While the barren world crawls by, Corax flies high above and Ivy keeps her eyes pinned on the horizon. Nothing can sneak up on us, we just have to make it to our destination.

  I focus only on the ground in front of me, letting the endless, flowing ndscape wash away the thoughts that are threatening to form. Nothing matters other than following the compass in front of me.

  Corax swoops down to check on me and to have his battery topped off at regur intervals. Having to remove his harness to pull off his chest piece is a little bit of an oversight, but one that doesn’t need to be fixed right now. It only takes a few seconds to take it off, and put it back on again before he takes off into the air once again.

  Only a couple of hours into the drive, in the dead of night, Ivy’s voice pulls me out of my trance.

  “Hey Blue?” She says at a barely audible whisper, so quiet even Cassie doesn’t wake up.

  “Yeah?” I respond, just as quietly.

  “Do me a favor. If anything goes wrong with Mara, make sure you, Corax, and Cassie get out.”

  “I won’t be able to handle losing you and Vince.”

  “Let’s make sure you don’t have to then.” She says with a smile.

  Ivy doesn’t say another word the entire night. Every ounce of concentration is dedicated to watching for any movement along the empty ndscape, as well as checking the radio occasionally. I don’t mind though, splitting my focus to concentrate both on her and the sand in front of me might give unwanted thoughts space to form.

  Cassie and Vince sleep restlessly through the night. When a nightmare starts to bother Cassie, Vince reaches over and pulls her head into his p and ys a comforting hand across her shoulder, all without waking up. That helps settle Cassie down.

  The sun eventually rises behind us, and Cassie with it.

  “Ugh.” She groans and tries to sit up, only catch herself with a sharp inhale a moment ter. She waits a few seconds for nausea to pass before continuing her sitting motion.

  “How do you feel?” Ivy asks quietly in an effort to not wake up Vince.

  “Fucking awful.” Cassie reaches behind the back seat and pulls out two rge jugs of water. She sets one in the center seat next to Vince, and starts sipping out of the other.

  “How much did you two drink?” Ivy asks.

  “I don’t remember.” Cassie mumbles.

  “They drank those big bottles, and grabbed six more small ones from the trunk.” I inform the both of them.

  “Are you going to be sober by the time we arrive?” Ivy asks, and I’m pretty sure it’s a joke.

  “How much time do I have?” Cassie asks.

  “Eighteen hours, we’ll be arriving around midnight.” I answer.

  “I’ll be fine.” Cassie spends a few minutes trying to keep water down, and leans back to try to get more sleep.

  “You should rest too.” I tell Ivy.

  “It’s never a good idea to leave only one person awake. I’ll sleep when Vince gets up.”

  “Corax is awake too. Nothing will be able to sneak up on us with him keeping an eye out. And if anything happens to me, he can wake you up.”

  “Sure, but he’s not in the car. If something goes wrong and you shut down, it could be minutes before he wakes me up. Trust me, it’s safer this way.”

  “Alright.” I guess that’s a decent argument. If I had a hallucination, I could do a lot of damage to myself before Corax could reach me.

  It’s a couple more hours before Vince and Cassie wake up for good.

  “What ever happened to never again?” Ivy asks Vince the moment he removes his hat from his eyes.

  “I couldn’t let her drink it all by herself.” he sounds awful. His voice is hoarse, scratchy, and he already sounds exhausted. He immediately grabs the jug Cassie set next to him and begins to drink.

  “Uh-huh, you’re so selfless.” Ivy teases.

  “Have we seen anyone on the road?” Cassie asks and hands Vince leftovers for breakfast.

  “Not a single soul.” Ivy responds for me.

  “That’s weird. I would have thought this would be a major trade route.” Vince says through a mouth full of food. “There aren’t many towns between here and the mainnd.”

  “There is a storm hitting in fourteen hours or so.” Ivy says.

  “Still, some idiot trader should still be trying to beat the storm, or some scrappers trying to make it back.” Vince mumbles, mostly to himself.

  “Like us.” Cassie adds.

  “Like us.” Vince agrees, gesturing with his breakfast towards her. “Something’s off.”

  “Could they be setting an ambush?” I ask. “I saw the tips of a mountain range to the south. Maybe they’re expecting us to follow that?”

  “No, that’s not Mara’s style. She’s going to want to look us in our eyes when she tries to kill us.”

  “Shit, she cleared the way for us.” Cassie realizes and falls back into her seat.

  Vince doesn’t respond, he just continues to eat his food with slow, deliberate motions.

  Hours pass in a silence nobody dares to break while Vince and Cassie nurse their hangovers. Cassie recovers far quicker, but even Vince starts looking better after a lot of food and water.

  The better everyone feels, the more anxious they feel as well. Cassie is constantly fidgeting with whatever she can get her hands on, and her bouncing legs are shaking the car. Vince, on the other hand, is slowly, almost mechanically taking care of himself and scanning the horizon.

  “What’s our pn if Ivy can’t kill her from the ridge? Did visiting the town help at all?” I eventually have to break the silence. My mind is going to consume itself if I don’t.

