The City in the Middle of the Night

SOPHIE

The viewports inside the Command Vehicle darken, then grow opaque as a dense layer of ice covers them. Even with warm air streaming into the passenger section through tiny vents, the walls turn frigid to the touch, and my fingers get numb. All around me, seasoned killers in dark padded uniforms whimper, Let me out I’m so cold I want to go home we’re all going to die out here we’re going to die. Every time our gravity-assist treads stumble over another sharp downgrade, we lurch, and the entire capsule screams. “Everybody shut up,” snaps Nai, an elegant older woman who’s the leader of the Perfectionists. “You all sound like children.” I can’t see anyone’s face behind their protective faceplate, which makes their wailing seem disembodied—as though delirium has settled upon us like a mist. My armpits chafe and my chest constricts, and I’m caught in my worst terror: strapped down in a tiny enclosed space, surrounded by a whole platoon wearing dark combat gear and helmets, being dragged into the night. Except that this time, I could have escaped. I had a choice, I could have said no. The moans grow louder as the Command Vehicle struggles to stay upright and move forward.

I’m the only one in the passenger section who’s not making a sound, and that’s only because I’m screaming inside my own head.

“We’re fine,” says Sasha, a large fussy man who’s the second-in-command among the Perfectionists. “Everything’s fine. Nothing to worry about. Everything’s totally fine. Why should we worry? We’re doing great.” He keeps saying these things until Nai hisses at him to shut up. A sour odor hangs in the stale air around me. I think of Reynold saying, Some primitive fear from before our ancestors discovered fire.

Bianca keeps smiling at me from the front of the Command Vehicle, where she sits with Nai, Dash, Sasha, and an older Alva loyalist named Marcus, all of them still dressed in normal clothes. She kisses Dash, holding his face in one hand, across an instrument panel full of muddy topographic readings and warnings about the dangerous thickness of ice coating our outer shell. Our conversation in the junkyard repeats in my mind, and I can’t believe how stupid I was.

Bianca went with me when I said goodbye to Ahmad and Katrina, and she kept nudging me so I wouldn’t say anything about where we were going, but also to hurry me along. She said, It’s exciting, we’re going on an adventure, oblivious to how I flinched.

The people around me are still crying, thrashing against their harnesses, making invocations to various gods and devices. Dash is joking about Xiosphanti food again. The indicator lights on the front panel make rainbow trails along the scuffed aluminum walls.

Bianca said she loved me, long after I’d have sacrificed anything to hear her say those words. I would have worn a tower of ribbons and gone to a hundred terrible parties, just so I could pile every shining toy in the world at Bianca’s feet. I would have braved every gun and every gloved hand in Xiosphant to bring Bianca jewels from the Palace vault. But now I see her in the cockpit, whispering to Dash and twirling one slender hand for emphasis, and I feel empty.

The vehicle lurches, and someone’s gloved fingers grab at my arm for support, and I freeze. I can’t breathe. But just as I’m spiraling into panic, I feel a nudge on my right wrist. My bracelet has woken up, and it’s urging me deeper into midnight. I take a deep breath and I concentrate on the hum that I feel through my skin. The Gelet haven’t given up on me, even after all the times I failed them. They still want me to join them.

All that matters is that bracelet, and the knowledge that my friends are near, and everything else is nothing. Except I don’t know what the Gelet will think when they see a fleet of armored vehicles, spiked with weapons, and they realize I’ve led a whole army to their territory. Bianca’s friends designed these vehicles to look just like the ones the Gelet tore to pieces before.

I never loved anybody the way I have loved Bianca. But I know in my shattered core that I would have been a better friend to her if I had walked away in that scrapyard. I need to learn to belong to other people the way everyone else seems to, with one hand in the wind.

Something strikes our vehicle, and we rock sideways so hard we’re perched on one set of treads for a moment. Then we fall flat again with an impact that crushes me into my safety harness. “What was that?” Nai says, and nobody answers, except to groan. A second impact pushes us off one of our treads, and the vehicle sways harder.

