by Jenn Reese
“Wait,” she whispered. “Not yet.”
His shoulders relaxed slightly. She tried to calm her own heart as well. Any fear she showed would amplify his, and Dash’s. Their lives were her responsibility, and she couldn’t afford weakness. At least not when the enemies were less than a spear’s throw away.
The Upgraders shuffled through the entrance corridor and into the room. From below the desk, all she could see were their dust-covered pants. One of them sported hidden-needle boots, like the man she’d fought at Skyfeather’s Landing. Another seemed to have bare feet, but they were made of dull-black metal. Even the toenails! If the Upgraders were Humans once, they’d left that legacy behind them, as sure as the Kampii had left the dry land.
Aluna cast a quick glance over at Zorro. The animal had burrowed into its pile of rags. She wouldn’t have seen him if she didn’t know where to look.
She held her breath. If any of the Upgraders decided to look down, they’d be discovered. And captured. And probably killed. But the Upgraders seemed more focused on their crowbars and their greed. They wandered deeper into the room. One of them smashed his crowbar into the desk a meter from Dash’s head. It bounced off harmlessly, and the Upgrader moved on.
Another man was getting closer and closer to Zorro. He seemed smarter than the rest, less focused on smashing things. She felt Hoku tense. She wanted to calm him, but didn’t dare speak. When the Upgrader reached for the top rag in Zorro’s pile, it was already too late.
“Zorro, play!” Hoku yelled.
The Upgraders looked over at their hiding place. At the same time, every screen in the whole room erupted with sound and color and motion.
“Welcome to SkyTek, our dream for the future!” four dozen voices said at once.
The Upgraders spun around, holding their tools like weapons. Lights flashed as images flickered from every direction.
“Now!” Dash said.
Aluna shoved Hoku toward the entrance and pulled Dash behind her. The Upgraders would see them, no question about it. But would they recognize them as enemies, or just part of the whirlwind of images and sounds filling the room?
Four dozen voices said, “With the world’s population growing past the point of sustainability . . .”
They darted through the corridor and burst into a courtyard outside the building. The day’s light was fading fast. They didn’t have much time before Dash’s poor eyesight would render him useless in a fight.
“The Upgraders came from this direction,” she said. “Maybe we can find the creatures they rode to get to the dome.”
“Good thought,” Dash said. “I have never seen them without mounts.”
She had to yank Hoku’s hand to get him moving. He was staring back at the building, and for a moment she thought he was looking for the Upgraders. Then she remembered Zorro and pulled him a little more gently.
They ran through the dome’s debris, following the Upgrader’s trail toward the rim of the dome. Hoku sniffled as he ran. Dash followed after him and made no noise at all. She checked up on him a few times to see if he was keeping up. He was. And the look of determination on his face told her that she needn’t worry about him again.
They made fast progress toward the edge of the dome. She had no idea if the Upgraders were right behind them. It was safer to assume that they were — safer to keep pushing until they found safety.
“We’re almost there,” she said. She didn’t know if that was true or not, but it seemed like something a leader should say. Her brothers were always telling her how important good morale was on their hunting expeditions.
They reached a towering wall of debris as the last of the sun’s light fled the sky. She tried to find a place to climb it, but the wall was too steep.
“Spread out and look for a way over,” she said.
She made it four meters up in one spot, but she couldn’t find another handhold and tumbled back to the ground. Dash was more tentative as he moved the other way, poking at the pile with his good hand and squinting to see in the darkness. Hoku stood where she had left him.
“Here!” Dash said.
She jogged over. He was kneeling by a filthy rag draped over some garbage at the base of the wall. With his good hand, he pulled the rag aside.
“A tunnel!” she said.
Dash nodded. “You go first. Then the boy. It will take me longer to crawl.”
Aluna’s talons would be useless in the tunnel. She pulled the knife from the sheath on her thigh and clamped the blade between her teeth. Dash and Hoku said nothing. She dropped to all fours and crawled into the darkness.
