The Exodus Towers #1

Davi shot at the intruders again, his bullet cracking into the wall at the end of the hallway, just outside Skyler’s door. He heard the enemies talking among themselves. A tactical argument, from the tone. Skyler had been through enough of those to recognize it despite the foreign tongue.

When they returned fire, Skyler acted. He twisted the handle, yanked, and threw the door wide open. Even as their faces began to turn toward him, Skyler took the toilet seat and flung it like a saw blade.

The thin edge caught the closest man full in the face. Surprise and horror came through in the man’s gurgling scream. He fell back into his friends, both of whom were equally caught off guard. The three of them tumbled backward in slapstick fashion, ending in a tangled mess of limbs on the dark landing below.

Skyler brushed away the idea of running to Ana and Davi. He leapt into the stairwell instead, landing squarely on the chest of the first man. Hands clasped together, Skyler brought his fists down like a hammer into the man’s face.

The man went limp. His two comrades were close to disentangling themselves.

Skyler ripped the weapon out of the unconscious intruder’s hands, swung it around, and put two bullets into each of the other men. One fell against the wall, a splatter of blood dotting the surface behind his head. The other fell to his knees and toppled forward, down the next flight of stairs.

Heart pounding, Skyler tossed the weapon aside and used his legs to push up the stairway backward. “Davi!”

The young man appeared behind him seconds later, gasping at the sight in the stairwell. Ana was right behind him.

“Tell me,” Skyler growled, “that you have another way out of here.”

“Those are Gabriel’s men.”

“No shit.”

“We have to get out of here. Get away.”

“Hence my question.”

“No, Davi,” Ana said. Her voice carried a sternness not there before. “Not away. Closer. Closer so that Skyler’s radio will work.”

Davi stared at his sister for a long time, his gut instinct to flee dwindling with each passing second. “Okay, okay. But if we don’t hear anything by morning, we will have to grab one of them. Force them to tell us.”

Skyler turned to him. “Let’s go.”
Gateway Station

3.MAY.2283

ALEX WARTHEN LAID three gray slates on the table.

“What’s this?” Russell asked. He angled his head to get a better look, and took a noisy sip of his vodka. Each panel showed a schematic of some sort.

Pointing at each screen in turn, Alex said, “maps of the space stations along the Elevator. Past, present, and future. Future being later today, if we all agree on the plan.”

Ten Backward had been cleared for the meeting, not that the tavern had seen much activity lately. Everything, even alcohol, was on ration until things settled down.

Sofia Windon, the only other council member genuinely motivated to retain her former position, loomed at Alex’s shoulder. The others had faded away when Russell disbanded the group. Good riddance, as far as he was concerned.

The woman, Sofia, hovered like a gnat, annoying and difficult to dismiss.

“Okay,” Russell said. “Station maps. And?”

He couldn’t ignore the stark difference between the maps from before and after the farms were stolen. The platforms made up the bulk of the Platz-built stations, and their absence after the traitors fled stood out like missing limbs.

A twang of pride coursed through Russell when he compared that to the future map. The vacant gaps between the lonely habitat stations were partly filled in again.

“The farms were originally clustered in groups of four,” Sofia said, “at specific altitudes. The higher up, the more time the stations are in sunlight. As you can see, a few members of each cluster are being returned.”

“Sunlight’s good, right?” Russell looked at each of them. “Why not move them all to the top?”

Sofia shook her head. “The scientists had all this tuned to perfection. Some crops do better with more sunlight, yes, while some provide better yields on a more normal diet.”

“We’re talking percentage points, though,” Alex Warthen said. “What I’d like to do is re-cluster them all down here, closer to Earth.”

Russell slurped his drink again. “Why?”

“Logistics. As long as we’re in a state of emergency like this, the closer the farms are the easier it will be to move—”

Russell held up a hand. “Look, do whatever the f*ck you want, eh? What the hell do I know about crop yields? I got you the farms, my work is done. Debating details like this is exactly why I told the council to piss off in the first place.”

“You said you wanted all major decisions submitted for your approval. We’re just trying to explain—”

“Approved then. Jesus f*cking Christ. Do the needful, as the blokes in Rancid Creek say.”

A technician rapped his hand on the open door to the tavern. “Mr. Blackfield?”

“What now?” Russell barked.

“Tania Sharma is on the comm,” he said. “Asking for you.”

Russell took in the words like a sweet song. He met Alex’s gaze. “Hear that? Asking for me. I deal with the runaways, you deal with the day-to-day.”

“Provided we get your approval on everything first,” Alex said.

“Not everything. The big stuff.”

“Can you define ‘big’ for us, please?” Sofia asked.

Russell considered telling her to look at her own ass in the mirror, but thought better of it. “Use your best judgment,” he said. “No, don’t do that. Until we’ve learned to work together, assume everything is big. I’ll tell you what is and isn’t.”

Alex and Sofia exchanged a glance, then Alex sighed. “So not everything, just the big stuff, which is everything.”

“Now we’re getting somewhere. What else do you have for me today? Just the big stuff, please.” Russell winked at him, enjoying the confusion on his face.

“Nothing, really. Shore-leave requests, we can prioritize those.”

“All declined,” Russell said evenly. “That is big stuff. We’ve got a mountain of work to do, shore leave can wait. If anyone bitches about that, have one of my boys kneecap ’em, all right? All right. Let me know when the farms have been reattached.”

The tech wanted Russell to take Tania’s call in a cramped little communications room. “Can you set it up anywhere?”

When the man shrugged, Russell beckoned him to follow and strolled to Section H, the portion of the station Neil Platz used to use as a satellite office. He thought it might be nice to let Tania see him sitting at Neil’s old desk, even if it wasn’t his true office on Platz Station. Mentally he set that place as his next destination.

As he strolled through the vacant area, a large meeting room caught his attention instead. Red carpets surrounded a sunken area in the center lined with black leather couches and chairs. A wet bar lay open on the wall to his right, empty. Looted by the cleaning staff, probably.

None of this held Russell’s attention. He walked instead to the far wall, which didn’t exist. An illusion of course, but a damned good one. The transparent panel that spanned the entire back of the room must have cost a fortune. Russell’s stomach fluttered at the sight of Earth below them. Darwin, and the rest of Australia, lay partly in shadow, the time being just after dusk.

“Put the comm on the table,” he said without looking back.

While the technician worked, Russell took in the entire horizon of the planet. Tania was out there, somewhere, along with Zane Platz and who knew who else.

