Mat did not have time to sit down and process what his personal intelligence assistant told him. Voices of the pale-skinned monsters, his supposed to be allies, grew louder and louder, and he thought he could even make out a few words.

Fatlander, Mad, Betrayal, Kill. Maybe those were just words he formed in his own head, but that mattered not. They all sounded very angry and threatening. If they were his allies before, they were not his friends anymore.

He doubted he could explain his way out of it. What was he supposed to say anyway, “Yes, I killed your brothers or fathers, but… It was all just a misunderstanding?”

So, how many potential enemies could be circling him, how many he might have to fight at once, how upset they would be for his betrayal…? The answers were hidden by fog.

He ducked behind the fallen tree and looked down the ravine for his escape.

“How could they be my allies? I am pretty sure this place has normal humans living here. What happened with them?”

I do not have that information, Pia answered him in a flat cold tone..

“Damn creatures!” he muttered to himself. “If only that guy did not open his mouth! Those teeth. How were they not supposed to scare me? Yeah, I got scared and let the fear dictate my action. How amateurish of me! Why did I do that?”

I tried to warn you.

“I didn’t know,” Mat said defensively.

Ignorance is no excuse. I doubt the administrators would see it your way.

“Fuck the administrators!” he silenced his hiss, but even that it seemed to be too loud as the area around him suddenly became ominously silent.

There is nothing for me here. Only killing and death and a drop in karma that might lock me on this planet forever… if that has not happened already. Fucken’ administrators.

So, when the twig snapped only a few feet away, he did not jump up to fight. He jumped down the ravine, going into a fog, running down as fast as he could between fallen trees and their smoldering stumps. He did not look back nor pay attention to the shapes of paleskins that would occasionally materialize around. He just ran down, focused on not hitting anything, jumping over debris when it would get in his way, skidding over ash, and enjoying his speed and agility like never before.

But he enjoyed it too much. Because sometimes in dense fog you can’t see shit, and some stumps are just too big to jump over. Sometimes speed can kill you.

He did not even see the branch sticking out from a fallen-down tree but felt it as a thrusting knife ripping his cotton shirt and his abdomen as he ran into it. He instantly fell to his right side, the branch cracking off.

Mat knew right away what happened, and if not for the paralyzing pain that instantly hit him, he would have cursed to high heavens. Cries of pain escaped his mouth, but he bit his clenched his teeth and muffled them as the voices of pale-skins seemed to be not too far behind.

They are after me, he thought and pulled himself up to his right knee. His left hand softly touched the branch that pierced him. Almost an inch in diameter. How deep it went, he had no idea. His fingers came back wet with his own blood.

He used the sword still held tight in his right hand to pull himself up. Pain in the abdominal muscles was there, but not too unbearable, and certainly not the only pain he felt. His left hand went to his right shoulder that sting him hard as he put pressure on that side. His fingers came back again wet with more blood.

Only then did he realize that he had cut himself on his own sword when he fell down, a cut about five inches long and a skin deep.

“Hell no!” he cursed and looked down to the blade that was now smeared by his own blood and almost threw it away. But at the same time, a tiny alarming voice, it could have even been Pia’s, said that it might be wise to save the only weapon he has. So, feeling very much disgusted by himself, he angrily shoved it inside the scabbard tied to his back.

“Great! They upgraded me to a better warrior class so I can killing myself better.”

Taking a step produced more pain, but he needed to get away, and holding the wound with his left hand, he tried to just walk as fast as he could. Running was out of questions.

I have to find a place to hide. The night should not be too far away.

A bit of luck came his way after he made a few dozen agonizing steps. The sound of passing water and the smell of its freshness reached his senses, and he knew he was on the bank of a river, and that river was his savior.

But finding a way to the water was another matter. Fallen timber was everywhere blocking his path, and what normally would take a jump now implied going around and around. So when his boots finally touched the water, it was not a moment too soon. He rushed in readily, splashing the water around.

The water was chilly, but it felt good. He stopped when it reached his waist, a few inches below the wound.

The river too was blanketed in mist and smoke and fog, and he could not see to its far side. It flew slowly, still, how much water was in front of him?

I do not dare to try and swim over it, he concluded, and then he stumbled to free a big piece of a tree trunk that got stuck on a riverbank in some branches.

He hugged it with his right arm and pushed it to the middle of the river with his legs, pushing himself on and on like a frog, and hustling his upper body on top of the flowing timber, trying to find a spot that would permit him to feel less pain in his abdominals.

When he was way off the bank, he finally took a deep long breath and asked Pia. “Now, can you please tell me my health status?”

You have suffered two inches perforation to your abdominal muscle. You have hemorrhaged already over 500 milliliters of blood.

“That’s not bad. It’s like one pint of blood, right?”

Exactly. Glad your ability to compute has not been affected.

"Are you trying to be funny, Pia?"