  “Not really.” Vince starts to speak, his voice nearly emotionless. “We’re arriving at midnight, we might be able to somehow repel down the side, but if it’s like the st town, we’d have to descend quite a ways before actually reaching anywhere we can stand. A single light and we’re dead.”

  “So when Cassie said we’re walking in the front door. That wasn’t a joke?”

  “Unfortunately not.” He won’t take his eyes off the horizon. “I do have a pn c, but you’re going to hate it.”

  “What is it?”

  “I have enough explosives in my satchel to partially colpse the ravine. We’d just bury them into the rock along the ridge, set them off, and let the ndslide kill everyone inside. Including the civilians.”

  “I’m using my veto.” I wouldn’t even be able to live with leaving five people behind, how does he expect me to handle that? How can he even consider that as a pn?

  “I know. It’s not a real option.”

  “It’d save lives in the long run.” Cassie says quietly.

  “You can’t be serious.” What am I going to do if they call a vote and override me? Corax isn’t going to let anything happen to me, and pn c is the safest option. Cassie’s made her point clear, I guess it all comes down to Ivy?

  “I’m just saying.” Cassie says, and returns to fidgeting with her metal arm.

  “Like I said, it’s not a real option.” Vince says. “It’s just the only pn that hasn’t fallen apart yet. I’m not Mara or Silver, I wouldn’t be able to live with myself.”

  “So we walk in the front door, then what?” I ask Vince.

  “I’d prefer if you stayed safe in the car, but I’m guessing that’s not happening?”

  “I’m not letting you die when I might have been able to stop it.” Despite my conviction, my voice betrays my fear.

  “Right. Well, if we make ourselves clearly known, we’re going to be safe for the most part until we actually see Mara. From there, we shoot her before she has a chance to shoot us, and fight our way out.”

  “We need to think of something better.” There has to be something, some safer way to kill her if Ivy’s sniping pn fails.

  “I know, but we’re out of time.” Vince says. “If Cassie’s right, and she cleared the way for us, that means she knows we’re coming. If we don’t kill her now, she’s going to spend the next few years brutally killing every person in Silver’s gang. We don’t have time to think of anything else, and this is our only chance.”

  I have time before we arrive. I can think of something, I have to.

  “What about the metal cables that were suspending most of the buildings in the st town? Can’t Ivy just shoot those, and drop whatever hideout she has into the ravine?”

  “She wouldn’t let that obvious of a weakness exist, She’s unfortunately thorough.” Vince answers. “But if, somehow, it’s an option and won’t kill innocent people, we’ll take it. The pn will probably change once we’re in, and I really hope it does.”

  The car settles back into an uncomfortable silence. The hours crawl by, and still not a single car can be seen in the wastend. Ivy eventually settles down into an equally uncomfortable sleep, which I’m gd to see. Even if it’s not a deep sleep, it has to be better than nothing.

  I spend the rest of the day thinking of dozens of pns. Each and every one is either too dangerous, too unlikely to succeed, will kill innocent people, or more often, all three.

  The sun goes down, marking six hours until we arrive. The mountains to the south have only grown closer with each passing mile. Mara’s ravine isn’t going to be more than a twenty minute’s drive from them.

  With every hill I crest, I expect to see something, anything out there. Now that the sun has set, there’s the possibility of Corax missing something and we drive right into an ambush that is set up at the base of a particurly rge dune. Of course it never comes, we’re seemingly the only people in the world right now.

  “I’m going to try to get a little sleep.” Vince says. Everyone knows he’s not going to be able to, but trying might help calm him down.

  An hour before we arrive, I wake Vince and everyone begins to prepare. Old Kevr vests and helmets get put on, weapons are checked and cleaned, and everyone has their own little rituals to help them calm down.

  Cassie ends up reading her tattered, barely held together book. The same one she once lent me and told me to be careful with. Vince grabs some old snacks out of his bag, and starts eating them a single crumb at a time. Ivy, on the other hand, just takes care of her rifle. She cleans it over and over, even after it’s spotless.

  Vince pulls out a few explosives and hands them to Ivy and Cassie, just in case. I don’t need any, Corax is my explosive.

  I still don’t have anything to do beyond cleaning my guns, but driving is doing enough to distract me. I hand my pistols to Ivy for her to clean them. If she’s going to be taking care of her weapon anyway, maybe taking care of mine will too.

  Once Vince finishes his snack, he speaks up.

  “Little Blue, I should drive the st half hour.”

  “Isn’t it safer for me to be driving? If anything goes wrong, I don’t want to have to shoot people. Plus I can just plug myself in and run the car to its absolute limits. And if the car gets shot and something gets damaged, I can try to reroute power around the damaged part.” The words flow out of me far faster than I meant them to. If anyone somehow didn’t know I was nervous, they definitely do now.

  “Alright, fair point.” Vince sits back in his seat, his rifle at the ready.

  Only twenty minutes ter Corax nds on my open windowsill.

  “Close, safe.” He reports before once again taking off into the air.

  Ten minutes ter we arrive at a massive, metal ptform where the trench should be. Hydraulics are holding up a small segment of it, an open door just for us, beckoning us deeper.

  “We’re here.”

  JanePtinum