He was sitting up on the cot, unraveling the bandage of his severed limb. Internally, the nanite was already performing a life-saving miracle. He could feel his ribs stitching together. And that joint that had always been out of place, where he’d broken his leg while roving the streets as a fledgling, felt better than he could ever remember.

He could even breathe without wincing now. Now that I think about it—Eolh inhaled sharply—I don’t know that I ever breathed this well.

The leather on his waistcoat creaked as he doubled over, trying to pick up another, slightly cleaner rag.

Seeing his apparent health, the Queen stirred from her chair. “It’s time.”

“He won’t be safe up there,” Eolh said.

“He’s not safe down here.” Her crest feathers were standing on end, adding to her height and brushing against the fabric ceiling.

“If you take him into the city, they will find him. You know they will.”

“We are hunted. They know we are here. We have no choice but to start moving, and unless you know of any other underground cities, the only way out is up.”

***

The way the two avians argued, it was as if he weren’t there at all. As if he were still back in the Conclave, listening to his cultivars argue in the middle of the night.

Xiaoyun yelling at Matsuka. Matsuka muttering to himself and to Harrison. And Harrison rolling his eyes at both of them, saying, “He’s done. He’s failed every single test. Every single one. Why are you so stuck on him? You can keep wasting your life, but I will not waste mine. He’s done.”

As if he weren’t there at all.

Poire was the last born of his cohort. One of thirty-seven children born in the Central Conclave, Karam. One of the thirty-seven chosen.

Unfortunately, he didn’t know what he had been chosen for. He wasn’t old enough to have earned any of those permissions.

And even if he was, he probably wouldn’t earn them. Not only was Poire last; he was also the least of his cohort. Every year, his test scores seemed to get lower.

Even last year, he thought. I tried my hardest. I gave it everything. Even then, I failed.

Well, fine. The tests were hard. But he knew where Marsim was. He even knew how to get to him. They were only ten minutes away at best.

“I know a few quiet spots in Lowtown,” Eolh said.

Ryke’s voice quivered with rage. “We are not taking the Savior Divine to Lowtown.”

“Well, he’s not going to the Highcity. They’ll sell him out, same as they do to each other.”

If only they would stop fighting.

Now the Queen was staring icy daggers into the corvani, and Eolh was pretending that his own crest feathers weren’t rising up.

“Why do you hate each other?” Poire asked.

Ryke and Eolh looked at Poire, then at each other. It was the same look his cultivars used to make when they realized he had been listening the whole time. That always made Harrison mad. Matsuka, ashamed.

“He is a thief,” she said.

“Better a thief than a coward, My Queen.”

Ryke’s golden eyes flashed. She took a dangerous step forward and raised herself a full two heads higher than Eolh. Only now did Poire notice how much larger her wings were than Eolh’s, and the muscles, too, where her wings attached to her arms. And the talons on her feet . . .

“We should go to the middle biome,” Poire said. “The second step.”

Both turned their heads.

“You mean the Midcity?” Eolh asked.

“Yeah, that one.”

“Good,” Eolh said.

“Yes,” Ryke said at the same time.

They looked at each other again, and Poire thought he saw something else pass between them. Are all avians like this?

“Who do you know in the Midcity?” Ryke eyed Eolh with suspicion.

“A good doctor.”

“A green doctor?”

“How do you know them?”

“I told you, corvani. You don’t know anything about me. I was going to suggest taking Poire to the very same. He owes me a favor.”

“Funny,” Eolh grunted. “I owe him one too.”

Eolh held his wrist in front of his face as if he could bring back his hand by staring at it. Bitterness etched grim lines through his feathers and the corners of his beak, and Poire felt a pang of guilt run through him.

If Marsim can help, maybe we can grow him a new limb. It wasn’t the most common procedure, but Poire had heard it had been done several times while they were building the Conclaves.

“Well?” Eolh cawed out a sigh. “How do we get back to the surface? I’d wager the hunter is waiting for us in the tunnels.”

“What choice do we have?” Ryke asked. “We’ll have to risk it.”

“No,” Poire said. “There’s another way.”

