Page 19

A sudden crack split the night—sharp and final, like ice breaking on a frozen lake.

Twenty yards to our right, a fissure opened in the sand, blue-white light spilling upward from depths I couldn’t measure.

The glow illuminated the desert in harsh relief, casting everything in sterile, clinical brightness that felt wrong against the natural darkness.

“Legion protocols,” Rhaekar growled, positioning himself between me and the light. “Active scanning.”

Through our bond, I caught his meaning with crystal clarity. The tech wasn’t just awake—it was hunting. Searching. For me.

Another fissure opened to our left, then another beyond it.

The desert was splitting apart, revealing veins of artificial light running beneath its surface like luminescent blood vessels through pale skin.

With each new crack, the humming intensified, vibrating through my bones, making my teeth ache.

“Let’s go.” Rhaekar grabbed my hand, his grip firm but gentle. We began moving away from the spreading light, our pace quick but measured. Running would waste energy we’d need for the long journey ahead, but dawdling wasn’t an option either.

I glanced back once over my shoulder. The fissures had connected, forming a geometric pattern that reminded me of circuit boards or ancient petroglyphs—precise lines and angles that had no place in the natural world. The pattern was expanding. Growing. Seeking.

My skin crawled with the certainty that we were being watched by something inhuman. Something that calculated and assessed with cold efficiency.

“Can it track us?” I asked, my voice sounding thin against the desert’s growing chorus of mechanical awakening.

“Yes,” Rhaekar answered simply. “But not quickly. Not yet. The systems are old, degraded. It will take time for them to fully reactivate.”

Time we could use to put distance between us and whatever was waking.

We moved like shadows across the dunes, our steps quick but controlled.

Rhaekar led the way, his superior night vision and desert knowledge guiding our path.

Our bond hummed between us, a golden thread that kept us connected even when we weren’t speaking.

I could feel his heightened senses—the way he processed scents on the wind, the subtle vibrations through the sand, the distant sounds my human ears couldn’t detect.

“Stay in my footsteps,” he instructed, voice low. “The sand here is loose. Easy to leave trails.”

I followed precisely, placing my boots where his had been.

Behind us, the network of glowing fissures continued to spread, geometric patterns splintering across the desert floor like cracks in glass.

The blue-white light they emitted felt wrong—too sterile, too cold against the natural darkness of the night.

“What exactly are we running from?” I asked, breath coming in controlled bursts as we navigated a steep incline.

Rhaekar paused at the crest, scanning the terrain ahead. “Legion containment systems. Automated drones and sentinels programmed to capture and examine anything anomalous.”

“Like me.”

“Like you,” he confirmed, helping me up the final stretch. His hand lingered on mine, the contact sending reassurance through our bond. “But they’re old. Sluggish. We have the advantage of speed.”

No sooner had the words left his mouth than a mechanical whine cut through the night air.

We both turned to look back across the basin we’d just crossed.

Something was rising from one of the larger fissures—a slender metal pillar that unfurled like a deadly flower, extending upward until it towered fifteen feet above the desert floor.

At its top, a sensor array rotated slowly, scanning methodically in widening circles.

“Shit,” I breathed.

“Perimeter marker,” Rhaekar explained, pulling me down into a crouching position. “It’s establishing a containment zone.”

Through our bond, I caught glimpses of knowledge—technical schematics, training briefings, field reports about these systems. The markers formed the boundaries; what came next would be the hunters.

As if responding to my thought, the ground thirty yards from the first marker bulged upward.

Sand cascaded down as something pushed its way to the surface—something metallic and articulated, with multiple limbs and a housing unit where a head should be.

It rose fully from the desert floor, shaking off sand like a dog coming in from rain, its movements unnervingly organic despite its clearly mechanical nature.

“Sentinel unit,” Rhaekar growled, the sound vibrating through his chest against my back. “Mark II. Crowd control and capture.”

The sentinel swiveled what passed for its head, a ring of sensors glowing the same eerie blue as the fissures. It began to move across the sand with surprising grace, each leg finding perfect purchase despite the shifting terrain.

“We need to move. Now.” Rhaekar pulled me up, guiding me toward a jagged rock formation half a mile east. “If we can reach those outcroppings, we can mask our heat signatures.”

We half-ran, half-slid down the back side of the dune, using its bulk to shield us from the sentinel’s sensors. I could feel Rhaekar’s strategic mind working through our bond— calculating angles, evaluating risks, formulating and discarding options with military precision.

“What happens if those things catch up to us?” I asked, though part of me didn’t want to know.

His grip on my hand tightened fractionally. “They’re designed to subdue and contain. Not kill. But their methods aren’t…gentle.”

More sentinels were emerging now, at least five that I could count, spreading out in a search pattern from the central marker. Behind them, smaller units skittered across the sand—disc-shaped machines that moved like crabs, leaving faint blue trails of light in their wake.

