Elina Cross came in low over the wall at sunset, wings tilted against the last red light. The stained glass threw color across the sand below her—reds, blues, a green like river water. She banked once to check the ground for heat shapes, saw none, and dropped inside the fortress gate. Her boots hit the packed dirt between the two lookout towers. She folded the wings tight against her back. The left edge caught the light and showed the line she kept sharp enough to cut a Vael arm clean through. She had promised the man who built these wings for her that she would use them well. Tonight she had used them to count roads and watch for dust, and she had come home with nothing solid to give her people. Virginia was already crossing the yard toward her. The older woman had a wrench in one hand and her glasses pushed up her nose. She stopped a pace away. "Mendez and Riley aren't back," Virginia said. "They should have been back an hour ago." Elina looked past her at the archway. The sky behind the scrap wood and sheet metal was going purple. "I flew the north track. I didn't see the jeep." "You didn't see it because it isn't there." "I know." Elina kept her voice even. Fourteen people in this fortress were hers to move and feed. Mendez and Riley had gone out because there were four days of food left. She had let them go. Boots came fast behind Virginia. Thomas pushed between them, breathing hard. His shirt was open over the undershirt, one hand still gripping the doorframe of the shack he'd come from. "Emmy's gone," he said. Elina turned. "Gone where." "Not in the bunk. Not at the well. I checked." He wiped his mouth. "The jeep. She talks about the jeep. She was watching them load it." Virginia closed her eyes for one second. "She stowed away." "You don't know that," Thomas said. He knew it. His hands were shaking. Elina looked up. The first star was already out. Vael hunted by heat, and at night a person on the ground was a candle. From the air she would see nothing but black sand and her own wingtips. "I can't fly it," she said. "Not now. I'd pass over them and never know." Thomas's face broke. "She's twelve." "I know how old she is." Elina put a hand flat on his chest, not to comfort him, to hold him where he stood. "If I go up blind I lead the Vael straight to whatever fire she's near. We wait for light." "Wait," he repeated. "First gray. I'll be in the air before the sun." Virginia nodded once and turned back toward the gate to close it. Thomas didn't move. Elina stayed with him while the yard went dark and the generator lights came on above the towers, and the desert past the wall filled with things she couldn't see.

Elina left the fortress at first gray. She climbed hard until the wall below shrank to a square of shadow, then leveled off and turned east along the track Mendez and Riley had taken. The cold air pushed against the stained glass and threw thin color across her arms. She watched the ground. No smoke. No moving heat. Only the road bending between rock and scrub. She found the jeep in a low wash, tipped half onto one wheel. She circled once. No bodies. No Emmy. She dropped lower and saw the hood: black scorch marks in a line, and a cluster of clean punched holes across the grille. Vael fire. She banked and flew back to the fortress without landing. Harlen was at the gate when she came down. He wore the red rig over his mouth and a bandage on his forearm from the last run. She told him what she'd seen. He listened, then nodded once. "How far," he said. "Twenty minutes on foot from the wash. I'll carry you in." "Do it." She took him under the arms and lifted. He was heavier than he looked. She set him down behind a rock ridge above the wash and folded her wings tight. They went the rest on foot. The jeep sat where she'd left it in the air. Up close the damage was worse. One tire melted flat. Blood on the driver's seat, dry, not much. No shell casings from their side. They had been hit and hadn't fired back. "Ran," Harlen said. "Or were taken." The first vine came out of the sand behind him. Elina saw the petals open before she heard the hiss — a bright pink and orange bloom the size of a dog, teeth ringing a wet mouth. Two more pushed up from the bank of the wash. Thorned limbs braced against the ground. One lashed at Harlen's leg and he stepped back into the shadow of the jeep. "Maws," she said. "Up." She jumped and beat her wings hard. Sand blew off the hood. Harlen didn't run. He turned toward the nearest bloom and the rig on his face lit brighter red. He breathed out. Fire went with the breath — a short, wide cone that caught the flower full in the mouth. The petals curled and blackened. The vine limbs went rigid, then loose. He turned and hit the second one the same way. It shrieked and fell in on itself. The third came at his back. Elina dropped. She brought the left wing down across its stem in one hard sweep. The edge cut clean. The head rolled off into the sand and the mouth kept snapping at nothing. Harlen stood in the smoke, breathing hard through the rig. Elina landed beside the jeep and touched the dry blood on the seat. "They walked out of here," she said. "We follow."

Elina crouched by the driver's door and read the ground. Two sets of boot prints led out of the wash. Then a third mark joined them — a long smear where something heavy had been dragged. She followed it a few steps and found more: parallel drag lines cut into the dry crust, and a set of narrow tire ruts beside them. The tracks bent south through the rocks. "Cart," Harlen said behind her. "They took them." "Both of them. Maybe the girl too." She stood. "South goes to the old mine." He checked the rig on his mouth and nodded. She lifted him again and they went low over the rocks, wings tilted to keep her shadow off the open ground. She set them down on a ridge above the mine. The sign was still there, half fallen, the paint sunburned off. Below, the pit had been widened. A ramp cut into the wall. Carts on rails moved up and down it, pushed by thin figures in dirt-caked clothes. Humans. Working. Elina flattened against the stone and pulled Harlen down with her. They lay there and watched. She counted Vael scouts first. Six at the ramp. Four more at a line of cages built from wood and black metal, the joints glowing a cold blue. Inside the nearest cage she counted eleven people sitting on the ground. She did not see Mendez. She did not see Riley. She did not see Emmy. "Not yet," she whispered. "They're not here," Harlen said. "They're not in that cage. There are three more." A larger Vael came up the ramp. It stood a head above the scouts, purple plates thick across its shoulders, one antenna slow in the still air. A tail dragged behind it and left a clean line in the dust. The scouts turned toward it as it passed. One bowed its head. The big one stopped at the cages and pointed with a clawed hand. Two scouts opened a door and pulled a woman out by the arm. She did not fight. They walked her to the ramp. "Commander," Harlen said. Quiet. "That's the one giving orders." Elina watched the tail cut its line through the dust and did not answer. They stayed until the sun moved a hand's width. She counted guards, shift changes, the gap between patrols along the rim. She marked where the cages sat and where the ramp mouth opened. She fixed the big one's path in her head. "They bring the workers up at dusk," Harlen said. "We'll see the rest of the cages then." "We wait." She eased back from the edge and folded her wings tight against her spine. Mendez and Riley were alive, or they were in one of the cages she hadn't seen yet. Either way, she knew where to come back to. That was more than she had at dawn.

