Chapter 20
Prairie Fire
They went a while longer. The narrow track broke out of a split in the rock face onto a slightly wider incline. Moonlight poured down again, washing the ground pale gray.
In the moonlight Eren saw a mark just ahead of his feet.
Not a footprint—a drag track. A strip-shaped trench about half an arm's width, running in from the right side of the slope toward the lower gully. Gravel on both flanks had been pushed aside. It did not look like natural collapse—too neat.
A few branches in the nearby brush had been snapped. Fresh breaks; the pale wood had not weathered yet.
Someone had passed through here not long ago. Whoever it was had cleared the way—stones shifted, brush broken—opening a path.
Eren followed the mark with his eyes toward the lower gully, and farther off, a jumble of old structure picked out by moonlight.
He could still make out a few things in the dark: half an arched reinforcement ring, a mine-cart frame toppled at the foot of the slope, and a section of narrow-gauge rail angling up out of the dirt—the gauge too narrow for ordinary rail lines.
Eren edged a few more steps along the drag track and crouched behind a fallen slab. Buried behind the stone was a round concrete base, three rust-frozen bolts still at the rim—old vent shaft or mast footing, maybe. Beside it, half buried in soil, lay a broken length of iron ladder.
Eren already had the shape of it.
This track likely belonged to an old mine tunnel.
He fitted that thought against the drag mark, the cleared ground, the beep-beep-beep Nova had heard. The picture was still incomplete—but enough to put him on guard.
At the same time, a few hundred paces away.
Inside a tunnel on an old mine-cart spur line, a column moved without sound.
The scout walked point, one hand on the tunnel wall, the other gripping a short stick wrapped in cloth—a shard of Crystone bound to the tip, giving off a faint glow. Not enough to light the whole tunnel, but enough to see the ground underfoot.
Four men in the middle escorted one captive. Cloth blindfold over his eyes, wrists bound behind his back. He walked unsteady; every few steps someone behind gave his shoulder a shove.
Two more at the rear carried supplies, lagging slightly at the tail.
The tunnel stayed quiet. Whoever led had scraped gravel to either side.
The man at the back suddenly stopped. He drew a palm-sized black handheld from inside his jacket—rubber bumper around the case, corners worn bright. The short antenna lay flat against his palm; he held a side button down with his thumb.
Three quick tones in his earpiece: beep, beep, beep.
Cold white lines scrolled on the small screen—a brief alert, then a string of coordinate-like numbers. He glanced, tapped twice under the screen with his thumb, and the display went dark.
He looked a few seconds, closed the cover, and murmured forward: "Pick up the pace. They're tightening the net."
No answer from up front—the pace quickened a beat. The blindfolded researcher stumbled; someone beside him caught his elbow.
Back on the slope.
The veteran's group had gathered again. Several of the runners who had scattered to make contact had come back—they met the rear guard in a hollow below the high slope.
"East gorge mouth—nothing."
"Main track either."
The veteran stood at the lip of the hollow, motionless, staring into the distance. A long while.
The hooded woman stood to his right and said something low.
"They set a trap—not just to watch a show. They'll look for a chance to move him out." The veteran's voice did not carry far, but every word landed clean. "Tighten the cordon. Don't let them slip."
Messengers ran out again, directions more focused this time—likely key routes and gorge mouths. You could see the veteran pressing more bodies onto the likeliest escape lines.
Eren lay behind the low rise with a different read on things.
The old mine track he had seen on the slope, and the beep-beep-beep Nova had caught—very likely that was whoever moving the captive while everything else burned.
Nova was sorting the distant sounds too.
"Hear it again?" Eren asked quietly.
"Yeah. Same beep-beep-beep." Nova pointed into the distance.
The direction he pointed matched where the drag track ran. Nobody from the veteran's column was checking that way.
Eren's first thought was to go confirm himself. The old mine track was not far—from the foot of the slope you could approach without being easily spotted. If he found a trail he would turn back at once.
Opponents with modern comms—he did not want a straight fight.
"Come with me." He kept his voice low, took Nova by the hand, and moved along the slope toward the right front.
They went slow, each step on the softest ground they could find. Moonlight was mostly cut off here by the slope wall—dark enough that only outlines guided them.
After about a hundred paces Eren locked onto Nova's wrist.
"Stop."
He crouched and reached slowly forward across the ground. His fingertips met a taut thin line less than a palm's height off the dirt.
Tripwire.
Without that flash of reflection they might already have triggered it.
His fingers traced a short length. One end tied to an iron peg driven into the soil; the other vanished behind a gravel pile a few steps on.
Cold ran up Eren's back.
He pulled Nova back without a sound. When they reached safer ground on the slope they looked at each other.
"Someone's over there." Nova said.
"Right. But we can't get through."
