Jax Benassi's Arc

Chapter 1 of 2

Jax crouched low behind a dune and watched the red lights blink on the tall monitoring tower. Its sensors swept the sand in slow circles. Every sweep marked who moved and who stayed. He needed to cross into the next sector before the hoarders buried their tracks, and the tower made that nearly impossible. A bright butterfly with huge glassy eyes drifted past his shoulder. It landed on a wire of the glowing boundary fence and did not burn. Jax stared. The creature's wide eyes blinked, then it lifted off and floated through a narrow gap between two panels. The wire there flickered, dim and weak. He marked the spot in his head. A dead patch. A way through. But crossing alone in daylight was suicide. He needed Theo to know the plan, and he needed a drop point that no patrol watched. Jax moved back through the dunes to the small armored post tucked between two ridges. He slid a folded note through the slit in its door. Inside the note: one line about the weak panel, one line about the hour, one line asking Theo to leave a sign if he agreed. By dusk, a chalk mark waited on the post's plating. Theo had read it. Theo would cover him. Jax pressed his palm flat to the cold metal and let out a slow breath. That night Jax slipped through the dim panel while the tower's beam swung wide. He reached the next sector with sand still on his boots. Behind him, an alarm began to whine. The lights on the tower turned from red to white. They had seen something cross.