Return

Luna didn’t know what to think about that. In truth, she could barely think at all by that point. In spite of Leon’s reservations, the group pressed forward cautiously among the remains of the factory buildings, looking around them as they went as if searching the shadows for enemies. The whole place looked as skeletal now as the carcass of some great creature made of steel, portions of walls damaged or even collapsed in whatever fighting there had been around there.

They took her on her juddering cart through into a space where the sign for a chemical company hung at an angle, looking as though it might fall at any moment. Vats and canisters stood wherever Luna looked, some large enough to be crossed by walkways of perforated metal. A few of the vats looked empty now, looted or leaking or just evaporated, but several rippled with chemicals, bubbling here and there in ways that promised death for anyone unlucky enough to fall in. Debris littered the floor so that it was hard to pick a way between it, from girders that looked as though they had fallen from the ceiling, to boxes scattered here and there that looked as though they had been searched for their contents.

The Survivors spread out around Luna, starting to search the factory, moving between the piles of debris and picking through what was left, presumably in the hope that one of them would contain something useful.

“What are we looking for?” one of them called over.

Barnaby answered that one. “We’re going to need machinery for processing chemicals into a usable form. Not the vats. Look further back.”

All Luna could do was wait and hope, and she hated the waiting. Part of her hated it because it meant that she couldn’t kill any of the people around her, but Luna knew that part wasn’t really her, just the part that was controlled. The bigger worry was that the more time passed, the harder it was to remember that. She couldn’t wait, because there was no time to wait.

“Here!” Leon called, from behind a pile of junk. There was a noted of hope in his voice, but Luna didn’t dare to share it right then. “Barnaby, Ignatius, come look at this.”

Luna saw the two of them disappear behind the same pile. Seconds passed, then minutes.

“Bring Luna,” Ignatius called out, and his hope felt somehow more solid, because he knew what it was they were looking for.

The figures around her wheeled her forward, across the roughness of the factory’s floor. Through the bars of her cage, Luna saw machinery she didn’t understand, but some of it seemed to be designed to grind, while parts of it scanned and parts of it liquefied. From the scuff marks on the floor, it seemed that Barnaby and Ignatius had dragged a couple of parts of it closer to one another in order to lash pieces of it together, while a couple of smaller pieces of equipment had been duct taped together to make a larger whole, albeit an unsteady one.

The two of them were working on the ore, and, from the way Luna threw herself at the bars even harder then, she guessed that they were achieving something. She kept going until—

“Stop!” a voice ordered, and it sounded like a voice used to giving orders and having them obeyed. “Stop, right now!”

Men and women came out of hiding places around the factory. All of them held guns that looked far more sophisticated than anything the Survivors had. Most of the people there looked as though they knew how to use them too, moving smoothly, aiming accurately, and not betraying a hint of concern as they surrounded Luna and the others.

“What are you doing here?” the man in the lead demanded. He had a pistol leveled at Luna. “Why have you brought one of those creatures here?”

“Luna isn’t a creature,” Leon said, obviously deciding to take charge. “She’s our friend, and she saved all of us. We just need—”

“You just need to leave,” the man said, “and you need to do it at once. I am Captain Harris of the Seventy-fifth. I have kept my people alive through discipline, and by making the choices that have to be made. I will not allow looters in our area, and I will kill the alien scum on sight!”

There was a crack as he fired, and Luna heard the ping as the bullet ricocheted off the metal of her cage, close enough that she was sure she could feel it passing close to her. Weirdly, she didn’t flinch or feel afraid, although perhaps that was because the progress of the alien vapor within her.

Around Luna, the guns of the Survivors came up, along with all the weapons held by the rest of the people they’d saved. The figures above had the more advanced weapons, but there were far more of those below, and plenty of them looked ready to fight and die if they had to.