[Haret, Epsilon Eridan – Year 2737

  Rhyan Fagioli had never seen a woman constricted by a giant boa before in his life, and his first time just so happened to be on the one pnet trying to murder him.

  The woman wasn’t screaming, even as she was wrapped in the thick, crushing coils of a reptile that could have swallowed a grown man. That was the first thing that struck him as odd. Most people in her position would be thrashing, begging, making desperate promises to gods that didn’t listen.

  But she was fighting.

  The reptile had dragged her and smmed her back against a gnarled root of a giant tree, then immobilized one of her hands around its body. However, her other one kept trying to force a bde between its overpping scales. Her movement was getting more lethargic, and it was clear to him that she was losing the fight.

  For a while, he only watched. The boa’s movements were more sluggish than those on Earth, and its slow coils tightened in increments. It wasn’t a reactionary predator.

  He curled his fingers as the inky Morkanium slithered through the veins on the back of his hand. The metal responded in erratic bursts, spreading unevenly along his wrist and rushing toward his elbow. Not where he’d wanted. He clenched his fist and shook. The liquid metal dithered, as though unsure of his command, and then finally began to flow more evenly, though not without resistance. He huffed.

  The boa’s coils tightened, and with every constriction, she gasped for breath. But it seemed as though the oxygen wouldn’t go anywhere near her lungs. With a fierce grunt, she wedged her knee into the creature’s underbelly. It was a weak, desperate move, but it made the boa recoil. Her fingers trembled as she cwed at the beast’s body with her free hand, scraping at the scales, creating grating skreeek sounds. The slight dey in the creature’s movements was enough to help her gasp in a few ragged breaths.

  She was buying time. She must have seen him.

  Gravel pursed his lips to steady his breathing.

  After a second of struggle, an inky substance crawled up his arm in liquid threads before hardening into a serrated bde that extended from his forearm to his fingertips. It threaded through his ribs with a slow, uncomfortable drag, weaving an unseen ttice of protection, wrapped around his throat in a sheath as thin as breath yet dense as iron, and pooled over his abdomen like a second yer of hide.

  Protection. He wouldn’t be reckless twice in a single day.

  Rhyan stepped closer. “You need a hand, or you just testing your pain tolerance?”

  She didn’t look at him, gritting her teeth while grunting out words, “Unless . . . you’re cutting . . . the head off, you’re in my way.”

  That was the moment he decided to help. Not out of kindness, nor because it was the right thing to do. Just because she had the audacity to mouth off while half-crushed by a reptile the size of a nd cruiser.

  One step. Then two.

  The beast didn’t notice him. Its focus was entirely on the woman.

  Rhyan drove his Morkanium-coated hand straight into the reptile’s skull.

  The bde sunk past bone and into the soft matter beneath. The boa seized. Its coils shuddered, the pressure around the woman’s body loosening for the first time. She wasted no time—shoving free, gasping for air as the creature spasmed and colpsed with a wet thud.

  The woman took a moment to recover. Still partially ensnarled in the sckening coils, she turned her head toward him and gave him the most scrutinizing squint despite the breathlessness in her voice. She then turned to his inky, bckened arm.

  “Thanks. But . . . what kind of magic was that?” she demanded.

  He flexed his fingers, and the Morkanium retracted from his hand like ink sliding backward, disappearing into his veins. He exhaled, brushing his arm off like he could wipe away the sensation.

  “That’s what I want to find out too,” he replied. “They said I’d find answers on this pnet.”

  Gravel got a good look at the woman. Her copper-red hair was short, neat, and practical, as was the utilitarian strap running across her chest and her scuffed gloves. She was lean and tall, possibly half a head taller than many women on Earth, and nearly as tall as Gravel. However, the freckles which dotted the bridge of her nose alongside her round, almost doll-like eyes morphed her into something of a walking juxtaposition.

  She coughed, rolling onto her side, one hand pressed to her ribs. “And what did you find?”

  Rhyan gnced at the dead reptile, then up at the thicket of trees swaying overhead. In the distance, the dreaded sound of approaching drones buzzed through the trees. His lips curled into something almost amused. “Arrest warrants.”

  She let out a humorless chuckle. “Well, bad news for you then.” She pushed herself up with a wince, dragging air back into her lungs. “The military’s after me too.”

  Rhyan looked her up and down. “If I’m not mistaken, the military wears exactly the outfit you’re wearing.”

  She dusted herself off, gncing down at her frayed uniform. The fabric was torn at the shoulder where the reptile had coiled too tightly, and a dark smear of mud ran along the insignia at her chest. She didn’t give him an answer to his question.

