The girl’s father came stomping out, clothes, face and hands bloodied from his butchering, looking annoyed. The girl was with him, as was one of the boys. Goa hadn’t seen the boy before, he was an older one. A hella big family, the veteran gregga mused, considering where they were living.

Did they really trick enough greggas to feed this whole lot? It would be a lot.

“What do you think you want now?” the man asked.

The boy was almost as tall, though thin as a rake. He couldn’t have been any older than Kel, his face sporting the fuzzy traces of a beard.

“You ought to listen to me,” Abek asked him. “We spotted mech signs on our approach to the city. You shouldn’t be just waiting around here; they’ll spot the smoke from your cooking for sure.

He nodded his head at the sliver of smoke that was rising from their makeshift chimney.

“You’re lying,” the boy suggested. “There’s been no mech around here for months.”

The man turned to glare at him, but didn’t slap him as he had the younger boy.

“Why would I?”Goa offered. “What do I have to lose? You heard the blast little girl, didn’t you?”

The girl nodded.

“It came from that way,” she told her father, pointed back towards the Iceline where a bit of smoke was still visible, rising from where the blast had come from.

Goa paid attention to the time. He could see where the sun was in the sky. It was close. If he guessed right, if he could still count the time right without a chronometer and even with his aching skull. But survival in the south meant being sure.

If he was lucky, everything would work out as it had before. Yeah, he’d been captured more than once in his time, hence his method for freaking out captors. It would only be a minute, nothing more.

The man’s wife came out then, no longer carrying the child in her arms. She started arguing with her husband or whatever he was about how they were dealing with their remaining prisoner. She wanted him in the pot as well. And now!

Then the real explosions started. One, two, three. That got the people moving, screaming. Children came out of their ramshackle home yelling, screaming. Abek was working the post some more, almost moving it smoothly! He had a good chance now, with the cannibal family in chaos, a real chance.

And then something happened, something unexpected. A far larger explosion than any of his little eggs could have produced, even all together, a thundering blast, came not from the ruins, but from the sky. That could only meant one thing. And at that point even he grew even more frantic in his attempts to escape.

Mechs were coming! Real mechs!

Goa struggled harder. But there was no way he was going to get free in time. He looked out in the direction of the repeating thunder. It was coming beyond the nearby structures, behind domes, the broken towers but he was sure it was coming closer. He could feel it from the ground under his feet, vibration coming right through his boots.

The thunder grew louder, and in seconds, a shadow of something large was moving behind the structures. Something above the towers. Something terrifying.

Its metallic surface gleamed in the low, near sunset red, orange and yellow light.

“Let me loose,” he called out at the people frantically running about. “I can help. I can help you hide from that thing.”

But they weren’t listening. They were preparing. Children and adults alike.

A group ran towards their building from the ruins. They were armed, and looked familiar. Some of them had to be part of the group that caught and beat him and Kel.

Did they really think they had a chance against a mech? He fought against the bonds, against the post; struggled on despite the pain. He did not want to be where he was, bound and helpless when the giant mechs were showing up to sweep them all to the next world.