Darkness etches across Vruksha’s face, like he and the other nagas have already thought of this. It confuses me until I realize why.
They knew what they were in for all along.
They knew and they still risked themselves for me? For Daisy?
He slides to me, silently, like a shadow, and towers over me. “We have our ways.”
All at once, the part of Vruksha that frightens me, returns. The exacting intensity he wields sharpens every scale and ridge of his muscled body.
“Ways?” I whisper, mouth going dry. “You not only know where the Lurker tech is,” I breathe, remembering what he just said, what he said and I ignored. “And you know how to use it as well…”
The Earth turning to ash, the leathery reptilians ignoring the cries of children as their giant ships blast all of ours… the images unfold again before my eyes. It was like we—and all that humans had achieved—were nothing.
Whoever had that kind of power—terrible power—could cause massive destruction and should be feared.
Vruksha and the other nagas aren’t just part of a primitive sentient species. They hold that power. The power humankind thinks could change the tide of war.
Something flashes across one of the screens, stealing my attention. Vruksha says something I don’t quite make out. Familiar faces distract me. “Something’s happening,” I say, focusing on the flurry of activity. Vruksha goes quiet beside me.
It’s the facility. My eyes narrow.
Men and robots rush across the cleared yard and toward the forest, past the barrier. I see Peter, Collins, and even Shelby. They’re scrambling and pointing, screaming at something I can’t make out.
“Can you enlarge it?” I stumble forward, using Vruksha’s tail to keep me upright. “Where’s the sound? Does this have sound? I need to hear what they’re saying.”
“Not the live feed,” he rumbles, leaning over the panel again. He presses a couple of buttons, and the footage from the facility takes over the whole wall.
The skiff appears. It’s trying to take off but is far too close to the forest to clear it. The others chase after it. Peter is barking what I assume are orders for the robots not to shoot it down. Whatever it is that’s allowing me to see what’s happening focuses on the skiff, following it as whoever is in the cockpit tries to fly it too high too fast. They’re trying to take off.
“You’re not going to make it,” I breathe, my heart thundering. The bottom of the skiff hits the tops of the trees. “You’re not going to make it!” I gasp.
The skiff jerks upward, hovers, skims more trees, and jerks again. It clears the next several trees and bounces higher. My fingers curl into my palms as it steadies. I forget my colleagues at the facility and focus on the ship, trying to see who’s flying it.
A shock of long blond hair is all I can make out through the blur.
My throat constricts.
“Daisy.”
Twenty-Three
Mate
Vruksha
Gemma refuses to let me carry her back to our nest.
She struggles in my embrace as I do so anyway. She’s not always going to get what she wants.
“I shouldn’t have shown you,” I growl. I regret giving her a view into the secrets of this place, this world I live in. The tunnels are known by all the nagas, like the Lurker technology and the old human ruins, but the secrets within them? Those of us who know of it, always kept those close.
Because what you know, what you have, makes you powerful in my forest.
The little bit of technology we handed over to the humans had been nothing more than cast-off bits and baubles of broken tech that no longer respond to us. To anything. Zaku and Vagan had made sure of it.
“I’m glad you did, but that’s not the problem right now. Daisy is. That skiff can’t save her! She’ll never make it past the stratosphere, not without a miracle. We need to go back! Please, Vruksha.” Her voice heightens. “You would have kept this from me?” she says, straining in my arms. “Something so pivotal?”
“It’s not your passst.”
“How can you say that? Of course it is. It belongs to humans…” her voice trails off at the end, and I peer down at her. Shadows distort her face, but I can see enough of it clearly to know she’s thinking.
“Or perhaps it belongs to no one and should be forgotten,” I grit.
We slip through the tunnels in silence going forward. When we’re back within my bunker, and I shut the door behind us, some of the tension leaves me. I set Gemma down on a crate, and she swings her legs over the side, stands, but quickly leans back against it.
I glimpse my spear perched against the wall by the exit.
I always knew it wasn’t made by humans. When I wield it, it’s like an additional limb, one that not only uses the muscles trained for it, but also your thoughts. Only Lurker tech does that, not human tech.
And Lurker tech never deteriorated, not like the cheap creations of the humans. Which, like Gemma’s brought up, usually rusts and corrodes, or loses its power source.
I never minded showing Gemma the tech until now because I didn’t think there would be any harm involved in doing so. It intrigued her so. Besides she’s mine, and that alone once assured me she could never, or would never, use it against me. Now I’m not sure.
“Maybe you’re right,” she says abruptly. “Maybe some of what you and the others guard is too dangerous… But that won’t help Daisy right now.”
“Mmm.” I coil my tailtip around her leg. “Who’s Daisy?”
My female throws her hands up in the air. “The woman who was with me on the plateau! The other female who ran from you, terrified for her life.”
“I forgot there was another female.”
“How? Err, never mind.” She rubs her brow.
“I’ve only ever seen you.” I do recall this other female now that she mentions it, but I recall
