"Day thirty-five. You know the drill.

"There's something living inside of me. I don't know where it came from. No, scratch that. I may as well be honest. I think the parasite infected Jacob when he went in the water. He must have given it to me when we were intimate.

"It's connected to my nervous system. It feels like it lives at the base of my spine, but I know it's everywhere in my body. I know it because I can feel it, using a sense I can't describe.

"And I...I can do things with it."

--Recording recovered from Site Resh, reconstructed 1887 CE (restricted access)

----

16 Rising Withering, 1886 CE

Over the Wildlands

Eztli woke to silence, which was strange considering how loud things were.

The skywhale rumbled, and her bed trembled. As Eztli opened her eyes, the redheaded slave who'd been sponging off her forehead shied back. Fear danced in the girl's eyes.

Eztli's Symbiont was silent. It took her a moment to remember what she'd done before she passed out.

She reached inward, trying to find some trace of her Wisdom, but it was gone, withered, vanished. From what she'd heard, the Symbiont-killing injection didn't always make people pass out, but Eztli had been engaged in a constant unconscious Synaptic connection through the disgusting insect, which may have changed the calculus.

Eztli reached a sweat-soaked palm back and felt at her neck. No beetle.

She was free. She hoped that freedom would be worth what she'd lost. Not just the Symbiont, but her family, her whole Gens.

The redheaded slave girl collapsed, bowing her head to the ground and hunching over her knees. The poor thing was terrified.

Since when had Eztli thought of slaves as "poor things?" Was her uncle right? Had Nethress corrupted her?

It was too late to back out now. Her uncle's transmission, a Synapsis message sent out to every recipient that he could reach--Sodality, Gens, bourgeois, Free City, or otherwise (and “otherwise” meant Eztli)--with instructions to distribute further by shortsphere, had accused Nethress of trying to recreate the genophage.

A total lie, all for personal gain. Perhaps Eztli ought to feel not a sense of loss, but of gratitude.

"Get up," she said. "I'm not going to hurt you." The slave girl rose, still looking uncertain. "I know you."

The slave girl bowed her head.

She'd been there when Eztli had met Princeps Tlalli in the field three weeks before.

Eztli looked at the girl in a new light. This was a human being in front of her. Not a beast, not an animal, but a person, even if she was a red-blood.

After all, Eztli was now one, as well.

Eztli rose. Someone had undressed her; she wore only a fancy shift, which they had obviously found in her uncle's quarters. He did like his slave girls to be dressed nicely. Slave boys, too. Publicly and privately.

"Bring me my skinsuit," Eztli said. The girl nodded her already-bowed her head and almost ran toward the door of the room. "Please," Eztli added.

The girl stopped in surprise. Only for a moment, but it was enough.

Eztli could mourn the loss of her SOPHIOS later. When she was properly attired in the skinsuit that no longer seemed to fit now she lacked a Wisdom to bond to it, she headed toward the bridge. As she expected, she found the rest of the command structure there. Thiyyatt held court with a dozen of the bridge crew in one corner of the room, her piercing voice ringing out above the shuddering of the skywhale.

What was that loud noise, anyway?

"... Until Kurnamesh the Intolerable thought to overthrow the line of Tiamon," Thiyyatt was saying. "That was when my great-great-great-great-grandfather took up knife and gun to rescue the Imperatrix from the assassination attempt..."

Tvorh, who was standing at one of the side walls and staring at a lat-lon readout he surely couldn't even see, sensed Eztli without looking in her direction. "Ductrix, you're awake."

Eztli stepped up. "How long was I out?"

"Sixteen hours. I did as you asked." Tvorh pointed to some of the lumin bulbs on the panels. "The navigators tell me that we're almost to Strathlic."

"Almost to Strathlic? How..." But of course. Engines burning with fire.

Eztli had looked at the schematics of the Thunderhammer drop pods. The cannon launched the pods, but they themselves had small engines that burned a pure organic fuel, accelerating them to and maintaining them at enormous speeds. They could cover great distances before gravity inevitably took over.

Eztli had also sent her findings to Nxtlu. Her family had apparently reverse engineered the designs and attached similar engines to their ships.

Not her family. Not any longer.

The data that Eztli had stolen from Yaotl's cache contained similar blueprints, but she couldn't recall the details. With her Symbiont gone, so was the additional memory in which she'd stored the information. She would have to get back to Acerbia and check the upload that she'd made to the Libraratory Tool.

But that hardly mattered. Those blueprints were written in pre-Exarchian tongues that nobody spoke anymore.

Except, maybe, for Tvorh, who had an uncanny knack for pointing out which books were copies of one another...

"Apparently these things can hustle when they want to," Senrii said, coming up behind them. "The new engines. We can't really burn them at more than 20% capacity. Something about the aerodynamics of skywhales interfering."

"By that," Aoife said from the other side of the room, "she means that the body of the skywhale would rupture, and there would be helium everywhere, and the cabins would fall out of the sky, and–"

"And that's why we're only going a hundred miles per hour." Senrii turned back to Eztli. "It's not a drop pod, but I'll take it."