Dusk came and the cages did not. Elina counted the guards again and got the same number. Six at the ramp. Four at the cages. The commander below, still walking his line. Too many for two people. She had known it since the sun moved, but she had wanted to be wrong. "We go back," she said. "We bring the others." Harlen didn't argue. He slid off the ridge on his belly. The red rig over his mouth dimmed to a low ember so the glow wouldn't carry. She folded her wings tight and followed. They moved on foot through the rocks until the mine was out of sight. Then she lifted him and flew low, close to the ground, wings tilted to hide her shadow. She set them down twice to rest her arms. On the second stop, Harlen touched her wrist. "Behind us," he said. "Two ridges back. One." She did not turn her head. She watched the ground and listened. A small sound came from the rocks, then stopped. Then came again. "Just one," Harlen said. "No bead on us. He's not calling the others." "He's learning us," she said. "Where we sleep. How many we are." That was worse than a mark. A mark brought a pack. A watcher brought a plan. She pointed to a narrow gap between two leaning slabs. "You go through. Slow. Loud enough he hears your boots. I go up." Harlen nodded once and walked into the gap. His steps scraped the grit. Elina stepped behind the tallest slab and opened her wings just enough to lift. She rose straight up, quiet, and settled on the flat top of the stone. The Vael scout came around the base a moment later. Purple plates. One antenna. A small humming panel on its belt. It watched Harlen's back and reached for something at its hip. Elina dropped. She led with the left wing. The sharp edge took the scout through the neck before it turned. It fell without a sound. She landed beside it in a crouch, wings folded. The antenna twitched once and went still. Harlen came back through the gap. He looked at the body and at her. "Clean," he said. She pulled the humming panel off the belt and crushed it under her heel. Then she dragged the scout into the slabs and covered it with loose rock. They reached the fortress wall just before dark. Two lookout towers rose at the ends of the scrap and sheet-metal barrier. The archway stood open. Virginia was at the gate with a wrench in her hand. Thomas was beside her, watching the road. Their faces changed when they saw Elina and Harlen. Virginia stepped forward. Then she stopped and counted. "Just you two?" Thomas said. Elina folded her wings. "They're at the mine. Alive. We can't get them with what we have." Virginia lowered the wrench. "Then we bring more."

Virginia called the camp to the yard before full dark. Seventeen people stood between the two lookout towers of the scrap and sheet-metal wall. Elina told them what she and Harlen had seen. Six guards at the ramp. Four at the cages. A commander below. Mendez and Riley and Emmy alive, or alive enough to be worth holding. Thomas spoke first. He kept his hands in his pockets. His beard was still dusty from the maw fight Virginia had pulled him out of days ago. Emmy was his daughter. Everyone in the yard knew it. "We all go," he said. "Every hand." "You don't fight," someone said from the back. "I can carry," Thomas said. "I can pull a body out. I'm going." He did not say Emmy's name. He did not have to. Virginia set the wrench down on a crate. She looked at Thomas, then at Elina. "A mine full of Vael," she said. "With a commander. That's not a rescue. That's a line of us in cages by morning." "They're our people," Harlen said. The red rig over his mouth glowed low. "Mendez took a shot for this camp before any of you knew his name." "I know his name," Virginia said. "I know all of them. That's why I'm saying it. We lose four more, we don't hold the wall. Then we lose the rest." The yard went quiet. Elina felt them waiting on her. She had counted the guards herself. She knew the math Virginia was doing. "I'm going," Elina said. "I saw the cages. I know the ramp. If I don't go, they die in there." "With me," Harlen said. "Two isn't enough," Virginia said. "You told us that yourself." "Then come." Virginia shook her head once. "I hold the gate. Someone has to." Thomas stepped forward. "I said I'm going." "No," Elina said. She kept her voice flat. "If we don't come back, Emmy has no one here. You stay." He opened his mouth. He closed it. He looked at the ground. Elina scanned the rest. Fourteen faces. Most looked away. Two did not. A man near the well with a rebar spear. A woman beside him, thin, with a rifle strap worn shiny. She had seen them both eat with Mendez. "I'll go," the man said. "Me too," the woman said. Virginia looked at them for a long moment. Then she picked the wrench back up. "Load them heavy," she said. "Water first." They worked fast. Canteens. Rope. Two spare knives. A can of the pitch Harlen used for his rig. Elina strapped her wings tight to her shoulders and checked the left edge with her thumb. Still sharp enough. At the archway Virginia caught her sleeve. "Bring back who you can," Virginia said. "Don't die proving me wrong." Elina nodded. The four of them walked out through the open gate. Thomas watched from the wall until the dark took them.