The transport was not built for speed. It was built for hauling scrap, and it drove like it resented me."Left," Mira shouted from the back seat. "Nova, left!"I yanked the wheel. The frame groaned. A slab of rusted plating slid past the window, close enough to rip off my side mirror."You said you would figure it out," Nyx-0 said in my head. It was wolf-shaped, wedged between my seat and the door with its claws dug into the upholstery."I'm figuring.""You are figuring us into a wall.""Then stop distracting me.""I am the only reason you have not hit it yet."I checked the mirror. Red lights, closer now. Four Beasts, maybe five, fanning out across the dust in a hunting line. District engines, built to run down anything that moved."Ten minutes," Kira said from the seat behind me. Her voice was flat and calm, and I hated how calm it was. "They have long-range scanners. They won't lose us in open ground.""Then where do we go?""Ravine Nine. Northeast. The walls are narrow. Beasts can

We didn't go back.That was the first thing everyone agreed on, and it was the only thing. Kira wanted to push north, toward a Resistance cache she wouldn't name. Mira wanted to circle wide and see the wreckage from a distance, just enough to know what we were dealing with. Dr. REN-9 wanted both of us to shut up and let her think.I wanted to know if Nexus had been anywhere near that fire."You're not going back," Kira said, for the third time, without taking her eyes off the road."I didn't say I was.""You were thinking it so loud I could hear it from here.""That's Nyx-0's job.""I plead the fifth," Nyx-0 said in my head. It had curled into cat shape on the dashboard, small and gray and deceptively harmless-looking, its tail flicking in slow arcs. "Also, for the record, I agree with her. Whatever that explosion was, it is not our business tonight.""It could be him.""It could be a fuel line," Nyx-0 said. "Beasts run hot. They have been known to explode without any help from anybod

The frequency didn't belong to a Ghost.Mira figured that out about ten seconds before the door of the relay station blew off its hinges, which was ten seconds too late to do anything useful with the information."Down!" Kira shouted, and shoved me sideways into the terminal bank. Sand and grit rained through the doorway. When it cleared, a figure stood silhouetted against the morning light, tall and straight-backed, wrapped in a coat too clean for the Bone Yard."I apologize for the door," the figure said. "I did knock. Nobody answered.""Who," I said, still on the floor, "knocks by blowing up a door?""Someone in a hurry." The figure stepped inside, and the light caught her face. Young, sharp-boned, with pale hair cropped close and a Pilot's collar at her throat, though it wasn't a District collar. Something older. Something that had been polished, not issued. "You're Nova Miles-7.""Depends who's asking.""Sera-404." She said it like a title, not a name, chin lifted, and behind her

Aurelith slept. It was the first real sleep she'd had in what Sera-404 guessed was months, deep and even, her great silver sides rising and falling in a slow, peaceful rhythm none of us wanted to disturb. Sera-404 sat beside her with one hand resting on her flank, eyes red-rimmed, saying nothing. Nyx-0 hadn't moved from where it had collapsed after the voice went silent. It lay curled in on itself, wolf-shaped, smaller somehow than I'd ever seen it, like whatever had happened had cost it something it couldn't spend twice. "You should rest too," I said, sitting down beside it. "I don't sleep." "You just laid there for twenty minutes not moving." "That's called thinking, Nova. Try it sometime." I almost smiled. Almost. "You said you remember fragments," I said carefully. "A name you won't say. A voice you thought you'd never hear again." I paused. "Was that voice back there the same one?" Nyx-0 was quiet for a long moment. "No," it said finally. "That one was new. Who

We didn't move until Dr. REN-9 was ready to talk, and she wasn't ready for a long time.She sat with her back against the rusted hull, knees drawn up, hands wrapped around a canteen she wasn't drinking from. Sera-404 kept watch on the ridge. Kira paced. Mira had gone quiet in the way she only did when she was scared enough to stop narrating everything out loud."Before I was a doctor for the Resistance," REN-9 said finally, "I was a researcher for the District. A long time ago. Before you were born, Nova.""I didn't know that.""Nobody does. I've spent twenty years making sure of it." She stared at the canteen like it might answer for her. "I worked in a division that studied Cores before they were called Cores. Back then, we called them Fragments. Pieces of whatever the Forge scattered when it shattered.""Founder tech," Sera-404 said quietly."Founder tech," REN-9 agreed. "The Founders didn't just build the old court militias, Sera. They built the Forge. Or they found it, and learne