“All set,” the tech said. “Let me know when you’re done.”

“Oh, of course. I’ll make it my number-one f*cking priority,” Russell said. “How about you just come back in an hour.”

“Yes, sir,” the man said. He slipped out of the room with his shoulders hunched.

Alone, Russell let out a long breath. The blue crescent of the planet below begged to calm him, and he decided to let it. Show Tania a face of control, even one of relaxed ambivalence.

He put on his best smirk, testing it in the faint reflection on the glass. Satisfied, he turned and went to one of the leather chairs. He carefully arranged the comm’s camera to catch him with the spinning blue globe behind him. Then he leaned back, folded one leg across the other, and took the call.

“Good evening, Miss Sharma.”

She looked haggard. Dark bags under each eye ruined her otherwise flawless face. Her black hair had been pulled back in haste, judging by the uneven strands that framed her cheeks. “Blackfield,” she said with a slight nod.

“I’m told our exchange is going smoothly; is this a social call then?”

The tics in her facial expressions proved a fascinating puzzle to decipher. Russell noted her lips purse slightly, her eyes narrow. He wondered if a recording of the call could be reviewed later, for a deeper study.

“We have an additional request,” she stated. She waited for him to say something, to ask the obvious question. When he didn’t she visibly gathered herself and went on. “An aircraft, one capable of atmosphere reentry.”

“Those don’t grow on trees.”

“I’m willing to trade additional food—”

“How about another farm,” he said.

She froze, blinked. Then the woman mumbled something and put the feed on hold. Always putting me on hold when a decision needs to be made, Russell thought. She must have her own halo of gnats buzzing about, a veritable flock of Sofia Windons, all anxious to be part of the leadership process. Hell, Tania was probably a gnat herself. He could see them now, huddled around the bright screen of a slate and making lists of pros and cons.

“Make sure all voices are heard, Tania,” he said to the blinking screen, smiling. “No rush.”

Russell sat back and clasped his hands behind his head. At this rate he’d have all the farms back without breaking a sweat, and the traitors would be at his mercy. He’d have food enough for Darwin, too, which would kill the steam driving Grillo’s ambitious plan. Still, he could let the slumlord ramble on for a while. Even if 50 percent successful, he’d deliver a much more cooperative city before Russell relieved him of duty.

Tania’s face reappeared on the screen. “We can’t afford to part with another farm,” she said. “Perhaps our shipments could increase—”

“No farm, no plane,” Russell said, and ended the call. She’d call back. He tapped the station directory on the screen and selected the Nightcliff interconnect, then Grillo’s, or rather his own, office.

Kip Osmak’s face appeared. “Mr. Blackfield, hello,” he said.

“Where’s Grillo?”

“Uh,” Kip muttered, his eyes dancing left and right.

“Doesn’t matter,” Russell said. “Tell him I need an aircraft, one that can drop from orbit. No pilot, no crew, and nothing military. Get it up here on the next climber.”

The sickly man only just managed to nod before Russell killed the link. Then he dialed Alex Warthen. It took a moment for the security chief to answer.

“Yes?”

Russell leaned in to the camera. “Do you have another tracking device? Like the one you stuck on that briefcase, months ago?”

“I’m sure one of the technicians can cobble one together. Why?”

“With video?”

“That’s harder to do. What’s on your mind?”

Russell recapped Tania’s request, and his idea. Place a remote camera in the aircraft’s cockpit, and feed it back to Gateway. They could learn all manner of interesting things, he pointed out.

“It’ll be complicated,” Alex said. “The range on such things isn’t great, so we’ll have to patch it into the comm system. If we’re not careful, they’ll detect it.”

“So be careful. It’s worth the risk to get a fix on their location, perhaps even some pictures. Lay of the land.” An icon appeared on the comm’s screen. Tania, calling back, he guessed. “Put it together, and quickly.”

He disconnected before Alex could respond, and tried hard to contain his glee when Tania’s face reappeared.
Belém, Brazil

3.MAY.2283

HE HAD THE dream again.

The same one he’d had before the Japan mission, of falling from a great height toward a vast engine. A machine that spread from horizon to horizon, pistons firing, massive metal gears turning, all laced with a maze of circuits upon which electrons raced.

As in the previous vision, he sped toward the apparatus and braced himself for the impact with it. Last time he’d punched through the surface like it was tissue and continued to fall, but he flinched and braced himself nonetheless.

This time, though, an iris opened before him, revealing a warm, pulsating glow. He fell into it and hovered. The energy seemed to snake toward him, tendrils as thin and fine as the Elevator cord itself, lacing out from the greater field and worming their way into his ears, eyes, and nostrils.

A flood of memories came to mind all at once. Clear and yet eluding any attempt to focus on their specifics.

And then the light vanished. The memories disappeared with it, and he fell once again, punching through the machine in an explosion of parts.

He flipped over in the air to look up at the damage, and found that the machine was just the other side of the sky. Now he fell toward the ground, the endless jungle with its dark heart.

Skyler felt the evil lurking beneath the canopy again and resolved to face it this time. His pace slowed toward the end, and the leaves at the greatest height began to tickle his arms. He ignored them, brushed them aside. Someone stood in a clearing directly below. A person wearing a suit of black. Black like the Builders’ material. Red light sizzled along the fine lines in the surface, gradually coalescing into what might be called eyes.

The branches grew thicker as he fell toward the being. They slapped at Skyler’s face, and he frantically tried to shove them away to see below.

In the clearing, the being looked up, arms outstretched, and waited to catch him.

Skyler woke with a start and sat bolt upright.

Next to him, Ana knelt, her hand still held out from gently slapping his cheek.

“You were dreaming,” she said.

Skyler nodded and rubbed his eyes. They’d camped within the mansion he’d found, the one he’d scavenged the motorcycle from. A third-floor master bedroom with a grand balcony that overlooked the southern district of the city. From that viewpoint they had line of sight on the encampment at the base of the Elevator, and Skyler knew the home was relatively safe, given that it had not been looted or soiled by subhumans.

“Is it my watch already?” he asked.

Ana shook her head. “There is talking on the radio. Come and listen.”

She tiptoed back across the opulent room and out the balcony door without another word. Skyler could see Davi already standing out there, leaning against the railing, a pair of binoculars trained in the direction of the colony.

Crawling from his sleeping bag, Skyler stretched and threw his jacket over his shoulders. He glanced at his watch, 3 A.M., and took a healthy gulp from his canteen before joining the twins outside.

