Chapter 20 – Run. Run. Run. Run.
Glass Canyons – Drift 13
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Run.
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Metal hooves hammer sand in ragged cadence—too fast, too rough.
Exactly like his thoughts.
Every bounce lands wrong, a half-second late, like the machine is thinking about quitting.
He can taste blood in his mouth. Or maybe just iron-packed sand.
Hopefully, just sand.
They recovered the runner he lost. This machine, a hybrid of metal and crystal tech, functions like a mechanical steed, galloping over the sand with a blend of animal grace and engineering precision. Serendipity pinned its location with eerie accuracy. Remulus patched it just enough to keep it moving. He only had two others: his own and the spare for Iliana.
Serendipity brought her own.
They have four again. Exactly what they need.
Dice puts the chance of a total fry-out at “low, but not zero.”
The left handle creaks when he grips it, rust flaking onto his gloves. They’re Serendipity’s gloves. His hands sweat inside, but the grip holds.
His spine rattles. Wrists ache from squeezing too hard. Shoulders throb from the constant shocks.
Every jolt knives through his ribs. His whole body threatens to shake apart.
They’ve been running for two drifts, stopping only for the worst radiation and heat.
It’s mid-morning now. Or maybe early afternoon. The suns cast faint, layered shadows to his left, so probably mid-morning. He isn’t sure anymore.
The air is barely breathable.
Soft sand over rock underfoot.
Serendipity said to outrun the heat.
The goggles Remulus gave him are nearly opaque with dust.
Not that it matters; his vision keeps coming and going.
Mostly going.
White swaths of red desert smear to the side and vanish.
He would laugh if he didn’t think he’d cry first.
Wind claws through his clothes, howling, sharper than he remembers.
He pulls Serendipity’s scarf tight over his mouth and chest.
It carries her scent: mint, metal, and something bright. Citrus leaves, maybe.
He misses the weight of the Mirrora on his shoulders. The fragile, angry little thing that refused to leave his side while he recovered.
Misses how she curled tighter when he was scared, how it steadied his heart. Had to leave her with Dice.
He should feel triumphant because they’re close now, but exhaustion has taken over. Heat without end. Slopes without end.
Thoughts spiral.
What if they don’t find the compound?
What if Hayam was wrong?
He wished he’d stayed at the hut. With Hayam and his biscuits.
Then Serendipity yells. A warning, maybe.
The wind takes it.
He can’t see past the dust rising like wildfire.
And then the silence shifts.
A hum turns to a tremor.
Shellkrats went quiet.
Then the sand moves and the centipedes come.
Lines slither and lurch with an unsettling rhythm, too fast, bodies stretching impossibly long, segmented and glistening like blackened steel. They swarm, leaving trails of shifting sand in their wake, each one the size of a human arm—or larger. The danger is immediate, their mandibles snapping with a sound like cracking bones. Too many.
Shouting erupts around them, but no commands make sense in the chaos. Panic rules.
He brakes too hard. The runner stumbles.
Remulus’s runner slams his.
“Don’t stop!” Remulus shouts, his voice shredded by the wind. “These fuckers’ll eat us alive if we stop. Keep moving!”
Remulus leans over, grabs the side handle of David’s runner, and yanks it forward.
He accelerates into nothing. Eyes sting. Teeth clench.
Just don’t let go.
Ahead, the canyon shifts.
Darkness creeps in, looming, wrong.
The dust thins; a shape appears. No, a gap. A crack in the rock.
Serendipity drops from her runner, yanking it one-handed toward the split.
A knife in the other hand.
The way she moves, with force and precision, twists his gut. She looks unreal.
A centipede lunges. She slices it clean. Another lashes. She moves again.
“Off the runners!” she yells. “Your legs’ll scrape the walls!”
He scrambles down. The runner stumbles beside him.
Remulus hits the ground next, dragging his runner.
Eyes up, scanning. Fast. Focused.
