Page 60 of Bride of the Enemy Alien

It’s not hungry, it’s interested and likes shiny.

I spin the token again. It wobbles in a crooked circle, catching red light. The kedi leaves the meat completely and creeps closer, belly low, wings half-lifted, tail balancing every tiny step.

The tracker remains in its mouth.

“Closer,” I murmur.

Rhazek doesn’t move. Syin doesn’t breathe loudly. Lio and Maro look like men watching a cliff decide whether to fall.

The kedi pounces on the token.

At the same time, I flick the third piece of meat behind it.

The kedi turns its head.

The tracker slips from its mouth.

It hits stone with a small, ugly click.

The tracker opens. Not like a flower. Not like anything alive. Like a lock deciding it has enough of the right shape to become a door. Green light slices through the seam. Rhazek makes one harsh sound.

The kedi hisses, finally offended by the game betraying it, and launches up onto Maro’s shoulder. Maro yelps. Lio grabs for him. The kedi scrambles over Maro’s head, digs tiny claws into his hair, and glides to a safer rock with every sign of having survived a great personal insult.

I throw my cloth over the tracker.

“Stone,” I say.

Renn is fastest. He slams a flat rock into my palm.

The tracker pulses under the cloth.

Once.

A pause.

I bring the stone down.

Again.

The casing cracks. A shard of black casing skips sideways and slices Orek’s forearm. He swears but stays back.

Green light spits through the cloth in thin lines. The pulse shivers up my arm, cold under the desert heat. Rhazek drops to one knee beside me, not touching, fighting something I cannot see and can feel anyway because the air around him has become pressure.

“Again,” he says.

I hit it again.

The tracker gives a small metallic scream and splits. A black bead rolls free. Not bone. Not seed. A piece of ugly off-world design no larger than the tip of my thumb.

It flashes once.

Rhazek’s throat flashes with it.

I slam the stone down before thought can slow me and the bead breaks.

Silence.

Real silence this time, or something close enough to trick my shaking hands.