Cress:

Numb. Dead. Was this normal, feeling like a sponge was soaking up all my emotions? I should be crying a river. Instead, I was numb. Dry eyed. Anger was the only thing making it through, and even that was muted and distant, like the thunderhead rolling in on the other side of the mountains.

The gopher rattled over a large stone, cement tires churning gravel, and I glanced at Beckett, teeth tight as I wrenched the steering yoke to the left, fighting to keep the old girl on what stood for a road east of town. Doc put a hand out, bracing against the wood of the dashboard, his other arm keeping Beckett from jostling around on the seat between us. He glanced at me as the gopher straightened up again, but didn't say anything. He hadn't said anything at all since we left Darkening. He hadn't even questioned my crazy plan, simply nodding and climbing up into the cab with Beckett, leaving Jimmy and the girls to travel in the bed of the cargo bin.

I couldn't tell from looking at him if he agreed, or if he was just going along with it to avoid a fight.

I turned back to the washed out logging slip that hair-pinned up the side of Roundtop – the blunt, weathered mound of rock that rose to the east of Darkening. It had been covered in gigantic red cedars once, but the original settlers had cut them down to build houses and barns and boardwalks. That wasn't necessarily a bad thing for us now. The scrubby ten-year saplings actually afforded more cover, their branches thick and green and closer to the ground. I could only be glad of that. We would need whatever we could get. Then, once we reached Browler's mine, we'd have shelter for the night, at least, and a chance to rest and lick our wounds.

Or, in my case, get the Mech patched up again.

That thing had enough firepower to take out a whole platoon. It was also the key to all of this. Those men were hunting for it. It might have answers, but if I couldn't get it working, it might as well be an empty tin can.

We started up another steep grade and hit a particularly bad washboard that sent everything bouncing around again. Doc maintained his grip on my little brother, saving him from flopping onto the floor, while I wrestled with the gopher, trying to keep us from tipping over the edge of the road while maintaining our precious forward momentum.

The washboard evened out and I glanced at Doc again, sliding my gaze along his profile from the corner of my eye. That straight nose with the slight uptilt at the end, that angled jaw... It was still sinking in that he was there next to me. Alive.

There would have been no way I could have done what he did for Beckett. The round had fragmented all through Beck's shoulder, and Doc had pulled out every last shard, then sewed him up all neat and tidy, and given Beckett a draught of something that would hold off infection. It had also made him sleepy, which was a good thing, given the amount of bouncing he was going through.

I would owe him again. I already owed him so much. There would be no way to ever repay him.

Not just for Beckett, either.

I slammed the gopher up into high gear as we rounded yet another switchback and began lumbering up the last stretch before the cut off to Browler's mine.

He had been there when Momma died. He hadn't asked any questions then, either. He took one look at me standing there on his back stoop in the dark and the rain, grabbed his jacket and his medical bag, and climbed into the gopher. He had given her something that calmed her fits, but there hadn't been anything he could do. There was something wrong in her brain, a mass growing like a canker on the stem of a weed, taking up too much room in her skull, choking the life out of my beautiful, intelligent, graceful mother.

He sat with her until she slipped away, and he had mourned her right along with the rest of us. She had been the one who saw how smart he was. She had been the one who urged him to study medicine, and sent letters to those fancy schools in Edon for him. She had believed a poor farm kid from the colonies could do whatever he put his mind to.

We came up over a gravely rise, and there was the cutoff, leading away into what looked like nothing but a dense thicket of brambles and pine saplings at the base of a stony outcropping. No one had been up there in years, and it took some complicated maneuvering to get the gopher through the overgrowth, but then the hidden mouth of the mine yawned wide at us from behind a screen of scraggly branches, and we were rattling on through into stony darkness.

I flicked on the headlamps. Then I opened the door and hopped out, calling a quick, "Jamesh! You alright?"

"Right enough," Jimmy called back. "The girls are a bit shook, but they'll survive."