Ana sat cross-legged on the Spanish-tile surface of the wide balcony, holding the radio in both hands like some kind of holy relic. She dialed the volume up slightly when Skyler took a seat next to her.

The first voice he heard was Karl, and a flood of relief coursed through him.

“… water supply. And these we placed to gain access to the hospital.”

Skyler closed his eyes and pictured the control room, set up inside a modified cargo container. He imagined Karl standing before the map of the Belém on the wall, tracing a finger along the aura roads.

“And you cannot travel beyond these … auras?” A new voice, thickly accented.

“Gabriel,” Ana said, distant and cold.

“Not without a protective suit.”

Silence followed. Skyler heard a tinkling sound, like a spoon rattling against a teacup.

“So, the suit contains some of the aura? It can be bottled like wine?”

“No,” Karl said. “As I said before—”

“Never mind what you told me before,” Gabriel said, his tone light, conversational. “I want to hear it again.”

“The aura puts the disease into a kind of stasis. If you bottle air within an aura, and pump it into a special suit, the disease will stay asleep. It’s only when it comes in direct contact with the live disease that it will wake up again.”

“Fascinating,” the other man said. Another long silence.

“Please,” Karl finally said. “Please, let us ship air and water up to orbit.”

Gabriel chuckled. “We’ll discuss that tomorrow. I’m tired.”

“You’ve said tomorrow four times—”

The smack made Skyler jump. Ana did, too, and Davi turned from his vigil.

Another smack. Then the distinct sound of a person toppling to the floor.

“And I’ll say tomorrow as long as I wish, pendejo. Take him back to his tent.”

Sounds of rustling, grunts of men hefting a body. Skyler gritted his teeth when he heard the scraping of feet across the floor of the room. Then a door slammed shut.

Again came the sound of a spoon stirring tea. Then a new voice, a woman’s, in Portuguese. Skyler looked to Ana and Davi, who both shrugged. They didn’t understand the words, either.

Gabriel replied in turn, and the door opened and closed once again.

No one spoke for a minute. Then two. Skyler motioned for Ana to turn the volume up again, and soon they could hear the sound of someone sipping a hot beverage. Then chewing.

When the door opened again the new arrival spoke in Spanish.

Gabriel replied and a quick exchange occurred.

“Gabriel asked for a status,” Ana said, “and the other man, Carlos I think, said the scout team still hadn’t reported in.”

“Those must be the men we fought,” Skyler mused.

Ana held up a hand to quiet him as more conversation spilled out of the radio’s tiny speaker. “Carlos wants to lead a search party at dawn, but they’re arguing about how they’ll watch all the prisoners.”

She listened to their words, her eyes dancing back and forth. Then she glanced at Davi and her eyebrows arched.

“What is it?” Skyler asked.

“Carlos said if they don’t have enough people to watch all the newcomers, they could start the trials early, which would reduce the population.”

“Trials?”

Ana shook her head. Then, “Hold on.”

A long back-and-forth between the Gabriel and Carlos followed. There was laughter, as well as periods of serious tones.

Their conversation continued but grew quieter; then Skyler heard the door close and they could no longer be heard. “What were they saying?”

“Carlos noted excitement about the start of the trials. But Gabriel urged patience. He said when the trials start the incerto will panic, and they’ll need everything ready. Then he said he wants someone to go out to the lodge first thing in the morning and bring the others back.”

“What trials?”

Ana shrugged, her look apologetic. Whatever Gabriel was planning, he expected it to cause panic among the colonists, and that meant nothing good.

“Tell him,” Davi said to Ana.

Skyler glanced at him, then at the girl. Her eyes were downcast.

“Gabriel said it’s critical that the ‘rogue’ be captured or killed before then. That he’d prefer you be taken alive so that he could try to talk to you, but because you had killed some of his own family—he refers to us as his family—he realized you may have been among the incerto too long, and will never claim your place within the new society.”

“Incerto?”

“It’s like … uncertain. Or, untested.”

Skyler stood and went to the railing. He stared at the horizon, in the direction of the Elevator, trying to see any sign of the camp in the darkness. Davi offered him the binoculars but Skyler waved them off.

A second later he changed his mind, took the glasses, and studied the buildings closest to the encampment.

“What are you looking for?” Ana asked.

“High ground,” Skyler said.

“Why?”

“We need to get moving,” Skyler said, otherwise ignoring her. “We don’t have much time.”

“An attack now is suicide,” Davi said. “The deal was that we would free our friends, then—”

“I know,” Skyler said. “The lodge he mentioned, is that where your people are being held?”

“My heart says yes,” Davi answered. “We can’t know for sure until we look.”

Skyler handed the binoculars back to him. “That’s why we need to get moving. He said they were going to ‘bring everyone back,’ so we need to act before that. When the sun comes up they’re going to send someone to this lodge, and we need to track them. Follow them there, and rescue your friends. We can’t do that unless we see which road they take out of the camp.”

“High ground,” Davi repeated, understanding.

“Pack the gear,” Skyler said to them. The twins set to work immediately.

Later, as he rolled his sleeping bag and tied it, he tried to pinpoint when he’d become the leader of this little group. Only the night before Ana barely trusted him to go to the bathroom unsupervised. Considering his track record as captain of a crew, Skyler resolved to look for a way out of the position as soon as their goals were accomplished. They were kids, after all, and people under him didn’t have the greatest survival rate.

By the time the three of them began their trek toward the camp, the sky in the east had become a purple stain, growing brighter with every minute. Skyler set a hard pace and showed them how to move between cover positions so that one of the three was always still and vigilant.

Moving through the dark streets, he weighed the situation. No air or water had been delivered up the cord in a week, and supplies had already been strained before that. From what they’d overheard on the radio, he guessed Tania was still in the dark as to the situation in Camp Exodus. Who knew what was going through her mind right now?

Whatever happened, Skyler realized, when he finally attempted to retake the camp, if all else failed he must clear the base of the cord so that climbers could come down again. At least then Tania and the others who huddled in orbit would have an option. A choice, if they wanted it, that wasn’t to turn tail and head back to Darwin.

If he only accomplished one thing, Skyler would give them that.
Above the Atlantic Ocean

5.MAY.2283

IN THE DEAD of night an aircraft dipped into the atmosphere high above the Atlantic Ocean. Heat generated by friction with the air made the underbelly glow bright orange, and the fighters inside clutched their harnesses with white knuckles against the bone-shaking turbulence.

