by Jenn Reese
ALUNA DOZED NEXT TO CALLI while the kludge bustled around camp, cleaned themselves, and gathered wood for the night’s fire. She could hear them talking as they piled the sticks and blew the embers into flames. Apparently Odd wanted his prisoners close enough to watch whatever ritual he’d be performing.
As the sky started to darken, Dash brought them bowls of food. Then he pulled out a coarse brush from a saddlebag and began to groom Vachir. Vachir huffed and pranced, clearly enjoying the extra attention.
“How is your head?” Dash asked quietly.
“It hurts less than your broken nose,” Aluna said.
Dash had done a decent job washing the red off his hands in the dirt, but his shirt was gone and blood and grime matted his usually perfect hair. The bandage on the bridge of his nose did little to hide the deep bruising across his cheeks.
Dash ran his hand down Vachir’s neck. “I killed one of them,” he said. “It was not my wish, but his hit disoriented me. Ending a life . . . It never gets easier.”
“You helped protect us,” Calli said. “You did the right thing.”
Dash rested his forehead against Vachir’s neck. The horse leaned in to him, offering support. “This is harder than I thought it would be,” he said. “I thought the Upgraders would be evil. I thought I might even enjoy killing them. Karl Strand has earned our hate.”
“Your people thought the Serpenti were evil,” Calli said.
“And the Kampii still think the Deepfell have the blood of demons,” Aluna added. “We’re all good at hate.”
“And blood. And death,” Dash said. He pulled himself away from Vachir and continued to brush her, although his heart clearly wasn’t in the task.
Aluna stared at Squirrel and Pocket and Hoku poking at the fire, at Odd and Mags talking quietly near Zeelo’s body.
“It will all be over soon,” Aluna said. “We’ve gotten so far. We just need to hang on a little longer. You can do this, Dash.”
Dash sighed. “I will do this.”
As the sun set, Odd called his kludge to the fire. The Upgrader prisoners had gags in their mouths, but every one of them was awake and watching, too.
“Zeelo’s gone and died,” Odd said.
Aluna had been expecting something more poetic, but she blamed the Equians for that. The horse folk were practically born being majestic.
Odd continued. “Zeelo fought hard. Served the kludge well. Was loyal as a . . . well, whatever you think is a loyal thing, she was as loyal as that.” Mags and Hoku chuckled. “She cursed better than any old Gizmo I ever knew, and she drank better than most of them, too.”
“To Zeelo!” Mags called.
“To Zeelo,” Dash and Pocket answered. Pocket nudged Hoku, who added, “Yeah! Zeelo!”
Squirrel stayed silent, her eyes alternately scanning the fire and the falling darkness, but no one seemed to mind.
“Now, let’s see what Zeelo says about her ’cycling,” Odd said. He pulled out a small silver stick and pressed a button on the side. An image of Zeelo appeared above the device, flickering and tiny, but moving around as if she were alive.
“So you’re watching this, meaning some blasted Gizmo got the best of me,” Zeelo’s tiny voice said. “Or maybe some coyote or a cough or one of you stuck me with something in the night. No matter. I’m gone, and you get my stuff.”
What stuff? Aluna wondered. Even the woman’s weapons had been just two gnarly old sticks. Nothing fancy or worth anything, except as a remembrance.
“My ears go to Odd,” Zeelo said, “so maybe next time he’ll hear whatever it was that sneaked up and killed me.” She chuckled then, even though the joke wasn’t funny, and Odd smiled. “My left cutting finger goes to Mags, if she wants it, and to Pocket if she doesn’t.”
“It’s yours,” Mags said to Pocket. The boy nodded grimly.
“And my best of best, my beautiful teeth”— Zeelo smiled, showing off rows of pointed metal fangs —“my beautiful babies go to Squirrel. She doesn’t need them now, but later on, she might want more bite.” Zeelo laughed again, and this time the other Upgraders joined her.
“No sad faces,” Zeelo’s video-self continued. “I’m older than most Gizmos, and a lot more handsome, too. About time I had a rest. You all go on with living. Curse my name at dinner, and I’ll know you’re thinking of me. You want my mark, then make it red. A flower. Something delicate and sweet smelling, just like me.”
