Free Prometheus Road by Bruce Balfour

beating we gave him? If he can still stand up, he’s a stronger man than I am. He’s not going anywhere.”
    Tom agreed with Humboldt. He didn’t feel like going anywhere. For that matter, he didn’t have anywhere to go.

Prometheus Road
     4
    “PSSST!”
    Tempest was lying facedown across her bed, on top of the blankets, her head hanging over the side. She had finally found a position she could fall asleep in, and had been resting peacefully for about half an hour when the odd noise at her open window woke her up. At first, she thought she had dreamed it. She lifted her head, but saw only the moonlight on the little flower garden at the bottom of the light pipe outside her window. Then she heard it again, a whisper in the darkness. “Psssst! Tempest!”
    She sat up, then pulled the blanket in front of her to hide her body. The silhouette of a head with wild hair appeared in the glass, backlit by the blue moonlight. “Can you come out?”
    Tom. She shuddered, wondering how to respond. If her father found out he was there . . .
    “Tempest?”
    “Ssshh!” She motioned for him to be quiet, then stood to approach the window, feeling the soreness in her back muscles from her time in the shock box the previous day. “Go away,” she whispered. “You can’t be here.”
    “I can’t be anywhere,” Tom said. “Let me in.”
    “No! I can’t!”
    “You come out, then.”
    “Are you crazy? If my father sees you, or if Humboldt hears you—”
    Tom snorted. “Humboldt already found me once tonight. We had a nice chat. He made some good points, I made mine, and we came to sort of an agreement.” He rubbed his eyes. “I’m not worried about your father, either. What’s he going to do if he finds me here, blow up our farm?”
    Tempest caught the tone in Tom’s voice. “What an odd thing to say.”
    “I guess you haven’t heard. They’re blowing up Eliots left and right around here this week.”
    She shook her head. “What? What do you mean?”
    “They—bombed our farm. Nanobomb. Nothing left.” His voice broke. He sighed heavily and leaned against the windowsill, then rested his forehead on his arm.
    “By the gods,” Tempest said, moving forward to place her hand on his head. “You’re serious.”
    He nodded. “Never been more serious.”
    “But that’s never, I mean, it must be a mistake. It couldn’t have been—” Tempest noticed her fingers were wet. Her eyes widened when she raised her hand and saw the shiny blood. “You’re hurt!”
    “You could say that. This hasn’t been the best night of my life.” He slumped more heavily against the window.
    She looked around for something to use as a bandage, then started to tear up one of the sheets from her bed. Tom waved his hand. “Don’t bother. Too many cuts. I’d end up wrapped like a mummy.”
    She paused, then stood and started toward her bathroom. “Wait. I’ve got something.”
    Tom sighed, but he patiently waited until she returned and sprayed some healing foam on his head and the other cuts she could reach. She took a deep breath, then helped him climb through the window and lie down on the floor so she could spray the wounds on the rest of his body. He had dark bruises forming almost everywhere. While she worked, he closed his eyes, waiting for her to finish. He looked exhausted, and she couldn’t imagine how she’d feel if she were in the same position with no safe place to hide, nowhere to run, his family and home gone, an outcast in his own village.
    “Where will you go?” she asked, offering him water from the pitcher by her bed.
    Tom blinked, took a drink, then squinted at her in the dim moonlight from the window. “Where do you want to go?”
    “Me?” She gasped and sat back on her heels. “I’m not going anywhere.”
    “We could leave together. This is our chance. You’d be free of your father and your brother.”
    “I can’t leave. Not now.”
    “You mean, not with me.”
    “Have another drink,” she said,