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“Go!” he barks. “Run, don’t stop!”
No time to argue.
David grabs the harness and follows Serendipity into the gap.
The walls close in. Too tight. Too fast.
She’s already ahead; he can barely keep up.
He jerks the reins hard, keeping the runner close.
It bucks once, beeps in protest, proximity warning blaring.
“Come on,” he mutters, breath ragged. “Don’t be stupid.”
The runner snorts, sharp and almost unwilling.
Legs stutter, scraping stone.
Ahead, Serendipity slices something out of the air. She keeps glancing upward.
He almost trips over the runner’s feet as a small knife strikes a huge bug right next to his cheek.
“Focus, Archivist,” she says. “They don’t stop unless you stop them.”
She tosses him a spare knife.
He catches it, barely.
Keeps running.
Bug guts splatter the canyon wall: green, black, slick.
For the first time, he’s grateful he’s half-blind.
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Run.
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This wasn’t the plan.
This is why he doesn’t travel with people.
Orpheus’s cadence slips again. He slams a side panel and resets the gait.
It’s the newest runner in the desert, gleaming like a prize. The black saddle still burns like coals. You’d think I’d have fixed that by now.
Up ahead, Serendipity threads the group through hellfire.
Wind howls. Dust sheets sideways. Even the shellkrats have shut up.
David rides white-knuckled, white-faced.
Iliana.
Where is she?
There—drifting back. Shoulders shaking. Pushing too hard.
Not just tired. Failing.
Of course, she won’t call for help.
Stubborn Sulei. She would rather suffocate than admit it.
He tried to talk her out of this trip. She didn’t let him finish. Maybe she silenced him. Who knows.
She always gets her way—with her life, with his, and now with David’s.
He still isn’t sure if he agreed to bring them here or if she made him.
Everything is a blur after he saw her at the Aurelion docks.
How do you trust anything when every choice might be a whisper in your head?
Shove it down.
Glance back again.
Her hands strangle the reins.
His old suit molds to her frame, helmet sleek, elegant.
Looks better on her than it ever did on him. Of course it does.
Then the sand shifts.
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A hush, then a hiss.
The pack that’s been shadowing them finally goes for blood.
Instinct fires. He surges forward, rams David’s runner with his knee, grabs the side bar, and drags the kid with him.
“Don’t stop,” he snaps. “Keep moving.”
No time for questions.
The canyon mouth is seconds away. Shove David through. Double back for the siren.
Serendipity’s blade flickers ahead: left, right, left. Too clean. Too practiced.
No time.
He shoves David toward her.
“Yours,” he barks, then wheels Orpheus around.
Iliana’s already falling.
Her runner skids. She drops, still clutching the steering bar.
He curses, vaults off, lashes her runner to Orpheus with a quick strap, and hauls her over his shoulder. She weighs next to nothing.
Cracked visor. Cheek implant flashing red. Airway clogged even through the helmet.
“Goddamn it,” he mutters. “Hard fix. Wrong place.”
No hesitation. He runs.
Lungs burn. Two runners clank beside him, one limping.
Add it to the list.
Iliana hangs limp but breathing.
Behind him: the scrape of a thousand legs on stone.
He runs faster.
The canyon gap looms. Too narrow for this mess.
He leans over Iliana’s runner to toggle follow mode.
It’s already on.
“Damn it, woman,” he mutters, tying the pale blue one, the older and quieter runner, to Orpheus.
If they bolt, they bolt.
He hoists her again, like a sack of grain. One arm clamps her legs. Gun in the other.
Centipedes spill over the dune. Slower now.
Close enough to stomp if they get cute.
He steps into the throat of the canyon. Stone swallows the desert’s roar.
One way in. One way out. Perfect kill zone.
Just keep running.
And pray the massive feline from a few klicks back has found something else to hunt.
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Run.
?
She’s running.
Or thinks she is.
Maybe riding.
