Page 165 of The Space Between Stars

“There’s a rock formation. Ahead,” Dex called. “It could be a good place to take cover for a rest?”

Dex’s vision was superior to Calver’s, but as Calver strained his eyes, he did see a mass on the grassline, darker than the space around it. A spike of fear shot down Calver’s spine. They couldn’t be far from the northbound distortion locomotive guiderail that had once connected Kaidech to Seraphinden.

Fourteen years had passed since he was last in these grasslands. A voice had beckoned him toward something he didn’t understand, promised him everything he wanted, and taken everything that made him human in exchange. Calver blinked hard, quashing the churning at the back of his mind. They were too far north—not the same rock, not the same cave. Besides, there was nothing to fear out here, anymore. The worst that could have happened already had.

He nodded to Dex, and they made for it.

The conversation with Mastico the week prior brought a new question to mind, though: why had the Survivor beckoned him there all those years before? Because he had Ruxian blood? What use could Calver possibly be to it as a conduit? He was only a passive gene carrier.

The desert suddenly seemed to shrink until it pressed in on Calver’s chest.

Moments of premonition.

The constant twisting in his gut that something was going to go badly wrong.

The void space.

Not passive. He’d been the one with powers all along. The Survivor didn’t stop him from feeling. It didn’t make him faster or deadlier. It was surfacing the abilities Calver had always had. He had a second sight. A broken one. One that only predicted destruction. He’d only ever been able to access it from the void state Calisto had taught him.

The state the Survivor pushed him into.

Calver might have spiraled, had he been alone. Had Dex’s horse not come to a stop, just then, ahead of him. He shook himself free from his mental sludge. The rust-colored butte Dex had pointed out now towered beside them. They dismounted soundlessly and watered the horses, watching the sun steadily climb into the sky, painting the grasses with gold. Unless Calver’s measurements were wildly off-target, the town of Thaligan was no more than a night’s ride away.

His stomach still churned.

Void.

“Have you noticed the clouds?” Dex asked, finishing what was left of his canteen.

Since the tail end of day prior, a subtle haze had hovered on the western horizon. It was more noticeable now in the glow of the morning. Haze like this meant fire. And fire meant nothing good. Calver lowered his chin.

“What do you suppose that is?”

Calver shrugged. We might not sleep again, he didn’t say.

He took the first watch, using the opportunity to tamper with two Aetech lamps he’d tasked Dex to pack. Muscle memory moved him, adjusting Aetech’s stratum to the one he felt compatible with. He remembered the long months on the Rollard Isles, where he’d processed what must have been thousands of ruxechorin cores.

Confined in a dark warehouse, fingers bloodied, he’d worked core after core until someone forced him to eat or sleep. With the lamps keeping him busy, the Survivor had fallen to a steady hum—like a film over his mind, instead of the crushing weight it always had been. It had almost been bearable.

How had he forgotten?

Fankalo had been so proud of him. He’d been glad to have something to do with his hands. He’d thought he was getting better. Those had seemed like good days.

The higher the sun grew, the deeper the smog became. Calver stared at it, fighting sleep. It shifted and changed like a lucid dream. He kept seeing Fankalo on the beach in Pazir, smoke rising all around, screaming his name. He squeezed his eyes shut.

Some time later, something nudged his side. His eyes snapped open and he grabbed it—Dex’s boot.

Calver released him and shook his head.

Dex’s forehead furrowed. “I’m just ready to not sit on a horse.”

They crested a grassy hillside at highmoon and Dex whooped in triumph. When the geometric shapes of Thaligan’s squat buildings grew clear against the midnight blue of the coastline, Calver released a sigh of relief. They were not the source of the smoke. He’d nearly expected to find a shell of a town—smoldering buildings, a city square piled high with its dead.

This was just a normal town. With not-normal smoke clouding the sky.

The sun rose and they made their way down into Thaligan. Perhaps a hundred residences, at most, clustered together in orderly rows. Early morning goers gave them overlong stares as they clopped through the earthen streets. He and Dex were smattered with the desert: dust and sweat, dirtied hands and cracked lips. They were likely the only outsiders to have come through the Jiradesh—not the port—in months.

They made their way to the dock, a single broad stretch of planking with two dozen boats, where Dex bartered the horses to an enthusiastic dockhand in exchange for a skiff and renewed supplies.