novelraw Chapter 124: Reconnaissance
Chapter 124: Reconnaissance
They continuted to walk forward until the tower shrank to a black notch and then to nothing at all.
Where City D had sat on the other side of the harbor, it had transformed into nothing but ice and snow. There were no building that could be seen, only the bridge that connected the twin cities to each other still remained... and even that had turned into what looked like a walking bridge.
The rope hissed behind them, a thin line dragged across white. Wind went past with teeth, the windchill dipping so low that most people wouldn’t be able to withstand the freezing cold without getting frost bitten in minutes.
The air had no smell—not even the metallic tang of cold she remembered from winters before. This was cleaner than that, emptier, like the world had been boiled down to glare and the small sounds a living sheet of ice made when five people crossed it.
Zubair took point, walking in the direction that City D should have been. Each step he took, he paused for a moment to listen for a reply.
And the ice was definitely replying to him. It cracked and groaned, the sound echoing for kilometers.
Alexei held the right side of the formation. When a ridge lay under snow as smooth as glass, his arm appeared at the edge of Seraphina’s sight. He didn’t say a word, simply held it there.
She didn’t need it, she wasn’t about to slip or stumble, but the creature inside of her purred anyway, a satisfied sound under her ribs. Take it, it whispered to her. Almost without thought, Sera reached out and gripped his forearm.
When they got through the ’dangerous’ part, Sera removed her hand, Alexei dropped his arm, and the two continued forward in silence.
Elias floated half a pace behind her, angled so his body took the worst of the wind, shielding Sera so that it wasn’t as biting. He didn’t ask, and he didn’t explain his actions. He just did it almost subconsciously.
Lachlan orbited around her left shoulder, restless gravity. "It feels like we are on the roof of the world," he said, squinting against the glare. "If the roof didn’t believe in railings or good decisions."
"Exactly your kind of roof," Alexei grunted his eyes still scanning the horizon as they moved forward.
"You’re not wrong," Lachlan muttered, but his grin flicked and went, eaten by white.
The more they pushed forward the more their reality became clearer.
The tsunami had taken everything that they knew and left behind everything that they didn’t. The landscape was just plains. The sun came from everywhere at once; even squinting, the horizon hurt their eyes.
"Based on the albedo I have been able to do," Elias said to no one in particular. "We are in the high range. All the surfaces are reflecting a large percentage of sunlight. Not only does that mean we need tinted lenses or something like that, we also need to understand that the ice is reflecting more solar energy back into space, keeping everything cold. I don’t see this melting with the spring thaw." He marked something in his head and kept walking forward.
Zubair lifted his hand where the wind snagged on a low ripple and lost some of its speed. "We’ll take a break here to get some readings," he grunted. "We need as much recon as we can get if we are going to survive."
He went to a knee and set his palm flat to the ice, eyes closing like he’d pressed his ear to a door. There seemed to be a hum underneath the layers of ice. He nodded once, heat thinning the frost in a cigarette-thin curl.
"Hole," he grunted, looking at Elias. "Get some readings."
He bled heat into a single small circle until the ice gave up a blue-dark throat. Steam rose from the surface of the ice, then thinned out. Elias stepped forward, opened his rut sack and pulled out a testing kit.
Stripping a micro layer from the rim with a scraper, he dipped the chemical strip in and watched color creep up and change.
"Base is mixed," he said after a beat. "Likely extreme saline from the ocean waters. There’s also a good chance of flood contaminants and sewage. Do not drink."
Zubair didn’t argue, simply nodded his head. "Noted."
They left the hole steaming quietly to itself and pressed on. The rope bumped at her boot when wind shoved it sideways. Sera counted their steps simply so she didn’t feel like she was going insane.
There were no tracks. No smudges of ash from an attempted fire. No stutter in the light that meant movement ahead. If anyone else had survived out here, they were smarter than they looked or already died the moment the ice appeared.
People with sense would still be inside, fighting over pantries and bedroom doors.
The shape of them settled without talk. Zubair ahead. Elias behind, shoulder to wind. Alexei at her right, hand there before she thought of it. Lachlan close enough she could hear the little click of his molar when he chewed at nothing.
And Sera walked in the center of the four men where the air split and changed its mind and went around.
Balance, the creature hummed. Law.
They halted again when the plain dipped, offering the idea of shelter more than the fact of it. Zubair’s hand cut the air. Stop. "It’s time to eat," he said, pulling his pack forward and opening up the main zipper.
They crouched in a shallow lee. Alexei’s thigh found her hip for a heartbeat and moved away when he noticed. Lachlan’s knee tapped her boot and resettled like a dog circling once before sleep. Elias took the place where the gusts hit last, eyes on the light.
They unpacked as if it were one motion they’d practiced since childhood. Brown MRE wrappers went down, dull and square. Entrées, crackers, cheese spread, peanut butter. A brownie.
No one broke anything off for her. They set everything in the middle and their hands turned the pile so the angles faced her. It was clear that they wanted her to pick something first.
Sera’s jaw went tight before she could stop it. From the moment they stepped out of the tower, it was like they were trying to protect her.
Like she couldn’t survive on her own without them.
And that was starting to rub her the wrong way.