I let the tailgate down and came around to the back end. Jimmy was already up and moving, rubbing his backside and a bruised shoulder, but the two girls were huddled up in a little wad in the corner. I eyed the two of them for a moment, unable to keep the curl of dislike off my lips as I kept talking to Jimmy. "We need to get firewood gathered before it gets too dark. Why don't you three go on and fetch some dry kindling?" Keeping busy would keep their minds off things, and it would keep them out of my sight for a bit. Wins all around.

Jimmy gave me a dull glare but climbed on down and headed out into the sunlight. He knew better than to argue.

Whatever daze the Ormel girls had been in had apparently lifted while we were on our way up the mountain. Ephie and Lolarose were still cowering, but Ephie lifted her chin, giving me her best haughty stare down the length of her dainty nose. "We don't have shoes."

I pinched my mouth tight over a sneer. Of course townie girls would never spend their summers running barefoot. Probably had soles smoother than a baby's backside. But that wouldn't help anybody. I stooped to strip off my own boots. "You can take mine then."

"I am not wearing your filthy barn muckers, Cressaida Montgomercy," Ephie hissed.

My teeth snapped together. I stopped unbuckling my bootstraps and stood up straight. "Well, I need you out of the cargo bin."

They sat there, blinking at me like I had grown antlers.

With a tilt of my head, I gave Ephie my best icy stare, the same one reserved for our mean old lead tiktik cow. "Out. Now!"

Ephie sniffed, but when I didn't move, she licked her lips and swallowed, then gave Lolarose a little push, and the two of them came shuffling forward, climbing down out of the bin, both of them making faces and clucking like startled chickens when their toes touched the damp floor of the mineshaft.

Good. They didn't have to like me, they just had to listen. I climbed on up into the bin and began rummaging through the cargo locker for my set of work lamps.

Doc came down out of his side of the cab, murmuring a kind,"You can sit up front if you'd like. Just try not to bother Beckett," as he passed the girls.

I shoved aside the little whisper of jealousy that crowded my thoughts and lit the lamps, then hung them from the top of the bin, angling the mirrors so the light beamed down on the jumble of metal that was the Mech. Then I waded into Mallush's tool kit, adding a few things to the stuff I kept in the cargo locker. A welding iron. A bunch of clamps. Snips and turnscrews. It took some doing, but I managed to direct wire one of the power cells to the welding iron. Then I got to work, hunting through the Mech's guts for leaks and tears, using bits of metal from the tailgate to patch things here and there. It was hard, hot, detailed work in such close quarters. I was hungry, and sweating, and beyond tired. But the sooner I got answers, the safer we would all be. So I kept at it, reconnecting wires and tubes, resealing flanges, doing my best to cobble the Mech back together again.  

>>>>><<<<<

Nox:

Sunlight warms my skin, glowing through my eyelids. There is sand between my toes, and the steady, lulling rush of water nearby, waves lapping at the shore; gulls keen overhead, their cries moving and wheeling, there and away.

I'm home. I know even before I open my eyes that Marin is stretched out on the blanket next to me, her long brown legs tangled up in mine. Her head rests on my shoulder, her mane of curls cascading over my bare chest. I breathe deep, taking in the clean, peppery, minty scent that always drifts from my wife's hair.

"Dadde, dadde!" My eyes fly open at that high-pitched, giddy squeal.

Marin laughs, already moving, sitting up.

I lift my head, searching, hoping. Our linen half-tent is in the way, the thin fabric blowing in an ocean breeze, but there, through the tassels, a fleeting glimpse of a child's smile and a mop of curling sunbleached hair. A snub nose, and big, glossy, laughing brown eyes that make my heart warm —

... bright orange zigzags scrolling upward

A large conch shell sits heavy in my hands, smooth and cool from the sea. I turn it over to reveal the thick, leathery protective plate clamped tight over the opening of its shell. A stream of water spurts from the small hole in the plate, and my daughter giggles and dances away —

... bright orange zigzags scrolling upward, sparking and flaring

No. I'm not ready. I want to stay in this place of sunlight and laughter. I want to show Keziah the starfish. It is stuck to a rock in a tide pool, and it is a beautiful, vibrant purple, with pale pink at its center and yellow dots along its many arms. She will love it... Marin will love it...