The aircraft, a long-range paramilitary troop carrier originally built for the Thai army, began to turn in a wide circle once the violence of reentry ended. It set itself on a course for Belém and began to drift lower as the coast of Brazil approached.

A small device, installed in a cavity behind one of the instrument panels in the cockpit’s ceiling, transmitted telemetry information sapped from the ship’s computer to a relay in orbit. The relay, bolted to the top of a small inspection robot, sent the information to a terminal in Alex Warthen’s office on Gateway Station.

No one aboard knew about that, though. They’d searched, twice in fact, but not to the point of dismantling anything. Even Tania had poked around when the vehicle first arrived, looking under seats and inside every storage compartment. The urgency of the situation didn’t allow for diligence beyond that.

The crew were all in back, slipping out of their jump-seats and pulling on their gear. Ten men and two women all armed to the teeth after a carte-blanche rummage through “Room 17,” the armory Neil Platz had stocked inside his secret station.

Environment suits went on first. Much debate had gone into whether the bulky protective outfits were needed. The aircraft, programmed to land between the colony and the reservoir to the east, would set down in a clearing that fell within the “aura road” set up to link the two locations.

The soldiers balked at the idea of trying to fight with the suits on. But as they planned their mission, it became clear the precaution would be wise. They had no guarantee the aura road had even remained in place. Whatever had befallen the colony, it was possible the aura towers had been moved, scattered, or pulled back to camp. No one knew.

“Five minutes,” someone said.

“Five minutes,” a voice in the background said.

Russell leaned in over Alex’s shoulder and studied the image. The camera had a perfect view right down the middle of the cockpit. The aircraft, another loaner from Grillo’s dwindling fleet, had a side-by-side pilot and navigator seat layout. Flat monitors made up the bulk of the dash, showing virtual instrumentation along with maps and other indicators.

Both seats were empty. The colonists apparently didn’t have anyone who could pilot the ship—an interesting detail—but they’d been able to program the autopilot system.

The view out the vehicle’s window was too small and grainy to discern anything yet, but the location of the traitors was now known: Brazil.

Russell hadn’t stopped smiling since that bit of information came in. Already he’d thought up and discarded dozens of attack plans, always thinking up something more spectacular than the last.

He watched as the craft slipped over the coastline and followed the edge of a river. It skimmed low over the ground. Russell saw treetops zoom by above the height of the plane.

“Interesting,” Alex said.

“What?”

“Flying so low; it’s a risk. Like they’re worried someone might see them if they came in at a normal angle.”

The aircraft banked again and followed a smaller river. This time there were hints of a cityscape to the west. Russell glanced at another window on Alex’s terminal, which showed the physical location of the tracking device on a map. The plane followed a river that marked the northern edge of a city called Belém, heading east and then southeast.

“One minute,” the voice in the background said.

At a bridge spanning the river, the aircraft slowed to a crawl and then turned to follow the road that extended out from the bridge back toward the city. The road, Russell saw on the map, snaked around to eventually meet the city’s southern edge, where dockyards lined a wide river.

Then the plane slowed completely and hovered. The sound of the thrusters spinning down could be heard. Their view out the cockpit showed the black shapes of the metropolis’s skyline against a clear, starry sky.

“They’re going in dark,” Alex said. “Taking pains to land in secret.”

The plane turned in place to orient itself toward the south. Treetops replaced Belém’s skyline. The rainforest spanned the horizon.

A second later the aircraft’s engines stopped and the landing lights came on.

The aircraft had landed in a clearing alongside a dirt road. The road went up a small rise maybe thirty meters away and then dipped back down and out of sight. Dense rainforest lined both edges, the trees still rippling from the exhaust wash generated by the landing.

Russell ignored all of this. His eyes were locked on a black tower that sat beside the road, not far from the craft. The object looked to be about as tall as a two-story home, and its square base was perhaps two or three meters wide.

It looked wholly out of place in the surroundings. And, despite being on the sloped road and uneven ground, it sat perfectly upright.

After a second Russell realized that another tower loomed in the distance, just over the rise. A black, angular monument against the night sky, completely out of place among the dense trees.

“The f*ck are those?” he whispered.

Alex shook his head and continued to study the screen. He zoomed in slightly to remove most of the cockpit from their view.

Within seconds a squad of environment-suited soldiers flowed past the nose of the aircraft, rallying at the base of the nearby tower. They crouched there and waited until the entire group had exited the plane.

“Hmm … odd,” Alex said.

“What?”

“They’re wearing environment suits, but according to the map they’re only about one klick away from the Elevator.”

“Maybe it doesn’t have an aura like ours.”

The idea explained a lot about Tania’s recent requests. Air and water, in exchange for so many of the Space-Ag platforms, made total sense if they had no way to scrub Belém’s air of the disease. The supplies would only buy them time, though. Maybe they had some plan to activate the aura? He racked his brain, trying to figure out how any of that would require a commando squad to fly in the dark. Whatever it was, this mission was worth nine farm platforms, almost all of Tania Sharma’s remaining leverage.

Russell watched with bemused interest as the combatants readied their gear. Gun-mounted flashlights were activated, the beams sweeping across the ground. Some part of him yearned to be there with them, gearing up for a fight. That corner of his mind didn’t care whose side they were on, or what their purpose was. Combat just got his juices flowing, in a way no woman could. None he’d yet to meet, at least.

The camera’s view became obscured as someone entered the cockpit. Alex quickly zoomed out to the full view again, and they watched as the person began to tap commands into a touchscreen near the pilot’s seat.

“Power-down sequence,” Alex noted. “The camera is tapped into the flight computer’s power line. We’ll lose our feed in a minute.”

The person in the cockpit tensed suddenly and dropped to a crouch. The muffled sounds of machine-gun fire thumped through the speaker.

Outside, the gathered soldiers were shooting in all directions. Rapid muzzle-flashes lit up the surrounding trees like lightning.

A human dressed all in black was among the fighters, Russell saw. He quickly realized “human” might not be accurate. The being clawed and punched with terrifying speed. Bodies fell with each blurred swing of the thing’s arm.

Some of the fighters broke and ran, one toward the aircraft and another toward the cover of the trees. But a second creature emerged from the foliage, galloping on all fours. It pounced on the back of the nearest fleeing enemy, and the pair collapsed into a rolling ball of flailing limbs.

The creatures moved like subhumans. Russell knew that, and yet their appearance was very different. They were clad from head to toe in some kind of skintight black outfit.

