We split up. Dylan, Michael, and I turn away from the admin buildings and into the mill proper, the smokestacks looming over us like haunted castles as we pass. Dylan turns us down between them to a set of doors at the end. Retrieving a key, he unlocks one and pushes it open, leading us into a long, narrow shed. Two huge machines line either side, flanking a walkway between them that disappears into darkness. Dylan snaps his flashlight to his rifle, flicking it on.
Our footsteps kick up clouds of dust, which meld with our foggy breath to create wisps and ghosts that drift across our flashlight beams. My eyes dart around. I don’t know if I should remind Dylan that a Nahx could easily jump the perimeter fence if they wanted to, or just tear it open. Surely if these guys have been hunting them, they would know that.
I’m not sure what a grinding shed is, but the machinery is gigantic and menacing, made of bolts and cogs and chimneys. It looks like something out of a steampunk fantasy, complicated-looking, strangely shaped, and bulky. And dark. If a Nahx wanted to hide in here, they could just press themselves against a machine and they might blend right in.
Neck, I think, shoulder joints, knees. A good knee shot makes them fall. A neck hit and they don’t get up. Not right away, at least. Dylan turns us down another aisle, this one weakly illuminated by a set of open doors to the outside down at the end. He stops us, holding one fist up. When he turns back to us his eyes are wide.
“What?” I whisper.
“Supposed to be locked,” he hisses.
This is what happens when you try to find a Nahx in the night.
Dylan looks like he’s going to pee himself; the other guy with the camera still hasn’t opened his mouth. Meanwhile my mind has clicked into high gear, which can be helpful in moments like this because I can think of all possible outcomes at once. About 70 percent of them are imminent death, but that’s just normal operating procedure. Thirty percent are ways to get out of it.
“Back-to-back,” I say, tugging Dylan behind me and turning him so he’s facing away. “Cameraman, what’s your name again?”
“Michael.”
“Stay between us, Michael. We’re going to go back the way we came.”
I click on the tactical light on my rifle, shining it down on the floor. Our three sets of footsteps in the dust wind back along the walkway before turning down the center of the shed. There are no other footprints here, which makes sense. If there’s a Nahx in here, they turned left or right inside the back entrance, which means they could be anywhere.
“Did you lock that door we came in?” I whisper, looking back. Dylan nods without turning. He has his rifle raised; the beam of his flashlight shakes on the walls and machinery.
“If there’s a Nahx in here, he already knows we’re here too,” I say.
“So we ambush him,” Dylan says. “Find his tracks.”
That’s a crazy idea, but it’s also part of every scenario I can think of that has us making it out alive.
We edge back down the passage to the central aisle. I shine my flashlight back along the way we came in, seeing only our footprints there too. Along the other way is undisturbed dust.
“Are you sure that door was supposed to be locked?”
“Yes,” Dylan says tightly. “Garvin put locks on everything for this exact reason.”
There’s a loud bang and the sound of glass breaking from the other end of the shed. Michael swings his camera around, nearly clocking me in the head. Dylan reaches past him to give me a shove, but I’m already running, on pure instinct. The feel of having a rifle in my hands again has turned me back into a soldier, a survivor. A killer even, maybe. Will I take out this Nahx if I get a shot?
The door we came in through is mangled and torn from its hinges—a heavy, oversize metal door, crumbled on the floor like a discarded tissue. Of course I know how strong the Nahx are, so this is just a reminder. I edge forward, every muscle in my body clenched, and poke my head out the demolished doorway. Tracks in the snow lead away from the door in both directions—our tracks and the long strides of the Nahx’s distinctive armored boots, his tracks disappearing along the front of the grinder shed and in between the stacks of logs left behind when the mill was abandoned.
“It’s heading toward the barge,” I say. “Is anyone left there?”
“Just a sentry. AJ.”
“Is he armed?”
Dylan nods.
I need to think, but I don’t have time. This Nahx is behaving strangely. It knew we were in the grinder shed. With only two exits, it would have been easy to corner us and take us out. It’s almost as though it didn’t want to.
