Julius sat with his back to a rock and the small dish balanced on his knee. Its blue lights had gone dark hours ago. He was a bald, middle-aged man with tattoos crawling down both arms, and the device on his lap was the only thing that had kept the Vael from reading his heat since the camps burned. He was headed for the mountains because a stranger had told him a man lived up there the Vael could not see at all. Julius meant to find him. The fire pit sat low between the sleeping bags, throwing more smoke than light. Emmy poked a stick into the coals and did not look up. Bethany had already turned in. Harlen crouched at the edge of the ring, the red glow of the rig on his mouth dimmed to a pinpoint. Elina folded her wings behind her and sat across from Julius. Riley cleaned her makeshift gun in her lap. "The dish," Elina said. "Tell us." Julius turned it in his hands. "I didn't build it. I met a man who had one. Traveled with him four days." "And?" Elina said. "It quit. Middle of open ground. Lights just went out." He tapped the rim. "Surprised him more than me. He thought it would last. It didn't." "What happened to him," Riley said. Not a question. "They found him. Not me." Julius kept his eyes on the fire. "Mine still had a charge. His didn't." Riley set the gun down. "The man in the mountains. That's where you heard it." "From him. Yeah." "Say it plain," Elina said. Julius drew a breath. "He told me where he got the dish. A man up in the mountains gave it to him. Said the man didn't need one. Said the Vael don't see him at all. Not his heat, not him. Nothing." Emmy looked up for the first time. "How." "He didn't know. The man he met just said he was safe up there. That was the word he used. Safe." Harlen's rig flared once as he exhaled. "You believe it." "I believe the dish worked until it didn't," Julius said. "I believe someone made it. And I believe he's still up there." Elina studied the dark device on his knee. "How many charges did yours have left before the fortress?" "Two. Maybe." "And now?" "None." The fire popped. No one spoke for a moment. "Then we don't stop," Elina said. "Mountains at first light." Riley picked her gun back up. "If he's real, he can build more." "If he's real," Harlen said, "he can teach us why." Julius set the dead dish down beside his boot. He had told them what he knew. The group had heard it and chosen to keep going. That was the answer he had wanted, and it meant the next miles belonged to him to lead.

They climbed for half a day before the trail ended. Julius stopped at the front, dead dish clipped to his belt. The path narrowed between two rock walls, and past that narrow spot the ground opened into a shallow basin. The basin was full of flowers. Not flowers. Bright pink and orange heads on thorned green stalks, each mouth wide enough to take an arm. A hundred of them, maybe more, packed shoulder to shoulder across the only way up. The nearest one turned its head toward the sound of his boot. "Maws," Harlen said behind him. His rig glowed red. "Whole field." Elina landed on the ledge above them, wings folding tight. "No way around," she said. "Wall drops off on the north side. South goes back down." Bethany pointed past Julius's shoulder. "There." A dark slot in the rock, maybe forty feet off the trail. A cave mouth. "Goes into the mountain." "Or nowhere," Harlen said. Julius looked at the maws. He looked at the cave. "Nowhere is better than back." He was leading. He had said he would. "We try the cave." They moved along the wall in a line. Elina flew low cover. A maw lunged and Harlen scorched its head off its stalk. The rest hissed but did not leave the basin. Julius reached the slot first and ducked inside. The cave went black fast. Tevin came in last, his shackles throwing thin blue light on the walls. He held his wrists up without being asked. Nobody thanked him. He had been quiet since the fortress, a stranger they had picked up who did not seem to want anything except to keep moving. The passage split. Then dropped. A four-foot gap opened over a pit they could not see the bottom of. Julius jumped it and turned to catch Bethany. Elina carried Tevin across in a short, ugly flight, her wings scraping stone. Harlen jumped last and landed hard on one knee. Further in, the ceiling dropped to a crawl. Julius went first on his belly. The dead dish scraped rock. He kept crawling. Somewhere ahead, cold air moved. He came out into light. The others crawled out behind him one at a time. They stood on a shelf of red stone. In front of them the ground split open into a canyon, and across the canyon a rope bridge sagged between two cliffs. Dry bushes lined the near edge. The far side climbed on into higher country. "That's the way up," Elina said. Julius unclipped the dead dish from his belt and looked at it, then at the bridge. Somewhere past that crossing was the man who did not need one. "Then we cross," he said.

They crossed the bridge one at a time and climbed until the ridge broke open. Below them, the ground flattened into a shallow bowl. In the middle of the bowl sat a glass dome, ribbed with metal and traced with blue light. Inside stood a small wooden building and a cluster of satellite dishes. No Vael in sight. Julius crouched behind a rock and stared. He unclipped his dead dish and held it up next to the ones inside the dome. Same shape. Bigger. "Could be him," he said. "Could be nothing. No Vael down there. That's something." "Something," Elina said. Her wings caught the sun. She pointed. "Not nothing between us and it." Julius looked where she pointed. The dome was ringed with maws. Not a hundred like the basin. Maybe twenty. Pink and orange heads on thorned stalks, mouths already turning toward the ridge. "We clear them," Harlen said. His rig glowed red. Riley checked her makeshift gun. "Loud work." "Then quick," Elina said. They came down in a spread line. Elina lifted off and swept in from the side, her sharp wing edge slicing the first stalk clean. The head dropped and kept snapping at the dirt. Harlen scorched the next two before they could lunge. Riley fired once. The round tore through a stalk and dropped it. She fired again. Julius broke left with a length of pipe, cracked a mouth shut mid-strike, then jammed the pipe through its throat. One got Tevin's leg. Thorns bit through his shorts. He went down. Elina dropped from above and split the stalk with her wing. Tevin crawled back, bleeding but moving. It was over in under two minutes. The last mouth twitched and went still. Julius stood in the middle of the ring, breathing hard, pipe wet. A voice came out of the dome. Loud. A speaker somewhere in the frame. "Where did you get that cube." Julius froze. He looked down at his belt. The dead dish. He held it up so whoever was inside could see it. "A man gave it to me," he said. He spoke toward the dome. "Out in the flats. He said there was somebody up here who had a better one. His ran out. He didn't make it." Silence. Long enough that Julius thought the speaker had cut. Then a seam in the glass split. A door slid open at the base of the dome. Warm light spilled onto the dust. Harlen lowered his rig. Riley kept her gun up. Elina landed beside Julius, folded her wings tight, and said nothing. Julius clipped the dead dish back to his belt. He walked toward the open door. Behind him, Tevin limped, shackles glowing faint blue in the fading light. Whoever was inside had been watching them the whole time. He stepped through.