A bloodbath unfolded on the screen. Russell saw one of Tania’s fighters stagger away from the carnage, his environment suit torn to shreds, both hands clutching at his neck, where blood flowed freely. One of the creatures spotted the man and raced over to him. It swung, raking a hand across the back of the man’s head. The poor bastard collapsed in a sickening heap, dead before he hit the ground.

The man in the cockpit stepped backward, blocking much of the view. A third creature appeared in front of the plane, illuminated fully by the landing lights. The black material it wore seemed to have hardened panels, like armor plating.

As Russell watched, a flash of red light appeared to emanate from the creature’s eyes, as if it had trained a laser on the cockpit window.

Then it jumped.

In a split second the being reappeared right outside the window, clinging to the fuselage. It tilted its head at the cowering man in the cockpit. Then it raised one hand and placed it on the glass. Light erupted from the creature’s palm in a blinding flash. The tempered glass shattered into a thousand tiny pieces, but it held its shape.

A black-clad fist punched a hole straight through the thick barrier. The hand then swiped violently, knocking the shards away, and the creature was inside. It dove on the man and the two fell out of the camera’s view.

The sound of the man in the cockpit being torn to pieces was so revolting that Russell reached out and turned the volume down. Alex sat perfectly still, making no effort to stop him.

Outside the aircraft, the battle was already over. Broken bodies lay everywhere, and the armored, outfitted subhumans were gone, vanished into the forest as quickly as they had appeared. Not twenty seconds had passed since the first shots were fired.

The instruments and screens in the cockpit started to go blank, and the landing lights turned off, plunging the grisly scene outside into darkness.

A second later the feed ended.

Russell swallowed. He realized he’d put a hand on Alex’s shoulder and gripped the man’s shirt in a white-knuckled fist. He let go and stepped back. “What the hell did we just see?”

Alex half-glanced over his shoulder. He opened his mouth to say something, and then snapped it shut and looked back at the blank monitor.

“I mean,” Russell said, “what the actual f*ck? And what were those towers?”

“I’m not sure I want to know,” Alex replied, his voice laden with naked dread.

A long silence followed. When Russell finally got his breathing under control, he began to chuckle.

The chuckle turned into a rolling, uncontrollable laugh.

Alex turned to him. “What’s so funny?”

“Tania,” Russell replied. “She. Is. Screwed. Totally, utterly, royally screwed!”

The dire look on Alex’s face only made him laugh harder.
Darwin, Australia

5.MAY.2283

SAMANTHA TOOK ONE last swig of her cider and flipped the cup over on the bar.

“Done,” she said.

Woon bobbed his head at her, his constant smile almost hidden beneath the long white beard and mustache he wore, both extending down to his waist. He spoke very little English, and Sam knew only a few words of Mandarin. This left their conversations one-sided, with Samantha blathering on about whatever she felt like talking about, and Woon just nodding. His smile seemed painted on, and even if she launched into a lengthy, solemn diatribe about the fates the rest of her crew had suffered, his grin never faltered.

She pointed at the glass with two fingers, her thumb up to create a mock handgun. “My tab,” she stated, and winked at him.

Woon, of course, nodded. His eyes, so narrow they looked closed, still managed to twinkle in the dim room.

Samantha climbed off her stool, yawned, and stretched. She dropped to the floor and rattled off ten push-ups in rapid succession, then flipped over onto her back and did the same number of sit-ups.

She bounced to her feet, waved to Woon, and headed for the wide entrance to the hangar-turned-kitchen. Both of the massive doors were open, rolled to either side of the front of the building. This indicated Woon was open for business, but the stools and tables were mostly empty.

A glance at the old digital clock on the wall told her the time in large, amber numbers: 3:14 A.M.

Two scavengers sat at a table off to the side. One had his head down on the table, one arm curled around to block his face. The other flipped through a worn paperback book, its cover weathered to the point of being unintelligible. Sam recognized the second man as Lee, the pilot of a short-range boat. They’d flirted here, once upon a time. She turned toward their table and took an empty seat. Lee’s eyes flicked up to her, then back to his book.

Not even a hello, she thought.

“Lee,” she said.

“G’day,” he muttered, and flipped a page. A greeting used for random strangers passed on the street.

Sam jerked her head toward Lee’s sleeping friend. “Looks like you need a new drinking partner. I could grab us a bottle.”

He glanced sidelong at her then, and some silent deliberation passed through his mind. “Thanks, but I’m okay.”

The lingering effects of Woon’s cider jumbled her thoughts. Six months ago he would have invited her to stay and drink, and within an hour they’d probably be in the cargo bay of his plane, making the beast with two backs.

But not now. No hint at all of that camaraderie.

“C’mon,” she said, leaning forward in hopes of earning more than a glance. “Shots, you and me. We can go to my roof. Dawn is still—”

“I fly at dawn,” Lee said. He dog-eared a page in his book and set it down carefully on the table. “Your orders, remember?”

She did, vaguely. Grillo wanted more output from the crews, and two missions a day was the only solution Sam could find. She doled out Grillo’s requests not based on profit or eagerness, but on things like range, readiness, cargo room, and capacitor charge time.

None of the crews liked it, but they didn’t have much choice. No one had seen hide nor hair of Prumble in months, and anyway the days of picking and choosing missions were long gone. Grillo says jump, the crews jump.

“Maybe we should inspect your bird then,” she said with what she hoped was a coy smile. “A thorough examination, just you and me—”

“Sam,” Lee said with an annoyed sigh, “it wouldn’t be good for others to see us cavorting. Sorry, just the way it is.”

“Cavorting? Jesus. I’m not proposing f*cking marriage, I just want a quick tumble. What’s the big deal?”

“Not a good idea, Sam. Sorry.” He picked up his book again and pointedly began to read.

She stood so fast her chair tumbled over backward. Lee winced but kept reading, and with that Sam turned and strode away, the warmth of alcohol in her head transforming instantly to a cold desire for more. She told herself they would come around. Grillo’s plan required time before the rewards would be clear. Until then, she doubted any of the crews would smile and wave at her when she passed, much less jump between the sheets.

“Maybe I’ll go visit Vaughn,” she muttered to herself as she stalked down the center of the runway. She’d used him to escape, only to end up not escaping at all, not really. Grillo had agreed not to punish the guard for allowing her to get away, but she’d not seen Vaughn since then. Perhaps, she thought, he’d be up for some makeup sex.

