Page 130 of Bride of the Enemy Alien

I really, really hate maybe. Visidion drives the point of his weapon into the exposed conduit and twists. The metal splits. Rosalind throws ash into the opening. The green light sputters.

It looks like enough. Then a thin thread slips through the ash and shoots upward. Not a beam. Barely light at all. A single green line climbing into the red glare.

“No,” I groan.

Rosalind smothers the conduit with another handful of ash while Visidion rips the metal free and crushes the glowing interior under his heel.

The light dies, but it’s too late, and we all know it. Every one of us looks up.

Nothing happens.

The suns burn. Dust moves over the ridge. Somewhere behind us, the zemlja rolls deeper beneath the desert.

Penr reaches us, breathing hard.

“Did it send?”

Rosalind doesn’t answer immediately.

“That wasn’t the proof packet,” I say.

“No.”

“So they don’t have the map.”

“No clean map.”

“The City?”

“Not cleanly.”

“Epis?”

“Not cleanly.”

I glare at her. “You are using that word too much.”

“Because I don’t know what survived the break.”

That is worse than no. Rhazek stands beside me, blood drying dark along his throat. The command anchor beneath his throat plates is quiet. Not gone. Quiet.

His hand hangs close to mine without touching, so I close the distance myself. His fingers turn around mine.

I close my eyes because that is all I can afford. When I open them, Rhazek is watching me.

“Home,” he says quietly.

The word hits harder than it should.

“Yes,” I say. “Unfortunately.”

He looks amused. Then a sound cuts through the sky. Thin. High. Wrong. Every head on the ridge lifts. The chime comes again, so faint I could almost convince myself it is metal cooling somewhere behind us.

Almost.

Rosalind’s face drains of color. Visidion’s wings spread. Rhazek’s grip closes around mine.

Above the twin red suns, where I can see nothing but glare and empty blue, something answers the signal we failed to kill.