Page 49 of Bride of the Enemy Alien

For three blessed breaths, the desert is only desert.

Then the copper sphere in Rhazek’s burned hand gives one tiny, miserable click. Rhazek looks down and his expression locks.

“No,” he says.

I push myself upright, every muscle shaking. “No what?”

The sphere cracks along one seam. Inside it, a point of green light blinks once.

Not from the dead fragment.

Farther away.

The second point.

Rhazek closes his hand around the sphere, but the light leaks through his fingers anyway.

“The first core did not send,” he says.

The relief hits so hard I nearly sway. Then he keeps talking.

“It woke the second,” he says so softly only I hear it.

10

Rhazek

The second tracker wakes hungry.

It runs through the old scar before the broken core finishes dying in the sand. Not pain. Pain is simple. Pain is honest enough to strike where it means to strike. This is colder, thinner, a wire pulled through flesh that no longer belongs to the one inside it.

The first fragment lies in pieces at my feet. Its black casing has split open, spilling green fire into the red dust in threads that hiss when they touch stone. The warriors hold back. Good. Fear can be useful when it keeps hands attached. Renn has one arm across the younger route runner’s chest to stop him from stepping closer. Syin’s blade remains angled toward me, because suspicion is the only part of this mission he has decided to perform perfectly.

Kessa stands too near the dead core.

She is staring east, not at the fragment, her face tight in concentration. Dust clings to her cheek. Blood darkens one sleeve from the cut she earned when the core burst and spat shrapnel like an angry insect. Small wound. Shallow. Not dangerous, if she keeps distance from the green light.

I know this because I noticed too quickly.

“It woke the second,” she repeats, louder so everyone hears it.

Everyone goes quiet.

“Where?” Syin asks, turning toward the ridge.

Kessa lifts one hand, then stops. She flexes her fingers once as if reaching for a map only she can feel. The humans look at her with worry they try to hide. The Zmaj look at her the way warriors look at a new weapon they have not decided whether to carry or bury. I hate all of them, which is inconvenient because they are not wrong.

“South of the broken cistern markers,” she says. “No. Past that. Lower.”

“Lower?” Syin asks.

“There are shelves under the ridge,” she snaps. “Old collapse lines. Sink pockets. Zemlja channels. Sorry the floor didn’t write labels for you.”

Orek makes a sound that dies before becoming amusement. Syin’s tail lashes once, but he does not waste time being offended. That may save his life.

“We go,” he says.

“No,” I say.