I trail off because I don’t have words to define it. Cold crawls over my skin. My eyes burn, but I don’t blink. I have to see this. Have to know what happens next.
The drone hovers for a fraction of a second longer, then shifts and continues its sweep like nothing happened. Like it didn’t just erase something that should have been impossible to hit.
I tighten my fingers around him. I don’t even remember moving, but my hand is on his arm, gripping hard. Grounding or maybe making sure he’s still there. He doesn’t pull away. Doesn’t react beyond that same subtle shift I’ve felt before.
His focus doesn’t break. Still tracking. Still measuring. Still preparing.
The drone passes overhead. Close enough that I see the underside clearly. No markings. No insignia. Nothing that tells me who built it. Only having seen it do I know what it does and what it will do again. The hum fades as it moves on. Not gone, but farther away for now.
I don’t let go of him because now I understand something I didn’t before. This isn’t a possibility. This isn’t a theory. This is real. Whatever that thing is, it’s not just looking for him anymore. It’s hunting. It kills.
I don’t move right away and neither does he. The crevasse holds the heat. The air is tight and still around us. The space is too narrow to ignore how close we are. Out there, the sand looks the same. Unbroken and empty, like nothing happened. But I knowbetter. I force myself to breathe slower, deeper, dragging control back where it belongs.
“That thing,” I say quietly, eyes still on the dunes. “It wasn’t searching randomly.”
“No.”
Flat. Certain. I nod once. Of course it wasn’t.
“It locked,” I continue. “Tracked. Selected.”
“Yes.”
The word carries more weight than ever because now I understand what it means. I shift my weight. The rock at my back grounding me in a way the sand can’t.
“We drove them off,” I say. “The Invaders. The ships. That’s what the bomb was for.”
Silence. I glance at him. He’s still watching the opening like the drone might turn around at any second.
“That was the end of it,” I press. “There shouldn’t be anything left to come back.”
“I was held.” The words cut across mine, simple and direct. I stop and look at him. He doesn’t turn. “I was held,” he repeats. “Above.”
The pieces click. Hard. Fast. Not just one group. Not just one invasion. Something else. Something watching from outside all of it. Waiting. Learning. My stomach tightens.
“They weren’t part of the war,” I say slowly. “They came after.”
“Yes.”
That means?—
“They know about Tajss now,” I whisper.
“Yes.”
The certainty in that single word settles like weight on my chest and shoulders. This isn’t a possibility or a guess. This is a fact.
I finally pull my hand back from his arm. The space between us shifts, that subtle edge returning to him as soon as the contact breaks, but it’s different now. It’s not as sharp and immediate. As if something in him holds a fraction longer before resetting.
I notice and file it away because while I see it, bigger things demand my attention right now. Fears that I thought were done. I push off the rock, stepping forward enough to look out into the open again.
Nothing. No movement. No sign of the drone, but that doesn’t mean anything.
“They’ll come back,” I say.
“Yes.”
I exhale slowly.
