Julius's Arc

Chapter 4 of 5

Julius stepped through the seam in the glass and the door slid shut behind him. Warm air. The smell of solder and old coffee. Then a shape moved from behind a workbench and Julius stopped walking. An older man stood there in a stained yellow jacket and blue-lit goggles pushed up on his forehead. He held a long rifle with a barrel too wide to be human. The muzzle glowed faint violet. It was pointed at Julius's chest. "How did you all survive out there," the man said. Not a question. A demand. Behind Julius, the others filed in. Harlen's hands went up slow. Riley kept her gun low but ready. Tevin leaned on Elina, blood soaking through his shorts. Emmy stepped in last and did not raise her hands at all. "We have a place," Elina said. Flat. "Walls. A well. Twenty of us before the last attack. Fewer now." The man's goggles flicked down over his eyes. The blue lenses brightened. He looked at each of them in turn, then at the dead dish on Julius's belt. "Radio towers," he said. "Old ones. They spit noise on the bands the Vael use to see heat. A camp that size, sitting under a tower cluster, would read as static." He lowered the rifle a hand's width. "Explains why I never found you." "You were looking," Julius said. "I look at everything." He nodded at the dome around them, at the dishes on the roof. "I send a signal. Scrambles their scopes inside a few hundred yards. Anything farther and it thins to nothing. That's why they don't see me. That's why they'll see you the second you leave." Emmy stared at him. "You've been up here alone." "Yes." "That's stupid." The man's mouth twitched. He set the rifle on the bench beside a bin of glowing blue scrap and a hanging welding arm that ticked as it cooled. "Ambrose," he said. "Anybody keeping a kid alive is people I can talk to. And you cleared twenty maws in two minutes. That's people I can use." He crossed to Tevin, cut the shorts open at the thigh, and washed the thorn punctures with something that hissed. Tevin didn't flinch. Ambrose threaded a curved needle and started stitching. "Short range won't save your camp," Ambrose said without looking up. "But I've been building something bigger. A wide broadcast. Enough to blind them across a whole valley." He tied off the thread. "I can't finish it alone. I've tried for two years." Julius looked at the welding arm, the bin of parts, the dishes overhead. He thought of the fortress. Of Thomas bleeding out on the stones. "What do you need," he said. Ambrose pulled the goggles off. His eyes were tired and clear. "Hands," he said. "And a trip back down the mountain."