THE GARBAGE BENEATH Aluna’s hands and feet had been packed and smoothed. Unfortunately, the walls of the tunnel were less groomed. She bumped her head on a metal pipe and felt a sliver of plastic scratch her arm as she wriggled forward. The knife blade in her mouth made it impossible to talk, so she stopped and pointed at the obstacles for Hoku.
The tunnel had obviously been carved for bigger people. There was enough room for her to avoid dangerous-looking debris, now that she knew to look for it. They’d certainly swum through tighter holes and hidden in smaller spots than this back in the ocean.
She heard a whimper from behind her and paused. Behind Hoku, she could see Dash clambering on his three good limbs. But he didn’t look good. Even in the darkness, her eyes picked up the beads of sweat on his face. He jerked his head from left to right. His breath came out in ragged, uneven gasps. Apparently, the horse folk didn’t do well in confined spaces.
She pulled the knife out of her mouth and said, “Keep moving. Don’t stop. Focus on Hoku’s feet in front of you. Nothing else. Just Hoku’s feet.”
She kept the knife hilt in her fist and crawled forward, faster. Hoku kept pace with her — he’d always been agile, like a crab scurrying over a coral reef. He shifted from side to side, just as she did, trusting her to avoid the worst of the dangers.
They moved fast, but it wasn’t fast enough. They were losing Dash. His breathing had become labored, and Hoku had been forced to grab him by the hair and pull in order to keep him moving.
“Tell me about the horse folk, Dash,” she said.
No answer. Hoku looked at her, his brow furrowed with worry.
“Tell me about your mother,” she tried. “Or your father.”
Dash gulped and shook his head.
Too personal. He had some pain there, and now was not the right time to stir it up. She kept them moving while she tried to think of something else to ask.
“Tell us about running across the desert,” Hoku said. “Tell us about sunsets.”
They crawled another few meters before Dash started to speak.
“The sun,” he said, his voice cracking, “she commands the sky. She is our great mother, gifting life and granting death as she wishes. At night, she abandons us to darkness so that we may understand the world without her. We make bonfires and let our bodies become one with the cold. Our word-weavers tell stories to lure her back into our sky. They take turns sleeping so that their stories last the whole night, until the great mother returns and again grants us her gifts.”
His voice was not only stronger; it was beautiful.
“Were you a word-weaver?” she asked.
Silence, and then, “No, though I would have liked to be,” Dash said. “Many things would have been different had that path been open to me. But it was not meant to be.”
Meant to be, she thought. So many things were meant to be. She shouldn’t have been creeping through some tunnel of garbage trying to escape from an ancient, broken-down dome full of once-Human scoundrels. She was meant to be in the ocean, swimming around with her grown-up tail.
“I smell fresh air,” Dash said.
She hadn’t noticed, but he was right.
“Quiet now,” she said. “If the Upgraders came this way, they probably left someone behind to guard the exit.”
They crawled the rest of the way silent as sharks. Ahead of them, a rag hung across th
e tunnel, flickering firelight haloed around its ragged edges. Aluna crept slowly to the exit, sheathed her knife at her waist, and pulled aside the cloth.
A few meters from the tunnel exit, a monstrous animal stood grazing on scrawny tufts of grass sticking out of the packed brown dirt of the plateau. She’d seen animals like it in a picture book Hoku and Calli had shown her back at Skyfeather’s Landing. Its thick, armored body was striped black and white like a zebra. But unlike that slender animal, its legs were stout and muscled, more like tree stumps. And instead of a horse’s head, it had the round skull of an ancient rhino, complete with wicked metal-tipped horns.
Hoku and Dash crouched behind her. When the fresh air hit Dash, he sighed.
“What is it?” Hoku asked.
“No idea,” she whispered.
“It is a rhinebra,” Dash said. “A beast of burden. They can carry and pull great weights and are more aggressive than smaller pack animals.”
“Great weights?” she said. “It’s got a saddle. Do you think it can hold all three of us?”
Dash snorted. “It could carry ten of us and not even notice.”
“Okay,” she said, “then we’ve got a plan. Follow me.”
She stepped out of the tunnel before either of them could protest and snuck toward the rhinebra.
