“You should have seen the commander’s face when your arrow came in, Ritz.” I look around the table with a mock, overexaggerated surprise then throw my head back cackling. “Fucking fantastic. Absolutely worth the punches to the face.”

  Ritz scans the voice-to-text box in front of her eyes as she adjusts the bow on her shoulder and spins the arrow in her fingers. Biting the inside of her cheek, she puts down the arrow and signs, “Maybe you should aim for less face-hitting in the future, though.” Her translator gloves turn the shapes and movements into sounds for us.

  I give her a crooked grin, hold my hands up and shrug. “It won’t kill me.”

  Kio snorts, half-asleep over top of their dinner plate. “Spoken like a true runner.”

  “We can’t all sit around camp waiting for someone to drop a jillabird in our lap.”

  Kio throws a nutra-ball in their mouth. “You go get chased around by a giant bird and tell me who really got the short end of the stick.”

  “Kio,” Jai chides, taking food from her plate and putting it in her bag under the table. “Don’t talk about her like that.” I give Kio a stratified smirk that falls off my face when Jai continues, “She’s spent who knows how long being brutalized by soldiers, of course she’s not going to trust us yet,” and I realize she’s talking about the jillabird.

  Ritz—the only one who notices—stifles a laugh. “Do you think you’ll actually be able to train the jillabird to teleport?”

  Kio grimaces and shrugs. “Eh?” They look to Jai. “Jai?”

  Jai hides another piece of food in her bag. “It’ll just take time for her to trust us. After that, I’m sure we can.”

  “Yeah, but that’s assuming we can find more about jillabirds than chipping murals,” Kio looks off to the side, wide-eyed, “and that’s a pretty big if.”

  Jai gives them a disapproving frown. “Talk like that’s not going to help anyone.”

  The chatter from the rest of the camp having dinner fills the main-mess hall-whatever we need building. One of the few shelters made from sheet metal and scrap—as opposed to the fabric ones we sleep in—it’s just too small to fit all nineteen of us comfortably. Wildlings perch on the edges of tables when lacking seats, or lean against the central pole. A disjointed bundle of lights encircles the support, like a jagged, misplaced star. It paints the patchwork walls with shadows.

  Jai finishes eating and stands. “Kio, are you going to come say goodnight to her?”

  “The bird? No thanks.” They bury their head in their arms on the table. “I’ve been chased around enough for today.”

  “Suit yourself.” Jai picks up her bag and leaves.

  I watch her go. Ritz kicks me under the table and nods me after her. Tapping the table a few times, I spin around and follow after Jai.

  Outside, the desert wind blows sand around on the dunes beyond camp. It whisks away the chemical tinge of nutra-balls and rehydrated food—stolen from soldiers’ camps—spilling out from the shelter. My jacket’s thermal lining kicks in, the day’s heat gone.

  Jai hops the fence of the jillabird corral. The bird screeches at her, but quieter than this afternoon.

  “Easy. Look,” Jai holds out her bag. “I brought you something.” She repeats presumably the same thing in high-pitched noises.

  The jillabird sniffs, feather-scales rippling.

  “That’s it.” Along with a large piece of rehydrated bread—which Jai holds out to the jillabird—Jai also takes out a length of rope from her bag. “See? Food.” She tosses the bread to the creature. While its distracted eating, Jai ties one end of the rope around her waist. “Want more?” She kicks over her bag, spilling half her dinner on the sand.

  The jillabird picks at the food as Jai creeps a few steps closer.

  “What are you doing?” I ask.

  She jumps. The bird rounds on her, feather-scales sticking out straight from its sides, hissing.

  Right. I should have kept my mouth shut until she was done whatever she was trying to do. “Hey!” I shout and run towards the corral, jumping the fence before I think too hard about it. Or at all. “Over here!”

  This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

  The jillabird considers me for all of two paliaen seconds before it hisses and charges at me.

  “Oh shit.”

  “Play dead,” Jai says over the com.

  I drop to the ground, nicking my head on a stray rock. Ow. The bird slows, nudging me with its beak.

  “Xen, don’t move for a sec…” Jai murmurs.

  The jillabird pushes me from my side onto my stomach. I turn my head to avoid suffocating in the sand. The bird snaps.

  “I said stay still.”

  Then the bird screeches and when I sit up, Jai’s on its back, tying the rope around its neck. “Hit the cuff!”

  I kick the particle cuff. It shuts off, falling from the bird’s ankle. Jai grins wildly. I only hear it because she left her com on, but she breathes, “Come on, show me what the world looks like from the sky.”

  Like it understands her, the jillabird spreads its wings and with a few powerful flaps is airborne.

