1. The Exodus
The smoke of Sango Prison slowly faded into the distance.
At the back of the group, Tanaka walked in silence. She glanced over her shoulder one last time toward the city limits. Standing discreetly at the edge of the tree line were her sisters. They didn't call out or approach — they couldn't risk it — but as Tanaka looked, they raised their hands in a slow, synchronized wave. She held their eyes for a moment, then faced forward again.
A few paces ahead, Lilly kept stopping. She would take a few steps, then freeze, looking back toward the plumes of dust rising from where they had left Byron.
Aemon noticed. He walked over and took her hand without saying anything. She looked at him.
"We have to make it mean something," he said quietly. His voice didn't have its usual edge.
Lilly wiped her eyes. She tightened her grip on the Glitch Blade, and on his hand, and kept walking.
2. The Train to Pasi
Days passed on the road.
One evening, as the rebels settled to rest, Snake sat apart from the group. Sixtus moved slow circles around him while he watched the camp. After a while, his eyes drifted to Moto at the edge of the clearing, pacing the same ten feet of dirt over and over, jaw tight, gaze fixed somewhere past the tree line.
Snake watched him for a while. Then he let Sixtus go.
"You're wearing a hole in the dirt."
Moto stopped. He exhaled hard and sat down on a nearby rock, elbows on his knees.
"It's Amber," he said. "Not knowing how she is."
Snake didn't say anything. He just looked at him.
Moto looked up at the sky. "My earliest memory of her — she'd just been born. We were on the train out of Gehen. Asher handed her to me and went to board, but our fare came up short. They wouldn't let him on." He paused. "The train left anyway."
Snake was still.
"I was sitting at the window with this tiny baby. My father was already gone. My mother was still back there. Then Asher got left on the platform too." Moto turned his hands over in his lap and looked at them. "I watched him get smaller through the glass."
He was quiet for a moment.
"When we crossed into the Sea of Terrors, the monsters started hitting the sides of the train. There were these massive flashes of electricity blasting them off the tracks, and the whole car was shaking, and I just —" He stopped. Started again. "I was shaking. I was just a kid."
He looked down.
"Then she grabbed my finger. This tiny hand, just... reached out and grabbed it. She was scared of the noise too." He was quiet for a moment. "I stopped shaking after that. I don't know how to explain it. I just covered her eyes and made sure she couldn't see out the window. That was all I was thinking about."
He looked back up at Snake.
"I protected her then. I have to protect her now."
Snake looked at him for a long moment. Then he nodded once, and they sat in silence while the camp settled around them.
3. The Fall of Zen
The next day, the group crested the final hill toward Zen — and stopped.
The borders were fortified. Armed guards stood at intervals along a perimeter that had never needed one before. Moto raised a fist and the column halted. He held them in the tree line and signalled Aemon, who split off two of his clones. Snake sent Sixtus and two others slithering through the tall grass.
An hour passed. One of Aemon's clones slipped back through the brush. It wasn't alone.
Trinity stepped into the clearing and stopped when she saw Moto. For a moment she just stood there. Then she crossed the space between them fast and threw her arms around him.
Moto went still, arms slightly out, then carefully patted her back. Over her shoulder his expression didn't change, but his eyes moved quickly — checking the tree line, checking the guards at the border, counting.
Trinity pulled back. Her eyes were red.
"What happened?" Moto said.
"Malachi came for the Spirit Ore," she said. "Khosa surrendered it. He didn't want blood on his hands — he chose his people over the stone." Her voice didn't carry any judgment about that. "But Andzani wouldn't let it end there. He went after Malachi himself."
She stopped.
"He didn't come back."
Nobody spoke.
"The Crimson Creed came not long after," Trinity continued. "Like they'd been waiting for us to be weakened. They took the King hostage and moved through the city before anyone could organise. The guardians tried to hold them." She swallowed. "They killed almost all of them. Kuzai they left alive — out of pity, I think, which is its own kind of cruelty. Koji they kept because of his tracking. He hunts our own people now. Anyone who tries to leave." She looked at the ground. "Our people are making fabrics for their war effort. Malachi's forces withdrew, but the Creed stayed. Five of the Ten Plagues are running the city."
She looked back up at Moto.
"We haven't stopped praying. And now you're here."
Moto held her gaze for a moment. Then he looked past her toward the guarded border, thinking.
4. Thunder
"We have to help them," Moto said.
"We should split up."
It was Aemon. He had his arms crossed, which he almost never did.
"Aemon —"
"The only thing Khosa needs is a reason to fight back," Aemon said. "I know his ability. I know why he's not using it." He paused. "When I was moving between homes, I spent time at that palace. They got on my nerves and I got on theirs, but I never went hungry. Nobody ever forgot to put clothes out for me." He glanced toward the border. "Let me fix this. Go get your sister."
A beat of silence.
"I'll stay with him," Lilly said, stepping up beside Aemon.
Aemon looked at the ground and coughed into his fist.
Moto looked between them. "Okay." He turned to Aemon. "The civilians stay with you too. Douglas tried to have me killed in Sango — I'm not dragging a village of people into that with a target on my back."
Aemon nodded.
Moto turned toward the crowd. "Hey —"
Nobody heard him. The column had fractured. Rumours about the guards were moving through the ranks — he could see it spreading in real time, clusters of people grabbing each other's arms, voices rising.
Najo stepped up beside him and looked at the crowd. He sighed through his nose.
Then he raised his hands.
Tanaka frowned at him. "What are you —"
He closed his eyes. He reached back for the sensation from when Tanaka had inverted his ability — the feeling of charges as something physical, something he could put his hands on. He found the resistance in the air between his palms and pushed.
The gap between positive and negative tore open.
CRACK — BOOM.
A bolt of lightning materialized from nothing and struck the earth ten feet away. The shockwave rolled through the clearing. Every person in the column went completely still.
Tanaka punched him hard in the shoulder. "That was way too loud!"
Najo rubbed his shoulder, ears ringing. "I couldn't hear it!"
5. The Heart of a Rebel
The silence held.
Moto looked out over the crowd. Near the front, a young man — maybe a year older than Moto — was standing with both arms spread back, putting himself between two younger kids and the noise. His hands were shaking.
Moto looked at him for a moment. Then he reached into his pocket and pulled out the red bandana.
He'd been carrying it folded since Byron handed it to him. He unfolded it, felt the weight of the worn fabric, and tied it around his forehead.
A gust moved through the clearing.
The dirt and soot lifted out of his hair and the green came through, bright and unmistakable in the late afternoon light. A sharp sound moved through the crowd — not quite a gasp, something quieter and less controlled than that.
Moto didn't move.
"I know you're scared," he said. His voice came out plain and flat, not particularly loud, but the clearing was quiet enough. "I've been scared since I left Gehen." He looked at the young man still shielding his siblings. "That's where I'm from. Same as some of you."
More sound from the crowd. He let it pass.
"I can't take you to Nyika. I've got a target on my back and I won't carry all of you into it." He gestured toward Aemon and Lilly. "These two know this place. The King is worth following when he's himself, and Aemon's going to remind him of that." He paused. "Zen is the safest you're going to be. That's the truth."
He looked at the young man one more time.
"Follow Aemon and Lilly. Stay alive." He put his hands in his pockets. "We'll figure out the rest when it's over."
He stepped down off the incline and walked back toward his crew without waiting to see if the crowd settled.
They did.