The video disappeared and the night suddenly became a little darker and a little quieter. Only the fire dared to crackle. Aluna studied Dash’s and Hoku’s faces, but found them still and unreadable. Either they were getting better at playing their parts, or they didn’t find this whole vile tech transfer nearly as disgusting as she did.
“I’ll see to the ’cycling after dinner,” Mags said. “Can’t do all the upgrades while we’re on the move, but I’ll get you your parts for safekeeping until I can.”
“I’ll do the marks,” Pocket said. “Got enough red for Zeelo’s flowers, as long as you don’t want them too big on your skin.”
Aluna thought of the tattoos she’d seen on some of the Upgraders. Odd’s arms were covered in pictures so dense that they blended together and made it look like he was wearing tight, brightly colored sleeves. Did every tiny image represent a person who had died?
Odd walked over and clapped Mags on the shoulder. “We did well today, my fellow mess-ups. We owe thanks to the two new slayers who joined us. I submit that they get first choice of spoils from those they bested.”
“Tech cannibals,” Aluna muttered to Calli. “Scavengers.”
Calli shrugged. “We don’t make a lot of new tech nowadays.” She touched the gold necklace wound around her throat, the one that let her breathe in the thin air of the mountaintops, and Aluna wondered who it used to belong to. “We all rely on the work of the ancients, don’t we? The only difference is that we’re given our tech when we’re born, or during our ceremonies. The Upgraders have to take theirs wherever they can find it.”
“From one another?” Aluna said. She glanced at the Upgrader prisoners tied up nearby. Their metal bits glittered in the firelight.
“It’s life,” Calli said. “It’s not always about honor and friendship. Sometimes it’s just about surviving.”
Aluna looked at Calli, wondering when this hardened warrior had replaced the shy girl Aluna had met all those long months ago. Probably at the moment Calli had gotten stabbed and poisoned and almost killed in the Shining Moon settlement.
“Does anyone want to argue with me?” Odd asked the Upgraders around the campfire. “Any who feel Dash and Hawk don’t deserve what I say?”
Aluna looked at Pocket. That boy knew the truth. He’d seen everything. But he kept his head down, seemed to study some crack in the earth by his feet. She’d been expecting him to betray them, especially now when it was safe.
“I don’t want any spoils,” Hoku said. “You lost a member of your kludge. You choose first. You need the strength.” Only Aluna heard him mumble afterward, “No parts. Not yet.”
“I, too, will pass,” Dash said, his expression dark. Aluna suspected he found the idea of profiting from a kill repellent. Dash only killed to survive, and for no other reason.
Odd shrugged, his massive shoulders barely moving. “More for us, then. This is the order we’re choosing: me, Mags, Squirrel, Pocket, and back ’round again.”
Hoku and Dash came over and sat a few meters in front of Aluna and Calli. Close enough so they could talk, but far enough away to make it look as if they were simply guarding their prisoners.
They watched as Odd and his kludge divvied up their spoils. The list seemed long. Longer than it should have been. When one of the Upgrader prisoners nearby started to grumble, Aluna realized why. Odd was giving away everything — even the tech that belonged to their prisoners.
“Oh, sweet currents! They didn’t list the parts that are still attached,” Hoku breathed.
“What do you mean?” Aluna
asked.
Hoku pretended to talk to Dash. “Odd is giving away the prisoners’ weapons and the tech that can be taken without injury. I thought . . . I thought he might be planning to kill them and take everything.”
“He intends to let them live,” Dash said. “That is a great relief. I am not ready for another fight.”
Aluna glanced at the helpless prisoners who’d tried to kill them only a few hours earlier. “Strand’s Upgraders would have slit their throats, just because it was convenient.” Her brothers and the other Kampii hunters might have done it, too, but she didn’t say that out loud.
“The kludge puts itself in more danger by letting them live,” Dash said, “but it is an honorable decision.”
