Kessa
The floor splits between me and Rhazek.
A black crack races away from the ruined receiver and cuts across the chamber with a grinding snap. Green light flashes once inside it, then dies.
It’s over. I take a breath, turn to Rhazek, then another tremor comes from deeper down.
Renn stares at the floor. “That is not the machine.”
My stomach clamps into a tight knot. I know that vibration.
“No,” I say, my mouth dry.
Syin looks toward the passage we entered. Dust sifts from the ceiling in thin streams.
Blood runs down Rhazek from the hook at his throat and down his chest. The restraint on his damaged wing has gone dark. So has the line that trapped my ankle.
The leash is broken, but the building is trying to kill us anyway.
The crack widens another finger. The floor shakes as something moves below us.
“Shit, zemlja,” I say.
As if on command, the chamber jumps and I’m knocked off my feet. I hit the floor hard. Syin catches Renn before he falls into the widening crack. The damaged receiver tears sideways. A guard near the outer passage loses his footing. Gray slams both hands against the console.
The bucking stops but the sound comes again. A long scrape as something enormous forces stone out of its way. Whatever Rhazek sent through the old network found something real.
“Move!” I shout.
The chamber begins to break apart around us.
The guard nearest Renn lunges at him, picking now of all times to resume the fighting. Renn catches the weapon shaft with his lochaber and twists. Syin drives the second guard into the transport rail hard enough to make the metal ring. Gray tries to get the curved wand back.
I see his intent and rush over and kick it away. It skitters across the floor and disappears into the crack. Gray looks at me.
“Sorry. You should really stop leaving important things where I can reach them,” I say, shrugging.
Syin hits him from the side and they go down. For half a heartbeat I think we might actually be winning. Then the floor heaves again.
The transport cage jerks on its rails. Rhazek’s damaged wing catches against the locking arm and he snarls through his teeth. I take one step toward him, then stop.
Look first.
The room is coming apart. The passage we entered from is half blocked by a widening crack. The receiver is ruined but not dead. The transport rails cross the chamber and disappear through a narrow service opening behind the console.
There.
A route.
“Syin!” I point. “Behind the receiver. The rails go through the wall.”
He glances once and understands. “Renn.”
They move while I run for Rhazek. He lifts his head as I reach the cage.
“Kessa.”
“No lectures.”
“I was not going to lecture.”
“Good. I’m busy.”
The locking arm across his damaged wing is bent where the receiver overload twisted the cage. One end has pulled half free of the floor mount, but the other is wedged against the rail. The metal is hot and throws heat against my face.
I take his water skin and pour what little remains over the joint. Steam jumps back at me. Rhazek catches my wrist before I grab it.
“No.”
I glare at him.
“It will burn you.”
“It’s already burning you.”
“That is different.”
“Only if you’re stupid.” He narrows his eyes. “Don’t answer that.”
I wrap the edge of my shirt around my hand, wedge the bone handle of my knife under the warped joint, and push.
Rhazek braces the torn cage bar across the other side.
“Together,” I say.
He doesn’t argue but joins me, and we push. The joint screams. Once. Twice. On the third try, the locking arm tears free.
Rhazek’s wing drops loose behind him. He hisses through his teeth.
I grab his forearm through the bars. “You with me?”
His fingers close around mine. “Yes.”
Something crashes behind us.
Syin has driven his lochaber into the seam beside the service panel. Renn is pulling at the other side. The panel bends outward a handspan.
“Again!” I shout.
They wrench it wider. The opening behind it is narrow, dark, and slopes upward. Perfect. Almost.
A broken chime sounds behind me. Not the old command rhythm. One sharp note. Then another. Faster.
I turn.
Gray is on one knee beside the receiver. Blood runs from his mouth. One hand is pressed into the cracked console and the other is tearing open a narrow panel beneath it.
Green light crawls through the broken machinery. It races along a cable buried beside the transport track and vanishes into the wall. Rosalind’s warning comes back to me. Proof. Signal. Someone listening above us.
“No.”
Gray smiles through the blood.
“You broke the leash,” he says. “You did not break the send.”
Rhazek doesn’t move toward me. Nothing inside him answers any external command. No green line lights under his throat. My sense of relief lasts less than a breath.
Because the console brightens.
Gray isn’t trying to control him; he’s dumping whatever the receiver still remembers into the only path left.
The City. Epis. Rhazek. Me.
It’s not a complete packet or all the proof of what survives, but maybe enough. I hate maybe.
“Syin!”
He looks over.
“Keep opening that route. Renn, guard him.”
Renn starts to protest.
“That is not a suggestion.”
