“My dad’s… hand?”
Neither Wyatt nor Y4139 understood what Linneya meant. Her face had gone frighteningly pale. She coughed so hard the compressed-oxygen mask slipped off, and she couldn’t get a word out. Her eyes fluttered shut—and she collapsed back into the seat.
Wyatt’s mind spiked with alarm. Hypoxia. He shouted for Y4139 to take the wheel, then pulled Linneya’s mask back on. She stayed limp, eyes closed.
He checked her vitals and went cold.
Linneya didn’t even have a heartbeat.
“There are forks up ahead,” Y4139 said, staring at the split in the road. “Which way?”
Wyatt didn’t answer. He dragged Linneya flat, slammed open his database, and dug for anything—anything—that might apply. A half-remembered scene from a book in one of his dream loops surfaced.
He started chest compressions.
Thirty seconds felt longer than a firefight.
Linneya finally gasped back to life, eyes barely opening. “Ow… cough… you’re crushing me. That hurts!”
Wyatt exhaled a breath he didn’t have. In half a minute, he’d aged a year.
“The bugs are catching up again,” Y4139 said. “Which way? Still up the mountain?”
Wyatt looked back. The swarm they’d pushed off was closing again. The ATV was almost down to the valley floor now. Straight ahead was another climb; to either side rose steep mountains, carved with narrow cuts and gullies.
“No.” Wyatt pointed. “Right.”
He’d already run the numbers. The beetles were slightly faster than the ATV. They hadn’t shaken them even on the downhill. If they climbed again, they’d be caught.
Y4139 swung the ATV into the winding ravine to the right. The swarm turned with them.
Wyatt drew his pistols and stepped onto the rear edge, firing into the closest beetles. A few dropped. More replaced them.
Again. And again.
The swarm wasn’t going to quit until it had them.
“So what now?” Y4139 called. “Do we just keep following the ravine?”
Wyatt saw it ahead: a choke point so narrow it looked like the mountain had been split clean in half. The cliffs on both sides were almost vertical. The tightest stretch was under four meters wide, maybe forty meters long.
A plan formed—reckless, but clean.
“Through there,” Wyatt said, pointing. “Listen, Y4139. When you clear the pass, keep driving west. I’m going to jump off and block them.”
“What?!” Y4139 barked. “You’re going to fight the swarm alone?”
“Yes. This is a perfect defense point. And I counted—there aren’t that many on our tail.”
“Then I’m staying too.”
“And who protects her?” Wyatt shot back. “Also—you’re out of ammo.”
“But—”
“No ‘but.’ You said you’d listen to me. If we don’t stop them here, they’ll catch us sooner or later.”
The ATV plunged into the choke point. Wyatt backed toward the rear as he spoke.
“Then when do I come back for you?” Y4139 asked, voice tight.
“You don’t. Protect Linneya. Find a safe place and wait for me.” Wyatt paused, then added, “If I’m not back in two hours, return to the Sunflower without me.”
Y4139 didn’t have time to answer.
Wyatt leapt off the moving ATV, pistols up.
Linneya stared after him, stunned.
The swarm hit the choke point almost immediately.
Wyatt hammered the lead pincer-head beetle with gunfire. It shrieked and charged anyway, but collapsed less than two meters from him. Behind it, a mantis-beetle swung its bladed forelimbs down.
Wyatt holstered his pistols and drew his blade.
One clean cut took the creature’s claw and head in the same stroke. He pivoted, carried the motion through, and slashed the next one sideways—then the next.
Behind him, Y4139 kept driving.
It rounded a rocky spur, and the swarm—and Wyatt—vanished from Linneya’s view.
She turned toward Y4139, trying to hold her voice steady. “He’ll be okay, right… cough… giant?”
“He’ll be fine, little person,” Y4139 said with absolute confidence. “He could wipe out an entire space fleet by himself. These bugs are nothing.”
With Wyatt holding the choke point, the swarm didn’t catch up again.
After ten minutes of driving west, Linneya begged Y4139 to stop—she was afraid Wyatt wouldn’t be able to find them. Y4139 didn’t want to park in open sight, though. It looped around several ridges until the air battle was no longer visible, then tucked the ATV against a rock wall.
They climbed down and sat on a boulder, eyes fixed on the eastern bend.
An hour passed. No movement.
The light began to drain from the sky.
“Giant…” Linneya whispered. “Why isn’t he back?”
“Uh… maybe there were a lot of bugs,” Y4139 said, not sounding convinced.
“Where did they come from? I thought there was no life left outside.”
“Don’t know. First time I’ve seen them too.”
Linneya hugged her arms around herself. “Shouldn’t you go help him?”