Aluna watched Odd’s kludge take their new tech and weapons and store them in their packs. There would be no gloating tonight. Instead, they returned to the fire and started telling stories about Zeelo. Some were funny: her loudest fart, her best curse, the time she beat an arrogant young man who’d tried to rob her. Others were heartbreaking. Mags told them all about Zeelo’s three children and how they’d each died. Zeelo had worn their symbols on her chest, drawn directly over her heart.
Sleep came like a whirlpool, trying to drag Aluna under. She fought it as long as possible, not wanting to miss any of the Upgraders’ stories. They didn’t talk like the Equians, but they clearly understood the power of sharing words and memories around a crackling fire.
Hoku said they couldn’t just stop Karl Strand, that they needed to replace him with a more appealing option, or another person bent on world domination would simply rise to take his place. Not for the first time, she was beginning to think that Hoku was right. She was beginning to think that these people deserved better.
HOKU WATCHED THE MOUNTAINS to the north loom a little larger and closer every day. The dry earth beneath his feet grew moist and dark and turned to soil. Hoku loved the cool feel of it beneath his head at night. He loved how green the plants were that grew from it — foliage the rich color of kelp instead of those poor faded shrubs in the desert. Deep in his heart, it made him feel closer to water.
But getting closer to the mountains meant they were getting closer to Strand’s army amassing in the foothills. Hoku liked traveling with Odd’s kludge — at least on the days they had enough food to eat and weren’t under attack. Everything would change when they got to the army, and he worried that by using the kludge to get close to Strand, they were putting Odd, Mags, Pocket, and Squirrel into far more danger than they knew. It ate at him, this worry, but he kept it to himself.
When they reached the edge of the vast forest that sprawled between them and the mountains, Odd paused.
“Hate this place,” Odd said. “Knew a man came through here once. Stepped into the forest on the south side and they found his body three months later on the north side. Dead. Throat sliced. Propped up against a stump, like a message.”
“A message from who?” Hoku said, eyeing the trees.
Odd took a swig of his water. “Someone smart enough to leave messages. Someone who doesn’t care if they make enemies.”
Hoku spotted a squirrel racing up a tree trunk and three bright-blue birds gossiping on a nearby branch. Odd could wade into battle against five foes at one time, and he was scared of a forest?
“If the trees bother you, we could find another route,” Dash said. He tried to make it sound like he had no preference, but Hoku knew that Dash had no love of enclosed spaces. “The forest cannot extend forever. We can go around.”
Mags pulled off her wide-brimmed hat and wiped her forehead. “Yeah, sure. Let’s go another way,” she said. “Had enough of these bugs. My boots weren’t made for mud. Don’t even know what manner of poisonous creatures live in there, waiting to snack on us.”
Mags, too? Hoku eyed the forest with new respect.
“Can’t go around,” Odd grumbled. “Unless you want to arrive at Strand’s after he’s old and buried. Take us weeks, maybe months, to go around woods this size. They follow the mountains in both directions. We go through, or we give up.”
“Then we go through,” Hoku said quickly. He glanced at Aluna and saw her face tight with worry.
Mags muttered a colorful string of words. “Fine. We go through. We’re not the first band of Gizmos trying to make our way to the army. Maybe whatever lives in here got itself killed by now.”
“Double up on the watches from now on,” Odd said. “Hawk with Pocket, Mags with Squirrel, Dash with me.”
Hoku urged Sunbeam into the woods, expecting the horse to resist. Instead, Sunbeam clomped ahead, oblivious to their discussion. Hoku tried to follow the horse’s example.
The trees grew thicker and taller and closer together as they traveled. The sun disappeared behind the thick canopy of leaves for hours at a time. Their progress slowed as Dash scouted ahead, trying to find paths wide enough for the rhinebra. The animal grunted and whined each time it had to squeeze between the rough bark of two ancient trees.
Branches rustled. Birds chittered and called. Strange things howled and barked and sometimes growled. At night, it seemed as if the entire forest were alive and plotting to kill them.
Days blurred into a series of Upgrader stories told while they walked, insect bites, and a variety of stringy, charred rodents eaten over the campfire. Hoku spent his time with Aluna and Calli when he could claim to be checking on them, and with Pocket when he couldn’t.