“Trackers,” Rhaekar explained, following my gaze. “They detect biochemical signatures, residual energy patterns. They’ll be looking for yours.”

We reached the base of the rock formation just as one of the trackers changed direction, heading toward the path we’d taken across the dunes. Its blue sensor light brightened as it picked up our trail.

“It’s found us,” I whispered, fingers tightening on the rifle strap.

Rhaekar’s eyes narrowed, his calculating gaze taking in our surroundings. “Not yet. It’s found where we were. Come.”

He led me into a narrow crevice between two massive sandstone boulders.

The passage twisted sharply, opening into a small natural chamber barely large enough for the two of us.

The stone walls would block our heat signatures, and the winding entrance would prevent direct line of sight from the trackers’ sensors.

“How long can we stay here?” I asked, setting down my pack.

“Not long,” Rhaekar answered, positioning himself so he could see the entrance while keeping me behind him. “But long enough to let the first wave pass.”

Through our bond, I felt his tactical assessment—the positioning of the sentinels, their likely search patterns, the optimal timing for our next move. His mind worked with impressive efficiency, mapping escape routes and contingencies.

“I can feel you strategizing,” I said, pressing a hand to his back.

He glanced down at me, a hint of surprise in his eyes. “The bond is strengthening. You’re adapting to it quickly.”

“Is that unusual?”

“For non-Rodinians, yes.” His tail curled around my ankle in that now-familiar gesture of possession and comfort. “It suggests the compatibility between us is…exceptional.”

A surge of warmth flowed through our connection—pride, affection, something deeper I wasn’t ready to name. It momentarily eclipsed the danger surrounding us, reminding me that amid all this chaos, we’d found something rare and precious.

The moment shattered as a mechanical whirring sound passed by our hiding place. Through a crack in the rocks, I glimpsed a tracker unit sliding past, its sensors pulsing with blue light. It paused, rotating as if tasting the air, then continued onward.

“They’ll double back,” Rhaekar murmured, his voice barely audible. “We have minutes, not hours.”

I nodded, swallowing back fear. “What’s the plan?”

“We wait for the main search group to move northwest, then we head east.” He pointed toward where the twin moons hung low on the horizon. “There’s a dried riverbed two miles in that direction. If we follow it south, it will lead us toward the outpost.”

“And put us farther from the Legion tech?”

His expression tightened. “No. The entire region is honeycombed with buried systems. But it will take them time to activate units in other sectors. Time we can use to reach the outpost.”

I processed this, looking for angles he might have missed. “What if we used the tech against itself?” I suggested. “Create false trails, mislead the trackers?”

Interest sparked through our bond. “What do you have in mind?”

“You said they track biochemical signatures. What if we leave some of mine going in the wrong direction? Hair, skin cells, maybe even...” I hesitated, then pushed forward. “Blood. A few drops on some rocks heading northwest.”

Rhaekar studied me with new appreciation, the tactical part of his mind immediately grasping the strategy. “It could work. Confuse their tracking algorithms long enough for us to gain distance.”

We quickly assembled a decoy kit—strands of my hair wrapped around small stones that could be thrown, a cloth wiped across my forehead to collect sweat, and yes, three precious drops of blood from a small cut on my finger, smeared on a piece of fabric.

“This,” Rhaekar said, pressing his forehead to mine in a gesture that sent warmth rushing through our bond, “is why fate brought us together. You see solutions where others see only threats.”

The compliment settled in my chest like a physical weight. No one had ever valued my mind quite this way—as an equal partner in survival, not just someone to be protected.

When the sentinel units had moved far enough northwest, we slipped from our hiding place.

Rhaekar deployed our decoys with precise calculation, creating a false trail that led away from our actual route.

We then headed east as planned, keeping to hard rock when possible to minimize footprints, moving swiftly but cautiously through the night.

The bond between us served as an early warning system—his heightened senses detecting dangers before they became visible, my intuition filling in gaps his military training might overlook.

We functioned as a seamless unit, communicating without words, anticipating each other’s movements with uncanny precision.

As we crested a rise that revealed the silvery line of the dried riverbed below, I cast one last look behind us. In the distance, the desert glowed with unnatural blue light, expanding outward from where we’d been. The Legion tech was fully awake now, searching, hunting.

Hunting me.

“We’ll make it,” Rhaekar said, reading my fear through our connection. His hand found mine, fingers interlocking. “Together.”

I squeezed his hand, drawing strength from the certainty in his voice, in his soul that now brushed against mine. The danger hadn’t lessened. If anything, it had grown. But so had we—becoming something stronger, more resilient, more determined than either of us had been alone.

“Together,” I agreed, and we descended toward the riverbed, the first step of many on our journey to safety.