Eren stayed low and felt around some more. Half a length of old cable showed from under the gravel, a fresh cut at the end gleaming silver in the moonlight. In a hollow in the slope wall he found several stones turned over—wet faces that should have lain against the ground now open to the air. In a crack between rocks his fingers found a torn strip of paper with two handwritten lines still legible: sample, -7.
He turned the scrap over, looked again, and pocketed it.
"Tell them?" Nova glanced toward the veteran's column.
Eren did not nod at once.
It was not that he distrusted Nova's ears.
Two strangers with no clear origin, tailing them half the night, pointing at a booby-trapped old mine tunnel—why should they believe it? Even if they did, and their people charged the traps, he and Nova would probably wear the spy label. That end was worse than failing to find the researcher—both their lives forfeit.
Stay quiet and keep tailing—maybe the revolutionaries would find it themselves. Something might still break their way.
He tipped his head toward Nova. "Can't. Keep following."
Nova nodded once. They retraced their steps behind the low rise and watched the hollow below.
They had barely settled when a voice rang clear in the night sky.
"You've been on our tail all this way. Care to step out and say hello?"
Eren's spine locked. The white-haired veteran stood in the distance, eyes fixed straight on him.
Eren did not make an extra move. At the edge of his vision, crossbows waited behind rocks on either flank—bolt heads catching cold light in the moon.
He rose slowly, hands spread, palms out. Nova pressed against his back, fingers hooked in his coat hem, and followed him down.
Moonlight dragged their shadows long as they stepped, one pace at a time, into the light at the hollow's rim.
A short command. Two heavy crossbows pressed into his back—at this range no one would miss.
"Don't shoot. We met a minute ago." Eren's voice did not shake. "We've got something you want."
Silence in the hollow.
The white-haired veteran came out of the group.
He did not rush to speak. His eyes ran Eren head to foot, then flicked to Nova shrinking behind him—appraising, not like he was sizing up strangers.
"You said you were job-runners." He spoke at last. "Job-runners tail us in the dark this long?"
Eren had no clean excuse. He was a job-runner—that part was true. The full story would not fit in a few words.
"I am a job-runner. I did follow you." He said. "I wasn't trying to hurt anyone."
"You tailed a stretch, went that way, came back." The veteran lifted his chin toward the slope behind Eren. "What for?"
Eren's stomach dropped. They had seen everything he had done.
"Who you're looking for didn't take the main road."
The veteran held his eyes. "You follow us all night without a word, get caught, then you've got a lead?"
Eren met the veteran's gaze and did not look away.
"We found freshly cleared ground that way, drag marks, stones turned over—and this." He drew the scrap from his pocket and held it out. "There are traps ahead. We didn't dare go on. So we came back."
"That way there's an old pit tunnel—dead end, collapsed ages ago." A man beside him cut in.
The veteran did not answer.
Eren knew—if he stood on the other side, he would not trust someone caught red-handed who suddenly had something to say either.
"I was going to keep tailing. Wait until you found it yourselves—then you'd believe it."
The white-haired veteran pinched the scrap but kept his eyes on Eren's face.
Eren could see him weighing it.
"How did you find it?"
Nova stepped to Eren's side and swallowed. "There's a beep-beep-beep sound in that direction—keeps going."
The hollow stirred at once.
Someone murmured, surprised: "Electronics?"
Another man's grip tightened on his spear shaft. "You sure you heard that? Don't talk wild."
The hooded woman said nothing, but her look darkened a step. She slipped the long crossbow from her shoulder—the prod and rail rough with field-built joins. Her thumb nudged the latch, ready to change line and push.
The veteran was quiet a moment.
He looked at Eren. "How far?"
"About a quarter hour on foot." Eren said.
He turned and pointed. "Alan—take two men, check the direction he gave."
A wiry man answered.
"Red smoke the moment you have anything. We'll support."
His right hand lifted. "Everyone else stays on plan."
Alan took two men and melted into the dark like they had never been there.
Time crept by.
Then a small wisp of dark red smoke rose on the distant slope.
Everyone in the hollow looked up.
The veteran wasted no words. He turned and started redeploying.
The force split in two. One group kept the original observation arcs—pressure on the regular corridors, contact with the outer reserve.
"Don't pull bodies off the other routes." He said. "Let whoever's hiding think we're still watching."
Eren knew the logic was sound. The two of them were outsiders—hardly trustworthy.
The other group.
"Lila." He called.
The hooded woman looked up. The brim drove her eyes into shadow; you could not read her face.
"You pick a few. Take these two. Go support Alan's team." He tipped his head toward Eren and Nova.
Lila looked at Eren, then Nova. She did not object.
The veteran added: "Keep them close. If the tip's bogus, you know what to do."
Lila nodded and sorted the formation.
She waved two men behind her. The column gathered without a sound.
The moon had shifted farther west. The wind ran colder than when night fell.