She shuffled beside Taryn like a prisoner on a pilgrimage to the gallows. Once, when Taryn’s foot caught on a stone, Audrey lightly held her elbow just enough to keep the woman upright. Neither of them acknowledged it.
Cold gripped them like fingers. This side of the planet never saw full light. Everything lived in twilight—half-born, half-dying.
After several hours, numbness spread along her arm where the restraints dug into her bone. Her anger rose with every step, climbing like heat under her skin.
If she could only summon that fire again?—
If she could only reach the thing that had answered her in the smoke?—
But nothing answered her. Only the empty throb of exhaustion.
And yet, that wasn’t entirely true all the time. Something reacted now and then—small surges slipping through the cuffs when fear spiked. It wasn’t her real power, though, just leakage.
One afternoon, they stopped. Nikos ripped the gag out and tipped a swallow of water against her tongue—more insult than mercy.
She snarled.
“That’s it? Untie my hands or carry me.”
She saw the slap coming and sidestepped.
Her boot slammed into his foot. Her knee drove into his groin. Nikos folded with a strangled curse.
Audrey laughed—bright, unhinged.
Then his backhand cracked across her face, whipping her head sideways.
“You’re a colossal pain in my ass,” he hissed. “I doubt that’s the first time you’ve heard that.”
He struck her again. And again. And again.
“But go on. Keep talking,” he said.Ryker will have even less patience for your bullshit than I do, and I’m dying to watch you piss him off.
Audrey smiled at the thought before she could stop herself. Blood spilled down her chin. “Oh, I plan to get under his skin. Deep.”
The reminder that she could still hear him even through the restraints made his eye twitch. He glanced at the cuffs and growled.
“Handing you over can’t come soon enough,” he muttered, tying her gag back.
Hours later, the world darkened ahead, like a continuous wall of shadow, as though the land itself had stopped and something else had begun. Lights shone along the dirt path as they crossed into the darker side of Nepra. They exposed nothing comforting—just sand-like dirt, shrubs, chain-link fences, and emptiness.
It was even colder than before.
Over the hill, Audrey saw it. Concrete walls resembling an exiled city. A massive structure sprawled in the dark, like a skyscraper laid on its side. It was a place built to swallow people—a machine. The word slid through her head, both mechanical and monstrous. She imagined it was part prison, part machine, built to process and break people down piece by piece. Merely looking at it, Audrey thought the walls might grind her up and spit out whatever was left.
Audrey guessed the Aggregate would have a hard time attacking a place like this.
She felt sick, despite her outward bravery.
Was this Home Field?
An hour later, she had her answer.
And death seemed much closer.
24
Home Field looked abandoned, but only in the way a corpse looks dormant while rot works beneath the skin.
