“You’ve found them,” the stranger answers.
Even through the mask’s filtration, there’s something uncomfortably familiar about its tones, its pronunciation even, the way the syllables flow from one to another.
With a cold shock, I realize that I’m speaking to Chloe herself. Kori’s mother … and lately, her attempted murderer. I knew there’d never in any universe be a traditional meet-the-parents moment for Kori and me. But meeting under these circumstances, caught in the heart of a brewing planetary civil war, is a whole new level of mess.
“Chloe. I know of you.” I swallow my revulsion for this woman. I need to earn her trust or else doom the dayfolk altogether. “Please, you need to arm those who can fight and shelter those who can’t, as fast as you can. I can fight with you. With what precious time we have left, I can arm your shoulders with my knowledge of the enemy—”
But it’s then that I belatedly notice another set of footsteps approaching from the landing pad. Multiple sets, actually. Two pairs of boots on metal. One pair of pure metal on metal, accompanied by a periodicsqueak.
“Kori?” I gasp, hardly daring to hope as I turn to meet the new arrivals.
“AND ASPECT!” the mech declares, stamping their peg leg with a steely whine.
“And Aspect,” Kori sighs, emerging from behind them a moment later.
Despite her armor, Chloe visibly tenses from head to toe. Her flanking enforcers reach for heatshot pistols at their belts, but Chloe raises a gloved hand, signaling them to stand down for now.
Kori, meanwhile, is armored only up to the neck. Her straight brown hair is fully free of its former braid now, cascading past her shoulders. Her eyes are wearier than I left them, dark circles edging the beautiful brown, but they still spark when they meet mine, quickening my heartbeat.
Beside her, fully armored but nevertheless radiating intense grumpiness, is yet another dayfolk.
I incline my head in the second dayfolk’s direction. “And who’s this?”
“This,” Kori says, as Aspect delivers a vengeful kick to the stranger’s back for good measure, “is my doctor, Ednit. One of many to run my mother’sEvolution Project, transferring whole sets of memories—wholepeople—into bodies that harness radiation instead of dying from it.”
My vision swims, maybe from the rush of new info, maybe from the relentless sun. “You mean—”
“They stole me out of my body,” Kori says, gloved hands curling into trembling fists. “Put me in what they deemed abetterone—what they callEvolved—entirely artificial. And lied to me about it my entire life.” She turns her piercing stare on Chloe. “You can drop the act now, Mother. You don’t need that helmet any more than I do.”
With a mild shrug, Chloe does indeed collapse her helmet, revealing her face. I expected her to look, perhaps, akin to Kori—but like Kori as seen in a foggy mirror, like Kori more beaten and weathered by time. Instead this woman is practically her spitting image. She’s so flawless that she’s not even younger, more so removed from the inevitable crawl of decay entirely, built from something utterly unlike flesh and bone and soul—ageless, deathless, severed as physically as she is emotionally from everything that ought to make her human. Her guardsshould be terrified to see their leader outside her armor, fully exposed to Pagomènos, but they don’t even twitch. Are they, too, among these Evolved? How many of them are there?
“You could stand to be grateful for relative immortality, Kori.” Chloe sighs. “It wasn’t without cost.”
“To who?” Kori’s lips pull back from her teeth. “To me, haunted by memories that you gaslighted me into dismissing as nightmares? To people like Jelza, who found the reality utterly unlike your promises and were denied the chance to turn back? To every other dayfolk citizen, observed by your Evolved enforcers without a lick of knowledge about what their government is really plotting?”
“Kori.” My voice feels strangled in the back of my throat. I step forward, reaching for her, aching to comfort her, but she only pulls away, roughly shrugging my hand from her shoulder. “I believe you, and I’m as angry as you are. But if we don’t workwithyour mother to warn the settlementnow, a lot of people are going to die.”
Chloe crosses her arms. “Bold words from the leader of those coming to kill us.”
“Those are Thaane’s soldiers, not mine.”
The blood drains from Kori’s face. “Thaane? What? Was he in league with Azarii all along?”
“No.” I shake my head. “No, not really. He’s using Azarii just as much as he was using me. His intentions are akin to what my parents’ once were. March on the Daylands. Wipe out anyone too weak to fight back.”
Kori runs a hand through her hair, overwhelmed, before turning her attention back to her mother.
“Chloe …” Kori swallows hard and sets her jaw before correcting, almost pleading, “Mother. Think what you will of Adria. Call me ungrateful, rebellious, obstinate, whatever you damn well please. But if you don’t work with us to prepare the settlement now …” She gestures to the rapidly approaching storm of nightfolk warriors, bent on bloodshed. “Thaane’s army will slaughter our people.”
Chloe barks, “I will never need help from one of your kind.”
“Mother, people are going todie—”
“And so what if we lose a few?” Chloe shouts. “It’s still better than lowering ourselves to work with monsters.”
The gravity of her statement stuns us all briefly into silence, even her twin enforcers; all, that is, except Ednit, who apparently had no idea it would getthis badand lets out a pathetic whimper.
“The Evolved will fight alone,” Chloe says. “A united front, finally unveiled at the proper moment. We will be heroes to the survivors. Maybe even gods. It will cement our position forever, ensuring that no one dares question the rightness of the Evolution Project, the glory of what we’ve become. And then we can take the Shadowlands, seize the ultimate source of radiation for ourselves … and become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.”