Gunfire draws us into the log stacks, running practically blind through slushy piles of snow and sawdust, following the Nahx’s footprints. They stop abruptly when we reach the end of the log yard and the high fence.
I spin, pointing my rifle and light left, right, back the way we came.
“Where’d it go?” Dylan says. “Michael, did you see anything?”
Michael’s eyes are fixed on the viewfinder of his camera as he shakes his head. I’ve got to admire his commitment.
“Who is shooting?!” I shout. Some indistinct yelling from the direction of the lake is the only reply. I tug Dylan back between the log piles. “Let’s circle back.”
We turn and run back down through the slush. Just before we reach the end of the logs a shadow flashes across above us, from one stack to the other.
Dylan spins, raising his rifle. “Was that…?”
I strain to see. High above us, on top of one of the stacks of logs, a shadow moves lengthwise, away from us, before leaping to the next stack, its shape outlined against the gray sky.
“Did you get that?” Dylan asks.
Michael is actually smiling. “Uh-huh.”
These guys are crazy.
Dylan leads us out of the log piles, edging along the ends of the trunks until we’re two rows over. We slide to the ground, rifles and camera raised, trying to be as quiet as we can while we gasp for breath. I start to speak but Dylan pulls me back, hand over my mouth. Michael turns the camera on us and holds it there a bit too long for my comfort. Dylan nudges the barrel of his rifle up toward the top of the log pile, about halfway down the row. If he hadn’t drawn my attention to it, I would have thought it was just a misshapen log.
But it’s the Nahx, pressed down on the logs. I strain to see, but I don’t even think his rifle is aimed at us. He’s not moving, though from the position of his head, I think he’s watching us.
“Take the shot,” Dylan whispers. “He can barely see where you are from that angle.”
He’s right. One of the logs is jutting out, giving me some cover. Slipping down until I’m lying in the muck, I painstakingly nudge my rifle over so the barrel is poking between two logs. I have to hold my head in an intensely uncomfortable position to get my eye to the scope, but once I’ve contorted myself sufficiently I have the Nahx right in the crosshairs. The top of his skull, I think, which won’t work. Even the high-caliber bullets bounce off their helmets. But if he moves his head…
“Take it, Xander,” Dylan says. “You got him.”
My finger curls around the trigger as I click on the laser sight with my other hand. A bright red dot appears on the Nahx’s head. He reacts as though the laser burns him, jerking his head up and scrambling backward over the logs. The red dot glows just under his chin. Perfect.
“Take him, bro! Take the shot!”
I hesitate. I don’t know why except that this seems all wrong. This Nahx shouldn’t be alone. He hasn’t taken a shot at us. In fact it’s almost as though he’s been avoiding us, which makes no sense. The Nahx are brazen. They openly stalk and kill. Stealth is not really their thing, especially when they’re not even shooting.
“Xander…”
The Nahx drops out of sight.
Dylan curses and pushes me off him, leaping up with his rifle raised, running back down the row. Michael chases after him without a word.
“W
ait!” I yell.
Dylan shouts back. “Go around! Cut him off!”
Before I can move the Nahx reappears, jumping down from the top of the log stack, landing between Michael and Dylan with the force of a cluster bomb. They go flying in opposite directions, Dylan rolling toward me. I’m on my feet and firing at the Nahx before I have a chance to think. Bullets ping off his armor as he suddenly turns, leaps right over Michael, who is miraculously somehow still filming, and runs back toward the fence.
“Yeah, you better run, motherfucker!” Dylan yells after him. Both he and the Nahx raise their weapons at the same time and I hear a million different things suddenly—Dylan’s rifle firing, the whine of the Nahx rifle, shouting coming from somewhere, my heart beating in my skull, Michael finally making noise, going, “Oh my God, oh my God,” and a kind of sharp hiss as the Nahx fires a dart. I grab Dylan by the coat and pull him down just as the Nahx gracefully leaps the perimeter fence and runs; with three or four long strides he’s gone, disappearing into the dark.
“Xander!” It’s Michael’s raspy voice. I spin around to see Dylan cradling his bare hand. A Nahx dart lies on the ground next to him. A dark spiderweb of black veins is spreading out from his palm.
