Directive: Avoid threat density.
Instinct: Eliminate access. Secure.
The distinction fractures. Open ground exposes her. Structures contain. Variables increase. Control increases. The equation does not resolve cleanly. Two outcomes. Two paths. One increases unknowns. One increases control. The decision point holds. A flash?—
Metal. Close walls. Containment. Hands striking. Blood. Mine.
The memory pushes harder. Not a fragment. A sequence. After, silence. No movement. No threat. Everything contained. Everything… controlled.
The image lingers. Too long. Interference spikes.
Delay. Error. I force it down, but not fast enough. The residue remains. Containment. Control. No exposure. The instinct locks onto and refines it. Selects. I shift the path, not away, toward.
She adjusts with me. Faster than before. Better. Alive. The pattern behind us tightens further. No loss. No delay. Closing. The air hum cuts across the new path. They adapt. So do I.
The structures resolve larger. Closer. Stone breaks the flow of the dunes. Metal catches light beneath the red glare. Interruption. Cover. Boundary. The directive resists. Avoid. The instinct overrides.
Hold. Protect. Mine.
I move faster. No more deviation, no delay. The decision locks. Open ground exposes her. Structures contain. Variables increase. Control increases. The equation resolves.
She stays with me. Always.
13
LEENA
The city appears slowly.
At first it’s just a distortion on the horizon, a break in the endless roll of dunes where the red glare of the twin suns catches on something sharper than sand. I almost miss it, thinking it’s another trick of heat and distance, another mirage rising out of exhaustion and too many hours without rest.
Then the angle holds, and I slow without meaning to.
“That’s it,” I say, the words quieter than I expect. “That’s the city.”
I haven’t seen it myself, only know of it from the reports of those who discovered it. From the rumors that had been flying around my fellow survivors. My chest constricts at the sight of it.
It seems almost mythical, the way it rises as we move. Like it’s pulling itself out of the dunes in pieces instead of all at once. Blackened stone. Angled metal. Structures that don’t belong to the natural lines of Tajss, cutting against the landscape instead of blending into it.
The larger of the two suns presses down from above, bleeding everything into deep rust and shadow. The smaller one catches along the edges of the structures, turning broken walls into sharp lines of reflected light.
It should feel like relief.
We spent days preparing for this. Mapping routes. Rationing supplies. Planning how to cross the worst of the terrain just to reach something solid. Something that wasn’t constantly shifting beneath our feet. A place where the wind couldn’t erase us. A place that would have the feel of something permanent.
I take another step forward. Then another. And a sense of unease increases instead of fading.
Something isn’t right.
“It’s too… still,” I murmur. “We had people moving toward it. Supplies staged along the approach. There should be?—”
Movement cuts my words off. It’s not in the city, but above it.
At first I think it’s the glare, the way the smaller sun fractures along the broken edges of the structures. Then one of the shapes shifts against the light, too clean, too controlled. Then there’s another, and another. My breath catches and a cold chill traces my spine.
“Don’t—” I start, not even sure what I’m about to say.
Multiple drones move high across the sky before the city, their paths intersecting in clean, deliberate lines. Not sweeping wide like before. Not searching open terrain. Focused. Layered.