Julius stepped through the seam in the glass and the door slid shut behind him. Warm air. The smell of solder and old coffee. Then a shape moved from behind a workbench and Julius stopped walking. An older man stood there in a stained yellow jacket and blue-lit goggles pushed up on his forehead. He held a long rifle with a barrel too wide to be human. The muzzle glowed faint violet. It was pointed at Julius's chest. "How did you all survive out there," the man said. Not a question. A demand. Behind Julius, the others filed in. Harlen's hands went up slow. Riley kept her gun low but ready. Tevin leaned on Elina, blood soaking through his shorts. Emmy stepped in last and did not raise her hands at all. "We have a place," Elina said. Flat. "Walls. A well. Twenty of us before the last attack. Fewer now." The man's goggles flicked down over his eyes. The blue lenses brightened. He looked at each of them in turn, then at the dead dish on Julius's belt. "Radio towers," he said. "Old ones. They spit noise on the bands the Vael use to see heat. A camp that size, sitting under a tower cluster, would read as static." He lowered the rifle a hand's width. "Explains why I never found you." "You were looking," Julius said. "I look at everything." He nodded at the dome around them, at the dishes on the roof. "I send a signal. Scrambles their scopes inside a few hundred yards. Anything farther and it thins to nothing. That's why they don't see me. That's why they'll see you the second you leave." Emmy stared at him. "You've been up here alone." "Yes." "That's stupid." The man's mouth twitched. He set the rifle on the bench beside a bin of glowing blue scrap and a hanging welding arm that ticked as it cooled. "Ambrose," he said. "Anybody keeping a kid alive is people I can talk to. And you cleared twenty maws in two minutes. That's people I can use." He crossed to Tevin, cut the shorts open at the thigh, and washed the thorn punctures with something that hissed. Tevin didn't flinch. Ambrose threaded a curved needle and started stitching. "Short range won't save your camp," Ambrose said without looking up. "But I've been building something bigger. A wide broadcast. Enough to blind them across a whole valley." He tied off the thread. "I can't finish it alone. I've tried for two years." Julius looked at the welding arm, the bin of parts, the dishes overhead. He thought of the fortress. Of Thomas bleeding out on the stones. "What do you need," he said. Ambrose pulled the goggles off. His eyes were tired and clear. "Hands," he said. "And a trip back down the mountain."

Ambrose finished the stitches on Tevin's leg and stood. He wiped his hands on a rag and looked at Julius. "Come see what I've been building. All of you." He led them through a low door at the back of the dome. The next room was bigger. Cold. A single floodlight hung from a chain. Under the light stood a machine two stories tall. Stone and metal plates, welded and bolted. Flowering desert plants grew up through its joints, thick as arms, ending in spiked pods that leaked something wet. Glowing blue lines ran along the armor. A glass cockpit sat in its chest. Cannons hung from each fist. Emmy stopped walking. Riley whistled once. "I was an engineer before," Ambrose said. "Bridges, mostly. Turbines. When the Vael came down I picked this mountain because I could see their landing site from the ridge. They strip the valley every day. Ore. Water. People." He put a hand on the machine's leg. "This is how we hit them back." "It's beautiful," Elina said. Flat. "Does it work." "No." He walked them around it. He showed the cannons, the armor grown through with thorns that eat heat, the cockpit wired to respond to a single operator. "One problem," he said. "Power. Nothing we make will run this. It needs a Vael core. I have one." He pointed up at the ceiling, at the hum they had stopped hearing. "It's what runs the dome. Pull it and the jammer dies. We light up on their scopes inside a minute." Julius looked at the machine. Then at the ceiling. "So we need another one." "I know where." Ambrose crossed to a bench covered in tools and cleared a space with his forearm. He unrolled a hand-drawn map and weighted the corners with a wrench and a pair of pliers. "Landing site. Four miles down the back slope. They keep cores in a supply shed on the west edge. I've watched it for months. Two guards at night. One inside." "Four miles out from your jammer," Riley said. "Yes." "So we're blind the whole way." "Yes." Harlen leaned on the bench. "How long to install it once we're back?" "An hour if nothing's cracked. Two if it is." Julius put his dead dish on the map next to the wrench. He thought about Thomas. About Mendez. About the fortress with fewer people in it every week. "We go tonight," he said. "Small team. In and out before they know a core's missing." Ambrose nodded. "I go with you. You won't know which one to grab." "Then we make a plan," Julius said. "A real one. Every step. Before anyone leaves this room." Elina folded her wings tight against her back and pulled a stool to the bench. Riley set her gun down. Emmy climbed up beside the map. Ambrose picked up a pencil. They started drawing.