Samantha stopped walking and hung her head. “Why,” she said to herself, “am I so damn horny all the time now?”

The constant fantasies that ripped through her mind like runaway trains had become an annoyance. She walked on, pondering the reasons behind her distracting thirst all the way to the hangar, the same hangar she’d called home when Skyler ran the show.

Maybe, she thought, it’s because I’ve not seen any combat in two months. Perhaps some part of her had grown addicted to the tension and violence beyond the aura and sought to fill the void in other ways. Or maybe it was because she was no longer living with four men. Skyler, Jake, Angus, and Takai were all gone now. The bond they’d shared had been something different. Primal, sure, but born of a shared reliance on one another to survive. None of them had ever shown her attention of a physical kind, and she’d never sought it from them.

She laughed aloud at another thought. Maybe I’m just suffering from twitching ovaries. She was twenty-three, too young for such concerns in a pre-disease world. And now, all bets were off. The idea of birthing a child into the hell that humanity now lived in seemed foolish at best.

Besides, Samantha had no desire for motherhood. Three times in the past five years she’d been asked, sometimes subtly and sometimes directly, if she thought an immune woman would give birth to children with the same attribute. She doubted it, but the question was pointless. She had no intention of being the guinea pig in that experiment. Though she knew of no other immune women, she did not want to be a lab rat.

The hangar depressed the hell out of her. With no aircraft dominating the vast floor, it felt like an empty cavern. Add to that the lack of her crew mates, and it served only to remind her of everything that had been lost.

As she did most nights, Samantha pulled the blanket and pillow from her bunk, tucked them under one arm, and made her way to the roof. She left her tent behind, this time, the sky being devoid of rainclouds now that wet season had made its usual swift departure.

The stars were bright and clear tonight, and a half-moon provided plenty of light by which to move. She laid out her blanket and pillow, stripped to her underwear, and fell asleep under the stars only after a quick and lackluster session of pleasuring herself. Up until a few weeks ago she’d engaged in that activity only a few times, those needs fulfilled by the regular brush with danger, the proximity to and the dealing of death. Lately, though, it seemed she could not find rest unless she coaxed her body into some release, however limited it might be.

She awoke shortly after dawn to the sound of her name being shouted.

When she opened her eyes, the morning sun lanced into her eyes like lightning bolts. Samantha winced, and rolled onto her side, pulling the blanket over her. The motion made her head hurt, despite a tame night at Woon’s. “F*ck off!” she shouted back.

“Come down here. I have something to discuss!”

Grillo’s voice. Bloody hell.

Frowning, Sam threw the blanket off and pulled her clothes back on. A stained white tank top, black cargo pants, and steel-toed boots with bright yellow stitching. She rubbed the back of her neck as she stalked across the roof, weaving her way between planters flush with ripe fruits and vegetables. Her stomach grumbled despite the hangover, and so she plucked a ripe plantain from a heavy branch, peeled it, and devoured the bland fruit in three bites. At the cistern she filled a bucket with cool rainwater and dunked her head in it, twisting left and right violently until she couldn’t hold her breath anymore. Water flew in an arch when she yanked her head from the bucket, and she kept her eyes closed as the runoff flowed down the sides of her face, letting some of it flow into her mouth. This she swished from cheek to cheek while she wrung her blond hair out and knotted it into a quick braid.

“Good enough,” she growled, and trudged down to the hangar’s catwalk. From her room she grabbed her favorite black vest. It was laden with pockets and made of a stiff woven nylon. A patch on the left breast bore the Australian “Special Operations Command” logo. There’d been another patch below it when she found the garment, bearing some soldier’s last name, but she’d torn that off.

Zipped up, the vest constricted around her torso and made her feel even taller than she already was. Something about the stiff, tight material served to give her confidence, and a certain swagger that made people listen.

At the front of the hangar she punched the red button that hung from a chain by the doors, causing the big barriers to roll back with a loud gnashing of gears and pulleys.

Grillo stood just outside, in front of a black armored truck. He wore a business suit, as usual, and gripped a ledger of some sort in his left hand. “Good morning,” he said.

Two similar trucks were parked behind his. She noted that each had both driver and passenger seats occupied.

“What’s with the caravan?”

“Safety in numbers,” he replied.

Samantha grimaced. Grillo’s relentless drive to subjugate the roofers around Nightcliff, and their gardens, was often discussed by the scavenger crews. A few seemed to fall every day. The leaders of those enclaves were once a steady source of business.

The slumlord gestured, his eyes darting to the interior of the hangar.

“Come in,” Sam said. “Take a load off.”

He nodded and stepped inside. She led him to the circle of couches and chairs that the crew used to sit in when planning missions. Grillo deliberated for a few seconds before selecting a wooden chair. Sam flopped onto the black leather couch opposite him and tucked her feet up beneath her legs. “You could have just sent a list.”

“It’s not that kind of mission,” he said flatly.

Samantha waited.

“Do you recall,” he said, “the explosion just south of the aura, in Old Downtown, a few months ago?”

“Sure. I heard the, um, ‘traitors’ tried to blow up Nightcliff. Good thing they missed, too, since I was locked up in there. Look, we’ve talked about this. I’ll keep the crews in line and all that shit, but I draw the line at doing anything that might hurt my friends.”

Grillo held a hand out, waving her off. “Our arrangement is well understood. Hear me out.”

“Okay …”

The slight man leaned forward in his chair. “The site of the explosion is seeing some”—he searched for words—“activity.”

“Huh? Subhumans?” She thought that unlikely. Old Downtown sat beyond the aura, yes, but it was only connected to land inside the aura, effectively making it an island. The small subhuman presence that existed there in the first weeks and months of the disease had long died out, leaving the place a ghost town.

He shook his head. “A cloud blankets the whole area. Darwin gets fog on occasion, but this is localized to just that area, and it’s been there for two days now.”

Samantha studied him. “So their bomb hit some subterranean infrastructure. Ruptured a pipe or a mini-thor’s cooling system.”

“Maybe so,” he said.

“So what’s the problem? It’s walking distance from the aura. Send a team in environment suits to scout it out.”

“We did,” he said. “Yesterday.”

His tone implied the result.

Grillo went on. “Five suited men hiked down there, but the moisture obscured their helmets. Zero visibility. They said they were going to turn back, but got lost. And then we lost all contact.”

“Subs,” Samantha said, “probably. They can track by sounds, so the fog wouldn’t slow them down much.”