Marin...

Marin...

... bright orange zigzags, separating, scrolling, separating, scrolling, before honing slowly in on themselves to form one single, solid line...

>>>>><<<<<

The sand and the sunlight disappeared in a blinding flash, sliding through my fingers no matter how I clutched at them.

Orange letters flickered to life in the dark.

Left lower leg detached.
Hull integrity: one hundred percent.
Fuel level: one hundred percent.
Arterial energy distribution system operational.
Metabolic system operational.
Respiratory system operational.
Motor system operational.
Stabilization system operational.
Hydraulic system operational.
Temperature control system operational.
Sensory system operational.

Weapons system damaged. System bypass in effect.
Overall operational capability eighty-seven percent.

Cold. Everything was cold. Instead of salt and sand, there was only the smell of stone and earth and old wood. Instead of warm sunlight, I was lying under the harsh white glare of mirrored work lamps.

This between time was always the worst part of coming back. The taste and sound of before lingered, and each time I came back to reality, they got harder and harder to leave behind. Reluctantly, I began going through my self-inflicted re-entry procedure. It had been ten long years since I had been on that beach. I was never going to see that beach again. Marin and Keziah were safe so long as I stayed away. That was what I had to fight for. Not to see them, but to save them. It didn't matter how tired I was. It didn't matter if I was only a shred of myself clinging to the inside of a metal brain. I had to keep fighting the monsters that made me.

Slowly, I let my eyelids part.

Fierce hazel eyes were peering down into mine. Above them, a pair of slashing sandy brows were locked together in a furious scowl. "Alright, Metal Man, you're gonna start talking."

Cress. Her name popped out of thin air, along with a rapid-fire flurry of memories when I pulled up her information. She was not a threat, even if she looked like one to my self-defense protocol. It was lighting up the ion rifle in her hands, outlining it in frantic, blinking red. To be fair, the rifle was aimed at my head, but she wasn't going to use it. She didn't have to. I wasn't going to repeat the mistake of lying to her. "What do you want to know?"

One of those furious eyebrows twitched upward. "Howabout you start at the beginning."

My gaze slid to the man crouching next to her, his skin washed near white by the work lamps. He was whip-thin, with a face a pretty woman would envy, but he had that air of unflinching grit about him that seemed to come part and parcel with life in the colonies. If he had survived in this unforgiving place, it would be foolish to dismiss him in a fight.

Cress caught the shift in my attention and let out an impatient little sigh, gesturing in the man's direction. "This is Doc. He's a friend," she snapped. "Can we get on with it?"

I was flat on my back. With a sigh, I pushed myself up to sit with my back against the boards of the cargo bin. "Alright... The beginning... My name is Nox Reighan. I was born in Daspari, Ronyr, in the year 6850. I think that would be year 56 by the Coalition calendar. I'm somewhere north of thirty. I think. I've lost track. Things get a bit blurry... Anyway. Eighteen years ago or so, I was called up to serve in the Ronyran forces that were sent to the the border during the unrest with Panes and Al-Ipan.

"I was a forward scout marksman stationed with the Ronyran Eagle brigade at Fort Qa'Dan in the Obry pass when the Panesians began their first sortie through the Strait. My scouting partner and I were the ones who carried the news from Fort Qa'Dan to Admiral Lorme's navy in Pordazh Oran. It was brutal. Thirty miles of rough terrain in the dead of winter. But Ronyran scouts are built for running... We made it. Earned scarlet eagles for bravery."

I paused, trying to sort through what I was going to say next.

"I have a wife and daughter... Back home... Keziah was barely four summers old the last time I saw her. I came back from the front, and a week later we found out she had bone fever. There was a treatment, but it was costly, much too expensive for my peacetime military pension. So when Dr. Karodian showed up saying he had tagged me for a special military unit because of my scarlet eagle, and offered to pay for all of Keziah's treatments if I made it through the program, I jumped at the chance."