No, Mat.

“Well, one pint is not that bad. I usually donate that much regularly. That’s not that bad at all.”

That's on account of me surpassing your bleeding all I can. And you are are still bleeding out as I cannot completly-

“At what rate?”

It depends on your body movement. Now that you are putting pressure on it, your loss is negligible.

“Okay.”

But if you pull out the wooden shank that had pierced you, your hemorrhaging will increase by a factor of five instantly.

“And how long would I have then?”

Less than thirty minutes to stop it.

“I see. And what is my best bet to stop the bleeding? Any wound plasma at my disposal?”

Negative. Your best choice is to cauterize the wound. Or you can find a safe place to pass out and be enactive, and I can slow down your heart rate to only a few beats a minute and direct all the nano-h-cells you have to work on repairing your raptured blood vessels.

“How long would that take?”

Seven days.

“That long?” Mat asked all disappointed, not really ready to go under for any period of time, not now that he was awake.

Your supply of nano-h-cells have been severely depleted during the last hundred days. You only have about 25 percent of them left. You must have bled them out during the last few months.

“Yeah, and how I cannot remember any of that?”

I do not have that information.

Met shivered and sighed. “I guess I will have to remember those months on my own, huh?”

When Pia did not answer, Mat added. “Well, anyway, what is my Health status now?”

Health: Sixty percent

“That’s not bad. Any organ damage?”

Negative.

“How about a near-term prognosis? What am I looking at?”

From your wounds, the infection will spread within 46 hours. If left untreated, if you leave the debris inside your body, even with my help sending the nano-h-cells to fight infection, your health will slowly deteriorate. We can only slow it down. There is just not enough of them to fight the infection off.

“So, how long would I have then?”

Estimate time when your health will be at zero is ten days.

“That’s not bad. I can get fixed in that time. No problem.”

However, your biggest problem is not your wound right now. It’s hypothermia. If you stay in the water for another two hours, your body temperature will drop below the life-sustaining level.

“Can we get nano-h-cells to keep me warmer?”

Yes. I would have done that already if you have placed me on an automatic response mode.

“What? When have I taken you off that mode?”

Pia skipped a beat, and it took a second before she answered, I do not have that information either.

“Well, go into automatic respond mode. Keep me alive. And keep me posted. I need to know.”

Yes, Mat. I can do that.

“And please, pretty please, with a cherry on top, don’t listen to me the next time I instruct you to go off the auto-healing mode,” Mat added angrily.

The river flew slow, and Mat decided to stop pushing after a while. He looked up toward the sky, and there was suddenly the clearance in the air, and he felt for the first time the rays of the sun. They were meek and as he tilted his head, he saw it far in the horizon, going down.

He looked around some more. He seemed to have already passed the middle of the river, the other bank being much closer than he thought.

I better cross the river while it’s still light. They might have followed me. I better find a shelter for the night while there is still light. And if I need to cauterize this, I will need fire. I can’t be seven days out.

He sighed, and, risking the emergence of pain, pushed his legs against the water again.

Warning! Pia’s alarming voice made Mat twitch.

“What is it now?” he asked right away, not understanding why she is not providing an explanation already.

According to the information that was provided in the briefing, the planetary rivers are known to be inhabited by Vamp Fish. The largest of them are known to grow to ten feet long and known to sense the drops of blood from a mile away.

“Shit.”

I am sensing water vibrations that are indicative of their activity.

“Shit, I better get my sword out,” Mat said and decided to put his legs over the log, hugging it completely and pulling himself up as much as he could out of the water.

As he steadied himself on top of that log, he took out his sword. Looking at its broken blade, a nagging thought stuck him worse than a wasp. What kind of a force could have cracked his sword in half? It was cast in Fibia out of titanium-steel alloy no. 25, one of the hardest known metallic alloys in the administration inventory. The force of such power was not known to exist on this planet, at least to his knowledge.

And what if it was not an explosion, what if… could it be that they gave him a defective weapon? A decoy? Could have only been someone very close to him.

Warning! The vibration sound is increasing. I count at least ten different sources. Estimated time of the attack is under a minute.

“Great, there is a whole bunch of them. But… They are not friendlies, are they? I mean, I can kill them, right? Mat asked just to make sure.

You will kill them or you will be their dinner.

“Oh, thank you for illustrating that so vividly for me,” he said, not caring if his sarcasm was lost to his intelligence assistant.

He ducked his bloodied left hand in the water, cleaning it there, calling the beasts in.

He saw a long shadow emerge from the deep, more than six-foot-long, almost like a giant catfish. It went right at him and opened its mouth but a few meters away, showing rows and rows of sharp teeth.

“Do all creatures here have the same teeth?” Mat asked as he lifted his right hand to strike the beast.

Except his sliced shoulder did not listen to him so well, and he cried out in sudden, gripping pain.