Harlen crouched on the ridge above the dead town and counted Vael in his head. Nine confirmed kills. Three rigs stripped and rebuilt. The newest one sat clamped over his mouth, glowing red against his jaw, humming when he breathed. He had scorched his own collarbone testing it at ten percent. He wanted to see what it did at forty. The town below had been empty since the first day, when dozens of Vael dropped from the sky and no one but him lifted a hand. Dust filled the doorways now. A weathered building sat pressed against a long slab of red rock, half its roof caved in. Harlen watched that ruin because something inside it was moving. A figure stepped out through the broken doorway. Not a Vael. A woman. Then she turned, and he saw the wings. Stained glass. Colored shards held in lead. They caught the sun and threw red and blue across the sand. Harlen had seen Vael tech glow like that on a scout's back. Close enough. He was already running. He cleared the slope in six strides. She looked up. He fired. The rig kicked. A rope of flame tore across the ground where she had been standing. She was not standing there anymore. The wings snapped open and she was above him, ten feet up, then behind him. Something sharp raked his shoulder and knocked him flat. He rolled, aimed, fired again. She slid sideways in the air and the flame went past her ear. She landed hard in front of him and drove a boot into his wrist. His hand opened. She stepped on the rig's trigger line and pinned it. "Stop," she said. He swung at her knee. She let him miss. "I'm not Vael." "Wings say different." "Wings are glass." She turned so he could see the edge of the left one, sharp as a knife. "A man made them. Not them." Harlen stared. The shards were hand-cut. He had seen Vael work up close. Vael work was smooth. This was seams and solder. She lifted her boot off the line. She did not step back. "You could have burned me," she said. "You didn't check." "I check by shooting." "Change that." He sat up slowly. Blood ran down his shoulder into the dust on his shirt. The rig ticked as it cooled against his mouth. He reached up and unclamped it, let it hang at his throat. "Harlen," he said. "Elina Cross." She offered a hand. He took it. She pulled him up without effort, and he felt the strength in her arm and understood he had survived something. "How many of them have you killed?" she asked. "Nine." "I have people," she said. "We need nine more." Harlen wiped blood off his collarbone and looked at the wings again. He was listening now.

Harlen wiped the blood off his shoulder and looked at the winged woman who had put him in the dust. She stood at ease, wings folded, edges catching sun. He had a hundred questions and no reason to trust her yet. "Nine more Vael," he said. "For what. Who's we." "A camp," Elina said. "Fourteen of mine. Three others holding a fortress. A well. Lights. Walls that still stand." "That's a number, not a reason." "We fight the ones we can. We hide the ones who can't." She met his eyes. "Kids. Old people. A father with a girl. They don't shoot. They breathe. That's the reason." Harlen turned his head and spat pink into the sand. "Sounds slow." "It's slow. It works." She walked past him toward the weathered building against the long slab of rock. He followed because he wanted to keep her in front of him. The wings threw color across the broken adobe wall. "Show me," she said. She pointed at a grey car half-swallowed by drift sand. Dust caked its hood. The windows were blind with grit. "The thing on your face. Show me what it does." He unclamped the rig from his throat and set it over his mouth. It hummed against his teeth. He set it high, higher than he had tried before. He breathed. A rope of fire hit the car and stuck. Paint bubbled and ran. The hood sagged. Something inside popped, then caught, and the whole shell went orange. Heat pushed them both back a step. Harlen killed the flow and let the rig hang. Elina watched the car burn without blinking. "Good," she said. "Come with me. Bring that." "No." She turned. "I work alone," Harlen said. "I've worked alone since the first day. No one else moved. I moved. I keep moving." "You'll die alone too." "Probably." She didn't argue. She looked at his scorched collarbone, then at the burning car, then past him. Her face changed. Harlen turned. A column of black smoke climbed above the ridgeline east of the town. Thick. Fresh. Not brush. Something with fuel in it. "That's not mine," Elina said. "Not mine either." She folded her arms. "You burned me a car. I put you in the dirt. Call it even." "For what." "Walk to the smoke with me. Look. That's all. After that you go your way." Harlen watched the column bend in the wind. Smoke meant people, or Vael, or both. Either way there was something out there to kill or count. "One look," he said. "One look." She started walking. He clamped the rig back over his mouth and followed, six paces behind, close enough to see the shards in her wings shift red and blue as she moved. The car burned behind them. The smoke ahead kept climbing.

The smoke pulled them off the flats and onto a broken road that curved through the dunes. Cracks split the asphalt. The yellow line snapped and started again. Harlen kept six paces behind Elina, rig clamped to his throat, and watched her wings shift color as she moved. The road bent one last time and stopped. Ahead of them the pavement broke off into open air. A sinkhole. Wide as a house. The edges were fresh, still crumbling. Smoke poured up out of it in a slow black column. Harlen dropped flat and crawled the last few feet. Elina folded her wings tight and crouched beside him. Vael came up out of the hole. Two, then four, then more. Purple bodies, too many legs, tails dragging in the dust. They climbed the walls of the pit like it was nothing and spread out along the broken road. "They dug it," Elina said. "From under." "For what." She pointed. A cart rolled up the shoulder of the road behind them, pulled by two more Vael. Dark wood banded in iron. Blue light crawled along the seams. Inside the barred door, Harlen counted three bodies. One was moving. The other two weren't. The Vael steered the cart toward the lip of the hole. "They're feeding it," Elina said. Harlen counted seven Vael on the road. Two on the cart. He set the rig higher than he had ever run it. "I take the cart side," he said. "You take the pit." "Go." He stood up and breathed. The fire hit the two cart-pullers together. They came apart in the flame, legs still running as they burned. The cart slewed sideways and stopped. Harlen swept the line right and caught a third Vael crossing to help. It went down screaming a sound no throat should make. Elina was already in the air. She dropped on the pit crew with the sharp edge of the left wing leading. The first Vael lost its head clean. She landed, spun, and opened the second from shoulder to hip. Glass came away red. The last two ran for the hole. Harlen burned one on the lip. It fell in trailing fire. Elina threw the violet shard she carried at the other. It stuck in the base of its skull. Quiet came down fast. Harlen killed the rig. His collarbone throbbed under the fresh burn. He went to the cart. The lock was Vael work, blue and humming. He shoved the muzzle of the rig against it and gave it two seconds. The iron sagged. He kicked the door. One prisoner alive. A woman, older, glasses cracked, one arm bent wrong. Blood down her front from a hit she'd taken when the cart slewed. Harlen had done that. He knew it as soon as he saw her. Elina landed beside him. She looked at the woman. She looked at the hole still pouring smoke. "We carry her," Elina said. "Now."