“He blocked it,” Michael says. “It would have hit me.” Unbelievably he’s still filming, talking at me through his camera like a rogue reporter in a war zone.
People are shouting somewhere. Dylan is hyperventilating. I fall down on my knees next to him, tearing open his coat and pulling it off. Stripping my scarf off, I tie a tight tourniquet around his upper arm before peeling back his sweater sleeve. A thin sliver of Nahx toxin is inching up his wrist.
“Move out of the way!” Garvin’s voice bellows as he charges on us. As I tumble backward Dylan reaches for me with his good hand. I take it and squeeze as hard as I can, as though maybe I can pull him away from the inevitable. He turns to look at me, stricken, and I watch his face because I don’t want to see what I know is going to happen next.
Garvin raises his machete, bringing it flying down, and cuts Dylan’s arm off just below the elbow, while I’m frozen, holding on to Dylan, letting him scream for both of us.
RAVEN
Wherever I am, the sky is beautiful. It cycles through sparkling, fluorescent blue, soft misty mauve and pink, and deep velvety indigo streamed with ribbons of aurora borealis and sprinkled with stars.
If I’m on earth. The northern lights might be called something else on other planets. The sun, or something like it, rises and falls, bringing short days and long nights. I can’t actually see the sun because it’s low on the horizon over my right shoulder and I can’t turn my head. I can’t move at all.
Only one sun, though, as far as I can tell; that’s a good sign.
I try to keep my eyes open, though it hurts. If I close my eyes, I drift into unconsciousness, and the gaping, jagged hole in the universe is waiting for me, crackling with lightning, pulling my molecules apart. I wake with an agonizing jolt, salt tears stinging me.
At night the darkness is profound, despite the colorful sky. The little firefly creature I stole from the Nahx transport hovers over me some of the time, my only company. They bathe me in a tiny circle of bluish light, like a miniature UV bulb.
“Blue,” I say one night, though the effort makes my lips burn.
The light flickers happily, dancing off. Though my thoughts are tangled and swirling, I note that as the creature’s name and file it away. Blue. I want to ask them to come back, because I’m lonely, but now I can’t make my mouth or tongue move.
The next day it snows. The flakes melt on my face, but I think my body gets coated in a thick white blanket, as though I’m becoming part of the landscape. I manage to open my mouth, which is difficult with what I think is a broken jaw, to let snowflakes wet my parched tongue, more to relieve the discomfort than from any desire to survive. My inability to move, and the scorching fire that lances through every inch of my flesh, suggests that I’m grievously injured. So I wait in agony, expecting the trauma of my fall to finish me off, hoping it does.
I’ve lost everything. It’s time to give up. The Nahx won. We lost.
I lost.
Everything.
My eyes drift shut and capture another terrifying glimpse of the crackling, stygian rift before snapping open again. The tiny light floats above me, pulsing, seeming to say Stay awake.
I try to say “Okay, Blue,” but all that comes out is a hoarse moan.
Things are moving inside me. Bones, muscles, sinew, and cartilage are tugging, pulling themselves back into order. Blood is churning through my veins and arteries like lava, pouring into holes left by shattered ribs and crushed vertebrae. My spine is like a glowing-hot spike from my brain to my pelvis. My head is still fragmented—part of it working on reconstructing my skull, part of it occupied with a kind of reorganization of my brain, as though everything I’ve ever seen or thought or learned is being catalogued and shelved in a more practical order. Maybe this is just a side effect of whatever is happening to my bones, less physically painful but with its own kind of anguish. Thoughts and memories are as clear as a movie screen as they get sorted. So I watch it again. All of it—every mistake, everything, everyone I’ve lost. I see Mom and Jack. And Topher and Tucker. And August.
August carrying me. August feeding me. August holding me while I bled to…
Blue bops me on the nose as my eyes droop.
“Yeah…” I manage, though it gurgles a bit. “M’wake.”
I understand what is happening. I am being reconstructed, body and soul. Whatever is in the darts, whatever turned my blood silver and made me a superhuman, knows how my body parts are supposed to fit together and is slowly dragging them back into place. When this started, in the first few hours, I was sure the pain would drive me mad, but now that a few days have passed, I’ve grown used to it, which in itself is a fascinating discovery.
