Page 17 of Fated to the Fang

I could tell her the floor of her town is a road, that the cold she felt under her own hand on the step was real and has a name I won't say even to myself. She'd believe some of it if she could use it, but ask how I have that knowledge, and there's no answer that doesn't reveal the rest. She'd have everything at once, no ground to stand it on, and carry it into the world where the wrong species would learn she had it.

I have a choice that really isn't one. Keep the truth, and she hunts blind potentially hitting what's already mapped for her. Or give it to her straight, and I lose the last thing she may still believe of me: that every lie was meant to keep her breathing, not keep her small.

The window goes dark. I stay until I hear her heavy breathing. I don't decide tonight. I only stand there with the lie still in my mouth, listening to her breathe, and understand that silence has stopped being shelter.

13

AVERY

The cooler won't latch. I slam the lid twice before the gasket seats, and the bang is more satisfying than it should be. Tissue kits on ice. Spare collars. The tag reader, two knives, the GPS I checked three times because it kept my hands busy. I pack like the gear has wronged me.

Owen's on the floating dock as I carry the last crate down, camera across his chest, thermos in one fist.

"You've got a face on," he says.

"I have a normal face."

"Don't lie. Your face says you lost an argument and didn't get the last word in."

"Cradle Skerry." I drop the crate into the skiff. "Haul-out's read empty five counts running. I want eyes on it before the grant office writes my colony off as relocated."

"And you invited me for my sparkling company."

"I brought you because you see things in frames before I see them in water. Get in."

The crossing takes forty minutes. The engine takes over the silence so I don't need to. The skerry is a low gray spine, the old research station hunched at the north end—two sheds and a service landing the university capped a decade back. Seals should be stacked on the ledge in the dozens. There are just seven. They lift their heads when we climb ashore and don't settle.

"They're acting weird," I say.

"Define weird."

"Animals like that relax when they're hauled-out. These are scanning like they're afraid."

Owen's already photographing the sheds. The gravel is churned, and the science arrives before the fear does. Two parallel grooves, deep, dragged from the upper shed toward the landing. Not seal—seals push divots, not rails. Something heavy and rectangular went over this ground more than once.

"Owen. Long lens on the landing rail."

He frames it, then lowers the camera slow. "Call me, O, please. I hate Owen. Why's it clean?"

He's right. Salt-scaled iron everywhere, except one four-foot stretch wiped to bare metal, and in the seam the wipe missed, a brown crust.

"That's blood," I say. "Cleaned in a hurry."

In the tide pool below, a glint. I fish out three transmitter collars, straps cut. Not chewed. Not failed. Cut, the tags pried off and gone. My animals.

"Mine," I say. "Someone harvested them."

O turns toward the upper shed and stills. "Avery—crate marks. Same waffle press as the harbor."

Rectangular pressure beds in the wet gravel, waterproof cases set down in rows. A stencil on the shed door, half scrubbed: SALTLINE, and a string of numbers under it.

"It's a schedule," I start. "A handoff point. Somebody runs cargo through here and knew the colony would be gone, knew the island would be empty. I think they knew when I'd come."

That's when the seals bolt. All seven go off the ledge at once, bodies striking the water in a hard, panicked scatter. Not tide. Not noise from us. Something else.

O turns toward the upper shed and raises his camera.

"What?" I ask.