He shuts his mouth. I run for the receiver.
Gray reaches for the weapon of the guard Syin dropped. I kick it away and slam my shoulder into him. We hit the console together. Pain shoots down my already injured arm, but he loses his grip on the open panel.
The green light flickers.
Rhazek grips the bent cage opening. “Kessa.”
“I know.”
“You do not.”
“Probably not, but this is a terrible time to explain.”
He looks past me at the line disappearing into the wall.
“The rail carries it.”
I follow his gaze.
The same transport rail holding his cage runs under the receiver. A narrow green conduit is clipped to its side, almost hidden beneath black brackets.
Of course.
Everything in this place shares a route.
“Can you reach it?” I ask.
Rhazek looks at the torn bar in his hands.
“Yes.”
Gray lunges for me, but I duck.
“Do it!”
Rhazek drives the bar down between the cage rail and the green conduit. The chamber flashes white-green. The receiver screeches. Gray spins toward the console.
“No!”
I grab the loose edge of the cracked panel and yank with both hands. The metal tears open far enough to expose a cluster of pulsing lines. I don’t know which one matters. So I cut all of them.
The bone-handled knife bites through the first line and throws sparks into my face. The second melts against the blade. The third snaps with a sound like a tiny scream.
The light running toward the wall stutters and then stops.
Gray makes a sound I’ve heard from ration thieves when they realize the last jar is empty.
Despair.
Then the zemlja hits.
The floor rises in a rolling wave. Metal bends. Stone cracks. One transport rail peels upward. The receiver tears free of its remaining mount and slides toward the widening gap.
Gray grabs it. I grab the floor. Only one of those choices works.
The receiver drops into darkness with Gray still clinging to it. Green light spins once below us, shrinking fast. Then stone slams over the gap. I don’t wait to see if Tajss spits him back out.
“Kessa!” Syin roars.
I scramble up.
Renn and Syin have the service panel nearly open. One guard is down by the wall. The other is running for the outer passage. I wish him luck. Not much, but some.
“Rhazek!”
He has both hands around the bent cage opening. The overload twisted the front frame, but not enough.
I run back and jam the bone handle into the damaged latch.
“You are going to run out of knife,” Rhazek says.
“I’m going to run out of everything at this rate. Pull.”
He pulls and the latch gives with a shriek. The cage door kicks outward. Rhazek tries to stand and almost folds. I get under his arm before he can object.
The dead hook at his forearm catches on the frame. Rhazek pulls it free with a hiss, then slides the green-black crescent out from under his throat plate. Blood wells along the old collar scar, but nothing lights. Nothing answers.
He looks down at me.
“Don’t.”
“I said nothing.”
“You were about to.”
“I was about to say thank you.”
“You are a terrible liar.”
“Yes.”
I almost laugh, but another tremor kills the urge. We stagger toward the service opening.
Syin looks at Rhazek, looks at the gap, then starts smashing the right edge of the frame with his lochaber.
Renn takes the left.
“Subtle,” I say.
“The chamber is collapsing,” Syin snaps.
“Fine. I’ll allow it.”
The frame tears loose from the wall.
Rhazek ducks and turns sideways. His good wing folds tight. I take the damaged one carefully in both hands and guide it through without letting the torn edge catch.
He makes it halfway before one horn clips the upper frame. He stops. I stare at him. He stares at me.
“This is not the moment,” he says.
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You were thinking loudly.”
Renn makes a choking sound behind us.
“Push,” I tell him.
Renn does. Rhazek comes through with considerably less dignity than he probably prefers, but we’re moving.
The service passage climbs sharply under the ridge. It was built around the transport rails, not for people. Broken brackets catch at our boots. Supports hang low enough that Rhazek and the Zmaj have to duck. Behind us, something enormous is turning the buried chamber into rubble.
The first collapse hits before the second bend.
Dust punches through the passage. I lose my footing and slam shoulder-first into the wall. Pain flashes down my arm. Rhazek catches me around the waist before I hit the floor.
“I have you.”
“I noticed.”
“You are bleeding.”
I look at my arm. Something opened it from elbow to wrist. Not deep, but enthusiastic.
“Later.”
He looks like he wants to argue.
“Later,” I repeat.
He lets me go and we keep climbing.
Behind us, the old installation shrieks. Then another section of passage caves in and seals the sound behind a wall of dust and stone.
For a few moments no one speaks.
Renn wipes grit from his face. “Did the zemlja just save us?”
“No. It tried to eat the building. We just happened to be in disagreement with the building,” I say.
Syin grunts. “A useful distinction.”
“I have those occasionally.”
