“Rynn,” Vael says softly. “Look at me.”
I do.
“We move now.”
We pack fast.Everything we own fits in one bag — a medkit, a handful of ration bars, the emergency filters, Nessa’s toy. The rest stays behind, ghosts in a shell that was never home.
Nessa blinks awake as I pull her coat over her shoulders.
“Mom?”
I smooth her hair back. “Hey, starling. We have to play another hiding game, okay?”
Her small brow furrows. “The scary kind?”
“The brave kind,” I say, forcing a smile. “You remember how brave looks?”
She nods solemnly. “Like you.”
I almost break right there.
Vael hoists the pack over his shoulder and offers his hand to her. “Come on, cub. Time to move.”
She slips her tiny fingers into his metal palm without hesitation.
Outside,the world’s all shadow and wind. The mining fields stretch like a graveyard — skeletal cranes and broken tracksdusted in pale ash. Every sound carries. The low hiss of venting gas. The crunch of gravel under boots. Even our breathing sounds too loud.
I keep one hand on Nessa’s shoulder, the other tight around the compad. The wind bites through the seams of my jacket, dry and electric. The air smells like iron rain, sharp enough to sting my eyes.
Vael scans the horizon. “We stick to the slag ridges. Less drone coverage.”
He moves first, a silent shape cutting between the half-collapsed pillars. I follow, pulling Nessa close. The ground vibrates faintly beneath our feet — distant machinery still alive somewhere below.
We make it to the base of the ridge before I risk checking the compad again. The signal’s weak, static chewing at the corners of Drel’s transmission log. But one phrase burns clear in the feed:
MOVE. NOW. THEY KNOW.
The letters bleed on the screen, bright as blood.
Vael peers over my shoulder. “How far?”
“Too close,” I say. “If Kael sent that, it means Tarek’s teams are already en route.”
Nessa tugs at my sleeve. “Who’s Tarek?”
The question lands heavy. “Someone who doesn’t like us,” I answer.
Vael glances at me. “That’s one way to put it.”
We keep moving until the horizon fades to black and the wind shifts. The faint tang of ozone grows stronger. Storm’s coming. The kind that makes your skin prickle before you see the lightning.
Vael stops at the mouth of an old loading tunnel. “This’ll do.”
He pries the rusted door open, metal screeching like a dying thing. The smell of oil and old coolant hits me. I cough, pulling Nessa’s collar over her nose.
“Inside,” he says.
We step into the dark. The air is thick, humid, alive with the whisper of machinery buried somewhere deep below. The sound wraps around us, steady and low — a mechanical heartbeat.