“Better be heading home after this smash and grab,” a woman’s voice said from the other side of the animal. “I need a fix-up. My skin’s itching fierce.”
Aluna froze.
“There’s no medtek in the wide world with skills wired enough for fixin’ you,” a male voice said with a laugh.
“Shut it,” the female Upgrader said. “No unmarked noob gets to high-talk me about tech.”
As long as they kept talking, everything would be fine. Aluna beckoned to Dash and Hoku. They tiptoed out of the tunnel toward her. She held a finger up to her lips, and they nodded.
“You hear something?” the woman said.
The man grunted. “You’re the Gizmo with the full-gold ear. You tell me if I’m supposed to hear something.”
None of them moved. None of them even breathed.
“Probably Pebbles chewin’,” the woman said finally. “Stupid striped cow.”
Aluna shared looks of relief with Dash and Hoku. Dash took another step forward and reached for the rhinebra’s reins.
Behind them, something squeaked.
A small gray streak of fur galloped out of the tunnel, raced across the ground, and launched itself into Hoku’s arms, chittering happily.
Hoku hugged Zorro to his chest and tried to cover the little creature’s mouth with his hand. “Zorro, quiet!” he whispered.
Aluna cursed under her breath. The animal had fallen silent immediately, but so had the Upgraders. She crouched low and readied her talons. The smooth metal weapons warmed quickly in her palms.
“Get on the animal! Both of you!” she said. “I’ll hold them off and catch up when I can.”
HOKU HUGGED the raccoon tight. He never thought the little guy would escape the Upgraders in the dome. What a good boy! Zorro licked his chin.
But now, thanks to Zorro’s noisy entrance, they had a whole new set of problems to solve.
The first Upgrader jumped out from behind the rhinebra. She was huge. Her arms bulged muscles, and tattoos covered every inch of her exposed skin, including her slick, bald head. One of her hands had been replaced with a sleek black blade. In the other, she held a gun that dripped fire.
“Look out!” Dash yelled.
Hoku ducked, sheltering Zorro with his body. A short spear whizzed over the top of his head. The male Upgrader had climbed up the other side of the rhinebra and was using it as a shield.
“Aluna’s right!” Hoku yelled. “Let’s get out of here!”
Aluna’s talons were already spinning. The female Upgrader spewed fire at her. Aluna rolled left, her thin talon chains cutting through the gout of fire as if it weren’t there. A slash of blood appeared on the Upgrader’s cheek, and she stumbled back, surprised.
Hoku scurried under the rhinebra’s belly. The man shooting spears switched targets to Dash. Hoku heard the horse-boy say something to the rhinebra, and the massive animal started grunting and shifting its weight. The Upgrader had to stop shooting in order to hold on.
Zorro scampered up Hoku’s arm and clung to his shoulders while he danced between the rhinebra’s tree-trunk legs. Something bopped Hoku in the head. A rope ladder! He grabbed the bottom of it and looked up. A half-dozen rungs higher was the male Upgrader’s foot.
The rope ladder was attached to a saddle, and the saddle was attached to the rhinebra with straps . . . straps that were fastened right in front of Hoku.
He grabbed the first of three straps and yanked. Nothing happened. He tugged harder. The strap budged ever so slightly.
“I don’t suppose you’ve got superstrength,” he whispered to Zorro. The raccoon tilted his head. “Didn’t think so.”
Dash was still talking to the creature, commanding it to keep hopping around. But Hoku knew that as soon as the creature tired, the Upgrader clinging to its side would recover his balance and shoot Dash and Aluna.
Hoku grabbed the strap with both hands, took a deep breath, and pulled as hard as he could. The fastener wiggled. He widened his stance, using his feet to push against the earth for more power. He never could have done that in the ocean, but up here, gravity had its uses. He pulled again. The rhinebra jerked up suddenly, and the strap popped free.
He used the creature’s erratic movements to help loosen the next fastener. As soon as it popped open, the third strap snapped. The thick leather whipped across his face. He reached up to touch the bridge of his nose and found it slick with blood.
Zorro squeaked. Hoku looked up and saw the saddle twisting off the rhinebra. In a second, he’d be face-to-face with that horrible Upgrader. Unless . . .