One hundred miles per hour, sustained over many hours. Yes, they were living in a whole new Tellus. "And the other sky whales? From my... from Gens Nxtlu?" Eztli asked.

"No sign of them. If they ever did manage to get off the ground, we were long gone by then." Senrii crossed her arms and leaned against a bulkhead wall. "I'd say thank you for getting us out of here, but I'm not sure if I should, since for all we know this could be a wild goose chase to Strathlic. We're almost out of fuel. If any more of your family's ships show up, we'll be as easy to shoot down as a... um..."

"A floating skywhale?" Aoife asked.

"Quiet, you," Senrii said.

Eztli raised an open palm. "Well, we'll find out soon enough." Eztli had faith that they were doing the right thing.

Faith. What a strange concept.

She was certain all of this was connected. About that, at least, her uncle had told the truth. The world was changing, and some unidentified danger was encroaching bit by bit.

Eztli thought about the eight-eyed Harbinger and shuddered.

If Strathlic had answers, then Eztli owed it to herself, to her dead cousin Yaotl, and to all of the people of Tellus to find those answers.

She could do that without a Symbiont. But could she do it without a family?

***

"Blood, bones, and bile," Senrii cursed as she looked out the diamondglass canopy of the skywhale at the Strathlic dig site.

Abandoned tools and waving canopies were scattered across miles of rough terrain. Rough because it looked like a bunch of half-excavated buildings.

And because Chimeras rampaged through the streets.

There was a tent village near the southern tip of the destroyed city, though. Several of the buildings in that area appeared to have been cleared out. One was a two story tower with a hexagonal room atop it. It reminded Senrii of landing control towers. Another was a long, low building near the lower edge of a flat asphalt area.

A long, wide road to nowhere. Who would build such a thing?

A third was circular and made of precious steel. From above, it looked like it was designed to dilate open. Probably Strathlic's controlling Tools had died centuries ago, and it was jammed shut.

But you never knew. Tvorh had opened the way into two Last Era ruins by communicating with surviving Tools. Those old beings were as canny in figuring out ways to survive as their designers had been in figuring out ways to kill-switch an improperly unlocked libraratory.

This place was going to be a ruin again if they didn't help the tent city, though. Soldiers manned barricades that had been set up near the tents.

Though "soldiers" was stretching it. The weaponry was patchwork, the armor was nonexistent, and they were trying to cover a whole 360 degree perimeter with maybe fifty fighters. There were probably four times that number of people in the tent city, but Senrii supposed they were limited by the weaponry they had available.

A wave of Chimeras left the cover of the surrounding buildings, charging in a circular pincer toward the open tent city. Cornartis growled next to Senrii. "I could have family down there," he said in response to her querying look.

"Right. Strathlic is a Hallardite dig site."

Smart Chimeras, new tactics. They moved together.

To Senrii's surprise, they died together.

The Hallardites picked their targets expertly. Their rifles might have been patchwork, but they shot with precision that Senrii would only have expected to find among the Wolfmen, the Blooddrinkers, or similar General elites.

Was that a professor manning the lines? His spectacles were incongruous, he seemed to have more gray than brown in his beard, and his belly would have washed him out of the Wolfmen training regimen in an hour, but he worked the bolt on his rifle expertly, took aim, and placed a subsonic bullet into the eye of a twisted duck-leopard as it came bounding over the open but uneven ground of the surrounding ruins.

The Chimera hit the ground in a plume of dust, but the professor was already racking another bullet in.

A whoop next to Senrii startled her. Aoife had a fist in the air and an unapologetic grin on her face. "That's it!" she shouted. "That's the Amrician way!"

"Huh?" Tvorh asked. Poor kid, not being able to see this. Aoife grabbed his hand.

It was incredible, watching fifty shooters drop hundreds of Chimeras in a matter of seconds. The ground around the tent city was littered with monstrous corpses. Even the flying Chimeras didn't fare any better. The Hallardites--Amrician, Adonist heretics who refused both the Symbiont and the superiority of the Gentes--were as deadly shooting into the air as at the ground.

It was an object lesson in how Hallard and the other Free Cities had managed to survive so long. "Now I get you a little better, Aoife," Senrii said.

"A nation of riflemen," Cornartis said, sounding as if he was quoting someone. "Ductrix, permission to descend and provide support."

Senrii looked around the bridge. Piotr gazed at her evenly. Tvorh wasn't bloodthirsty, but he was starting to look itchy; probably Aoife's excitement was rubbing off on him. Better that than the other things they could rub together.

"Everyone suit up. Magi, give them whatever support they need. We're dropping where the fighting is thickest." She looked to Tvorh and then to Eztli.

And barely missed Eztli's wince. Oops. They really needed to talk about what Eztli had done. Senrii was the closest thing the Ductrix had to a peer here.

Or maybe that was Aoife, now that Eztli was a red-blood. Bile. No time to think about that, especially since Eztli recovered quickly and gave a quick nod.

