Page 25

Chapter

Twenty-Five

Morgan

M y lungs burned, but I couldn’t stop. Even as I squinted into the first rays of sun teasing the horizon and my vision blurred, I kept running. At least we were free of the swamp. That was something.

After slogging through the marsh, the solid terrain felt strange beneath my feet.

No more sinking into mud with each step, no more worrying about what slithering creatures might be lurking in the murky water.

The air smelled of dust rather than the stagnant, sulfuric odor of the swamp, which I welcomes even as I sucked in greedy breaths.

Tivek was leading the way around the Kronock patrol we’d spotted, but I tried to orient myself by the sky trail of the Drexian ship. Though cloaked with invisibility shielding, its engines left a subtle heat distortion against the sky, like looking through warped glass.

I caught a faint ripple against the dawn, moving toward the tallest of the hills ahead.

“There,” I whispered to Tivek, barely breaking stride as I pointed to the sky. "Moving behind that ridge."

He nodded, adjusting our course slightly. The warmth of the rising sun did little to dispel the chill of dread spreading through me. If we had heard the ship's approach, so had the Kronock.

Stop assuming the worst, I told myself. Drexian pilots are the best. They know they’re flying into enemy territory. They won't be caught easily.

But they didn't know what we knew. From their perspective, they were responding to a distress call. They'd have seen the smoke billowing from the enemy facility, maybe even detected the explosions. They'd be rushing in, thinking they were coming to the rescue.

Flying straight into a trap.

Just like we had.

"Do you—?” I started, then had to gulp for air as we crested a small rise. "Do you have any idea how the Kronock mean to trap everyone here?"

Tivek pressed his lips together, his expression tightening while we ran.

"If I were planning it," he finally said, "I'd target the ships. Destroy our means of escape, then hunt us down at leisure. This planet is isolated enough that no one would receive distress calls if they jammed communications."

Why hadn’t alarm bells gone off when communications hadn’t been jammed around the prison planet? I should have sensed something was wrong, but I’d been so relieved that help would be coming, I didn’t bother to think that it had been too easy.

“They don't need to catch us all at once,” I said, agreeing with his assessment. “Just make sure we can't leave."

We fell silent again, conserving breath for running. The ground had begun to slope upward again. My calves protested, but I pushed through the burn. Every second counted.

A question that had been nagging at me since our reunion with the others suddenly bubbled to the surface.

"Does anyone else call you Tiv?" I asked, the words tumbling out between pants.

Tivek turned to look at me, surprise flashing across his face. Of all the things to ask while racing to prevent a disaster, this probably seemed absurdly trivial. But suddenly, I needed to know.

He shook his head. "Only Deklyn," he said. "And I usually call him Dek."

Something warm unfurled in my chest that had nothing to do with exertion. "I like Tiv," I said. "It suits you. The real you."

The corner of his mouth quirked upward. "You can call me that, if you like."

I ducked my head, unreasonably pleased by this small intimacy. A secret name for a secret agent. It felt right somehow that we had a shared secret in his name.

The terrain grew steadily steeper as we approached the base of the hills. I scanned our surroundings anxiously, expecting to see Kronock troops converging from all directions. But the landscape remained eerily empty.

"I don't see the patrol," I said, not slowing my pace. "Do you think we beat them here?"

"Maybe," Tivek replied, though his tone suggested he found our luck suspicious. "Or they're approaching from the other side."

The absence of enemy forces should have been reassuring, but instead, it made my skin prickle with unease. The Kronock weren't known for their subtlety or patience. If they knew an enemy ship had landed, they should be swarming these hills.

Unless they were waiting for something. Or someone.

We reached the foot of the tallest hill, the one where we'd seen the ship disappear. Up close, it was more imposing than it had appeared from a distance. It was steep and rocky, with patchy vegetation desperately clinging to its sides. The summit was lost in the lingering morning mist.

"We need to circle around," Tivek said, pointing to our right. "There's a natural saddle between these two peaks. If I were landing a ship here, that's where I'd set down."

I nodded, struggling to control my breathing. The combination of thin air, cold, and exertion was making my head spin. We'd been running for what felt like hours, though the low position of the sun suggested it had been less than that.

"Almost there," I murmured, more to myself than to Tivek.

We skirted the base of the hill, moving from the sunlit side into shadow. The temperature dropped immediately, and I suppressed a shiver. The environmental suit adjusted, but there was always a lag.

The ground here was covered in small rocks that shifted treacherously underfoot. I slowed my pace, not wanting to twist an ankle when we were so close to our goal.

"I think I see the saddle," I said, pointing ahead where the hill we were circling dipped down to meet its neighbor.

Tivek nodded. “That must be where Deklyn’s ship and the others are. We’re almost there.”

Relief surged through me. We'd made it. No sign of Kronock. If we could reach Deklyn’s ship in time, warn them about the trap, maybe we could still?—

My next step landed on nothing but empty air.

One moment I was running, the next I was falling.

My stomach dropped as my arms windmilled uselessly in open air.

The shock was so sudden that I couldn't even scream.

My mind registered only a split-second of bewilderment before instinct took over, and I tried to twist in mid-air to meet the ground.

The impact sent shockwaves through my palms and up my arms as I landed in something between all fours and crouch.

Beside me, Tivek hit the ground with a grunt, his Drexian reflexes allowing him a slightly more graceful landing.

"What the—" he started.

I groaned, letting myself roll onto my back.

My wrists throbbed from absorbing the impact, but nothing felt broken.

The drop hadn’t been as far as I’d expected, perhaps only a couple of meters.

I lay there for a moment, catching my breath, then raised my head to look up at the opening we'd fallen through.

It wasn't a sinkhole or natural formation. The edges were sharp, too freshly hewn. My eyes widened as my gaze moved beyond the opening above us.

"Tiv," I whispered, my voice hardly more than a breath.

He turned to follow my line of sight, and I heard his sharp intake of breath.

Was I really seeing this?