“Divine One?” Ryke bowed before she spoke to him. Like he was some revered being who had fallen from the Heavens. He didn’t know why, but that bow made his chest squeeze with discomfort.

I am not what you think I am . . .

“The elevators,” Poire said.

“Elevators?” Ryke said as if she’d never heard the word.

“There’s eight of them,” Poire said. “Or there were. But I saw one that looked like it might still work. If it has power.”

“Elevators,” Ryke said again, looking at Eolh.

Eolh shrugged. “Well, what about them? How do we get through all the Sajaahin?”

Outside, the chants still came and went in long, moaning waves. Drums thumped regularly, though the horns had ceased their racket. But Poire was certain, as soon as he stepped outside, the noise would resume at peak volume.

If they’re so convinced I’m a god . . .

“I have an idea,” he said. “Follow me.”

He opened the tent upon a sea of torches and dark, huddled shapes. The hordes lifted their voices in raucous jubilation. The drums and clattering instruments shook the caverns, and the sea of bodies began to sway in waves, singing their guttural song.

Evolutionary mutants. That’s what they are. He was certain of it. But left to live on in these tunneled-out caverns for who knew how long.

Thankfully, long enough to have developed a belief system. Poire held his hands up, and a stillness fell over the crowds.

When he was convinced all the eyes were on him, he held his hands pressed together, out in front of him, and slowly spread them apart as if opening the heaviest doors in existence.

At first, nothing happened. All the Sajaahin stood still.

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Then, a few of them started to grunt and cough and bark at their neighbors. The crowds shuffled, beginning to split apart.

“I can’t believe that worked,” Eolh said behind Poire.

“Of course it worked,” Ryke said, her voice tinged with pride. “Where the Savior walks, the way opens.”

“Right,” Eolh croaked doubtfully.

As they walked through the parted crowd, the hooded heads turned as he passed like leaves following the light of the sun.

It was eerie but not quite uncomfortable. He felt safe here, like an esteemed guest in some great house. Director Yovan’s house, maybe.

As Poire passed the crowds, they whispered and sighed at him. One old Sajaahin broke the spell by falling to the ground, wailing before him. Her bony limbs stuck out of her ragged shawls, her knuckles cracking like dried branches as she clutched at the dirt in front of his feet. Not daring to touch him but unable to let him pass.

She was begging him. But for what?

“Just keep walking,” Eolh said over his shoulder.

“I can’t just ignore her.”

“Sure you can. Gods have been ignoring people for thousands of years. Why change that now?”

Poire ignored him and reached into the flexible pocket of his suit, where half of the nanite tubes were safely nestled. He crouched down in front of the old Sajaahin and gathered her hands in his. Her fingers were desperately cold and painfully brittle, and his stomach squirmed at the feeling of so many knuckles, but he pushed the weirdness away. Her face was hidden in the shadows of her hood, and he had the feeling it was better that way. Even for a Sajaahin, she looked frail.

“You shouldn’t worship me,” Poire said calmly. “I am not a god.”

She clucked gently at him, her voice full of awe. He had no idea if she understood him or not. The avians spoke his tongue, albeit with strange accents; maybe the Sajaahin did too.

“I don’t know who you are—or what you are—but I don’t want you to hurt. Please, take this.”

She clutched the tube in both hands, her whole body trembling. Under her hood, she made a gasping, gulping sound that Poire couldn’t interpret.

“Go on. If you need it, use it.” Poire mimed an injection. “Do you understand?”

In answer, she reached into the layers of her ragged shawls and pulled out a string from which hung the plastic shell of a mechanical switch. Its letters were faded but still legible: OVRD.

A key for a manual override, probably from one of the massive air filters or power exchangers on the surface.

She urged him to take it, pressing it into his hands.

He thanked her and looped the twine around his neck. The coarse fiber itched, but even if it was made of thorns, he wouldn’t take it off.

To Poire, this was no broken piece of plastic. It was a piece of home.

They reached the edge of the crowd, all the twinkling torches of the Sahaat spread behind them. Before they left, Poire took one last look. At the hordes of hooded aliens, draped in rags and rusted bits of metal. At their tents and the vendor stalls, and the train sitting high above the Sahaat, gleaming chrome on a mound of black dirt.