Senrii wasn't going to insult her by insisting that she hang back. She turned to the navigators. "Stay close and provide air support."

"Do as she says," Eztli ordered.

"Captain Cornartis, assign some gunners to the skywhale's heavy weaponry. Then get the other men ready, please. We go in hard." Senrii glanced out the window again at the killing field. "Apparently we've got mysteries to solve and archaeologists to save."

***

Morrison desperately needed to wipe off his glasses, but he was afraid that if he took a moment to do so, the Chimeras would overrun his position. Lance to his right had taken a needle in the throat and been dragged away by their medical team; Carril to his left had run dry and wouldn't be back on the line unless they could liberate more ammo.

So Morrison drew back the bolt, charged the chamber, and shot, hoping that the dust and the sweat on his glasses wouldn't throw off his aim too much.

A few minutes ago an airship had soared overhead with a burning sound that echoed through the tropical trees at the edges of Strathlic. It had moved even faster than a lungboat. Were they still there in the sky? Morrison couldn't hear them any more.

He didn't glance up. He drew a bead on a goat-headed armadillo as it bounded across the ground, spike-covered tongue lolling from its mouth, and shot.

The Chimera hit the ground, only to be replaced by another abomination. Morrison had been to the ranges plenty of times. He was a Hallardite, an Amrician, and an Adonist, by tradition at least. Guns and freedom ran red in his blood. But he'd never expected to have to use that training like this.

He'd never expected to die like this, either.

He should have at least asked Alison out for dinner at some point. Furtive sex after long days wasn't the same as a real and meaningful connection.

He'd have liked to have had that.

He charged in the next round and shot.

At least she was safe with the engineers. Maybe some of them would escape in the chaos.

Right. And maybe Adon would throw open the gates of pearl and Morrison would walk through into Salem. If he was praying for miracles, he might as well go all in.

The mounds of Chimera corpses were becoming a problem. They provided cover for the monsters, and it was getting harder and harder to pick them off while they were far away.

Morrison swept the gun back and forth, running his scope over the enemy. Their nearest were one hundred meters away now. Far too close for comfort.

Crack.

That one, at least, would rot a hundred meters away.

They were closing fast. Way too fast. Eighty, sixty, forty meters. Morrison dropped a giraffe-hyena-wolf. Its enormous, pustule-ridden neck crashed to the ground like a log, kicking up dust and tripping its neighbors.

But still. Forty, thirty, twenty--

All across Morrison's sector, the Chimeras' front line tripped simultaneously. They twisted and screamed as nerves snaked out of the ground, wrapping around their heads and jabbing into their eyes.

Morrison chanced a glance over his shoulder toward the engineers and was surprised to see one of the imagers had crawled up almost to the line. Alison Handes stood next to it, a smug smile threatening to break through her inexpressive mask. She was using its digging nerves as weapons. "They send us monsters, we send them engineers," she murmured, then noticed Morrison looking at her.

Adon, what a woman. Morrison winked at her. It probably wasn't very effective, what with all the soot on his glasses. But by Adon, she smiled back at him.

Hell with this. He was going to live to ask her to dinner. He turned back to his scope and started shooting again.

The imagers were scattered evenly around the tight defensive circle, their nerves digging into the ground only to stab back out across the killing zone, twisting up Chimeras by the score and killing them by the handfuls.

Turning tools of inquiry into tools of slaughter. Morrison might have objected in his more radical younger years. Now, he was damned happy for it.

But the Chimeras were too many. There seemed to be no end to them, and simple mathematics said that when finite bullets faced infinite cannon fodder, the bullets would eventually run out.

"Hey, we've got incoming from above!" someone shouted.

"Humans, they're humans. From the skywhale," said someone else. "Don't shoot them!"

"Reinforcements?"

"Adon, I hope so!"

"Get them on the lines the moment they land!"

Morrison glanced back in time to see a young woman in a skinsuit swoop down to a landing within the defensive perimeter. Skinsuit? That meant she was a Maga. And that meant she wasn't from Hallard.

Which meant she was a Generosa. Great. Just what they needed.

Not his problem, not yet. When Morrison turned back to his scope, he found himself staring into a mouth full of shark's teeth.

Parrots weren't supposed to have mouths at all, never mind shark's teeth. The Chimera reared up on its hind legs and drew back the talons of its colorful wings, readying to strike Morrison.

Then its head exploded in a burst of blue blood.

It hit the ground with additional force thanks to the object that had fallen from the sky onto its head.

No, not object. Person.

A young man, dark and dark-haired and wearing a skinsuit, rose from the corpse, flapped his gliding wings once, and turned to face the onrushing horde. He held up a hand, and a telltale flesheater mist shot from it into the Chimeras. Terrible lesions opened on their skin, and blue blood splattered to the ground.

The boy glanced back at Morrison for a moment. Was that a blindfold over his eyes? Now the Generosi were just showing off.

Then the boy jumped into the fray.

This day just kept getting stranger.