The cockpit’s night-vision screen shows a glimpse of fuzzy segmented armor.

“Fucking bison!”

“It’s a lot bigger than I thought it would be.”

“It’s a lot bigger than we are.”

“Get it off us!”

“There’s more than one of them.”

At least three shapes move around us on the screen. We rock onto our side again.

“We can’t move forward,” Marcus says.

“Shoot them! Shoot them!” Sasha has sweat pooling on his forehead. “Where’s the bloody flamethrower?” A woman named Lucy puts on protective gloves and fumbles for a port in the side, letting in a stabbing draft for a moment until the port seals around her wrists. Sasha picks up a short-range radio and shouts, “We’re under attack. Roger, you’re in the rumbler. Can you get a clear shot?”

Nai starts to say, “No, wait—” Dash tries to slap the radio out of Sasha’s hand.

A heartbeat later, I feel an impact that makes my teeth snap together. My neck hurts, and my ears ring.

“You missed the bison, but you hit us,” Sasha says into the radio. “Try aiming.”

A second mortar blast rattles our vehicle.

“Sasha, you idiot,” Nai says. “Tell them to stop shooting at us.”

Lucy’s flamethrower goes off, turning the night vision a shimmering green, and Lucy shouts, “Got one of them!” The viewport shows an impression of a shrieking round mouth and stringy white fur on fire, then goes dark again.

We’re back on our treads, moving forward in fits and starts.

“Bad news,” says Marcus. “Those mortars cracked one of our engine casings. We’ll have to keep stopping every few kilometers, or the chamber will overheat and flood with toxic fumes.”

“We can’t stop,” Nai says. “We’ll get stuck in the ice.”

“You should have thought of that before your goon ordered the other vehicle to shoot at us,” Dash says. Nai starts to respond, but thinks better of it. Most of the people in this vehicle answer to Dash.

Sasha sees me sitting nearby, and looms over me. “You,” he spits. “You’re supposed to be the magic talisman that gets us through the night in one piece. That’s what we were promised.”

I just look up at him. Whatever Sasha sees in my face, it makes him back away, hands raised in a defensive cower.

“Stop bothering Sophie,” Bianca says. “She’s not an all-purpose protector. She’s good if we run into crocodiles.”

“Oh god, spare me. Bianca! Everybody swoons whenever you open your mouth, like you’re some Xiosphanti princess out of an old storybook.” Sasha grunts. “This whole mission was your idea, and we’re depending on your friend’s so-called magical powers, and I can tell you’re just a cheap grifter.”

Bianca smiles up at Sasha, as if he just said something innocuous about Zagreb opera, and I can’t help feeling a sugary rush of pride in her.

Everybody else in the Command Vehicle goes quiet, not even moaning anymore. We’ve stopped driving already, because our engines need to cool down. Dash breaks the silence. “Sasha, put on some protective gear and go outside to look at the damage you caused. Take a few engineers with you.”

Sasha starts to say, “I don’t answer to you,” but Nai just gives him a look, and he trails off. His face falls, and he slumps forward. After a moment, he says, “Fine, great. See you soon.”

“We’ve lost number-five troop transport,” Marcus says as Sasha puts on the gear, accompanied by two men and a woman from the engine section.

“What does that mean, ‘lost’?” Nai says.

“It’s just not there anymore. Maybe it fell down a crevasse. The ice is full of fissures.”

I can smell the smoke from the cracked engine, and my head swims.

“We… lost a vehicle,” Nai says.

These are the people that Bianca decided to trust with everything. She tries to give me a conspiratorial smile, cocking one eyebrow. But I just stare past her, at the instrument panel that’s gone bright pink with warning lights.

Sasha has his survival gear on, helmet in hand, and he hesitates at the inner hatch. “Okay,” he says. “I’m going outside now. If… if you still think I should.”

“Great,” Dash says. “We’ll keep it warm for you.”

