Apollo spotted Giger Caust outside the Stellen Arms tavern. He was wearing a deep purple overcoat and a pointed travelling hat, as well as heavy walking boots. He waved to her when he noticed her.
“Some people tried to kill me last night,” she said as he approached.
“Oh,” he said. “I was going to say hello.”
Apollo grabbed his collar and let her coat fall open, the hilt of her sword emerging from its folds. “Hello. Why did two men try to kill me last night?”
Giger’s eyes flicked down to the sword. “I don’t know! I don’t know!” he cried, trying to wriggle out of the overcoat pathetically. “They might have followed me! Wanted to stop you from helping me!”
“I gathered that part. Why?” Apollo said, tightening her grip. “And stop squirming! I don’t enjoy it, you don’t enjoy it. Leave it out.”
Giger reluctantly stopped trying to escape. “They’re… a cult. Some people we knew, friends of hers joined them. I think they lured her into the Static, promised her they could take care of her better than we could. Well, this is what’s come of that! They used Riga’s death to steal her only sister from me!”
He became very cold. “Those men. You killed them?” he asked. Apollo nodded. “Good,” he said. “They deserved worse.”
“Everybody gets what they deserve,” Apollo said, releasing her grip. “One way or another.”
“You really believe that?”
Apollo answered that one with a shrug.

The checkpoint on the road that led out of Stellenmarek was a simple gate. A young woman in an official uniform sat reading a book inside a small wooden shelter. Apollo walked up and knocked on the wall.
“Entering the Static,” she said.
“Oh, really?” the young woman said, not looking up. “Reason?”
“Rescue mission,” Giger volunteered.
The woman glanced at him. “Write it on the board,” she said, pointing to a blackboard hanging from the wall of the shelter. Giger picked up the chalk that was hanging from a string and began to carefully write out “rescue mission” under the previous entry, which read “death”.
“Good book?” Apollo asked.
“I don’t know,” the woman said. “People keep trying to talk to me about it, and every time they do I lose my place. I’ve been on this page for three days.”
“That’s life,” Giger said, and the woman hissed in frustration.
“Isn’t it just,” she said. “Weapons?”
“What?” Giger murmured, looking around. “Where?”
“I carry a straight sword, a knife, and a sling for hunting,” Apollo said. “I don’t believe this man carries any.”
“Ah, but that’s where you’re wrong!” Giger said triumphantly. He opened his overcoat and reached under his left armpit, quickly producing a sleek handgun. “Nine rounds plus one,” he said, proud of his jargon. “Point three five seven ammunition. Single and double action. Low-tolerance machining.” He pronounced each word as if it were an incantation.
“That’s nice. It’s a paperweight,” Apollo said. “Try and fire it inside the Static zone and you’ll blow your hand off. If you’re lucky. It’s the dark ages out there. Hence the blade.” She lifted her sword a little to show it to the guard.
“Oh,” said Giger, crestfallen. “Can I keep it anyway?” Apollo nodded, and he tucked the useless gun back into its holster dejectedly. The woman and Apollo shared a meaningful look, and Apollo began shepherding Giger through the now open gate.
“That was easier than I expected,” Giger said, perking up.
“They don’t care how we go out,” Apollo said. “Only how we come back. If a mutant tried to come down that road they’d probably be shot on sight. An obvious mutant, that is.”
“Were those killers mutants?” Giger asked.
“I don’t know. I didn’t check. They could have hidden them, or they could have been completely untouched.”
Suddenly Apollo held up a hand, stopping Giger in his tracks. “I hear something. In the bushes.” While they had been walking, the area around the road had gone from cultivated, cleared fields to wild scrubland. Apollo unhooked the loop that held her coat shut, still listening for any change in the noise that was entirely unapparent to Giger. After a long pause, she lowered her hand. “It’s leaving.”
“What’s leaving?” Giger asked. Apollo looked at him seriously.
“It is,” she said. “For now,” she added. When Giger looked pained at this, she decided to throw him a bone. “I’m kidding,” she said, completely straight-faced. “Most wildlife here is more scared of us than we are of it.”
“I’m not sure that’s true, Miss Ridley.”
They walked in silence for a while.

Apollo Ridley walked with the silence of total alertness. She was ready, honed to strike at the slightest sign of danger. She walked with death at her right hand, and she knew it well.
She sometimes wished she knew it less. But those were thoughts for peaceful times. In the Static she had need of death. She kept it close at hand. The Static was her teacher in all things. To fight, to hide, to survive: these were all things the Static was a fine teacher of.
Giger Caust walked with the silence of total obliviousness.