  I whistle for Getlas and she whirs over to me, beeping sleepily. Didn’t we fly enough today?

  “I know, I know. But come on, we’ll lose ‘em if we’re not fast.”

  Getlas and I chase after Jai and the jillabird.

  We’re just out of sight of camp when the jillabird decides it doesn’t like Jai on its back and careens wildly to throw her off.

  “Jai, are you—”

  But she’s laughing. Grabbing the rope tight-knuckled, legs squeezing the sides of the bird, Jai smiles as the bird thrashes around in mid-air. When that doesn’t work, the jillabird shoots straight up into the sky. I fly after them. At last, the jillabird levels out. Jai lets go of the rope and flops back, arms outstretched, her laughter near-hysterical. She notices me where I hover above her. “Hey!”

  “Hey.”

  “I know you think this is really reckless, but,” she brushes tight black curls out of her face, “I just couldn’t wait.”

  “No,” I shake my head vigorously. “That’s not what I was thinking at all. I’m impressed you stayed on.”

  “Well, I’m not a wrangler for nothing.” She sits up and takes in the night sky, the desert sprawling out below us, and sighs. “Is that what you get to see all the time?”

  “Pretty much.” After a moment, I start. “Wait, is this your first time flying?”

  “Well, I can’t fly a glider, so yes.”

  While the rest of the desert’s animals might listen to the wranglers, the half-corporeal creatures that make their home in spare tech don’t. Their wings are the only part that’s tangible, so the rest of their body they make out of tech. And while they don’t listen blindly to the runners or fighters who fly them, they at least talk.

  “But,” Jai takes a deep breath, looking around with the kind of adoring stare I can only dream of being on the other end of, “I’ve always wanted to fly.”

  I shake my head, snapping out of my staring. “You should have told me. I’m sure I could’ve found a way to get you in the air. Right, Getlas?”

  Getlas beeps decisively twice. No way.

  “Um, that means ‘For sure.’”

  Jai giggles.

  I fly closer. “What do you think? Of—Of flying.”

  “It’s even better than I imagined.” She looks up at me, eyes bright. Like she kept a few sunrays in her irises. “Oh, your head.”

  Sure enough, I’m bleeding again, my fingers coming away from my forehead red. “One of these days Hels is going to get sick of patching me up.”

  Jai brushes my temple, fingers sunbeam-light. “Are you okay?”

  I think I stop breathing. “Uh, oh yeah, yeah. It’s nothing.”

  She laughs quietly to herself. “You know, you didn’t have to do that. I had a plan if she didn’t like me getting that close.”

  Right. “Um… sorry?”

  “It’s fine. This is more fun anyways.” She reaches up again, running her fingers along my bruised jaw.

  It hurts more than I expect. I flinch away.

  “Is that from today?”

  Once I remember how to person again, I grin and scoff. “Let me tell you: I was trying to get caught, but they were really trying to catch me.”

  Jai absent-mindedly stokes the jillabird’s feathers. “I’m so happy I was there to help free her, but I could have gone my whole life without setting foot in one of those encampments.”

  Jai’s run today makes her one of the first wranglers in our camp to see a soldier’s battalion up close, a job usually left to runners and fighters. But then we’re not usually stealing giant birds.

  “What’s it like?” she asks. “Always being the one who runs distraction or goes in alone and causes chaos?”

  “Fun.”

  Jai gives me a disbelieving frown. “Don’t you ever get scared?”

  I shake my head with a close-lipped smile. “Nope.”

  What the commander said about the empress… It didn’t scare me. It was just weird. Since when did the empress care about wildlings beyond stealing usamas and killing the rest of us who get in the way? “I’m fearless.”

  Jai rolls her eyes.

  “I’ll prove it.”

  Jai tilts her head. “How?”

  “Like this.”

  Getlas frantically beeping to not, I hit the button that switches off the forcefield keeping me attached to her.

  I free fall. Air rushes past me and I tear up. I turn off my jacket to really feel the wind flying past, freezing and all. I spin head over heels. The sky and the sand dance in circles. If it weren’t for the ground rushing to meet me, I wouldn’t know I’m falling.

  Getlas drops after me and I right myself so I’m parallel with her. Of her own volition, she flies closer and switches the forcefield back on, halting my descent. She beeps angrily at me. You need to give me proper warning!

  “I know, I know.” Louder, I shout to Jai, “See? Fearless!”

  “You’ve certainly proved why you’re not scared of soldiers.”

  “What’s that mean?” I ask as I fly back up to her.

  “It means at least you can fight a soldier.” In the moonlight, she eyes my bruises again. “You can’t fight gravity.”

  I flash my teeth. “Watch me.”