Sometimes Pocket rode with him on Sunbeam. Hoku had heard the stories behind every one of Pocket’s tattoos, and he had watched Zeelo’s red flower fade from angry red to deep crimson on Pocket’s arm. Whenever he saw it, he thought of Zeelo’s sharp teeth and wicked humor.
One overcast evening, Hoku started to ask about Pocket’s horns again when the boy suddenly sucked in his breath and pointed into the trees.
“Did you see that?”
Hoku scanned the darkening patch of trunks and foliage. “I don’t see anything but trees. Maybe —”
A face. In the bark of a tree. Two brown eyes staring back at him. Hoku gasped.
“You see it, too!” Pocket said. “Maybe my gears aren’t rusty after all.”
Bark. Now all Hoku could see was bark. But how was that possible? He hadn’t stopped looking. He hadn’t even blinked.
“Tides’ teeth,” he muttered.
“Tides what?” Pocket asked.
“Nothing,” Hoku said quickly. “The face is gone now. I swear, I saw it, though. Like it was part of the tree.”
“Shut it,” Odd called. “Whatever lives here decides to come for us, we’ll know soon enough. No use getting yourselves riled over shadows. Keep your eyes ahead.”
“And your hands on your swords,” Mags added.
Hoku looked back and saw Aluna squinting at the tree. She shook her head and shrugged. Calli mouthed, “Sorry!”
Pocket whispered, “I know what we saw.”
That night the air was so cold that Hoku could almost feel the chill through his thick Kampii skin. Pocket shivered under a blanket and poked at the fire with a stick. Not much in the wet forest would burn, but they kept their blazes small just to be safe. Traveling for weeks through a dense forest was bad enough; if the trees caught on fire, they’d have nowhere to run.
Hoku scanned the treetops, letting his dark vision show him animals scurrying from their nests and bats swooping at insects. He saw a raccoon climb up a tree and his heart ached for Zorro. He pictured the little guy following Liu the Dome Mek around HydroTek, growing fat on apples and doing tricks for scruffles.
The owls were talkative tonight, calling to one another from the treetops.
“What do you think they’re saying?” Pocket asked, inching closer to the fire.
“I think they’re flirting,” Hoku said. “Bragging about their feathers, or how fast they can catch a mouse.”
Pocket laughed. “I always imagine they’re talking philosophy. Meaning of life, and stuff like that.”
“Owls with a l
ot on their minds,” Hoku said.
A branch rustled, and then another one. Hoku scanned the area, but couldn’t find the source. He’d never had that problem with his dark vision before.
“I don’t like this,” he said. He pushed himself slowly to his feet. “Aluna, wake up.”
“What?” Pocket asked. “Oh. You’re talking to the fish.”
“She’s not a fish, she’s a —”
And then the trees came alive. A dozen Human-shaped figures dropped out of the sky and landed around camp without making a sound.
Hoku blinked. His eyes thought they were trees, kept tricking him into thinking they weren’t people at all. He caught glimpses of rough, bark-like skin and long, gangly limbs dotted with tufts of leaves. He thought they were wearing strange capes at first, but the voluminous material hanging from their arms seemed connected to their flesh.
One of the invaders hooted to the others and made a motion with its hand. Hoku and Pocket hadn’t been listening to owls at all. They’d been listening to battle plans.
SOMEONE SCREAMED. Aluna bolted awake, her hands already reaching for weapons.
“Wake up!” Pocket yelled again. “The trees are attacking!”
But it wasn’t trees. Strange people darted through camp, thin Humans moving fast as eels but making no sound. They swarmed over the Upgraders’ camp in misshapen clusters, grabbing, yanking, clawing. The kludge was completely overrun.
Except . . . no one was attacking her or Calli.
“Who are they?” Calli asked. “Oh, no. Hoku!”
Aluna scanned the battle until she found Hoku. There. Struggling against an attacker determined to pull him to the ground with a choking wire. She snapped off her wrist bindings and used her arms to drag herself toward him, fast as a seal on dry land.
“They’ve got Dash, too!” Calli cried. “I’ll help him. You save Hoku.”
Calli’s wings unfurled with a snap, and for a moment, it seemed as if everyone in the clearing stopped to look at them.