“I’ve no ammo. And he told me to protect you.”
“…Okay.”
“We’ll wait,” Y4139 said. “It hasn’t been two hours yet. He might show up any second.”
“Mm. Cough.”
Another hour crawled by.
Night fell completely. The valley went silent—no engines, no distant gunfire, nothing but the wind threading through the rocks. The temperature dropped hard, plunging past minus twenty Celsius.
Linneya couldn’t take the cold. She crawled back into the ATV, but the rear compartment was open to the air; it barely helped.
Y4139 kept watch outside, and with every minute its worry deepened. By their agreement, they should have left already.
Linneya hadn’t said a word. When Y4139 glanced back inside, it saw her curled in a corner, shaking.
“Little person, why are you trembling?”
“I’m cold,” Linneya whispered.
“But your forehead temperature is high,” Y4139 said, confused.
Linneya’s voice shook. “It’s been… two hours, right?”
“Yes. Just passed.”
“Then… let’s go back for him.”
“But he said we should return to the Sunflower,” Y4139 hesitated.
“Just… just look back first. It’s not far.”
Y4139 started to climb into the driver’s seat—then froze.
A figure was sprinting around the bend behind them.
“It’s him!” Y4139 shouted, thrilled. “Little person—he’s here!”
It raised its voice toward the darkness. “K18772! Wyatt! Over here—!”
Linneya tried to sit up, but her head swam. She had no strength.
“I thought you’d already left,” Wyatt’s voice called back.
“Did you get them?” Y4139 demanded. “Are the bugs gone?”
“Every last one,” Wyatt said.
He vaulted into the ATV. Green ichor coated his armor, and bits of chitin clung to him like trophies. Then, as if by magic, he produced a pink backpack from behind his back.
“Is this yours?”
“Yes!” Linneya’s face lit up. She grabbed it with both hands. “How did you find it?!”
“It was hooked on a beetle’s horn. I took it.”
“Thank you,” Linneya said, beaming as she tugged the zipper open. “You got back my dad’s hand.”
Inside was the end of a mechanical forearm.
Wyatt blinked. “Your dad… is a robot?”
“Of course not,” Linneya said, as if it were obvious. “My dad is human. Only his arm is mechanical.”
“Oh.” Wyatt nodded slowly, filing that away.
…
Y4139 drove on through the darkness toward the Sunflower. If nothing went wrong, they would reach the ship’s valley around midnight.
But the night only got colder.
After sunset, Linneya’s condition kept sliding. Now she lay half-conscious in Wyatt’s arms, limp with fever and exhaustion.
Wyatt could read the warnings in her vitals: hunger, dehydration, exposure, infection, low blood pressure… and he had almost nothing to fight them with.
The only thing he could do was hold her close and overload his own system to radiate heat.
It was dangerously stupid. One mistake and his battery could rupture.
He did it anyway.
“Stay with me, Linneya,” Wyatt said softly. “Don’t sleep. Talk to me.”
“But… I’m so tired,” Linneya murmured, eyes closed.
“Just a little longer. Starling has a bed ready for you. When we get back, you can sleep as much as you want.”
Linneya’s lips curved faintly. “I can go back to Sister Starling… that’s good…”
“Yes. She’s probably terrified right now.”
Linneya wrinkled her nose. “You… smell really bad.”
“Uh… yeah,” Wyatt admitted. “That might be true.”
He turned toward Y4139. “Can I borrow that bottle of yours?”
“Keep it,” Y4139 said, tossing over its precious blue bottle.
Wyatt twisted the cap off and held it under Linneya’s nose. “Try this.”
Linneya inhaled—and her eyes snapped open. “Whoa. That’s… amazing. Like the ocean. And there’s… violet-citrus blossom.”
She stared at the bottle, suddenly alert. “Landevani—this brand is insanely expensive! I’ve only ever seen it in ads. How do you’ve it?”
“I found it,” Wyatt said.
Y4139 leaned in, genuinely earnest. “What is it for?”
“Perfume,” Linneya said matter-of-factly. “It makes girls smell nice.”
“…Smell nice and then… never mind,” Y4139 muttered. “Still don’t get it.”
…
***
Meanwhile, in the valley in front of the supply station…
The fighting was over. The swarm had been wiped out—but the robot wreckage scattered across the ground suggested the price had been brutal.
A CBG unit led more than a dozen robots over mountains of insect corpses and twisted scrap to the ATV CBG-03 had used to seize Linneya. It searched the vehicle inch by inch, probing every seam and corner with methodical patience.
Ten minutes later, it pinched up a single chestnut-colored hair from the seat.
A slow, vicious smile curled at the edge of its mouth.