Lena Pryce's Arc

Chapter 5 of 5

Lena moved fast across the open flat. Behind her, six lean shapes broke from the treeline. They fanned out, low to the ground, closing the gap. Her prosthetic arm ran hot, a beacon to their heat-sensing eyes. She couldn't outrun them. She needed to kill the signal her own arm sent. Her earpiece crackled. Bex's voice came flat and clear. "They read only heat. Take away the heat, you take away the target." "My arm doesn't have an off switch," Lena said. Her boots slid on wet ground. Ahead, the flat dropped into marsh. Fronds glowed pale blue in clumps, shimmering with soft light. Cold water pooled between them. "The marsh runs cold," Bex said. "Submerge the limb. Water pulls heat faster than air. Your signature drops. But you lose the arm's function while it's under." Lena reached the marsh edge. The pack was forty feet back and gaining. She had one move and no time to weigh it. She dropped to her knees in the shallows and plunged her left arm deep into the cold water. Mud swallowed it to the shoulder. The joints locked. The limb went dead and heavy. The lead hunter stopped. Its head swung side to side. Where a hot beacon had blazed, now there was nothing. The others slowed, confused, sniffing the cold air. Lena crouched still among the glowing fronds, her breath tight, her dead arm pinned in the mud. "Hold," Bex said. "Their scan resets in ninety seconds." Lena held. Water soaked through her duster. Her arm ached with cold she couldn't feel in metal, only in the shoulder where flesh met machine. The hunters circled the marsh edge. One waded a step in, then flinched back from the cold. They milled, lost, then peeled away toward warmer ground and vanished into the trees. She stayed down long after they left. Then she dragged her arm from the mud. It hung limp, slow to wake, fingers twitching as heat crept back. She flexed them until they closed. "You're clear," Bex said. "But the cold trick works once. They'll learn the marsh means nothing. Next time you cross open ground, they'll wait past it." Lena stood. She pulled Wes's slip from her pocket. The route ran on, past the old med station, to the contractor who'd bought the chip and buried it in her arm twelve years ago. The marsh had bought her passage this once. Ahead lay dry, open waste with no cold water to hide in. She checked her scanner. The site sat half a day out. Her arm still ran hot, and it always would. She couldn't drown the heat forever. To reach the source, she'd have to stop running from the pack and end them. Lena wiped mud from the scanner and walked deeper into the wastes, toward the name she couldn't yet place.