The blast ripped through the hive, a pulse of anti-light that tore sound out of the air. I was thrown against the wall; heat and cold fought across my skin until both gave up.

  Bǎo retaliated instantly, hurling a streak of Starlight through the darkness. The beam carved a clean line across the Jet’s torso—no blood, just steam. She didn’t flinch.

  She laughed louder.

  “You brought me food that glows!” she shrieked. “So thoughtful!”

  Her tail shot forward, striking like a whip. Bǎo blocked with her sword but the force sent her sprawling. The stinger sank into the floor beside my head, hissing acid that ate through obsidian.

  Oruun extended a hand; gravity folded upward, pinning the Jet’s body halfway to the ceiling. Wings flared, scattering dust.

  “Oruun,” she hissed. “I’M GOING TO CRUSH THAT FAT HEAD IN MY JAWS!”

  Oruun’s face didn’t change, but his knuckles whitened. “You’ve made a mistake. Now that you’re a Three Aberrant, you’ve lost your mind.”

  “Sorry, my dear, but you’re the one who’s lost their mind if you think you can kill THE Obsidian Jet.”

  She shattered the gravity field with a shriek, dropping like a spear toward him. The impact cracked the floor. Oruun staggered but caught her wrist mid-strike, twisting it until bone split. Black fluid hissed and smoked where it hit his arm.

  I scrambled forward, half-blind, half-angry. The seed in my shoulder pulsed again, sending roots through the broken floor. They tangled around her tail just long enough for Bǎo to rise and drive her sword through the base of the spine.

  The Jet screamed, high, metallic, ecstatic, and tore herself free.

  In a split second, I caught Oruun’s eyes in the dark.

  “My, aren’t you a beauty,” she hissed. “But scrap metal can never compare to ME, I’m a natural masterpiece, darling.”

  “Good,” Bǎo said. “I’ve always hated pretty girls.”

  She struck again, twin arcs of pink light crossing through the dark. The Jet stumbled, claws catching the ground for purchase. Her laughter broke into fragments, part joy, part grief.

  Oruun moved to the center of the chamber, opening a small gravity core from his belt. Blue light swirled out, forming a narrow cylinder that hummed with impossible pressure.

  “Arata,” he said, eyes still on the Jet. “Get Bǎo clear.”

  “I can fight—”

  “Not with one arm and half a heartbeat. Go.”

  For once I didn’t argue. I grabbed Bǎo’s sleeve, dragging her backward as the Jet lunged again, shrieking words that sounded like reversed prayers.

  Oruun raised his hand; the field expanded, wrapping her in a halo of bending space. Her wings beat wildly, shredding themselves against invisible walls.

  “Bug eyes!” she screamed. “You think you can throw me away again?”

  “Yes,” he said, and closed his fist.

  The field inverted. Air imploded, light folded, and the Obsidian Jet vanished in a bloom of compressed gravity, ripped upward through the roof of the hive, into the sky, into orbit.

  For a second, the tunnel’s ceiling glowed gold-white. Then only dust fell.

  Oruun stayed still, hand trembling. “Transmission complete,” he muttered into his comm. “Target exported. Confirm orbital hold.”

  A harsh Russian voice crackled through the static, female, authoritative.

  “Подтверждено. We see her signature in the stratosphere. Proceed to extraction.”

  Bǎo coughed a laugh, wiping slime from her cheek. “Why does everything end up in orbit with you people? Is 'space trash' the only move you know?”

  Oruun looked at me, eyes tired. “She’ll burn up soon enough. Or learn to fly again. Either way, it’s not our problem.”

  I stared at the place where she’d stood. The air still shimmered, faintly red, like laughter caught between worlds.

  “You thought I was useless,” I said quietly.

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  “You were supposed to be,” he replied. “You keep failing at that.”

  Bǎo sheathed her sword. “Next time, can we not crawl into a bug nest?”

  “There won’t be a next time,” Oruun said, though none of us believed him.

  The hive’s hum faded, replaced by distant thunder from above. We climbed out in silence. The wind outside was colder now, cleaner. The sky showed a faint streak of light where the Jet’s body had torn through the clouds, and into outer space.

  Bǎo squinted up. “Make a wish.”

  “I already did,” I said. “To never see her again.”

  Soldiers approached, two breaking off to stand a few meters away, close enough to shoot us, far enough not to be touched by whatever we were. One handed me a canteen without meeting my eyes. I drank and the water tasted like metal and mercy.

  Voronina stepped from the observation corridor a minute later, escorted, helmet under one arm now, face clean and unreadable. Kaspar trailed by half a pace, hands in his coat pockets as if we were at a museum.

  “You have value,” the President said, as if announcing an auction result. “Despite having one arm. Noted.”

  “You must be joking, President,” Oruun said. He was unusually angry, and short.

  Bǎo curtsied. “We love a good review.”

  Voronina looked at me last. “You look at the ground when you should look at the enemy,” she said. “Fix that.”

  Heat crawled up my neck. “Y-yes.”

  Kaspar was watching Oruun. “Your… technique is unusual.”

  “My physiology is unusual,” Oruun replied, pleasant as frost. The two men measured each other without moving.