Grillo spread his hands. “That’s what we’d like you to find out. You don’t need a suit, and you’re the only—”

“The only immune. Hooray for me,” she muttered.

“I’d just like you to poke around. Find out what happened, and that’s it. I’ll send a few good soldiers with you, yours to command. Men who fought in the Purge and know how to handle an environment suit.”

She’d prefer to go alone, but Grillo had a certain tone he used when something was not debatable, and he’d invoked that now. Maybe he feared she would run off.

“Clear the place out,” he added, “if you can, and then we’ll get some engineers in there to make sure whatever is generating that steam is not a danger to the city.”

She folded her arms and leaned back into the plush couch. “Our agreement was that I would get the crews flying again, which I’ve done. You never said anything about playing sub bait, or babysitting your goon squad.”

His face remained a mask, but she caught his grip tightening on the leather-bound book in his left hand. “Do this,” he said, “and I’ll bring you to my compound afterward to visit your friend.”

“And if I refuse?”

Grillo shook his head. “This is not an ultimatum, Samantha. I’m asking for your help because you’re the best person for the task. Whatever is going on out there, it may pose a threat to us all.”

Samantha shrugged. “Okay then. Sounds easy enough. When will your people be ready?”

“They’re waiting outside.”

The drive, despite being only eight klicks or so by road, took more than an hour.

Samantha sat in the back of the armored vehicle, rocking back and forth as it trundled over Darwin’s battered streets.

The two thugs Grillo brought along remained silent after the briefest of introductions, as if they’d been ordered not to chat with her. The taller one, David, had a ragged beard worn in contradiction to his neatly cropped black hair. His teeth were yellow and crooked, and there were wrinkles at the corners of his hard eyes.

The other was a Middle Easterner of average build and height. He’d said his name, Faisal, with a strong accent, and had not even made eye contact with her. Perhaps, she thought, he still believes women should cover themselves.

Darwin’s filthy streets blurred by. The morning sun would soon become intolerable for most, giving urgency to the foot traffic and makeshift street markets. Children chased after the caravan, laughing and waving until they could no longer keep up. Then they would bend down and pick up the nearest rock, hurling it at the trucks with total abandon, as punishment for not stopping.

Eventually the vehicles turned down Cavenagh Street and surged in speed. This close to Aura’s Edge, the people out and about were the lowest of the low. The single-story buildings here were all crumbling, looted shells. Hardly any had gardens on the roof, Samantha noted. Too easy to raid, too hard to defend.

Groups of citizens huddled in whatever shade they could find, all dressed in dirty rags, their faces skeletal and arms stick-thin. They watched the trucks roll by with hollow stares, having lost hope years ago of anyone coming out here to help them. Samantha glanced at Grillo. He sat in the front passenger seat, his back to her, and she expected him to be ignoring the heartbreaking view. But he wasn’t. Grillo was turned toward the window, his face scanning back and forth as he studied the sights. His lips were pressed into a thin line, and though she couldn’t see his eyes behind a pair of small, round sunglasses, she suspected there was no disgust to be found there.

After a few blocks the trucks reached the barricade and fanned out to park side by side. Samantha squinted when Faisal opened the back door of their APC and hopped out. Sunlight flooded the compartment, reflected off a dusty concrete sidewalk they’d parked on.

“After you,” David said, the only words he’d spoken the entire drive other than his name.

Outside, Samantha waited while the two mercenaries pulled on bright yellow environment suits that were produced from the back of one of the other trucks. The final truck held a selection of weapons and a comm terminal. A black woman in civilian garb sat at the screen, pulling a headset on. She smiled halfheartedly when their eyes met, then focused on the equipment in front of her.

Sam glanced over the weaponry arrayed along the floor of the truck, but there was nothing tempting. She made sure her own machine gun was loaded and ready. She’d yet to find a replacement for her beloved Israeli shotgun, lost when the Melville crashed. Someday, soon perhaps, she resolved to take a crew out into the Clear just to find another. For now, one of Skyler’s extra rifles would have to do. She’d found it in a private, hidden stash shortly after returning to the hangar. The place had been ransacked by Nightcliff’s finest, but in their haste they’d missed a few spots.

Skyler, despite his many faults, knew how to keep a weapon clean, and so she had no qualms about carrying one of his guns on a mission. In some weird way it felt like a small tribute to his memory.

“Up here, Samantha,” Grillo said. He’d scaled the barricade and now stood atop it. The mound of trash and debris roughly marked Aura’s Edge along the entire circle, except where it went out into the ocean. Beyond, a no-man’s-land extended for a hundred meters. Here the aura’s protection rippled, shifted, and weakened. Only fools ventured beyond the barricade without some form of protection against SUBS.

Sam bounded up the five-meter-high “wall,” hopping from one broken chunk of concrete to another, avoiding a rusty bit of chain-link fence that protruded from one spot.

Up top, Grillo waited with a pair of binoculars already extended to her. She took them, but didn’t raise them to her eyes just yet.

The street beyond the barricade was markedly different from the portion inside. Because so few dared to venture there, very little had been looted or picked over. Cars dotted the road. They weren’t packed in like sardines here, because Darwin’s Old Downtown was effectively an island, cut off by the aura. Farther west, Larrakeyah Army Base found itself in a similar state of isolation, but it had been one of the scavengers’ first hunting grounds for useful items.

Sam’s gaze settled on the area just beyond no-man’s-land. A group of tall buildings marked the local government offices, half a kilometer away. She could only see the very top floors. Everything else lay blanketed under a thick cloud that hugged the ground despite an ocean breeze. The gray-white haze swirled and billowed gently.

Grillo tapped her shoulder and handed her a headset. She slipped it over her head and adjusted the boom mic to rest near her cheek.

“Sound check,” a woman’s voice said in her ear.

Sam glanced back at the truck below her, and said, “Testing one two.”

“You’re clear,” the woman replied.

The two mercenaries, David and Faisal, were suited now and climbing the barricade. They both carried matching assault rifles, standard army issue stuff. David, she saw, had a couple of grenades on his utility belt. Oddly, both men had towels wrapped around their left forearm, as if they expected to get bitten by a police dog.

Next to Sam, Grillo cleared his throat. “I’m most interested in what is causing that cloud. If you can find yesterday’s party, please ascertain their fate, and salvage what you can.”

“And the headset is so I can call in reinforcements?”

“Do you want the truth?”

“No,” she said. “Glad-hand me.”

