The beam bursts from the barrel, striking the creature directly in its fleshy face. It gives another scream, but the shot doesn’t appear to penetrate the skin—it only aggravates the monster, which bears down on us with mindless menace.
“You can’t shoot a sand cephalopod with a ray gun,” Lament yells as we run. “They only absorb the beams.”
“How was I supposed to know that?”
“Everyone knows—”
He’s cut off midsentence as the creature smashes its two front limbs into the ground, creating a shock wave that makes my teeth snap together. I pitch forward, catch myself, keep going. “How do you kill it, then?”
“Youcan’t, you just have to—”
Another body slam, another shudder. It’s like being on a boat in a sea storm. The ground lurches beneath our feet, creating a dizzying shift in equilibrium. It’s all we can do to stay upright, so we give up trying to talk and put our energy into reaching the caves. Forty yards, then thirty, and then—
Lament is no longer beside me.
I swing around to see him stumbling under the latest shock wave, crashing to his knees. He hits the ground so hard he rolls. Behind Lament, the sand cephalopod makes a disturbingtut tuttingnoise that can only be a sound of pleasure, excited by the sudden proximity of its next meal.
The feeling starts at my toes and creeps upward, spreading through my chest, down my arms. My hands stop shaking. My lungs open. The panic dissipates, and in its place there’s only lightness, certainty. I scan the scene, calculating the monster’s speed, its trajectory, the distance between there and here. Lament said sand cephalopods can’t be killed, but the first thing they teach you at the Academy is anything can be killed. You just have to figure out how.
Lament is trying to scramble back to his feet, but the cephalopod is closer now, vibrating the earth with such intensity the sand has essentially turned liquid. Lament can’t get the leverage he needs to push himself upright. He’s trapped, sinking fast, with only seconds to spare before the monster arrives to claim him. His eyes flash to mine, and I can read the thoughts on his face, the terror and disbelief. “Hartman,” he croaks. “Go.”
But I don’t go. Because I remember, suddenly, a painted octopus on the wall of the children’s home, anatomically correct because Master Ira believed in knowledge as much as he believed in color. He painted that octopus himself, mantle in the front, funnel on the side, liver and poison sac in the middle, and behind the eyes: the brain.
I lift my ray gun and stare down its sights. It’s a tricky shot. Shooting too early means the angle will be wrong. Too late, and I risk losing my chance altogether. But this isn’t even what I’m thinking. I’m thinking about how good the gun feels in my hand. How holding it makes me easy and focused and free. I could do anything in this moment. Be anyone.
“Keller.” It’s the first time Lament has ever used my name. My mind snags on it like a fish on a line. “Run.”
The monster launches itself out of the earth and flies across the sky toward Lament, ready for the death strike. I catch a full glimpse of its giant, liquid eye. The iris is glowing blue.
I pull the trigger.
It’s a direct hit, unmitigated, elegant in its simplicity. The creature doesn’t even wail. The ray beam connects with its eyeball and rockets straight through its nervous system. The cephalopod instantly loses motor function, all systems dying even as it continues to sail through the air, forward momentum sending it right over Lament…
And down on top of me.
06
I blink my eyesopen to find Lament hovering over me, his expression a strange mix of anger and… relief? I can’t be sure. My head is spinning, my limbs sluggish and heavy. I try to push upright, but Lament’s hand comes to my chest to keep me in place. “What in Romothrida’s name were you thinking?”
This might be a rhetorical question, but I’m compelled to say, “Shoot its eye. Hit the brain.”
“Yeah, I got that bit.” His face sways in my vision, his features twisting like they’re being sucked down a drain. I blink and squint to make the world stop turning. I must have blacked out, but I can’t have been unconscious for that long. The sky looks no darker than before, and behind Lament, the sand cephalopod is flopped over like a beached whale. Still, something about the air feels different, something besides my throbbing head. A heaviness. I shift again, my thoughts going to things like atmospheric pressure and planetary gravity until I realize it’s not the atmosphere that’s changed. It’s me.
I’m buried in sand.
It must have happened when the cephalopod crashed down beside me, disrupting enough earth to blanket my legs and torso and—judging by thegrit in my mouth—my head and neck, too. For the second time, I try to sit upright, and for the second time, Lament holds me down.
“Let me up,” I complain.
“No.”
There it is again, his favorite word. “I’m fine.”
“You’ve been buried under a mound of earth.”
“It’s just sand.”
“You were unconscious.”