  Voronina’s verdict ended it. “You may walk New Moscow. Forty-eight hours. Supervision will be discreet. Do not insult me by pretending you do not understand what ‘discreet’ means.”

  Bǎo perked up. “Shopping?”

  “No,” Voronina said.

  Bǎo pouted theatrically. “Rude country.”

  The soldiers led us toward a decontamination hatch. My legs buckled twice, and I almost fell in front of everyone. Oruun fell into step beside me, then slowed. His gaze had shifted, not to the soldiers, not to Voronina, but somewhere past the wall, far off, like he was hearing a music I couldn’t.

  “What?” I asked, dread blooming. “Don’t… don’t do that look.”

  “Jet is not the only thing that burrows,” he said, distracted, eyes narrowing. “And our pursuer is patient.”

  The main villain we had fled. The one who had made space itself feel like a trap. The image of that ship’s silhouette crawled over my skin.

  Oruun placed two fingers against my sternum, very lightly.

  “When you watch a planet for a century, give or take, you become quite aware of their customs. Your planet is so boring that I’d rather read your stories than observe you, at times! But do you know why I persisted, boy?”

  “W-where’s this coming from…?”

  “Because I waited for a legend. Someone like you. Or, like you were.”

  “I’m trying.”

  At first, I thought he was reassuring. Then the silence. He said nothing. For a moment I thought, stupidly, that his hand would stay there. It didn’t. He stepped back; decision already made in the set of his shoulders.

  “Arata. I’ve bet everything on you, including the life of my wife, whom I love more than anything. But you’ve failed my expectations again, and now you’re crippled,” he said.

  The floor dropped an inch under my feet. “What? Now?” My voice cracked. “Now you’re leaving— now?”

  Bǎo’s head snapped toward him, eyes wide. “Excuse me? That’s not very team.”

  “You could have died. Your magic was depleted to the point that even I am surprised you are alive. Not to mention your inefficiency against Bǎo,” Oruun said, turning away.

  “I was caught off guard. Yeah, you’re right… I guess I bit off more than I can chew. Sorry, but that’s in the past now, and we can’t afford to let an arm split us up with that robot flying around, chasing after us,” I said.

  “Are you so desperate to continue fighting? You of all people should understand that once you’re powerless, your calculus changes,” Oruun said, voice void of warmth.

  My rage bubbled, and I gritted my teeth, staring deeply into Oruun’s black eyes.

  “You think I’m weak? This was your idea! YOU WERE THE ONE WHO BROUGHT ME HERE, YOU TRICKED ME! YOU KNOW WHAT…!? FINE! Come over here and let’s see how weak I am,” I shouted in rage.

  “Gladly,” Oruun said, as he began to walk over to me.

  I rushed to Oruun with my left fist balled up, my muscles expanded like the ape with Growth, and I took an offensive stance. “Grow,” I roared.

  However, I was stopped utterly in my tracks.

  “This is the lowest form of gravity magic, and you cannot even overcome this,” Oruun said.

  I was stuck, immobilized as if frozen in ice, yet I struggled to move forward with all my might.

  “You’re going to live the remainder of your life on this Earth. You can continue my work as Earth’s sentry, since your name has spread worldwide already due to your acts. Swallow your pride and get to work, or you’ll get us all killed, Arata. This is for the best. You two can find your own way home,” Oruun said, turning.

  “I TOLD YOU BEFORE… YOU DON’T GET TO TELL ME WHAT TO DO,” I shouted.

  “Look at you two! Bǎo thought you were friends again or something, like a second ago… can someone explain to me WHERE this negativity even coming from,” Bǎo shouted. Her smile cracked.

  “This has nothing to do with friendship. If we make one wrong move, it means we, and everyone we know, die. Never mind Earth or Edenfall. We need to be honest; Arata can barely stand on his own feet already and is crippled. I could teach you how to use magic, how to stop killing yourself from within, but after all these years, Bǎo… I know it’s impossible to save one from their own obsolescence and instability.”

  Silence. Then, almost rueful, almost kind: “Try not to die while I am gone.”

  I reached for him with my one hand, not sure what I meant to grab—his sleeve, the air, the idea of him.

  He had already turned. The soldiers didn’t see him leave; at least, their eyes slid past the gap where he had been and then they were looking elsewhere.

  He was simply not there anymore. The hatch wheezed open.

  A tech thrust two masks at us and fled our orbit as if we burned. Bǎo took hers and sighed like a martyr, then hooked her arm through mine with sudden, childlike force.

  “Don’t pout,” she told me, sing-song. “It gives you lines.”

  “I’m not—” I was.

  We stepped into the decon fog together. It smelled like old rain and medicine.

  Beyond the next door, New Moscow waited under low clouds, rebuilt in patches, half-miracle and half-scar. I looked at the ground. Then I forced my eyes up, because Voronina had been right and I was tired of being scolded by everyone in every direction.

  The hate and rage I felt towards Oruun, oddly, gave me energy. Energy that I’d need to escape New Russia.

  Bǎo bumped my shoulder with hers. “We’re going to slay,” she said, like the obnoxious streamer she is, and made it sound like a plan and a lie.

  “Forty-eight hours,” I said, mostly to hear the number. Mostly to make it real.

  We walked into the city.

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