13. Lucy
LUCY
The alarm comes through the house wall before dawn.
Three short pulses. One long. Farm distress.
I’m out of bed before the final tone ends, boots half-laced, curls shoved back with one hand. Across the hall, my father’s door opens at the same time. Samuel Hartwell looks at me, and neither of us wastes breath asking what the other heard.
When we reach the yard, the eastern sky has only begun to pale.
The lower irrigation tower is dark.
It should never be dark.
I run.
Cold mud sucks at my boots as I cross the first field. Behind me, my father shouts for tools, fuses, spare line, anyone awake enough to carry weight. The sunwheat bends silver in the dimness, rows upon rows waiting for water that stopped moving sometime in the night.
At the tower base, Torren is already on his knees beside the control housing.
“Tell me it’s a breaker,” I say.
He doesn’t look up. “I would love to lie.”
My stomach hardens.
The panel hangs open. Three regulator cores have been cut clean from the frame, not burned out, not cracked from age. Removed. The coolant line has been sliced and crimped to slow the leak until pressure collapsed across the lower field.
Not failure.
Hands.
Samuel reaches us breathing hard. One look at the panel changes his face. “How long?”
Torren wipes mud from his knuckles. “If we bypass within the hour, maybe we save most of it.”
“Maybe?” I ask.
His silence answers.
More neighbors arrive in a rush of boots, lanterns, and half-buttoned coats.
The Odell boy carries a coil of cable nearly bigger than his chest. Jessa arrives with a basket of bandages, because somebody always cuts themselves when farm metal and panic meet before sunrise.
No one has to be told where to stand. They see the tower, see me, and become a working line.
“Manual gates first,” I call. “Open the north channel and divert from upper storage. Torren, say what you need. Pa, get the old pump from the cider barn. Jessa, keep children away from the ditch.”
“What about Helix?” someone asks.
The name cuts through the group.
I keep my voice steady. “Helix can wait until the wheat has water.”
A tall shape appears at the rim of the lantern light.
Rethan Veyr looks badly suited to a crisis involving mud. Formal coat. Gloved hands. Silver-blue skin catching the first thin light. Yet he comes down the slope without hesitation, gaze moving over the damaged tower, the cut line, the missing cores.
“This was deliberate,” he says.
“Good morning to you too,” I reply.
His eyes move to me. “What is required?”
The question stops me for half a heartbeat. Not what happened. Not who is responsible. What is required.
I point to the manual gate wheel at the ditch junction. “That needs turning until the upper channel opens. It sticks.”
Rethan checks the wheel. “Direction?”
“Clockwise.”
He goes to it.
Torren mutters, “That thing took three of us last flood season.”
Rethan places both hands on the rusted wheel and turns.
Metal screams. Mud shakes loose. The wheel resists, then moves by a fraction.
I stare despite myself.
He turns it again.
Water groans somewhere under the field.
“Useful,” Torren says, sounding offended by the fact.
“Don’t admire him,” I snap. “Get me cable.”
For the next forty minutes, the valley becomes motion.
Samuel and two farmers drag the old pump from the barn on a sled.
Torren rebuilds a bypass out of spare parts, curses, and something I suspect once belonged to a cider press.
Jessa wraps a cut on Mrs. Odell’s palm. Rethan holds the gate wheel in position while water pressure fights to slam it shut, his coat streaked with mud to the waist.
He doesn’t complain.
That irritates me less than it should.
I climb the tower frame with a replacement line slung over my shoulder. Halfway up, a bolt slips under my boot. My hand shoots out, misses the rail, and catches only air.
Rethan is beneath me before I fall more than a foot.
His hand closes around my wrist. Firm. Certain. Careful enough not to bruise.
For one suspended second, I look down at him.
His gaze holds no panic. Only focus. And a steadiness that unsettles me more than panic would.
“I have you,” he says.
“I noticed.”
“Then climb.”
The absurdity of the instruction nearly makes me laugh. I find the rail, haul myself back into place, and keep moving because the field below us needs water more than I need to understand why my pulse has changed.
At last, the pump coughs.
Once.
Twice.
Then the ditch roars.
A shout goes up across the field as water surges into the lower channel, dark and fast beneath the morning light. Sunwheat roots drink. Mud shifts. The crop is not safe, not yet, but it’s no longer dying by the minute.
I climb down with shaking arms.
Torren checks the flow meter and lets out a breath. “We saved enough.”
Enough.
The word almost undoes me.
Samuel puts a muddy hand on my shoulder. “You did well.”
“We all did.”
Across the field, Rethan releases the gate wheel slowly. The muscles in his forearms tremble once before he folds his hands behind his back, as if discipline could hide effort from physics.
I walk to the damaged panel. Now that the crisis has slowed, I see what panic hid: a black Helix survey flag planted twenty paces beyond the tower, half-buried beside the ditch.
Not a claim marker.
A message.
Rethan moves to my side.
“Can you prove they did this?” I ask.
“Not yet.”
I hate the answer. Hate the honesty more.
Neighbors gather behind us, faces streaked with mud and fear turning slowly into anger.
I pull the Helix flag from the ground.
The metal stem comes free with a wet sound.
I hold it up for everyone to see. “They wanted us tired. They wanted us scared. Fine. Now they get us awake.”
No one cheers.
They’re past cheering.
One by one, the farmers pick up their tools again.
Rethan takes in the cut tower, the trampled mud, the rescued field, and then me.
“This should be added to the inquiry,” he says.
I tighten my grip around the flag.
“No,” I say. “This is why no one backs down.”