His home was in ruins. His friends, his family. All gone.

But a new people lived here now. He hoped this place would serve them well.

And as he stared, Poire felt a breeze. It sounded like wind rushing through the leaves of an ancient forest. But the wind didn’t reach down here, not this far down the cavern floor.

Snatches of conversation blew through the wind. He could hear voices but not their words.

“Here? Are you serious?”

“It must be.”

Poire strained to listen. Those were human voices. But he could see neither of the speakers.

“It’s blind.”

“No, it can hear.”

“It’s listening to us?” the elder voice said, suddenly hushed. “Right now?”

“Talk to it.”

“What do you want?” the elder voice shouted. “Why are you doing this to us?”

The wind howled over them, turning and twisting and carrying the voices away so that he could only hear the roaring gale as it rushed over him and under him, and when he looked down at his hands, he thought he could see steam, or mist, or something coming off his fingers. No; it was as if the mist were drawn to him but could not touch him, and—

“Divine One?” Ryke said.

Poire gasped as the wind, the voices, all of it disappeared. As if they were sucked out of the cavern and down some distant tunnel.

“Are you well?” Ryke asked.

“I thought I heard something.”

His hands were shaking, as if he were weak from hunger. Maybe he was still waking up from the cold chamber. They said sometimes people had waking dreams after they got out, especially if they had been under for a while.

And how long had he been under? Fifty years? A hundred?

More?

“Come on,” Poire said. “The elevator is close.”

They trekked across the expanse, Eolh showing Poire how to move low and fast. Ryke took to the air, watching over them from above.

Once, this city was beautiful. Eight columns supported a vast, seminatural cavern that had been hollowed out by nature, then by terraforming machines. The columns faced inward, toward that solitary spiral hill at the center of the Conclave, where the remains of one tower still stood.

Once, that tower had been glass and carved stone leafed in gorgeous, liquid metal that reflected all the blue fountains and red brick avenues. And, of course, the greenery that grew from every surface. Trees and grasses grew in pockets around every home, and hanging lichens dripped down the cavern walls, and ivies wound around the stone banisters of the crisscrossing stone steps.

Now, all the metal was stripped and scarred and corroded. All the plants and all the homes, long gone. The broad avenues where Poire and his friends used to play when he was younger were submerged beneath hills of dirt and crude hovels and debris.

Yet even in these wastes, new kinds of life blossomed. In the Conclave, they had lab-grown mushrooms, but they were nothing like the forests down here. Some of these gargantuan mushrooms even glowed an eerie white, like the ghosts of trees . . .

Somehow, it made him feel better. If only a little.

Poire led Eolh through one of these patches of the forest to a column that dominated a corner of the cavern.

“There should be an elevator shaft inside. There’s supposed to be a door there, but I guess . . . I guess something happened to it.”

Instead of a door, there was nothing more than a door-shaped gap leading into darkness. Eolh used the android’s eye to illuminate the inside.

There was the floor of the elevator, but something had made its nest in here, and the remains of eggs and molted skins and other decaying matter littered the floor. Black streaks of dried-up something stained the place where the control panel had been.

Worst of all, most of the elevator car was missing.

“What do you mean it’s missing?” Eolh asked.

“It’s supposed to have walls,” Poire said. “Elevators have to have walls, don’t they?”

“Don’t even know what an elevator is,” he grumbled back.

Poire craned his neck up, seeing only darkness. Even the ceiling was gone.

“Well,” Poire said, “as long as no one touches the walls, it should be fine. If it still works.”

Normally, all Poire had to do was step inside and impulse his destination to his implant. The implant would carry the signal into the Conclave’s system, and the elevator would do the rest.

But his wrist implant was still dead.

And with the control panel like that . . . there was no chance for manual input.

He focused all his concentration. Maybe I can skip the implant and impulse directly. He closed his eyes and willed the elevator to wake up. But it was like shouting into a wall. He felt like a young child again, learning how to summon the most basic impulse—and failing. Always failing.

