deliberate.
This was sabotage.
I know without a shadow of a doubt that it wasn’t Miri or Saelis, but there are always others down in the engines. I dodge them every time I head to the hangar. Engineers, other trespassers like me. Did one of them follow me to the hangar? If they did, why do this?
Why try to kill me?
Did they know who I was?
It doesn’t matter, of course. Soon, I’m going to wish I’d died in the fall. I’ll slowly starve to death, unless the poisoned air or water does the job first.
I’m going to die. Here. Alone.
I may be doomed, but my body hasn’t figured that out yet, and it keeps moving. I reach for the wrist of my wounded arm so I can take off my chrono and turn on its light, then lean back into the cockpit to dig in the storage compartment for the scarf I use on colder days. I hold the chrono’s strap between my teeth so I can aim the light as I wrap the scarf around my right arm in a pretty terrible bandage, panting by the time I’m done, pain racing all the way up to my shoulder.
I swipe to turn the light off again before my night vision is completely ruined, but then I remember—my chrono. It’s not just a handy flashlight.
My heart pushes up into my throat and swells three sizes as I reach with one trembling finger to swipe the screen. You can use a chrono to send a message all the way from one end of the archipelago to the other. Maybe it can reach Alciel from Below.
The display springs to life, projecting my options above my wrist, and for an instant my heart soars. I can let them know I’m alive! I can—
I can do nothing.
Because my chrono’s offering me a fraction of my usual options.
CALCULATOR TIME/DATE BIO-FEEDS SCAN PICS NOTES MESSAGE ARCHIVE
And that’s it. Anything that requires a signal—my current messages, my news feed, even the weather and wind forecasts—is unavailable. No help is coming from above.
I drop my wrist to my side, turning to take in my surroundings. A sweep of stars lights the sky above me. The lake around me mirrors the stars and clouds, and at its edges, darkness looms.
There are no real stories about Below, only legends. But every one of them speaks of desolation. A few speak of unnatural beasts, savage and brutal, and as if the thought of them is a summons, I hear a steady splashing away to my left.
Something’s out there—and coming this way.
My chest tightens, and suddenly, despite the inevitability of it, the realization hits me: I don’t want to die. Not now, and definitely not like this.
I wade as quietly as I can toward the back of the Skysinger—the front is still smoldering—and press myself in against her, hoping I can crouch in the shadows and avoid the thing’s notice. I’ve seen birds, but never an animal except in pictures. Is that what this is? What can it do? Can it see in the dark? Can it smell me?
As it splish-splashes closer, I realize it’s no taller than my knee, and covered in striped hair all over its body. A long tail trails behind it, held up in the air to keep it dry, and its eyes seem to take up most of its face, though there’s still room for a long, pointed nose. I press back into the glider’s side as the thing marches toward me, and with a soft trill, stops right in front of me.
The noise doesn’t sound like it wants to kill me, but for all I know it’s about to unfurl a long, poisonous tongue and zap me with it.
“Hey, little … uh, thing,” I murmur cautiously, trying to figure out whether to lunge right or left if it suddenly becomes hostile.
It blinks at me when it finds out I can make a noise, the movement slow and deliberate, and then it sniffs at me once and burbles cheerfully, as if it’s replying.
Maybe it is? I have no idea how intelligent animals are. Could it understand me?
“Don’t suppose you can point me to the nearest mech shop?” I ask, huffing a laugh at my own joke, and just the tiniest, tiniest bit, hoping it’ll surprise me by answering.
It trills again, eyes reflecting the faint starlight as it blinks up at me. And then in an instant it’s moving, turning to scamper away across the water, sending out ripples in every