Father Desmond Crane knelt in the sand and pulled another strip of Vael-tech from the heap. Three years in the wasteland had taught him where the scavengers missed things. The pile in front of him was mostly rust and grit, but jagged plates of dark alloy poked through, and one of them was a shoulder mount he had been hunting for weeks. He tucked it into the harness on his back, beside the half-built wings he was carrying across the flats. The wings were for a young woman named Elina. He had never met her. He meant to find her, and he meant to arm her before the Vael did what they always did. His collar itched against the sunburn on his neck. The collar still worked in trade camps and mercy houses; out here it meant nothing. Out here he carried a sharpened pipe across his knees and watched the road. The road was a cracked ribbon of packed sand that ran past a wind-carved cavern shaped like a broken skull. He had used the cavern for shade an hour ago. He had left boot prints. He had left sweat. A click carried across the flats. Desmond froze. On the ridge above the cavern stood a Vael scout, small and purple-plated, one antenna twitching toward him. A red lens on its chest pulsed once. It had his scent. It tilted its head, almost curious, and then it opened its mouth and screamed a signal to whatever else was listening. Desmond ran. The wings on his back clattered with every step, half-finished struts biting into his spine. He cut off the road and drove for the broken rocks past the cavern, where the ground turned to shale and a scent trail might break. Behind him the scout came down the ridge in loping bounds, faster than a man, faster than hope. Desmond did not look back. He clutched the pipe in one hand and the harness strap in the other and told himself that the wings were what mattered, that Elina was what mattered, that he only had to live long enough to reach her. He made the shale. He kept running. The scream behind him had already been answered from somewhere ahead.