Page 26 of Bride of the Enemy Alien

I ignore him, because if I look directly at him for too long I’ll start thinking about the fear I saw, and that feels like putting my hand into a hole without knowing whether it contains water or something alive.

“The pull is sideways again,” I say. “Same as before. It’s skimming through the old channel ring, not dropping through the floor. If this were leading to the source below, it would feel heavier. Like something under us tugging straight through my bones.”

Adran makes a small sound behind me. It’s not a sound of surprise, more calculation putting on its shoes.

I turn my head enough to glare at him. “Do not look pleased about that.”

“I am not pleased.”

“Right. You’re something worse.”

“Kessa,” Rosalind says, and there’s enough warning in it that I stop talking. Mostly.

The line of light shivers. Little sparks crawl along the cracked stone, gathering at three points around the cistern. One bright. One dim. One barely there. They pulse, then collapse into a shape that looks almost like the basin where Rhazek’s ship crashed. It’s not exactly the same and there are no nice labels or friendly route markings. Just a broken bowl of light, a jagged slash where the ship had fallen, and three scattered points beyond it.

Three.

The count knocks the breath out of me.

“One ship did not make three pieces that far apart by accident,” Virn says quietly.

“No,” Rhazek says.

Syin’s blade rises a fraction. “Explain.”

Rhazek works his jaw once, almost offering another partial answer. Then he looks at the glowing map, not at us.

“The crash broke the loud beacon. That is why you still have walls and not hunters landing on them. But a pursuit rig has more than one tooth. Hull relay. Blood relay. Dead drop, if the pilot expects to not live.”

“Blood relay?” Adran asks.

Rhazek does not look at him. “A phrase, not a confession.”

“That sounded very much like both.”

“It is a system designed by people who assume everyone they send may die or betray them. The ship carries a voice. The fragments carry echoes. Some echoes are stronger than others.”

“And one answered,” Rosalind says.

Rhazek looks at the bright point east of the basin. “One screamed.”

Screamed, like the piece is alive enough to hurt or made by people cruel enough to give pain a function. I don’t know which is worse. The universe has been very busy expanding my options.

The sphere hums and the bright point flares. A thin thread of light shoots from it toward the wall above Adran’s shoulder and vanishes into stone. Penr makes a small, broken sound from the arch.

“Is that toward the City?”

“No,” I say too quickly.

Everyone looks at me.

I breathe through the sudden pressure in my chest. I track the direction the same way I read a weak tile through my boot or a crowd about to bolt before anyone actually runs. The thread isn’t pointing at us. It’s cutting across our old water channels toward the east ridge, then bending south where the ruined cistern markers break into open stone.

“No,” I repeat. “Not at the City. Past us. Around us. Like it’s trying to find a cleaner path.”

“To what?” Rosalind asks.

Rhazek answers before I have to. “Sky.”