The ground shook. Not far. Under their feet. Harlen felt it climb up through his boots and into his teeth. More Vael were coming up out of the hole. "Move," Elina said. Harlen slung the woman's good arm over his shoulder. Elina took the other side, careful of the bent one. The woman made a thin sound and kept walking. They ran off the road toward the abandoned town. They passed the first ruin in twenty seconds. Sun-baked brick, the left side collapsed into rubble, walls leaning at a bad angle. Harlen glanced past it and saw another hole punched in the sand behind a fence. Purple bodies boiled up out of it. Then another hole. Then two more. Every pit fed pursuers into the street behind them. "They dug the whole town," Harlen said. "I see it." The woman coughed blood onto his sleeve. He didn't slow. Elina jerked her head at the ruin ahead. Two stories, doorless, windows like empty eyes. "There. Get her up. I take the roof." They shoved through the doorway. Harlen laid the woman behind a lip of fallen brick where nothing could reach her from the street. She gripped his wrist once, hard, then let go. "Stay down," he said. "Don't move." Elina was already climbing. Her wings caught the light through a hole in the ceiling and threw color across the walls. She went up the broken stair, out onto the flat roof, and stepped off the edge into the air. Harlen turned to the doorway and set the rig high. They came in a rush. Six through the front. He breathed and the doorway filled with fire. Three went down thrashing. A fourth pushed through burning and he swung the flame across its face until it stopped. The next two split around the rubble. He caught one against the wall. The other got a claw into his jacket before he burned its arm off at the shoulder. On the roof he heard Elina working. A wet crack. A body hitting brick. Another crack. She dropped past the window with the left wing leading and opened a Vael from throat to belly on her way down. Her boots hit the street. She spun and threw the violet shard into the eye of the one behind her. Harlen stepped out through the smoke. The rig was hot enough to blister his jaw. He didn't care. He counted as he burned. Nine. Eleven. Fourteen. Elina fought at his back. He felt her wings shift against him each time she cut. They turned in place and the Vael kept coming and kept dying. Then there were none. Harlen killed the rig. His breath came ragged. His collarbone screamed under the metal. Elina stood beside him, chest heaving, red down both wings. "Count?" she said. "Enough for today." Inside the ruin, the woman was still breathing. The street was quiet. For now.

The street stayed quiet. Inside the ruin, the woman's breathing had turned wet. Harlen crouched beside her and lifted her jacket. The break in her arm had pushed bone against skin. Blood soaked the brick under her hip from a wound he had not seen before. "She's bleeding out," he said. Elina dropped down beside them. Her wings folded tight against her back, colored light shrinking on the wall. She pressed two fingers to the woman's neck. "Fast and thin," she said. "Find cloth. Something straight for the arm." Harlen went. He tore through the ruin room by room. A collapsed kitchen. A back office with a rotted desk. He kicked the desk apart and pulled a drawer slat free. Straight enough. In a closet he found a stiff curtain and ripped it into strips with his teeth and hands. Elina worked the other side of the building. She came back with a plastic jug half full of stale water and a length of copper pipe. They knelt together over the woman. "Hold her shoulder," Elina said. Harlen braced her. Elina set the arm. The woman screamed once and then went quiet in a way he did not like. They splinted with the slat and the pipe. They packed the hip wound with curtain cloth and tied it tight. The bleeding slowed. Then it kept going. Harlen watched her face gray out. He had killed things all morning. He could not stop this. "Use the panel," he said. "The one that fixed you." "I don't have it." Elina's voice stayed flat. "It's at the camp." "Then we carry her." "She won't make the walk." The woman's hand found Harlen's wrist again. Weaker this time. Her mouth moved. No sound. Her fingers loosened and slid off. Elina held two fingers to her neck for a long moment and took them away. Harlen sat back against the brick. His collarbone throbbed where the rig had burned him. He looked at his hands. Dust in every crease. Blood not his own. "How many people at your camp," he said. "Twenty four. Children. Old ones. Fourteen who can fight." "And how many Vael in this town alone." "More than we killed." He had counted eighteen kills as his own goal. He had thought that number meant something. He looked at the dead woman and understood it did not. There were holes under every street. There would be another town, and another after that. "I can't do this one at a time forever," he said. Elina waited. "Take me to your camp," Harlen said. "I'm in." Elina nodded once. She stood and offered her hand. He took it. Behind her, the stained glass wings caught the light through the broken roof and threw red across the woman's face. They left her covered under the curtain, and walked out into the street together.