Even though I hate Sasha, this loud stupid bully, I still feel nauseous watching Dash ordering him outside, likely to his death, on a mission that doesn’t require his supervision. I kept thinking I had never seen the real Dash, but maybe I just caught a glimpse. Bianca smiles at Dash, and they hold hands.

“I’ll be back soon,” Sasha says, still hesitating.

But everyone just looks at Sasha until he opens the hatch, bows his head, and goes into the outer chamber with his team, then seals the inner hatch behind them.

“Everybody keep your eyes open for more wildlife,” Dash says.

While we’re stopped and our engines silenced, the sounds of the night come through. This close to midnight, the wind makes a keening sound, but our exterior visibility is a series of illusions.

Bianca kept saying she had lost everything, right before she showed me this machine for the first time, and maybe this is her way of getting it all back. The social status, the brilliant future, the luxury of idealism in a comfortable chair among friends, all the things she had when I first knew her. I miss that life too, maybe even more than she does and in a deeper cavity of my psyche, but the increasingly thick air of this icebound assault vehicle (sweat and farts and gun residue and engine coolant and terror) is leaving me surer and surer that this whole enterprise says something indelible about her.

My bracelet thrums harder, and I adjust it under my sleeve, trying to send a response, like, I’m here. I’m sorry about before. I’m here now. I’m sorry for bringing these intruders to you.

The voices of Sasha and the engineers come over the radio.

“Why is this taking so long?”

“Give us a moment, Sasha. Inspecting the damage.”

“I saw something move.”

“There are snowdrifts. Motion is pretty much constant out here.”

“No, really. I saw—”

“Just keep working. I want to see their faces when I come back in one piece.”

“Did you hear that?”

“It’s so cold my ears are frozen shut.”

“Just keep working.”

“Watch out, there’s a—”

And then a high shriek, and no sound but the wind again for a while.

“Nikki. Shit. Nikki. Did you even see what got—”

“Stop asking if I see things.”

“Nikki’s just gone.”

“We’re seriously all going to die here.”

“Stop saying that.”

“Okay, I think I sealed the damage. Let’s get back inside before—”

And then more screams, which grow louder and more indistinct, a chorus. Then they cease, and we’re left with just the wind again.

“Let’s go,” Dash says to Marcus. “Start the engines.”

Everybody looks at Dash for a moment. The radio stays silent. So Marcus takes a deep breath through his upper teeth, eyes stretched open, and then we roll forward. As soon as we’re moving again, I feel someone pulling my wrist once more.

The engine seems to hold up, and we tear through the night as if the ghosts of Sasha and the dead engineers are chasing us. The scream of our hastily repaired drive chamber sounds higher and more ravenous than the wind. We catch up to the other vehicles in our fleet, and even pass them, racing forward until our engines protest.

“Gotta slow down,” Marcus says. Dash tosses his head.

My bracelet thrums, as if in warning, but before I can make sense of it, I feel a sickening twist, as if the world has come apart underneath us. For one stomach-dropping moment, I think we’ve fallen into a sinkhole. But no—a splintering, shattering sound comes from two kilometers behind us, and the rear topographic scans show the ice shelf breaking apart. The layers of permafrost unfold like wings, spreading open to reveal the naked ocean below, and all the other vehicles are caught in the middle of it.

mouth

At first, they thought some seismic event had torn through the ice. Or maybe some submerged mine left over from one of those ancient wars, a final revenge from some dead sailor. They bickered and debated, even as the road rose up vertical in front of them. Sweated, spat, pleaded, prayed, boasted, grandstanded. The grav-assist treads pawed at the unsteady fragments of tundra, groping in vain for some purchase. But the mist cleared, and Alyssa spotted the cause of the eruption: one tentacle, covered with iridescent feathers and tipped with a leaf-shaped barb the size of a tenement, had burst upward from the frozen ocean, filling the space like a new monument. One of the giant squids that lurked at the bottom of the Sea of Murder had detected food on the surface, and decided to go hunting.

