Page 87 of Alliance
Roav nearly walked into his back as he stopped. The water was moving faster and louder, but the echoes had lessened significantly. A breeze churned the air at their feet. Roav would have walked straight off the end of the tunnel to a long drop if Jharim hadn't been in front of him.
The older bog—man—the oldermanunwound the climbing cables from his chest and hooked them into his shell where anchors rose from his silicone suit. Roav followed with numb digits, his mind completely enthralled with Jharim's movements. How his vents expelled air, his joints clicked, his lenses moved in smooth, rotating angles. He tried to find the parumauxi swarm, reaching out with his sensors while Jharim's back was turned.
"No data halos, Roav," Jharim reminded him.
Roav snapped them off with embarrassment.
A howl rose from the jungle, just audible above the crash of the water. All the revelations around his partner dimmed, their mission taking priority. Sizzle knew they'd escaped, and he was coming for them.
Roav's analysis of the world had shifted under his feet. Everything had changed, but also nothing. They worked in perfect sync, just as they always had. They anchored themselves to the walkway, tipped back over the edge of the cliff, and rappelled down to the riverbank in silence.
As the cables retracted back into their bodies with a high-pitched, dangerouszzzzzzzing,they looked at each other. Jharim's lenses went out just as his did. Their systems followed the same rhythm as they shut down one by one. First filtration, then thermoregulation. Next, quantum speech pathways and their sense of touch, smell, and taste.
They disappeared into the Saphed, sinking to the riverbed step by step. Auxiliary batteries kicked on and their vents opened, feeding off the current, keeping their skeletal scaffolding moving upstream towards the slaver ship's wreckage.
Biological species always forgot that biognostics evolved without convenient charging cables and ports. Wind, solar, and hydro powered them just as well. And it would ensure they remained undetectable beneath the water.
Waiting for the doll to come.
31
Though the break was much needed, Roz and Fásach convinced the girls to return to their pods for safety in the late afternoon on the next day. They whined, but both adults shared glances of concern as time ticked by. While Roz hummed the lullabies she'd been learning to soothe them to sleep, Fás hurriedly packed the needle. His ear twitched as a sudden burst of frenetic music erupted from Roz's mouth and the girls dissolved into giggles. She caught his eye and his ear twitched again.
"Reggaeton, was it?" he asked with amusement. Safia snorted, and the giggles started up fresh. Misila pointed at her and clutched her stomach.
"What? It's the lullaby of my people," Roz shot back. Both of the girls bounced in their strap-ins, mimicking the sounds of the horned instruments with uncanny similarity. All three spent a few moments jamming together before Misila yawned and the music faded away.
They bumped foreheads with both Fásach and Roz, then settled into their harnesses with smiles on their faces.
"We'll be within the hundred mile stretch soon," Roz told him, showing him a map as the needle started up. Her holowell flickered. Fásach glanced at her but chalked it up to blinking. "By the end of the day, as long as the trail is intact. We should start at the eastern end of the stretch and follow the river westward."
"I defer to your judgment," he said, hugging her waist as she warmed up the engine. She stretched open the length of her neck and he buried his nose against her pulse, dragging in a deep breath. As soon as they'd entered the heat of the jungle, she'd discarded the helmet, and Fásach was pleased with it.
But as cozy as it was to sit on the humming engine block with Roz backed up into his groin, the air was thick and still, and his predator-primed muscles ached after an hour. He ran abreast of their stolen vehicle in long bouts, jumping back on its sled when he felt winded. He wanted to wrap Roz in his arms, but she was focused on the trail and both of them were hot. Instead, he used the comb he'd gotten for her to pull tufts of his undercoat out of his pelt, wadding up the remnants in Roz's discarded polar coveralls to avoid leaving a trail of yiwreni fur in their wake.
Their shared silence was peaceful, meditative even. She focused on the trail, and he kept an eye on their surroundings, sometimes sprinting ahead to move debris. It was a silent collaboration that needed no words, and even so, she still chimed here and there. A sneeze, a grunt, shifting on her seat.
Then Roz listed sideways off her saddle. The needle engine whirred with a high-pitched whine, the plasma throttle over-expending fuel without acceleration as the fob looped around her wrist was wrenched from its safety port.
Harmonic vertigo immediately set Fás's heart racing with ice water. His hands and ears went numb as if he was back on Svargapan Samudr with Gil, hearing that horrible screeching warning through his symphony.
"Roz!" he gasped, several meters ahead of her. He dropped the tree branch he'd been dragging off the path and slid on his hip, catching her arm before she rolled down the ditch. The phantom sound of electricity humming through the antenna like angry hornets made his heart pound so hard that his visionblurred. His claws remembered how her coveralls ripped, the wind stealing hot droplets of blood as she dangled from his hand. His grip nearly failed on her wrist before he pulled her up into his arms with a whine of terror.
"Roz," he panted, pushing her curls off her face with harried, trembling fingers. When he uncovered her eyes, dead and vacant, his heart shattered in his chest.
Then the blue light in the back of one of her pupils blinked. Steady, slow...
He crushed her to his chest with a heave of air, rocking her back and forth with her arms hanging limp over his biceps.
"She needs to charge," he managed, his ears pressed back. "It's okay. She's okay," he told himself. "It's just a low charge."
He rocked her in his arms for a long while before he felt comfortable laying her down on the ground to look for a solution.
Fásach downloaded the snow needle's manual, unable to understand half of the gibberish in its scrolling files. He'd never been good with machines. Eventually, he figured out how to use its charge as a powerbank. Built for rangers and heavy-duty off terrain work, it was equipped with an adapter for biognostic riders.
The sun had set by the time Fásach had Roz wrapped in a light blanket to keep the dew away, her head bent forward to reveal the charging port outfitted with her S-Ion Slab4. There was half a slab's charge on that, which she must have been saving for emergencies. He sat down beside her, exhausted, unsteady, and hungry.
Halfway through the night, he killed a sleek, red-pelted animal with u-shaped pink markings. It had big, forward-facing eyes and a long heavy tail made for pouncing and climbing. Whether it was stalking his camp or not, it became dinner. He stacked its offal and other organ meat away from the trail, thenate its steaming liver and heart. All while sitting in front of Roz, staring at the blinking light in her eye, making sure it didn't simply... stop.