Hot metal under her hands. The runner bucks, still charging, somewhere behind the others.
Alone in the storm.
She stopped steering a while ago, around when the visor cracked.
Breathing has been a problem for an hour.
Tell them and risk a turn-back.
Don’t tell them, and maybe make it.
She should have said something.
No.
This is bigger than her. She had always dreamed of being part of something more, something that could change the world. She felt David was on his way to doing just that.
But self-sacrifice is stupid.
And she knows it.
Her name tears through the wind. Maybe.
She tries to answer. Nothing.
Wind turns powder-fine and hissing, scratches the visor.
It feels like being underwater, if water were hot, dry, and biting.
The red blur ahead tunnels.
She shakes her head. Vision stays fogged.
The runner Remulus gave her, She Who Screams at the Ocean, keeps moving.
Fast. Clean. Across burning, blistering sand.
She is barely on it.
Thigh straps loose but holding.
Every jolt jerks her body. She stays on.
Follow-mode: still active. Good.
When she falls, not if, they’ll still have a spare.
Heat. Too hot.
She should have stayed with Dice.
The visor fogs again.
The crack spiders wider.
The implant pulses wrong, out of sync with her breath.
Air warm and thin. Not enough.
David’s voice—somewhere. Ahead. Or behind.
Stubborn. Lonely.
She didn’t want to be alone again.
Always alone.
No water. No people. Only traffic and cruel intentions. Innuendo.
Home. She misses it. She’d never admit it.
Regret bites.
Dying in a desert. Funny.
Two suns bake skin with vengeance.
Inside the dark teal suit that smells like grief.
She should have stayed home.
She Who Screams at the Ocean jerks.
She clamps with her thighs; her fingers went numb ages ago.
Balance tilts.
Gut flips.
Tired.
No—failing.
She tries to breathe. Tries again.
Air catches. Won’t go down.
Think of water.
Then silence.
Then the distance from home.
A shout cuts through.
She doesn’t turn. Can’t.
The world narrows: sand, heat, dust.
A hiss behind.
The runner stumbles. So does she.
Then hands: strong, hot, familiar. Lifting, or laying her down.
Remulus, she hopes.
It better be him.
She came all this way to say sorry.
Just once more.
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Run.
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She runs.
Sand slips beneath her feet; her body knows how to move across it.
She’s unmounted three times this hour to read the ground herself.
Shellkrats have gone dead quiet.
The Felidae is close.
If it’s the same one she faced before, maybe they stand a chance.
Otherwise, Remulus better have a bigger gun than the one on his leg.
Underfoot, a low vibration hums through her boots.
Desert centipedes. The Felidae’s second favorite meal.
The desert shifts tone; the air holds its breath.
Nosey would’ve sensed it.
Her runner doesn’t.
A ripple blooms behind Iliana. She doesn’t think. She screams.
And then they’re running.
The canyon rises ahead, jagged and narrow, as if the desert cracked open and never healed.
She’s been here before. It always towers.
Burnt stone juts upward, sharp and uneven, as if the sky clawed at the planet.
Twin suns cast doubled shadows, tightening the path.
The entrance is too small.
Beyond it, the walls cinch like a throat about to swallow.
Behind them: open desert—endless rust dunes and black ridges.
In front: a trap.
A beautiful one.
They ride straight into its mouth.
No other way through.
Open sands offer no cover, no mercy. Only heat and hungry things.
Air tightens.
She’s coming.
Serendipity mounts again and crosses the last stretch, shouting for her group.
No one answers.
Movement turns chaotic. Good.
They should be scared.
She unmounts as the first centipede breaches — chitin splitting the sand with a wet crack, rust-red shell banded in black, pincers snapping with a dry, clicking rasp. A sour, mineral stink rises in the heat, like oxidized metal and rot.
It lunges; she’s faster.
One clean slice, head to tail. The shell parts with a brittle snap, oozing a sticky, stinking substance that makes her gag.