Alyssa unsnapped her harness, while all the Perfectionists in the number-seven transport wasted time bemoaning their fate, and pushed through the passenger compartment until she reached the cockpit. She leaned over an older Perfectionist loyalist named Winston, who sat in the pilot’s seat, and unfastened his safety harness for him. “You better let me drive,” she said. Winston hesitated, and she added: “Do you want to live, or do you want to feel good about yourself in your final moments? One of us here knows the Sea of Murder, and it’s not you.”

Winston slid out of his chair, and Alyssa climbed in, securing herself inside. Mouth came and stood next to her, mostly to watch what promised to be an excellent show.

The fleshy protrusion rose thirty meters over their heads, its tip swaying as if searching for prey. Then it curled, whip-fast, and ensnared two vehicles in a single fluid motion, dragging them back through its hole in the ice.

“Bloody hell,” Winston breathed. “Those poor people.”

“Pretty quick death. Better than most.” Alyssa kept her eyes fixed on the topographic scans, looking for any tiny fluctuations or perturbations in the ice, while easing the ATV forward at a tantalizing speed. They crawled ahead until they reached one of the darkest blue spots, and then Alyssa spun them almost 90 degrees and sped up, so the terrain streaked past for a moment. Then she pulled back on the throttle again, and they were back to baby steps.

“Shouldn’t we be just making a break for it, while that monster is distracted?” Jimmy, another senior Perfectionist, muscled his way forward. He was the enormous man with the spiral scar across his hairless scalp, who had searched Mouth and Bianca at the White Mansion. “Why are we playing games instead of just getting the fuck out of here?”

The other five vehicles were following Jimmy’s idea, barreling at top speed away from the jagged patch of exposed ocean, toward the waiting Command Vehicle. But the ice ripped open in the space between the rumbler and two of the troop transports, propelling massive chunks at their armored sides. The tip of the squid’s tentacle pulled one of the transports down into the ocean, twirling with the measured elegance of a coffee server at the Illyrian Parlour. Then another.

“That’s why,” Alyssa said. “Any other questions?”

Jimmy’s brow furrowed, so that the sharp end of his scar pointed at one glowering eye, while Alyssa executed a three-point turn, and then coasted the vehicle across a thin sheet of permafrost that seemed to tremble as they passed over it.

“I don’t trust either of you smugglers,” Jimmy was saying to Mouth in a chatty tone, like he was discussing an unsatisfying meal. Jimmy was so tall and wide he had to hunch over inside the troop transport, and his arms kept bumping against the sides. “We should have left you behind in Argelo.”

“I wish you had,” Mouth said.

Some of the leaders of this expedition, like Nai and Sasha, had wanted to ditch Mouth and Alyssa, or even put them to death for the stunt they tried to pull with Sophie. But Bianca was still convinced that their smuggling experience would be invaluable when (if) this expedition reached the walls of Xiosphant. Mouth still felt bound by the promise she’d made to Bianca at the White Mansion, even though this invasion seemed like a worse and worse idea. At least Mouth had managed to spend some time answering Professor Martindale’s countless annoying questions before they left, so whatever happened to her, the memory of the Citizens could be preserved.

The giant squid extended its reach farther over the ice, feathers curving outward as they searched for the other caches of protein. The other three lorries had stopped moving, probably hoping the squid would ignore them if they made no vibrations, but they rested on undulating promontories of ice.

The whole back of Mouth’s troop transport was full of people chanting, Oh fuck fuck shit fuck, or spilling bodily fluids on the floor. The stench gave Mouth a crushing headache. Alyssa was humming something that Mouth couldn’t make out at first, then she twigged: it was that song about the Decapitating Sisters, the two women who could snick a man’s head off before his thoughts even reached his gun hand, the pair of them a coordinated neck-severing machine of such beauty that people risked death to watch them work. Alyssa spun the lorry on its axis and scooted away from the tentacle as she broke into the chorus: “And oh, the heads, the heads, the heads, the rolling heads as they danced.”

