I take another step. Then his hand closes around my arm, harder. I pull, testing it, but his grip is like iron, unyielding.
“Let go,” I say, keeping my voice controlled. “We don’t have time to debate this. That’s our best?—”
“No.”
The word is sharper than before, but there’s no strain in it and no hesitation. I meet his gaze.
“Then explain it,” I push. “Because from where I’m standing, that’s the only place out here that gives us any chance at all.”
He doesn’t answer immediately, but his grip doesn’t loosen either. My pulse kicks up.
“Kaelreth—”
“Too many.” The words come low. Controlled. “Air. Ground. Structure.” Each word deliberate and measured. “Converge.”
I follow his line of sight back to the city, forcing myself to see what he’s seeing instead of what I want it to be. Drones crossing in tighter arcs. Figures moving in patterns that aren’t random. The transport, hidden just out of view from the city itself. Waiting.
“They’re focusing there,” I say slowly. “Which means if we move fast?—”
“They expect that.”
The answer is immediate. I look back at the city. At the clean lines of the drones. At the way their paths overlap without leaving gaps. At the figures below, moving in ways that suggest coordination instead of chaos.
“They’re not trying to find survivors,” I say, the realization tightening into something solid. “They’re trying to catch them when they come in. Catch… you.”
“Yes.”
I exhale slowly, forcing my frustration down, forcing the part of me that wants to run toward those structures to stand still long enough to think. Because he’s not wrong. I just don’t want him to be right.
“That doesn’t mean we just stay out here,” I say, quieter, but no less firm. “If we keep moving in open terrain, we’re still exposed. If they’re expanding their pattern?—”
“They are.”
“Then we need something that breaks it.”
He doesn’t respond verbally, but I feel a shift in him. A decision forming. He tightens his grip—sharp enough to make me catch my breath. Then he moves. Away from the city, pulling me with him.
A hard angle across the dune, cutting us off from the direct approach and driving us into rougher terrain where the sand breaks against scattered rock instead of flowing clean.
“Wait—”
I twist, trying to hold my ground.
“Kaelreth, that’s not?—”
He doesn’t slow or even look back. The pull becomes force. Not enough to hurt, but enough to move me whether I agree or not. Frustration flares, hot, sharp, and immediate.
“That’s the only place out here that gives us cover,” I snap, stumbling once before catching my balance and matching his pace instead of fighting it. “You’re taking us deeper into open terrain, not out of it.”
“Not open,” he says over his shoulder.
I glance ahead. The dunes break unevenly, jagged outcroppings of rock cutting through the sand in narrow, irregular lines. Not a city. Not shelter in any real sense. But not nothing either.
“Less visible,” he adds.
I grit my teeth.
“That’s not the same thing as safe.”