Grillo’s eyebrow twitched slightly but he did not smile. Sarcasm seemed to be the only thing that rattled his calm veneer. “The headset is so you can report back what you are seeing,” he said. “Up until the end, if need be.”

No offense, mate, but I’m not risking my life just to give you a little intel. She kept this to herself and nodded. “Let’s go, boys.”

She hopped down the other side of the barricade and stepped onto the dirty road beyond. When her two companions didn’t immediately join her, Sam glanced back to egg them on, expecting to see them eyeing the Clear with worry.

Instead, she saw them standing in a rough circle with Grillo, their hands clasped and heads bowed.

What the f*ck is this? Prayer?

The posture only lasted a few seconds, and then in unison they broke their circle and the two men jumped down the mound of debris to join her.
Darwin, Australia

5.MAY.2283

SAMANTHA TOOK POINT, with Faisal and David following a few paces behind, off to her left and right, respectively. The air processors on their backs hummed each time they took a breath.

They walked in this formation through no-man’s-land and into the Clear beyond. Clear, of course, being a misnomer. Samantha often chuckled when the term was used to describe the world outside Darwin. With no more humans polluting the shit out of everything, the theory went that the world would “clear up,” hence the name. Some thought that might be why the Builders confined everyone to a single city. A punishment, or judgment, of sorts. A chance for the planet to recover.

And the world may have indeed cleared up in places, but so many factories, chemical plants, power stations, and other bits of infrastructure were abandoned in haste that many of them ran on their own for years, unchecked. Fuel stations caught fire and burned for so long that they would shroud an entire metropolis in dark smoke for months. Samantha had seen all of this in her forays. Yet even she used the name Clear. It’s the name that stuck, and if it had a tinge of irony to it, so be it.

Fog started to envelop them. Samantha called a halt by raising her fist and then motioning for them to lower into a ready crouch. She felt a bit more confident when both men complied like such a silent command was old habit.

She instructed them to come to her position. “The thicker this gets, the closer we bunch, understood?” she asked when they were next to her.

Both men nodded. The masks of their environment suits were already dappled with condensation. Faisal raised his left arm, the one with a towel wrapped around it, and wiped away the moisture.

“If you get separated, stop and do a quick little whistle, nothing more. Subs are wired to attack humans, and our speaking voice is something they key on. Despite your helmets, a loud shout of surprise will still carry.”

Whether they knew this or not, they both flashed her an a-okay with their hands. She’d made the comment more for Grillo’s benefit, and for the woman operating the comm, so that she wouldn’t have to provide a running commentary.

“Okay,” Samantha said. “Follow me.”

Less than ten meters into the cloud, Samantha could hardly see her hand in front of her face. The swirling fog was cool on her skin, and in no time her body glistened from the water as if she’d been caught in a morning drizzle. She glanced back. Faisal and David were nothing more than apparitions in the fog. David drew his towel-wrapped arm across his mask, leaving a swath of clear plastic through which to see.

She faced forward again and crept farther into the thick mist.

The crystalline spike appeared so suddenly that she almost ran into it.

A needle point of pale blue glass, just a few centimeters in front of her face. Samantha halted and raised her hand for the others to stop. “Found something,” she said in a low voice.

“Bodies?” Grillo asked in her ear.

She ignored him and moved sideways to look at the strange tendril from the side. It was segmented, each length of it as long as her hand, connected by bulbous sections like bony knuckles. The material was not like anything she’d seen before. Slightly opaque, and coated with a fine dust, or moisture perhaps. She moved closer and saw both theories were wrong—the spike had thousands—no, millions—of tiny thorns jutting out of it, each thin as a hair and no longer than a grain of sand.

“What is it?” David asked.

Sam shook her head. “Beats me,” she replied. She stepped around it only to be poked in her stomach by something sharp, felt even through her thick combat vest. She looked down to see another of the long, thin crystal branches protruding through the cloud.

Looking up, and around her, Samantha realized they were standing at the edge of some kind of massive lattice. A complex, chaotic system of branches made up of the queer, pale blue segments. The tips of the branches were sharp as needles.

Samantha slung her weapon and tugged at her pant leg, pulling a section of it tight and away from her thigh. Then she waddled a few steps over to a spike protruding at that height and watched in horror as it poked through the cloth like a knife through warm butter.

“Guys,” she said, “back away. Very slowly.”

Faisal turned first. “God help us,” he muttered, and froze.

Facing him, Samantha saw that the lattice of branches had grown over and around them. Even as she watched, she could see new knuckle-like tips blooming on the thorny ends of branches, and new segments beginning to stretch.

“What’s going on?” Grillo asked, urgency in his usually calm voice.

Faisal crouched low and ran, ducking under the jagged tentacles. She saw him drop to a belly crawl before he vanished completely in the soupy gray haze.

“David, go!” Samantha shouted.

But the man hesitated. The spikes were getting lower to the ground with each passing second.

“I’m out!” she heard Faisal yell from somewhere nearby.

The opportunity to flee passed just seconds later. Samantha thought they would be skewered on a thousand of the knifelike points, but the growth seemed to stop when it neared them, leaving them inside a bulbous cavity, surrounded on all sides.

“We’re trapped,” David said. Now a hint of fear shadowed his gruff voice. If any one of those spikes poked his environment suit, he’d be infected and the headaches would start. After that, if he didn’t get back to the aura in time to snuff out the early part of the infection, he’d die. Or worse.

Sam unslung her rifle again, took the clip out, and ensured no round was in the chamber. Then she flipped it around to hold it like a club.

“Samantha, I need an update,” Grillo hissed in her ear.

“There’s some kind of … growth here. I think it’s … alien.”

David nodded at her with grim determination. He’d converted his own rifle into a club as well, and stood ready to start hacking.

“We’re completely surrounded by it,” Samantha said. “Going to try to smash our way out.”

Glancing around, she realized that every direction looked the same. She couldn’t remember the path Faisal had taken. “Which way?” she asked David.

He glanced around, then dropped to a knee to study the ground. “I think he went that way,” the man said, pointing. There were so many blurred boot marks on the ground, Sam didn’t think he could really tell.

“Faisal?!” she called out.

“Here,” his voice came back. It seemed to come from everywhere, but she thought it stronger in one direction. Better than nothing, she decided, and turned to face that way.

She swung the butt of her rifle with all her strength.

The gun swept through the crystal branches with a whoosh. The bony arms rattled against the butt of the gun like dead-wood. They swayed from the impact and bounced back, vibrating silently along their length. Not a single one broke or even showed signs of damage.