Kessa
In very short order we leave through the east crawl with no public announcement, no farewell, and no dramatic last look at the City because I’m not letting this day become a tragic ballad. At least not before I’ve had the chance to ruin someone else’s plan.
Syin goes first until we reach the second junction. Renn follows with the supplies wrapped tight against his chest. At the old drain I take point.
Rhazek already told me his direction. Under, not through. The broken token is in my pocket, but I don’t need it to read the denial mark. I lead us into the old service throat and down into the buried caravan cut.
The passage smells like minerals, stale heat, and the sour memory of water. It angles east until it feeds us into the outer service corridor. The gate at the end sits crooked in its track, forced just wide enough for a large male with a damaged wing to get through.
Beyond it, the desert isn’t subtle and neither was Rhazek.
His trail cuts east across the sand in a line ugly enough that Renn stops when he sees it. Deep footprints. One side heavier than the other. A broken scrape where a wing caught the ground. Dark drops baked almost black by the heat.
“He wanted to be followed,” Renn says.
“By them,” I answer.
Not by me. That was what the mark inside was for. Don’t take the obvious path. Get away from the City. Let whatever is listening believe the escaped weapon is running exactly where it wants him to run.
Rhazek didn’t have time to leave me a clever message, but he didn’t need to. The trail across the desert is loud enough for anyone with eyes.
We move.
The first stretch matches the route I worked out in the City. East, away from shelter mouths and water paths. The low ridge rises ahead, black stone cutting through red sand. Beyond it should be the old quake glass, then the dead cistern, then the split canyon.
I know where he meant to go and for a while, that certainty keeps my fear useful.
Renn reads the ground while we run. He points without wasting breath. A deeper heel mark where Rhazek stumbled. Blood on the lee side of a stone. Another long wing scrape through crusted sand.
“He was slowing,” Renn says.
“I know.”
Syin glances at me and I ignore him.
At the base of the low ridge, the trail is still exactly where I expected it to be. Rhazek should cross here, pick up the old quake glass on the far side, then keep moving toward the dead cistern.
Instead, his prints drive up the lower slope and stop well below the crest.
I stop so fast Renn nearly runs into me.
“No,” I say.
Syin comes up beside me. “What?”
“This isn’t where he was supposed to stop.”
Renn crouches over the last clean print. “But he did.”
This... this changes everything. Frowning, I kneel and study the tracks. This doesn’t make sense. The back of my neck itches but I don’t know if it’s some sense of being watched or irritation that I don’t understand.
The last few prints are shorter and deeper where Rhazek stumbled. I follow where one knee hit the sand. Blood darkens the crust beside a narrow scorched line in the stone. Then his tracks stop being the only ones.
Renn works carefully around the churned ground. “Boots.”
I crouch beside him. The tread is even, manufactured, repeating in hard little angles that Tajss didn’t make.
“Off-world,” I say.
Renn nods. “More than one.”
The unfamiliar prints close around Rhazek’s last steps. No body. No trail continuing toward the canyon. No sign he walked away from here under his own power.
A black line catches the light beneath the disturbed sand.
Too straight.
I brush sand and dust away. Smooth metal sits under the crust, dark enough to swallow the red glare. The seam runs along the base of the broken ridge and disappears beneath stone.
This is the thing that answered the dead drop. The thing Rhazek dragged away from us.
Syin sets his jaw. “They took him.”
“Alive,” I say.
He looks at me.
“There isn’t enough blood for dead, and they surrounded him instead of leaving him here.” I point to the clustered boot marks where they vanish at the metal seam. “They came out of that.”
Renn stares at the buried metal. “We open it?”
“No.”
Both of them look at me.
“If they built a machine that learned my routes by listening through Rhazek, I’m not rewarding them by putting my hand on the door.”
Syin gives one sharp satisfied nod. “Around.”
I nod back, agreeing, and we climb.
The ridge is hot, steep, and loose enough to punish every careless step.
We do our best to keep stone between us and the open sky, moving along the seam’s line without touching it.
Renn finds the occasional manufactured tread where someone crossed exposed rock, enough to tell us the buried structure continues beneath the ridge.
Before we reach the far side, I feel the wrong rhythm.
Once.
Pause.
Again.
I stop immediately. Syin stops with me.
Renn whispers, “What?”
I lift a hand for silence, tilting my head and listening. Or feeling.
It’s not exactly sound. More of a pressure than noise, pushing through the line the fragments opened between Rhazek and me.
Once.
Pause.
Again.
Underneath it is a softer beat. The one I used to pull Rhazek out of the fragment’s grip. My voice. Somehow, that became an anchor for him, but now it seems the enemy has polished it and turned it into bait.
“They’re using me,” I whisper.
Syin looks toward the far side of the ridge. “Can they see us?”
“I don’t know.”
“Can they feel you?”
That answer is worse. “Maybe.”
Renn grimaces. “Then we don’t give them anything clean.”
I nod and point toward a shelf of broken stone above the far slope.
“We stay high. No touching anything green. No blood if we can help it. Look before you move.”
Syin studies me. “And when we find him?”
“I can be sensible for several consecutive breaths.”
“That is not what I asked.”
“It’s what you’re getting.”
We climb the last stretch in silence. At the final rise, Renn touches my ankle with his tail and points at movement below. All of us drop to our bellies and work our way forward.
I work my way forward until I can crest the ridge and can see.
A shallow cut opens on the far side of the ridge where sand has slid away from buried metal revealing a transport rig that was buried. It has a black frame half hidden by sand and the heat shimmer. Green light crawls through narrow seams along its sides.
Two figures move around it in pale masks and layered armor that doesn’t belong to this world. One carries a rod pulsing with the rhythm of the call. The other works at the transport frame, locking sections into place.
Then I see Rhazek.
He’s inside a cage fixed to the rig. His wings are tight behind him and his arms are bound high. Blood darkens one side of his face. His head is lifted.
He’s alive.
My heart thunders loud in my ears and every part of me wants to charge. Run at the two aliens holding him captive and stab them with my knife. To set him free. Instead I grip the stone until the urge becomes something I can control.
He shifts, turning his face toward the ridge. There is no way he can see me. Still, he turns directly toward where I am hiding. He blinks, grunts in pain, then drops his head.
The green seams of the cage brighten.
Once.
Pause.
Again.
Then my rhythm answers beneath it.
Renn sucks in a breath with a sharp hiss. Syin doesn’t move, but I know exactly how much violence he is holding back. Below us, one of the masked figures pauses and turns toward the ridge.
The transport cage brightens and begins to seal around Rhazek.