On the fifth day, just as the bright sky begins to fade into twilight, I suddenly vomit, which would be less catastrophic if I wasn’t stuck lying on my back. Blue zips into my field of vision and vibrates as I choke and cough, before they zip away. I painstakingly turn my head, but the movement causes me to vomit again, my nose and mouth filling with rancid fluid. When some of it dribbles onto the snow beside my head I see that it’s dark silver. Like my blood is now? I’m vomiting blood. That can’t be good.
With supreme effort, I roll onto my side as I hear footsteps crunch through the snow. Seconds later a Nahx arrives on the dune above me. With the bright sky behind him, all I can see at first is his outline—slender, broad shouldered, very tall.
“August?” My voice is barely above a murmur.
He doesn’t answer, but as he steps down the dune toward me I see I’ve made a mistake. This isn’t August. This one is skinnier, gangly, with the loping gait of an awkward teenager. He limps a little as he approaches, glancing down at me for a few seconds, his head tilted to the side. Blue drifts next to him as he approaches.
He drops to one knee, reaching out to touch my head, letting his hands slide down onto my shoulders and arm. After a few seconds he leans back, wriggling his fingers in front of me.
Explain.
My teeth feel a bit loose, but I manage to speak. “Explain?”
No. Move hand. Like this.
I wriggle my fingers to match his demonstration.
Move feet.
I obey, but the effort sends searing pain up my legs and spine. The Nahx ignores my moans, reaching under my back to lift me into a sitting position. The agony of that small amount of movement sets off a bout of uncontrolled trembling. The Nahx seems unperturbed by this. He sits back on his heels and watches me as my aching teeth chatter and my eyes run with stinging tears. Blue lands on my bent knee and flickers there just as I vomit again and eject a stream of gray sludge onto the ground between my legs.
“I think I’m dying,” I croak. The Nahx shakes his head.
No. Sick. You’re letting the sickn
ess out.
I gingerly lean my weight onto my hands in the cold snow and edge myself backward away from the puddle of puke. The pain of that is unexpectedly manageable.
“I’m not dying?”
The Nahx shakes his head again as Blue floats up and zips from side to side.
“Well, shit.” I’m slightly disappointed to receive that unexpectedly optimistic prognosis. “What does ‘letting the sickness out’ mean?”
The Nahx tilts his head to the side, which is so reminiscent of August that I have to flick my eyes away for a second.
Parts of you died, he says, pointing at the puddle of vomit. You threw them out and made new parts.
I look at Blue, who bounces in agreement.
“Is that normal?”
They bounce again.
The Nahx, making a little hissing sound, signs at me.
You understand my language?
“Yes. It’s kind of a long story. Help me up.” After he drags me upright, it takes every reserve of willpower to take a single delicate step. My body is still burning, inside and out, but I’m moving at least, even though the pressure of my feet on the soft sand is like standing on coals.
You’re not broken. I go now, the Nahx says.
As he walks away, I see the reason for his limp. Parts of the armor over his thigh and knee are dented and cracked, the segmented plates no longer fitting neatly together. Beyond him, I can see other Nahx, scattered over the rolling dunes, some wandering, some kneeling with their heads down. When I crane my neck, painfully stretching to see over the rising and dipping hills, I spot some Nahx shapes lying in the snow, seemingly dead. Some of the dead appear to be human too, or formerly human, like me.
“Wait,” I call after him. “Wait! I want to ask you something!”
Blue floats with me. We catch up to the Nahx just as he bends over one of the dead. Clicking something in his armor, he removes some kind of small tool and proceeds to poke at the dead Nahx’s knee. Seconds later one of the armor plates comes away, then another. The limping Nahx uses the plates to replace the damaged parts of his own armor. I watch, fascinated by the thin, tentacle-like tendrils that wriggle out from the Nahx’s knee, knitting together the undamaged plates and sucking them into place. It looks alive somehow, almost sentient, though that idea is too terrifying to dwell on.
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