Warm air reaches us from above. Real desert heat. We keep moving.
The passage ends beneath another stone slab. Syin braces both hands against it. Renn joins him. It shifts, drops sand into all our hair, then opens enough for light to cut through.
Twin red suns hit my face and I’ve never been happier to hate them.
Renn crawls out first. Syin follows and turns to help Rhazek. Between the two of them they get his shoulders through. I climb out behind him and roll onto hot sand, coughing dust until my eyes water.
For one glorious second I lie there and breathe.
Then someone shouts my name.
I know that voice.
I push up on one elbow.
Penr is running along the ridge with enough people behind him to start a small war.
Human guards and Zmaj warriors move in mixed pairs across the slope. Runners weave between them carrying water, bandages, ash sacks, and messages. Nobody is screaming. Nobody is charging blind.
They came ready.
“You look terrible,” Penr says, skidding the last few feet to my side.
“Thank you.”
“I was worried you’d become difficult.”
“I’m saving that for later.”
His grin lasts less than a second before he sees Rhazek.
“Is he safe?”
Rhazek answers before I can. “I am not under command.”
Penr blinks. “That was not exactly what I asked.”
I point at Rhazek. “See? This is why I usually do the talking.”
Rhazek looks at me. “You expect me to be truthful.”
“This is deeply inconvenient timing.”
More warriors crest the ridge. Rosalind comes with them, Visidion at her side. Her gaze takes in Rhazek, me, Syin, Renn, the broken service opening, and the way the ground is still trembling beneath our feet.
“What happened?” she asks.
“The short version?”
“Yes.”
“Rhazek broke the leash. We stopped their clean proof. Then someone tried to send whatever scraps were left, and a zemlja objected to the entire building.”
Rosalind’s expression changes at the word send. “Tried?”
“We cut it before the receiver went down.”
Visidion looks toward the ridge. “You saw the path?”
“Into the wall.”
He and Rosalind look at each other. I hate that look.
“What?”
“Emergency uplinks do not always use one conduit,” Rosalind says.
Of course they don’t. A runner farther down the slope shouts.
“Light!”
We all turn.
A thin green glow leaks from a crack in the ridge thirty body lengths away. Not from our service opening. Farther east, where a narrow metal conduit pushes through the stone and disappears beneath the sand.
The receiver had another path out.
I climb to my feet and run. Rhazek comes with me, limping badly enough that I want to hit him and moving fast enough that I save the argument for later.
Rosalind and Visidion are right behind us.
The conduit is cracked along one side. Green light pulses inside it, weak and uneven. It’s not the clean pattern from before. Broken pieces trying to become a message.
Rosalind drops beside it. “You killed the packet.”
“Yes.”
“This is residue.”
“Can residue tell them where we are?”
“Maybe.”
I really, really hate maybe. Visidion drives the point of his weapon into the exposed conduit and twists. The metal splits. Rosalind throws ash into the opening. The green light sputters.
It looks like enough. Then a thin thread slips through the ash and shoots upward. Not a beam. Barely light at all. A single green line climbing into the red glare.
“No,” I groan.
Rosalind smothers the conduit with another handful of ash while Visidion rips the metal free and crushes the glowing interior under his heel.
The light dies, but it’s too late, and we all know it. Every one of us looks up.
Nothing happens.
The suns burn. Dust moves over the ridge. Somewhere behind us, the zemlja rolls deeper beneath the desert.
Penr reaches us, breathing hard.
“Did it send?”
Rosalind doesn’t answer immediately.
“That wasn’t the proof packet,” I say.
“No.”
“So they don’t have the map.”
“No clean map.”
“The City?”
“Not cleanly.”
“Epis?”
“Not cleanly.”
I glare at her. “You are using that word too much.”
“Because I don’t know what survived the break.”
That is worse than no. Rhazek stands beside me, blood drying dark along his throat. The command anchor beneath his throat plates is quiet. Not gone. Quiet.
His hand hangs close to mine without touching, so I close the distance myself. His fingers turn around mine.
I close my eyes because that is all I can afford. When I open them, Rhazek is watching me.
“Home,” he says quietly.
The word hits harder than it should.
“Yes,” I say. “Unfortunately.”
He looks amused. Then a sound cuts through the sky. Thin. High. Wrong. Every head on the ridge lifts. The chime comes again, so faint I could almost convince myself it is metal cooling somewhere behind us.
Almost.
Rosalind’s face drains of color. Visidion’s wings spread. Rhazek’s grip closes around mine.
Above the twin red suns, where I can see nothing but glare and empty blue, something answers the signal we failed to kill.