Cheerios

The desert blurred past in waves of heat and dust, our V2s tearing across the dunes. The engines screamed so loud it felt like my ribs rattled with them. Vassier’s men had stayed behind to hold Exidus back. Brave, stupid, or both.

I clung to Vassier’s back, Sylvi dead weight between us, her head pressed against my chest. She hadn’t stirred once. Not a sound, not a breath I could feel. Every bump in the sand made me think I’d lose her right there.

“How much longer?!” I yelled over the wind.

Vassier didn’t answer. Either he didn’t hear me or he didn’t care.

The sand was blinding, burning my eyes raw until I couldn’t keep them open anymore. I cursed under my breath, pulled the goggles off Sylvi’s face, and strapped them onto mine.

“Sorry, Sylvi,” I muttered. The world cleared instantly. Shapes sharpened. I could finally breathe again.

I looked to my right. Cassian and Rilke were doubled up on another V2, trailing close behind. Cassian’s grip on the handlebars was iron, his jaw set hard enough to crack. Rilke’s scarf flapped as she kept talking—mouth opening, closing, opening again. I couldn’t hear her, but I could see Cassian’s eye twitch. He didn’t snap, though. He never snapped.

I closed my eyes for just a second, the roar of engines fading into the background.

The center of Orati.

Its secret.

Gideon—gone.

Too much already left in the sand.

Is this what it was supposed to be, Autumna?

No answer. Only silence.

We tore on like that until suddenly—Vassier slowed. Our bike kicked up a spray of sand as he dragged it to a stop. Cassian pulled up behind us, engines humming low, heat still rippling off the metal.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

Vassier didn’t answer right away. He just raised a hand and pointed.

“That,” he said. His voice sounded cracked. “That’s where we’re going.”

I squinted past him, through the heat shimmer. At first, it looked like nothing. Just another mirage, another jagged shadow on the horizon.

But the longer I stared, the clearer it became.

It wasn’t a mirage. It wasn’t natural.

A building.

Old. Burnt black by centuries of sun, edges sharp but crumbling, walls scarred but unbroken. The desert had tried to kill it, strip it down to bones—but it refused. Still standing.

And I knew it.

My stomach turned cold.

It was the same place. The hollow where Sylvi and I had hidden. The place where I wore Exidus’s mask and fought Gideon.

The desert had brought us back.

Not by chance. Not by fate.

Something worse.

It had been waiting.