Every day now.
I tell them it’s for field samples. Soil erosion studies. Airflow measurements. I make up words, toss them around like a smokescreen. No one checks. No one follows.
Grady’s got the marines tightening the perimeter after the sting tail attack. Sensors are up. Drones in the sky. Ciampa says we’re “entering a period of high volatility,” which is his way of saying everything’s gone to shit and he doesn’t want to be blamed for it.
But me? I just want to breathe.
So I head out early, while the air’s still cool and sharp in my lungs. The path I take isn’t mapped. It twists between rock shelves and sharp drop-offs, through old lava veins turned torust-colored valleys. The route shifts every time I walk it—like the planet’s still deciding where everything belongs.
And each time, I notice something new.
A stone turned just so, pointing like an arrow. Scratches etched into bark or cave wall, symbols I can’t quite decode. Once, a pile of bones—carefully arranged. Not human. Not warning.
Guideposts.
I don’t let myself say who I think they’re from. Not out loud. Not even in my head, not really.
But I follow them.
And I hope.
I climb the ridge again by noon. Same ledge. Same wind tugging at my hair, the scent of ozone and mineral salts in the air. There’s a hollow silence here, broken only by the distant whine of a drone circling the upper canyon. It doesn’t come this far. Too steep, too narrow. Too wild.
I sit on the pelt he left me. The fur is worn soft now beneath my hands, the scent of it faintly metallic and earthy. It shouldn’t feel like safety.
But it does.
I close my eyes and whisper his name.
Except—I don’t know his name.
So I say,“You.”
The word is quiet, barely a breath. The wind carries it away like a secret.
“You know I’m not afraid of you, right?” I murmur, not expecting an answer. “Not even a little.”
Silence.
Just the crackle of dry brush beneath the ledge, the hum of the earth breathing under my boots.
“I mean, sure. At first. You were this… enormous, growling, clawed…thing.I thought I was dead for sure.”
I smile to myself, a wry twist of lips.
“But then youdidn’tkill me. You protected me. From one of those sting tail bastards. You didn’t have to. So now I’m stuck with this—this question.”
I reach down and toy with the edge of the pelt, my fingers curling into the soft fur.
“Why?”
No answer. Not even a shift in the wind.
“I’ve got more questions,” I admit. “I always do. It’s what I do—I dig, I poke, I prod. Ask the things no one else wants to say out loud.”
My voice lowers.
“What are you?”
