Petra Vane's Arc

Chapter 10 of 10

The new tent held her table and her tools. But the first cut brought back the old problem. Petra pulled the tracking chip from a woman's shoulder and dropped it in the tin cup. The chip still blinked. Live. Left alone in the open camp, one signal would pull a patrol straight through the tents. She had no wall to throw it over now. No prison yard. Just canvas and sleeping families on every side. She stepped outside and looked at the shelter cluster. Patched tents leaned together in the dark. Rolled bedrolls sat by every door. Children slept behind thin cloth. If a patrol came here, they would tear all of it apart. She could not bury the chip nearby. She could not sink it in a fountain across the whole capital again. She needed the signal gone, far from the sleeping people. The three-legged hound sat by the tent flap. Its crutch leg rested on the dirt. The dog had carried chips before, in small batches, all the way to the plaza. Petra crouched and held the tin cup in front of its nose. The hound sniffed it and looked up at her with tired, gentle eyes. "Not the fountains," she said. "Too close to the towers now. They'll be watching the water." She thought of the flat land past the ruined block. Empty ground. No tents. No patrol routes. "The wasteland," she said. "You take it far out and you drop it. Far as your legs go." She tied a small pouch to the dog's collar. She dropped the blinking chip inside. The hound stood. The crutch leg clicked once on a stone. Petra held its head between her hands. "Don't come back with it," she said. "Drop it and come home empty." The hound limped off between the tents. Petra watched until the dark swallowed its shape. Then she waited. The woman on her table pressed a cloth to her shoulder and asked nothing. Petra listened for boots. She heard only wind against canvas and a baby fussing two tents over. An hour passed. Then the crutch leg clicked outside. The hound pushed through the flap. Petra grabbed the pouch. Empty. The chip was gone, dropped somewhere out on the flat ground, far from any sleeping child. No patrol had turned toward the camp. She let out a slow breath and rubbed the dog's ears. She had her answer now. The prison yard was behind her. The fountains were watched. But the wasteland was open, and the hound could reach it. Every chip she pulled here had a road out. Then the woman on the table spoke. "There's more of us," she said. "A dozen coming tomorrow night. All branded." Petra looked at the one tired dog by the flap. One dog. One trip an hour. A dozen live chips before dawn. She pulled off a glove and started to count the hours she did not have.