Alyssa had already gotten them past the two fast-expanding holes that the squid had made, and they were gliding forward, with their engines stilled. “Shit,” Winston breathed. “We’re gonna make it after all.”

The fleshy tip of the squid’s long arm landed right in front of the ATV, blocking their path. Blotting out the rest of the world, even. The frond-shaped growth wriggled, almost playfully, and its huge feathers undulated in the wind.

“You had to say that,” Alyssa grunted at Winston as she squeezed their brake lever, as gentle as soothing a baby.

Jimmy fumbled for the thick gloves that would allow him to operate the flamethrower, which was housed in a small alcove next to Mouth’s seat. “Gonna teach that thing a lesson, send it back where it belongs.” His nostrils flared and his mouth stretched out.

The ground underneath the ATV heaved and buckled, and the spire-sized tentacle turned in a lazy half circle, as if groping for its prey.

“Don’t use the fucking flamethrower when we’re already on broken ice,” Alyssa shouted.

“Don’t tell me what to do. I’m going to finish this.”

“Mouth, don’t let him use the fucking flamethrower.”

Mouth was already placing her body between Jimmy and the flamethrower controls. Jimmy balled his fists, and Mouth tried to shape her body into some imitation of a fighting stance. “Step back,” Mouth said, “I don’t want to hurt you”—as if that was even a possibility. Jimmy took a swing at her head, and she ducked just in time, and then his knee connected with her thigh. Mouth had no room to dodge, and her hands wouldn’t even organize into fists.

A clanging filled the compartment, like one of those endless bells in Xiosphant, and Jimmy landed in a heap at Mouth’s feet. Alyssa had whacked him in the back of the head, right at the center of his swirl of scar tissue, with a metal spanner.

“Gravestones all over the world have ‘Should’ve Listened to Alyssa the First Time’ written on them.” Alyssa made sure Jimmy was still breathing, then glanced at Mouth on her way to get the environment suits. By the time Mouth had her helmet and gloves on, Winston had joined them and was getting suited up.

“Any other volunteers?” Alyssa called out, and all of the men and women strapped into seats just looked at the soupy floor. “You know, I’m starting to understand why you complain about city people,” she whispered to Mouth.

“So what’s the plan?” Winston asked as he clicked his helmet into place.

Alyssa stuffed meal rations and a few explosives into a big duffel bag, which she handed to Mouth. “We’re going to use the flamethrower. Just a different way than Jimmy had in mind.”

Soon they were trudging through the sightless wind, away from the number-seven troop transport and any hint of warmth. Mouth had the flamethrower perched on her shoulder, and she’d handed the bag full of supplies off to Winston. This suit had much higher-grade night vision than the ancient gear the Glacier Fools had used, but her visibility was only a bit better.

The Citizens used to send young people into the night, with a rope tied around their waists to let them find their way out again, and leave them long enough to experience this unbearable disorientation, so they understood the importance of family, the significance of the people who see and understand you. “Absolution,” the Citizens had called that moment of returning to the group after stumbling alone—meaning that the group was accepting you back into its embrace, but also that you understood how absolutely terrible life was without that warmth.

You could mistake the resting tentacle for a natural formation, like a ridge in the snow, from the murky view in this night vision. The transport resembled a misshapen hillock, as a thickening coat of ice covered it, and Mouth wondered if the engine would even run after sitting still too long. Even with the suit, Mouth felt the chill air draining the life from her body. But Alyssa had gotten a jostle back in her walk, even with the effort every step cost.

“You’re in a good mood,” Mouth said between shivers. “All this time you kept saying you never wanted to travel again, but you’re having the time of your life.”

“Eh,” Alyssa said. “This is a lot different than our usual slog, and the goal is something more than just moving some junk from one city to another. Bianca was right when she said these cities are both screwed unless they work together, and y’know, this feels like an excellent cause.”

Alyssa turned her helmet to face Mouth’s. Maybe she was smiling, hard to tell.

