“Do you need help with anything, Mrs. Evanarb?” Jace asked.
Mom said something about great manners. And then something else about him teaching Tayel some, probably, but Tayel focused on uncapping the canister from the shop. She dumped its contents onto her bed and reeled back in surprise. A flexi-screen had dropped onto the white comforter alongside the necklace. She picked it up and unraveled it until she stood with her arms fully spread. Modnik stared back at her, the invisible wind kicking up trails of snow. Otto shouldn’t have given her something so valuable for free.
“Tayel,” Mom called.
She rolled the flexi back up, placed it on the bed, and snatched up the necklace. In the main room, Mom laid a plate of food on the table. Canned meat and freeze-dried vegetable mash — again.
“Sorry, Mom. Did you need me to do something?”
“No, Jace already set the table. Could you please call next time? I know I can’t afford you a comm, but you can still—”
“Mom.”
“And what happened to your face?”
“I fell.”
Mom puffed up her cheeks like a mother Argel puffed up her chest. She crossed her arms over her apron stained with both paint and the evidence of a hundred cooked dinners. “Fell from what?”
“In a minute, okay? I get hurt worse in mag all the time,” Tayel said. “Here, I got you this.” She moved the necklace from behind her back and held it out.
Mom’s green eyes brightened — the calm, green eyes Tayel always wished she had. “You got this for me?”
“Just a little something.”
“It’s beautiful. You know I love eir stone.”
Tayel smiled as Mom pulled her into a tight hug. “Glad you like it.”
“Don’t think I don’t know you’re just trying to distract me. But I appreciate it.”
“Yeah, yeah. Can we eat while you interrogate me?” Tayel asked. She sat next to Jace at the table.
Mom took her place, too, and turned to him. “Hey hon, your mom called and said she and your father won’t be home until morning. Work emergency.”
He grimaced. “Yeah, they’ve been having a lot of those.”
“Well you’re welcome to stay here tonight.”
Mom nabbed a matte clay figurine of a sand cruiser off the counter behind her. Low aetherial flames came to life at the tips of her fingers, and she ran them in a geometric pattern over the wing. She’d light her homemade brick kiln out front later; this was just for scorch marks. For decoration. Mom used the aether for her art on more occasions than Tayel could count.
“Thank you,” Jace said. “I’ll definitely stay.”
Any other night this meant trading card talk, drawing games, and movie trivia. With what happened at the field, they might just keep watch out the window instead.
Tayel frowned at the smell of charred clay. “Don’t forget to eat, Mom.”
Mom’s eyebrows shot up like she’d been torn from a trance. “Mm, right.” She forked a mouthful. “So you were going to explain why you were late.”
Tayel met Jace’s eyes over the edge of her glass. She set it down. “I fell off the bleachers at the magball field.”
“Otto said those things were going to break any day.”
“There was a, uh, a raider there.”
The fire dissipated from Mom’s fingers. Her eyes went wide. “Where? The field?”
“Yes, but we told—”
“Is it still there?”
“We told Otto, Mom. And no, he disappeared.”
“Raiders don’t just disappear, Tayel.”
Jace spoke up, “But this one did, Mrs. Evanarb."
Tayel opened her mouth to add comment, but snapped it shut. Something moved outside the window Jace and Mom had their backs to. She swallowed a bite of canned meat, and it went down hard. A low rumble swayed the ground.
“Whoah.” Jace saved his drink from toppling.
He had seen the shadow at the field, too, so Tayel wasn’t crazy. She couldn’t have been seeing things, but she still squinted, trying to find proof of the movement. She leaned forward, traced the view of her own hazy front yard.
“Wonder what that was,” Mom said. “Honey, are you okay?”
A swirling black shadow opened up like a massive mouth in the murk. A silhouette of a man appeared inside it, his goggles glowing red against the dark. Tayel’s heart leapt. Her dinner twisted in her gut.
“Look!” she yelled.
The man jumped out. The shadow flickered away, leaving a second tremor to tear through the apartment. Fluorescent lights above the table rattled until the bulbs burst, casting Tayel and the shaking room into darkness.
Chapter 2
Tayel gripped her chair as the quake tore through the apartment. It shook the walls, toppled the glasses, and tossed her food from its plate. Mom cried out, Jace fell from his seat, and then the rumbling subsided. The thunderous tremor murmured away, replaced by ringing silence.
Tayel sat frozen, her fingers tingling as she fought to unravel them from the chair’s smooth chrome edge. Nothing outside appeared out of the ordinary. She slid out of her seat and tip-toed toward the window. Just the murk out there. No flickering shadows, no chasm left by the quake, no raider. She tried to swallow, but her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth.
The ground shuddered again. She backed away, bending low to keep her balance. The sway didn’t rattle the apartment like the first one had, but her muscles tensed just the same.
“Do you see anything?” Jace whispered.
“Not now,” she said, “But just before the quake I saw that shadow again, and the raider.”
His feathers bristled.
“Move.” Mom strode to the window and let the rickety plastic blinds fall in a waterfall of dust.
“But now we won’t see them coming,” Tayel said.
“They won’t come if they don’t see us at all.” Mom slicked her fingers through her hair, dislodging gooey trails of what would have been dinner.
Tayel bit her lip. If closed blinds prevented raider attacks, there probably wouldn’t be so many raids in her school’s history lessons. Blood swarmed in her ears just thinking about dangerous criminals slipping by the front yard, unnoticed.
Mom held a finger to her pursed lips. Her eyes narrowed. “Do you hear that?”
Tayel steadied her breathing. Nothing at first, but raspy, reverberating rings became clear in the quiet. She’d heard a similar sound almost a year ago, when she’d fallen to the dirt on the magball field and the crowd’s shouts turned into a weird, shrill alarm.
The reverberating rings were screams.
Mom stepped away from her post and flipped on the screen embedded in the far-side wall. An image of the planetary flag covered the wide frame — purple, black, and flickering every time the ground rumbled.
Tayel’s breathing grew erratic in the lingering silence. Jace tapped his talons on the chrome table, thrumming out a nervous beat. The Delta flag only continued to billow. Another second passed, and the screen went black. It came back to life with a crackling sound, revealing a video with the emergency news station watermark in the corner.
The camera panned across the crumbling Median Sector city. Buildings fell, fires burned, and thousands of people screamed as they fled in every direction. Shadowed figures wielding glowing weapons chased them down.
“Raiders,” Mom croaked.
Tayel squeezed the edge of the table, her knuckles white.
An automated voice over the video feed cracked with static, “All citizens are urged to evacuate to Top Sector’s emergency shuttle station. Do not remain in the under cities. Leave behind all non-vital belongings. Repeat: all citizens are urged—”
Tayel stopped listening. She could barely hear through the pounding in her ears.