As the sunlight faded, Apollo took Giger by the arm and led him off the road, ignoring his confused protests.
“We can’t make camp on the road,” she said. “We may as well skip through the woods singing ‘rob us, rob us, kill us, kill us.’ Now help me dig a pit.”
“A pit?”
“A hole in the ground. So travellers or, say, Bad Companies, don’t see our fire and slash our throats in the night,” said Apollo, accompanying the words with an appropriate if vicious hand gesture.
Giger nodded. “I see,” he said dryly.
The pit took a while; the fire took a while more. The two of them sat opposite one another, underlit by the crackling flames.
“Do you have a family?” Giger asked, after a while. “Any family. Not just children.” Apollo shook her head.
“Not my style,” she said. “Besides, it wouldn’t be fair on them.” She watched the flames dance for a while. “I never knew my parents anyway.”
“That’s a shame,” Giger said. “You’ve never thought about settling down?”
“No,” she said. “There have been times when I thought I might. But no. I’m not built for it.”
“That’s like saying you’re not human.”
Apollo shrugged. “That’s how I feel,” she said. She paused. “Tell me about your daughter.”
Giger smiled. “She’s brilliant. Runs circles round me. If I didn’t have the wives I’d be in trouble. So, so clever. She’ll go to an Institute for sure. Probably end up running the place.” He laughed hollowly. “If they’ll have her.”
“Her and her friends used to play tricks on me using an old two-way radio she found. Hide it in a tree and send me off looking for them. Lina was with them.” His face darkened.
“Lina? Is this one of the friends with the cult?”
“That’s right. Her and Polly were inseparable. For years, they did everything together. Then Lina’s family- well, they had to leave. I don’t know what happened, but the city guard were involved. She didn’t go with them, at first. She stayed with us. Then one morning we found a note telling us she’d gone to join them. Polonia was so upset she didn’t speak all day.”
“Some friend, leaving without saying goodbye like that.”
“I think that’s what hurt her the most. That she would just abandon their friendship so casually. Polly hated her for a while after that. But we knew that if Lina asked, she’d go. Is everything alright?”
Apollo had risen to a crouch, her head tilted to one side. “Maybe. Maybe not,” she said. Her hand crept towards the hilt of her sword, standing upright in the dirt where she had driven it after they finished the firepit.
A guttural animal noise came from the bushes behind her.
“Let’s go with not!” she said, turning and bringing the sword up to meet a huge black wolf-thing as it lunged for her. “Stay down! I’ll handle this!”
Giger lay down flat on his stomach, head under his hands. He didn’t need telling again.
Apollo swung the sword again, keeping the wolf-thing at range. It snarled, and she realised the upper half of its face was strangely out of proportion. The eyes too small, the brow the wrong shape.
They were human eyes. The growl was less a wolf, more a human voice.
But a human becoming a wolf or a wolf becoming human? she thought, thrusting the blade towards a questing paw. The wolf-thing’s claws raked the blade, flinging up sparks that startled the beast part of it and enraged the human. Either way, it wasn’t having them. Apollo took her sword’s hilt in both hands and brought the blade crashing down on the beast’s shoulder, slicking its fur with black blood. The thing roared and lashed out with a great black paw that launched Apollo backwards, nearly into the fire.
Winded, she struggled to get to her feet and take up her fighting stance. She had faced tougher opponents than this. The animal was wounded, snarling and enraged. Her human focus would be her strongest ally here. The beast snarled, loping towards her. It was huge, and its furious eyes glowed orange in the crackling firelight.
The fire.
Apollo dug her sword into the flames and wrenched it upwards, flinging burning scraps of firewood and kindling into the beast’s eyes. Blinded, the thing roared and lashed out with its good paw. Apollo sidestepped the wild blow and struck again, swinging her blade upwards. The beast staggered under the weight of the blow and growled, weaker now, but emboldened by rage.
On the ground, Giger lifted his head from the dirt and saw the battle ongoing. My God, he thought. He saw Apollo thrust her blade towards the beast, and the beast bat it away with a mighty paw. She staggered and tried to recover with a swift slash to the right, but the beast ducked it. Giger gasped involuntarily.
Hearing the noise from her charge, Apollo turned for a second. A second was all it took. The beast’s next wild swing sent her sprawling, her sword flying from her hand.
The blade turned over in the air and landed next to Giger. The prone form of Apollo lay a few feet away, unmoving as the beast advanced on her. He knew he was her only hope, and he knew that she was in turn his. His hand shaking, he snatched up the sword and got to his feet.
“Hey!” he shouted, raising the blade of steel in front of himself. It was heavy, but he knew that to let it fall would mean death for both of them. As the slavering beast drew nearer, he gritted his teeth and swung wildly.
By some vicious stroke of luck, his attack was not immediately parried by a single twitch of the wolf-man’s great claws but instead came down squarely on the beast’s head with a crack. Stunned, the beast stopped in its tracks as Giger raised the sword again and brought it down, opening a dripping black gash in its face, the beast’s blood rivuleting down its stark white fangs and pooling below it. It made a confused sound and tried to swipe at him, but the movement caused the great black body to lose balance and tumble to the earth.
Apollo’s awareness returned gradually, like an hourglass filling with sand. The beast was on its side, breathing heavily, Giger standing over it brandishing her sword. As she struggled to move, she saw him raise the blade and swing it, making another great wound in its side. Again he raised the blade. Again he struck.
Finally, she marshalled the strength to speak. “Stop,” she said. “Stop!” she repeated, when Giger raised the blade again. “It’s finished,” she said.
“Finished? The beast still lives!” Giger said, half indignant.
“So do we,” Apollo said. She struggled, managed to raise herself to her hands and knees. She extended her hand to Giger, and he pulled her to her feet. She looked into the one good eye of the wolf-thing, and saw its whites as the little black iris twisted and rolled. It was afraid. Dying and afraid.
She pulled her short knife from its sheath inside her coat, and put her hand on the wolf-thing’s neck. It was slick with blood. In a moment, the job was done. The wolf was silent.
“Find peace,” she whispered.