Mouth kept seeing Alyssa’s swagger out here on death’s icy threshold, and having two reactions at once. She was happy for Alyssa, and grateful that she’d taken charge and figured out a save. But also, Mouth sensed that something had changed between the two of them, the culmination of all of Alyssa’s attempts to fix Mouth back in Argelo. Alyssa had wanted her own crew, people she could count on who shared her goals, and now she’d found that by joining this slapdash invasion. Maybe Alyssa just didn’t need Mouth anymore.

They had gotten far enough away from the transport, and Alyssa set about building a pyramid of rations, and setting tiny charges at key points, with fussy artistry. “It has to smell like food, and smolder for a while without melting through the ice,” she muttered. From the flamethrower, she removed the fuel tank, which she splashed around her pile. One of the explosives had a crude timer, which they turned to its furthest setting: a picture of a zebra.

“Beautiful.” Alyssa seemed to want to stand and admire her own sculpture, but Mouth tugged at her sleeve. By now, the cold had seeped into their joints, hindering their range of motion.

Nobody talked as they trudged back to the ATV, and Mouth could think only about taking off this unwieldy gear and being warm again. She didn’t want to think any further than that. They had almost made it back when the puffed end of the squid’s tentacle lashed out and poked at the lorry, the edges of its feathers tearing a huge gash in the side.

The squid seemed to be trying to decide if the whole number-seven transport was worth hauling down into the ocean when Alyssa’s beautiful pyramid caught fire, a green flash far outshining everything else on the night vision. Like some sacred offering in the wilderness, the pyramid of food and accelerants blazed, sending smoke upward to join the low-lying cloud cover. Alyssa, Mouth, and Winston held their breath inside their helmets until the tentacle slid away from them to go investigate this new source of warmth and nourishing smells.

Mouth had an attack of lightsickness, climbing inside the well-lit transport, until she turned her night vision off. The gash in the side had let in the night air too fast for anyone to react, and their icy bodies were contorted into outlandish shapes, some of them with their mouths still opened to shout a warning or scream for mercy. Jimmy still lay where Alyssa had left him, like he’d never woken up. You would need heavy tools to dislodge these people from where they’d died.

Alyssa ran to the cockpit without bothering to glance at the dead, and gunned the engine, which miraculously still ran. She scooted them forward, as quiet as she could, fumbling at the controls with her thick gloves.

“We’re not seriously going to drive across the night in a lorry full of icy corpses.” Winston looked over his shoulder and shuddered at the unspeakable tableau.

“Pretty much, yeah,” Alyssa said. “You guys should strap in.”

“Good thing they’re frozen solid.” Winston gazed at the faces suspended in terror and agony. “When those defrost, it’s going to be revolting.”

Once they had gone a kilometer away from the undulating tentacle, Alyssa sped up, and soon they had gotten far enough away that it probably wouldn’t find them again. Then they drove past one of the remaining vehicles: the rumbler, upside down, with a busted axle and a hole big enough to do jumping jacks inside.

“So much,” Mouth said, “for the invasion.”

“We were always going to be outnumbered,” Alyssa said. “All the more reason to hit them before they see us coming. Just as long as the Command Vehicle survived.”

“There they are.” Winston pointed at the screen. “Damn, I didn’t think we’d make it.”

The Command Vehicle sat alone and motionless, but its lights still blazed, and the external shell appeared intact.

“Damn,” Alyssa said. “Damn. What are they—damn damn damn.”

As they approached, they could see a dozen huge, prayerful shapes in the darkness, clustered around the Command Vehicle: a congregation of Gelet. The scene looked utterly still, as if everyone had paused to reflect on their situation. Mouth let out a deep breath and tried to pull herself deeper into the frozen crevice of her passenger seat.

