I fall into step, adjusting as the sand shifts underfoot, my balance coming easier, my awareness sharper. I am not just watching the terrain anymore. I am watching everything. The dunes. The wind. The sky. Him.
My gaze flicks upward, scanning the empty red for any flicker of movement, any distortion in the light that might signal something coming before we hear it.
Nothing.
That does not mean anything. I drag in a slow breath, forcing myself to focus forward.
“I don’t think the city’s far,” I say, keeping my voice low, steady. “Another few hours, maybe less if we keep this pace.”
He does not respond, but adjusts the path almost imperceptibly. I feel the way he chooses terrain.
“You’ll see it before we reach it,” I continue. “The structures break the horizon. Stone, metal—some of it still intact.”
“Cover,” he says.
“Yes,” I say. “The kind that blocks aerial scans. At least… it should.”
The hesitation slips in before I can stop it because I am not sure of anything anymore. We humans were sure before. After the bomb stopped the Invaders. After the sky cleared, but before everything we thought we ended—came back.
“We thought we had handled this,” I say, quietly, more to myself than to him. “All of it. The pirates. The invaders. Everything off-world.”
He does not answer, but I do not expect him to. Because whatever took him was apparently never part of that fight. Which is a heavy thought. We know there are other planets out there, but how many? How many different aliens want Tajss?
“I don’t think they were with who took you. They weren’t part of what happened to you,” I muse. “They came after.”
“Yes.”
I glance over. He is still scanning, tracking, and moving like every second matters. Because it does.
“They know about Tajss now,” I say.
“Yes.”
No hesitation. No doubt. I exhale slowly, forcing the tension down before it spirals into full-blown panic.
“Then this is not just about you,” I continue. “This is not just recovery. It is reconnaissance. They are mapping. Testing. Figuring out how to?—”
The hum cuts across the sky again. Close and sharp. I snap my head up.
“There—”
I do not finish before he is moving. He does not pull me along or force me, I follow. Because now I recognize the shift before he even speaks. The urgency and the immediacy of the threat.
We drop off the side of the dune together. I move with him, matching his direction, my footing adjusting automatically as we cut across the slope and into the lower trough. Faster. Cleaner. Better.
The hum dips, sweeping wider and angling across the dunes ahead instead of directly over us.
“They’re expanding the pattern,” I say, breath tight but controlled. “Not just searching—they’re?—”
“Herding.”
I stop for half a second because that is exactly what it feels like.
“They’re pushing us,” I say.
“Yes.”
My pulse spikes.
