Chapter 32
Prairie Fire
The three of them fell back the way they had come.
Eren's head still swam. One-handed, he wound the cloth twice around his brow and pulled it tight. His feet still floated under him, but he did not dare stop—he hauled the other two toward the open.
Nobody spoke. Only footfalls, breathing, a thin thread of sobbing, and the steel sounds of the enemy overhead.
Night wind poured through the hatch, cold and dry. Eren cracked the lid, put half his body out, listened, then hauled Nova up and turned so Lila could climb clear. He came last, pressed the iron shut, and eased it flush.
He scraped dry grass over it, rubbed out the prints, snapped a brush stem and dragged it across the ground around them.
Lila crouched in the grass beside him, eyes locked on the tunnel mouth.
"Which way?" Eren's voice was rough.
It took her a beat. Then she lifted a hand toward the back slope.
"…Over the ridge. Through the black pines."
Eren gave a low "mm," pulled Nova into the brush, saw Lila still rooted, and turned back.
"Lila."
Only then did she move—hands and feet, scrambling after them. Two steps up she looked once at the hatch already covered, then kept going.
They crossed the scree and pushed into the black pines. Needles lay thick underfoot; walking left almost no mark.
Every few steps Eren glanced back. Where a print had slipped through, or needles lay kicked wrong, he dropped, fixed it, and caught up without lingering.
They had gone a long way when the wind dragged the powder and burnt smell the other direction.
Far off, a single shot cracked.
Lila's feet stopped. Her nails dug into her palms. She did not look back.
Nova's shoulders hunched; his head jerked with each sob.
At Eren's waist the envelope and the manuscript tugged, as if that shot had hooked them for half a second.
They sank deeper into the trees. Over another ridge, Eren checked the trail once, then found a lee.
"Far enough. We rest here."
Lila followed his hand into the hollow and squatted against the rock. Eren settled Nova between them and sat. He unwound the old belt from his knuckles turn by turn, wrapped it back around his left arm, and locked the buckle with a hard click before he let himself lean. Under the skin of that arm the shoot still jumped.
Envelope and manuscript pressed against him. The last warmth from Lin Ce's hand was already gone to the night wind.
Lila sat against another stone, face empty.
Eren had seen her ordinary look—a bright smile always on. That light was gone now, as if it had never been there.
Nova curled between them, face buried in his knees, shoulders hitching.
The three of them just sat.
"…I'm going back."
Lila's voice was raw, half to herself.
Eren turned his face a fraction.
"We dropped one just now," Lila said. "I can find another chance—ambush…"
The line caught. Her mouth shook harder.
"…Kill as many as I can."
Nova buried his face deeper.
Something in her own words lit her. She could not stop.
"Maybe we can still pull Old Shen and the others out."
She edged forward a step, hand reaching for the crossbow on her back.
Eren caught her wrist.
Lila looked up. Her eyes were a rolling red fire.
He went down on one knee, still holding her hand.
"Going back won't change it."
"It's not the same." Her voice scraped. "Old Shen and the others might still be inside…"
"What can we do?" He did not let go. "What did we even manage just now?"
She had nothing. Not a word.
She cried for a while—broken sounds with no shape. Somewhere in it a muffled scrap about dying for nothing, or a curse at herself; even she could not tell which.
After a time the mountain went quiet again. Only wind, and a dog barking somewhere far off.
Eren's mind cut back to the fight without asking him.
Figures sealed in the armor. Hydraulic lines flashing under flame. Guns that could erase a body to vapor. Those stuck harder than the missile's orange wash.
The "conspiracies" Mr. Shen had laid out in the command room climbed off the paper and stood up.
Lin Ce's dying handoff—the manuscript—get it to the next stop, and then? How long before the same machine ground that place flat too?
He looked down at his waist. A corner of the envelope had lifted; the blood-soaked tip was dry now, dark brown against the cloth. In the dark the inked "Shen" on the face was only the ghost of a stroke.
He tipped his head. Lila was staring at the envelope too. Their eyes met.
Eren drew it free.
"Have a look."
Lila took it.
She stared at the face a long time without opening it. Her thumb worked the paper corner, grinding a little crust of dried blood into grit.
Eren did not push.
After a while the paper edge tore with a soft sound. Lila flinched as if it had cut her, shut her eyes once, then kept going.
Too dark to see well, and nobody dared strike a light. The three of them read by the scrap of moonlight that found them.
In the black the face took on a pale blue-white cast. The "Shen" came into outline—strokes even, not rushed.
Inside, one sheet, folded twice. Not many words. Lila angled the paper toward the moon, and the lines rose one by one.
"By the time you read this, I will most likely no longer be able to speak to you myself.
"I know I stand on the enemy's list. Death was never a surprise.
"Still, I wanted a few words left behind.
"What they are hunting is not one person, one workshop, or one line of research—but every attempt to help humanity stand again.
"So even when the road ahead is hard, we have to walk it.
"I hope my fall lets more people rise, and walk the road we walked with a firmer step.
"If that is so, I will already have the best ending I could ask for.
"Do not linger for my name.
"Leave what remains unfinished to those still willing to take the next step.
"We will become ash,
"and the prairie will catch fire.
"Shen"
They finished reading.
Nobody spoke.
A strip of dark red still clung to the skyline. With the burnt smell the wind brought up from the valley floor, it made the letter's best backdrop.
Lila hugged her knees, eyes on the distance. Sometime without her noticing, the long crossbow had slid off her back; only the strap still hung on her elbow.
The fire Mr. Shen wrote about—she had seen it, clear as anything.
She did not know whether to put that fire out, or become the wood that fed it.
Or whether anything she did meant nothing at all—because the prairie would catch fire anyway… wouldn't it?
Her head went murky. Then she felt the long crossbow lifted from the ground, dirt brushed off, hung back on her shoulder. Only when the strap locked did she feel that familiar weight settle.
She did not turn.
Eren took Lin Ce's manuscript from his waist, crouched, and set it on her knees.
"What do we do with this?"
Lila looked down at what lay there. No answer.
"You know who it goes to?"
After a while she spoke, voice still rough:
"Somewhere around Rusak… there's a branch, I think. Closest one from here."
"Let's go."
She lifted her eyes to him. The blank in them was no longer complete.