“Hey,” Eolh whispered. His crest feathers were raised, alert. “You hear that?”

Before Poire could open his eyes, Ryke shoved him against the back wall of the elevator. His foot smashed into a clutch of empty eggs, cracking their desiccated shells.

Ryke put herself between him and the doors and unslung her carbine, pointing it out into the darkness beyond.

There was a quiet crunch, like a single footstep on loose soil.

Both of the avians’ feathers were raised. Both of them froze in place. And Poire could barely hear anything over the beating of his own heart.

“See anything?” Eolh’s voice was softer than silence.

“What is it?” Poire said. “What’s out there?”

Eolh held his good hand up, silencing him. He slid a knife out of his belt and held it at the ready.

“It’s toying with us. It knows we’re cornered.”

“Damn it.” Eolh’s crest feathers flattened. “Fledge, your thing. Elevator. Does it work?”

“I can’t—”

The corvani didn’t wait for him to finish. “Ryke, carry him.”

“Are you sure, corvani?” The Queen’s voice was low. Dangerous.

Poire felt a spike of concern. “What are you doing? Eolh, don’t.”

The corvani cocked his head, a sad smile playing at the corners of his beak. “Finishing the job, Fledge.” His smile soured when he turned to Ryke. “I always thought you sold us out. Everyone did. Hope they were wrong about you.”

Ryke’s feathers flared. But she nodded at Eolh, and he nodded back.

“What is he doing?” Poire asked. And when Eolh took a step out of the elevator, out where that thing was waiting for him, Poire shouted, “NO!”

He threw his hands out, meaning only to grab Eolh and pull him back in.

There was a flash of light. An electronic voice announced, “Destination confirmed,” and the elevator jolted under their feet, throwing the three of them to the floor.

It scraped against the column walls as it jostled and started to rise.

A wretched croak echoed out from the darkness. A webbed hand slapped at the elevator floor, a wet body emerging from below.

Ryke reached for her carbine.

Eolh threw his knife at the webbed hand. But the assassin was too quick. It sprang into the elevator, sailing over Eolh. Over Ryke. Eolh’s knife missed and clattered against the wall.

The assassin smashed into Poire with a force that knocked the breath out of his lungs. Their bodies made a wet smack as they slammed into the wall. The killer’s body was cold and slathered in mucus that stuck to every inch of Poire’s body.

Ryke loosed a piercing scream, filled with utter despair. As if she could undo this moment with her primal might.

And then, the heat of an energy lance sliced through the assassin’s body with a clean, diagonal cut that narrowly missed Poire, too.

The killer’s body began to separate into halves.

It died, croaking with laughter.

Ryke unfolded her wings, meaning to pull the killer off Poire, but Eolh threw himself at her and wrapped his arms around her.

“Don’t touch it!” Eolh shouted, Ryke’s wings beating at him. “Don’t!”

She was screaming now, and straining against his grip, and it was all Eolh could do to hold on as she fought her way toward Poire’s collapsed body.

But Poire didn’t understand why they were screaming. They had killed it, hadn’t they?

And when he pushed the wet body off himself, dropping its innards onto the elevator floor, and both Eolh and Ryke were staring at him, he still didn’t understand.

Poire tried to wipe away the slime covering his skin, but it stuck to everything. Some of it had gotten into his mouth, and he spat out the taste—sewer water and rancid mucus and too much salt.

“How?” Eolh furrowed his brow feathers in confusion. “How are you standing there?”

“It just crawled on me,” Poire said, still trying to wipe the gunk off his cold suit. The water-repellent material made the mucus bead off in globs. “I’m fine. You killed it before it could do anything. Uh, Ryke?”

“Divine One—” She was on the ground in front of him, kneeling, her beak pressed to the floor. “We are not worthy of your presence.”

Poire looked at Eolh. “What is she talking about?”

“That thing. A single drop of its mucus should’ve killed you. It eats flesh down to the bones.”

“Oh.” That was all Poire could muster. Dazed.

Ryke was whispering something at the floor that sounded like a prayer.

Eolh shook his head in disbelief. “Fledge . . . what are you?”