Another tears through the sand, dozens of hooked legs scrabbling in a dry hiss, body rippling like a chain of armored plates. She spins low and fluid, cutting it at the joints.
Muscle memory. Childhood.
Hayam from the ridge: “Tail first—always!”
A third comes from the left. She doesn’t turn. She drives her heel into its neck, uses her boot for leverage, and severs the spine.
Hunting now.
But they’re swarming.
Engines—two runners incoming. Fast. Too fast for this ground.
Remulus barks behind her.
David rides beside him, wide-eyed, clutching his runner like it might buck him.
“Yours!” Remulus shouts, shoving David toward her.
She snags the side bar, then David’s wrist. He isn’t ready—nowhere close—but she yanks him off the saddle anyway.
“Off the runners! Your legs’ll scrape the walls!”
David stumbles. She pulls him behind a stone ledge.
“You okay?” Not kindly.
He nods, chest heaving, eyes tracking the wrong thing—too many legs, too many shadows.
Pebbles skitter from above. Horrifying déjà vu.
She bolts into the canyon; David on her heels.
Outrun the centipedes. Let the Felidae feed on what’s already down.
The path pinches so tight she can barely swing Hayam’s knife.
She tries anyway.
Above, a shadow moves slowly.
It can’t come down this way. Not yet.
Walls too steep. No purchase.
She drives forward.
Glances back—David stumbles, stepping on bugs and bodies.
A centipede rears, pincers flaring toward his head, inner hooks glinting pale and wet. She doesn’t think; she moves before even her tail can react. She pulls a knife from her thigh and throws—
Elbow smacks stone. She winces.
“Focus, kid. They don’t stop unless you stop them.”
She tosses him her last spare knife, then turns, blade ready, and runs.
Slice, move, slice. Grace under burn. Sweat stings her eyes. She doesn’t stop. She dances.
Her tail strains against its wrap. For a breath, she sees it unleashed, glorious—everything she is, set free.
It pulls. She exhales, steadies her breath, and resists temptation.
Maybe next time.
Ahead, light filters brighter; heat brushes her cheeks.
Close.
Remulus shouts behind, words shredded by the wind.
She hesitates.
David slams into her, all limbs and curls.
“Sorry,” he pants.
“What’s happening back there?”
The noise surges before he can answer.
Then she sees it—Remulus charging the slot, Iliana slung over one shoulder, runners tangled by the reins, a storm of limbs and metal. He runs.
Serendipity yanks David forward.
Walls narrow.
Centipedes close.
No time to think.
Then a vibration.
Low. Above.
They glance up but don’t slow.
The canyon mouth spits them into another world—
Greener. Cooler.
Crisp air smacks her face like water.
Scrub grass grips sand. Low trees bow in the wind. A pulse of life fed by rivers buried deep.
They run.
Stumble.
Crash into each other.
Almost fold.
David’s runner beeps.
Remulus grunts.
Iliana stays limp.
But they’re out.
Then the shadow falls.
For a breath, it meets her gaze—knowing. Remembering her scent.
The Felidae launches.
Not a leap: a launch. Muscles uncoil like a spring snapping loose.
It clears the group in a streak of white and violet and lands with bone-cracking force at the slot—
between them and the swarm.
It erupts.
Claws. Fangs.
Chitin splits like dry bark; blood steams on stone.
The canyon becomes a butcher’s pit.
One centipede screams high; the Felidae answers with a roar that rattles bone.
David staggers back. Remulus lifts his gun, squeezes.
Click. Nothing.
“Shit.”
Her bound tail twitches. She can’t—not yet. Not in front of them.
It doesn’t matter.
The Felidae is already winning.
Bones crack. Acid hisses.
Metal. Rot. Heat.
Worse, the sound.
Not a fight. A feast.
“Don’t waste the distraction,” Remulus growls, hefting Iliana higher.
They run.