  Rhyan raised an eyebrow. “Deserter?”

  “Something like that. They don’t like it when you walk away from the wrong mission.”

  Rhyan had wondered why she seemed so casual, even now. Maybe that was the answer.

  Maybe she’d already made peace with dying.

  The buzz of drones grew sharpened into an electric hum, the type that told Rhyan they were likely small quadcopters. He didn’t think they were locked on yet, but that wouldn’t st.

  “Fantastic,” he muttered, already moving. “I came here for answers, and now I’m getting dragged into treason.”

  She huffed as she fell in step beside him. “Nobody dragged you anywhere. You should’ve just let me die.”

  He let out a sharp exhale. “Maybe, but it would’ve been a pain to listen to you compin while you were suffocating.”

  She almost let out a chuckle, but her legs were already pushing forward. “They’ll send ground forces soon. We need to move.”

  “You have an exit from Manua?”

  “I do.”

  “I know a way off-world.”

  That made her gnce at him. “You’re saying you got a bird waiting, right?”

  “Something like that.” She must have noticed that he just mirrored her exact words from earlier, judging from the furrow of her brow.

  Before she could reply, the distant drone hum became distorted for a split second. Rhyan deduced it was a frequency drop. They had lowered the altitude.

  The woman let out a prolonged hiss. “Advance team’s already on the ground. If they’ve got bio-scanners, we’re burning time.” She crouched low, adjusting her weight before gesturing ahead. “We move north. Hit the river. Running water screws their thermals.”

  Manua, Haret’s biggest jungle, was nothing like the Earth’s Amazon. Not anymore. Humanity’s old rainforest had been reduced to fttened nd for the most colossal megastructure the pnet had ever seen, only for the contractor—The South America Confed— to pnt a simuted forest atop the 48th floor of that very structure.

  Rhyan pushed aside a broad, waxy leaf, only to feel a stream of collected water spill down his forearm, soaking the sleeve of his jacket. He exhaled through his nose but kept moving, shaking off the droplets as best he could.

  The woman wasn’t as lucky. As she stepped past a low-hanging vine, one of the curling thorns hidden beneath the foliage shed out, jabbed through the fabric of her sleeve, and sliced a shallow line across her exposed wrist. She hissed, jerking her arm back as a single bead of blood welled at the cut.

  Those were the flora Rhyan would never have seen back in his hometown.

  “Watch yourself,” Rhyan muttered, stepping in to brush the vine aside with the back of his Morkanium-coated hand. The thorn recoiled at the touch, snapping back into its curled position like it had never moved in the first pce.

  After a few minutes of silent running, she shot him a sideways gnce. “You never said why you’re in this jungle. People don’t simply end up in Manua.”

  Rhyan didn’t look at her as he leapt over a fallen branch. “You never said why the military’s after you.”

  She pursed her lips, then pouted, then clicked her tongue. “Guess we’re both keeping secrets, then. Can I at least know your name? What do you call yourself?”

  A narrow stream trickled through the underbrush ahead, barely deep enough to wet his fingers. He took a good look around. Along its edge, small pebbles glistened under the dim jungle light, their surfaces smooth from years of water erosion.

  “Gravel,” he announced. He couldn’t call himself Pebble.

  She raised an eyebrow as she turned back. “Gravel?”

  He nodded once.

  She studied him for a second, then let out a breath that almost sounded like a ugh. “Alright, Gravel.” She stopped for a few seconds too long. “I’m Felicia.”

  That was the most Earthling-sounding name he had heard from a Haretian, which was not that strange, but was also strange enough considering the Earthlings hadn’t moved to Haret until 300 years ago.

  She didn’t offer a st name. He didn’t ask.

  “Where are you from, Gravel? Nobody on Haret speaks ISL*. Nobody names themselves in ISL, neither.” She scrunched her nose as she took in a deep breath. “Which pnet spat you out?”

  He kept walking. “You’re a curious one. Maybe we save our ice-breaker for after we’ve booked ourselves tickets on our next inter-gaxy unch?”

  “Leaving this pnet? I—” A shrill sound cut through her words, followed by the crackling murmur of ground team comms and the rhythmic snap of boots against the damp earth.

  Felicia’s posture shifted. “They’re sweeping left. Cutting off our exit.”

  Rhyan released a breath, adjusting his stance as his other arm hardened into a Morkanium projectile shooter. He tested the weight. “Well, fellow criminal. I reckon you’re quite short of options.”

  They ran.