"It started with physical tests. Then they moved on to mental testing... Trust me when I say the things they did to us made that run through the Barens look like an afternoon stroll on the green... There were only two dozen people who made it through to the end, out of thousands. Turns out I'm really good at not going crazy. I wound up as one of their most promising candidates. Now, ten years later... " I waved a hand at my freakish metal body. "Metal man."

Doc was studying me, eyes wide. "So... you're saying you're not a machine, you're human, and this Dr. Karodian has replaced all of your organs with... machinery?"

"That's about it, yeah. He did the same to the other twenty-three candidates... with limited success. There are only seven of us left. But unlike the others, I found a way to keep them from taking over every function of my brain. I sort of... walled a part of me off. Like a... like a mind fortress. I remember all the tests. I remember who I was. Who I am. I can still think for myself. A blessing and a curse, really."

Cress didn't look impressed at all, although she had put the ion rifle down while I talked. "Those men that came after you. They're not any military I can recognize, so what are they, then?"

Straight to the point. I nodded. "You're right. They're not Coalition, or Illyrian, or anything else, although many of them are planted in the Coalition High Command. They call themselves the Coventry Order of the Ryvengryphe. Which is a big, fancy name for a bunch of people who think the old ways need to be reinstated. Only bigger. And with them in power."

Jimmy spoke up then, from the end of the cargo bin. "So there really is something up on Mt. Malfi, then? All these experiments? It's not made-up scaredy stories to keep kids from going in the tunnels?"

"I think the laboratory was on the other side of Mt. Malfi," I said slowly. Without a map I couldn't be sure. "There was more to it, though. There had to have been a full-on military outpost up there somewhere. I never saw one, but there were too many troops and personnel moving around for it to be just the staff of the scientific compound." I eyed Cress and lowered my voice. "What's worse... If Havier is running around taking out civilians in broad daylight, the Covent isn't hiding anymore. They're going to come after me with everything they've got. I'm their most valuable secret, their biggest weapon. They're not going to let me just walk away."

Cress's jaw ticked. She sat back against the side of the cargo bin and closed her eyes. "We can't stay here, then. We'll have to keep moving." She lifted her hand and scrubbed it over her head, raking her fingers through her hair. "There's nowhere to go, though. Just a whole lot of nothing in every direction until we hit the sea."

Doc pursed his lips as though considering something, then bowed his head. "There isn't nothing," he said quietly. "My uncle is Illyrian. He's been writing to me for a while, now, begging me to come up to the Illyrian settlement. They need all the army medics they can get... There's been some sort of conflict with the Coalition, something to do with an attack in Arritagne that's being falsely blamed on Illyr. The Illyrians are secretly moving troops south along the peninsula. If that's the case, and my uncle is right about the troops, then Illyr's forces could be much closer than we think. Close enough, even, that if we were to go over the mountains, we could meet up with them before these Coventry people catch up to us."

Jimmy looked at his sister. "It would be risky. Mt. Malfi is part of this range. There's no telling where those tunnels lead to."

Cracking an eye open, Cress aimed a sidelong glance at Doc. "That's also assuming the Illyrians don't shoot us just for getting close."

"I doubt they'd shoot us. We'd have him," Doc said, jerking his chin in my direction. "Besides. They've got an army. The Coalition Colonies don't."

"Will Becks make it?" Cress whispered.

Doc was quiet for a moment, just looking at her. Then he nodded slowly. "He stands as good a chance as any. Your little brother is tougher than many grown men I've met. He'll be able to walk tomorrow, and the exercise will actually do him some good, if we can take it slow at first."

"We don't exactly have a choice," Jimmy muttered. "If we stay here he'll die."

After a moment, Cress turned to me. "Is that what you want, then, Nox? Surrender yourself to the Illyrians?"

It had been a very, very long time since anyone had asked what I wanted. I appreciated that more than I could say. Slowly, I nodded. If the Illyrians were gearing up to fight the Coventry, then I would join them.