He jumped and tried to grab the flailing straps, hoping they would pull him up the rhinebra’s flank as the saddle slid off the other side. The straps slapped him in the face instead.
The Upgrader grunted as he hit the ground, then yelped as the immense saddle fell on top of him. Hoku scrambled to the rhinebra’s head and found Dash guiding it by the reins.
“The Upgrader is down, but only for a flash!” he said.
Dash nodded and said something to the rhinebra. The huge creature bent its foreleg. Dash hopped up onto its knee and clambered onto its back, the reins still clutched in the hand of his good arm. Hoku scrambled up after him.
“Wow,” Hoku said. Had Dash really told this animal what to do — and it had listened?
“Sit behind me and hold on,” Dash said.
“No, we can’t leave Aluna,” Hoku said firmly.
“I have no intention of leaving without her,” Dash said. “Hold on, or you will find yourself on the ground again.”
The rhinebra’s striped fur was too short, and everything worth clinging to had gone overboard with the saddle. Hoku had no choice but to grab Dash around the waist.
“Here we go!” Dash said some strange words to the rhinebra and jangled the reins toward the left. The creature reacted instantly.
Aluna and the tattooed Upgrader woman were still fighting. Hoku watched her send a searing cone of fire toward Aluna. Aluna dropped and rolled forward. She tried to kick the flame shooter out of the Upgrader’s hand, but it didn’t budge. It was attached! The Upgrader swung her bladed hand down, but Aluna dodged. The black sword plunged into the earth right where Aluna’s head had been.
“Hurry,” Hoku said to Dash. His heart stuttered so fast that he could barely catch his breath. Don’t get skewered, he thought at Aluna. Don’t get skewered!
Dash turned the animal around and whispered to it again. The rhinebra threw back its head and roared. It wasn’t the high-pitched giggle of a dolphin or the distant weeping dirge of a whale. Its bellow crashed over them like a tidal wave.
Aluna and the female Upgrader both looked up, dazed.
Aluna jumped to her feet. She whipped one of her talons through the air and sent it flying toward the rhinebra. The thin chain wrapped around the biggest horn jutting out of the creature’s forehead.
“Go!” she shouted back.
Dash urged the rhinebra into a trot. The ground thundered with each of its steps. Aluna ran beside it, stumbling, but using the talon chain to keep her balance.
Flames licked Aluna and the rhinebra as the female Upgrader recovered her senses. The creature bellowed again and launched into a full gallop. Hoku grabbed Dash tighter. Zorro seemed safe enough clinging to the creature’s mane. How Dash was staying upright using only his legs was a mystery.
A spear whizzed by the rhinebra’s flank. Another nicked Dash in the ear. Both the Upgraders were up and chasing them now. Aluna ran and tried to jump onto the rhinebra’s head. She got one hand around its horn. Her legs dangled off the side as the creature galloped.
“Hold on!” Dash yelled.
The horse-boy urged the rhinebra even faster. Hoku could feel the animal’s muscles bunching and springing. He could barely keep his hold on Dash.
Aluna’s legs dragged along the ground. She tried to pull herself up, but kept slipping even farther down the rhinebra’s horn.
“Can’t make it,” Aluna panted. “Go . . . without me!”
“No! We will not leave you here,” Dash said.
“You’re strong. You can do it!” Hoku urged. If he could barely keep his own seat, how was he going to help Aluna?
“Do you have any ideas?” Dash said to him. “We are running out of time.”
Hoku looked back toward the dome and saw the Upgraders racing straight at them on another rhinebra and a terrifying black creature with eight legs. They were far behind, but gaining ground.
“Surrender,” Hoku said. “Maybe we can reason —”
“No!” Aluna screamed. “Do it, and I’ll . . . kill you both . . . myself!”
Hoku caught a flash of tawny wings in the sky.
An Aviar!
The Aviar dove faster than he believed possible. So fast, all he saw were feathers and a streak of brown hair. A moment later, she was lifting Aluna to the rhinebra’s back, tucking her wings, and grinning at him.
