Page 92 of Alliance
Within one heartbeat, I was gone.
34
A persistent transmission originating in the colony warped through Roav's sensors, bringing him out of sentinel mode. He punched one of the pistons in his chest in a rhythm like a marine mammal, letting the sonar echo through Jharim with one sentence.
She is here.
For the first time in days, Roav and Jharim's lenses glowed to life beneath the current of the Saphed River. They turned their heads towards each other, assessing as their cold, watery interiors warmed up, vibrating the water sluicing through their vents. Fish rushed by as their joints thunked and calibrated, sending shockwaves through the riverbed that kicked up debris and rotting plant matter.
Their heads emerged from the water, the glow of their stares reflected off its racing surface as they marched up the bank, dripping in the late morning light. A call and response sounded out over the trees: an unknown yiwreni buck and Sizzle, making their locations known.
Making it easy for the biognostics to find their target.
"Systems check."
"All systems clear."
"Jettison on mark," Jharim said with the practice of a leader. Both men synced, opened every vent, and whirred to a deafening roar. The vibration blurred their figures as waterexploded off their casings, out of their interiors, peppering the jungle foliage like buckshot from a shotgun. Instantly, they were dry.
And then they were ghosts, their heavy footprints disappearing into the jungle.
?
Fásach whined, clutching his antlers in a panic. Roz was gone. Justgone.He lifted his nose to the air and took a deep breath. The jungle had such a strong scent that it was hard to track her—
There.Hejustcaught it. The smell of burning plastic and lubricant. Roz was hurt.
He sprinted in the direction of the gut-wrenching odor, so desperate that he didn't notice the thundering gait catching up to him until it was too late.
A black and red blur bowled him over, rolling over and over, hitting trees and tangling in underbrush. He ripped himself out of a clawed grasp and roared down at a snarl of a thousand teeth.
Scocite.
There was no beating Sizzle's size. The bilong was a maelstrom of chaos and horror, standing seven feet tall when all four legs were on the ground, let alone when he stood on two. His y-shaped mouth opened all the way down his neck to his sternum as if the bisected jaw of a python had been combined with that of a dissection scar. And when his claw whipped out and threw Fásach down, he nearly engulfed the buck's waist in a single palm. He was a massive killing machine, and his saliva was dripping into Fásach's fur as he wrestled to get free.
Sizzle smashed him into the ground and dislocated his shoulder like he was a doll. He bared down on Fásach until there was no air left in his lungs, and the yiwren poundedhis fist against his guildmate's forearm in a grimace of painful surrender. A gesture that he ignored entirely.
"Who thefuckare you?" the bilong hissed, his teeth clicking as they zipped opened and closed with impatience. Fásach's hackles rose, and Sizzle's returned the gesture, shivering with menace.
" Fás," he croaked between failed gulps of air. "F- fás 'g."
"Bullshi—" Sizzle's holotab binged and his ears perked as he rotated to see the notification. Just like that, the animosity flipped on a dime. "Ooo, just got your message." Then he squinted at the snap of Fásach's family. "Is that Rosy Turner? I thought she kicked it."
A familiar red venandi crashed through the trees, skidding to a stop with wide eyes, his hands up in the air.
"Ay, don't eat 'em!" he yelled at Sizzle. "That's Fás!"
Sizzle huffed smoke from his nostrils. "I know. I'm movin', I'm movin'."
Fásach coughed, pulling air into his lungs with a painful gasp. He rolled to his knees, gathering his strength as Vin knelt in front of him.
"Hey, man. Good to see you!Weirdto see you. But, ah, still good."
Fásach shook his head, tresses waving wildly. His limbs shook as he tried to calm down enough to smell Roz again, one arm limp in his lap. "Mythuais,"he panted. "She ran. Please, help me find her."
He looked up at Vin and Sizzle, his vision shaking. Whether it was from exertion or fear, he couldn't say. He gripped the soil at the skepticism on his friends' faces, the way Vin's mandibles were unusually still.
" Fás, is she... Is it really, you know." He rubbed the back of his neck. "Fuck, man, you know what I'm asking, right?"