SOPHIE

I ignore the buzzing from my right wrist, and I take Bianca’s chin in my other hand, gentle as picking a pocket. I look down at her, bathed in the cockpit lights: wide perfect face suffused with bitterness and anger and, yes, love, but mostly just weariness. I stare, as if I had the power to preserve this sight in my memory forever. There are so many things I want to ask, in this final moment, but I don’t know if I would believe any of her answers.

“I have to go,” I whisper, and Bianca’s eyes widen. “I have to leave right now. They’re waiting for me. The Gelet. I think they want to take me to their city.”

“Sophie, listen to yourself. This is delirium. We’ve all got it, after so long in this nothing wasteland.” She grabs my arm, but I shake her off. “There’s no crocodile city. There’s nothing out there but frostbite and monsters. I get that you have a… a bond with these creatures, but don’t delude yourself. You can’t leave me now, in my literal darkest moment.”

“You can come with me.” I’m still close enough to murmur in Xiosphanti. I allow myself to believe for a moment that it’s not too late, that Bianca and I could still leave everyone else behind. “There is a city. I’ve seen it.”

I try to explain, so she’ll at least understand after I’m gone: “I can’t do this thing anymore, where we live in a tiny space and pretend it’s the whole world. People always have brand-new reasons for doing the same thing over and over. I need to see something new.”

The bracelet tugs my wrist again.

All through this conversation, I pretend Bianca and I are alone together—when we’re in a severely damaged all-terrain cruiser, soaked with the funk of despair, crammed with every last surviving member of our invasion force. Maybe twenty-five of us, including Mouth and Alyssa, who somehow found us after we gave them up for dead. Their friend, Winston, has removed his environment suit, and I start putting it on.

“We’re not going to let you just leave,” Dash says, and I ignore him, because this vehicle won’t go anywhere unless the Gelet allow it. They appear on the night vision: a dozen, on all sides, with their front legs bent and their pincers bowed in greeting.

“We’re almost home,” Bianca says. “Don’t do something stupid.”

I finish putting on everything but the helmet, which I hold in one glove, and I look into Bianca’s eyes one last time. All my rage has petered out, and instead I just feel a sadness so violent it’s like wings beating inside me, harder and harder, until they snap. I already told Bianca that our friendship belonged to the past, but now it’s really true. That’s the only way to explain why I’m leaving her like this.

Lucy keeps trying to use the flamethrower on the Gelet, until Dash has to pull her away and push her into the seat I’ve vacated.

“If you stay, you’ll die,” I whisper.

“I guess we’ll see.” Bianca actually smiles, as if she welcomes the challenge.

Just as I put my helmet on, Mouth says, “Can I come?”

I hesitate, and Mouth’s expression turns bleak. At some point, she lost any ability to hide what she’s feeling. She starts to say something else, about her senselessly dead nomads, and all the other deaths that make less and less sense. I wave for her to shut up and come with me, now or never.

Mouth turns to Alyssa, who says, “Fuck no. Not going to the giant frozen insect hive. I’m sticking with these assholes, because at least I understand them. And I still think we could win this. We were always going to be outnumbered.”

“Alyssa,” Mouth says. “I know I’ve let you down before, and you think these people are your crew now. But please, just trust me one last time. Don’t throw your life away. Please.”

“Just fucking go. Don’t give me a whole dance routine.”

I tug at Mouth’s arm. She aims one last gaze at Alyssa, like a lost child.

Alyssa scoots closer to Bianca, and the two of them exchange little nods—like, they’re in this together now. Mouth puts her helmet back on and turns to pull the tiny lever that opens the interior hatch, squaring her shoulders as if she’s going to lift something enormous instead of two centimeters of metal.

Dash makes one last lunge to hold me back, and I brush him aside. Mouth and I pass into the outer chamber, and then step out into the sleet-freighted wind.

The Gelet see us coming, and wrap our environment suits with sheets of moss, and a mesh of tentacles. We move away, and the transport growls to life with the hiss of a damaged motor. I shut my eyes for a moment, and then Bianca is gone, vanished into the white wind. The Gelet cradle Mouth and me, leading us into an underground tunnel.