Gale couldn't be happy he found the pond. His heart thundered in his chest, having vaulted over the fence and tumbling down into the high grass. The night was dry, colder than the day, but Gale didn't feel it. He barely could feel the sticky blades of grass slicing the skin of his calves, exposed by the thick cuffs in his jeans. Certainly he wasn't quiet, but he could only hear the blood in his ears, a rushing wind tunnel, loud as the engine of the plane.

He crashed through the tree line and saw the pond. Only tucking in and whipping himself to the ground saved him from plunging into the water. Something splashed, some almost certainly feral water beast, a fish mutated enough to survive in poison. Gale flattened himself to the ground.

It took a second before the ripples of the water registered in his brain. Guided by the starlight slipping through the gap in the trees, Gale saw the water's edge. It wasn't crystalline but still blue. He had never seen water that color before. Cobalt, dark, reflective of the sky above them. It was hard to imagine something so natural yet so colorful. The farm had faded green vines, pale cream seeds, and colorful stitch blankets in the living room. This was real.

As a child, Gale didn't get to believe in magic. He dreaded his father telling him bedtime stories. This farm, as awful as it was, gave Gale a bed that was his. A magical pond too.

Gale caught up, pulling himself to his feet. He stepped closer to the pond's edge, leaning over until he saw his own reflection in the water. His hair was even more vibrantly blue. The water was still rippling. Gale tilted his body even closer.

Then, he heard a soft squeak. He twisted his head toward the sound. Hiding behind some long green plants with brown fluffy tops, tucked in flush with the waterbed, a girl covered her mouth with both hands. Next to her, a boy looked at Gale, a screwed-up scowl carved into his cheeks. They couldn't have been much younger than him.

The girl dropped her hands to cover her chest.

"Who are you?" the boy demanded.

Gale tilted his head away from the two. He looked back toward the farm, or where he thought the farm might be. No path had been forged by him plowing through the woods.

"Hey!" the boy shouted. The water cracked, sloshing. "What, ready to be a pervert then but not now?"

"Dawson," the girl called out his name.

With his head tilted down and his eyes averted, Gale spoke, "I'm not a pervert."

No sound came back, and Gale dared to look. The boy, out of the water, halfway into a pair of boxers. He stared back at Gale, so Gale turned around.

"Who the fuck are you?" the boy shouted, the sound of wet fabric snapped behind Gale. "You don't sound like anyone I fucking know."

Gale scowled, "well you sound super fucking well-traveled. Just leave me the fuck alone!"

~~~

If the sound they had heard was a low scream, Eurydice would have cackled. Unfortunately, it is a high-pitched screech, definitely that of a woman. Every head twists in the direction of the screech.

The fire crackles. The flames are still so high, reaching up a story above them.

"Can people scream without tongues scream?" Calath furrows her brow.

"Yes." Harvey and Eurydice speak in unison.

The sound makes Cosmia uneasy, "what's Gale's crime?"

No one knows. Not even Norbu, but if he had to guess, he'd assume it was a minor offence. Trespassing, vandalism, destruction of property. Gale seems too frightened to have a history of violence under his belt.

Then, a second scream comes.

Norbu is the fastest. He lunges forward, cutting between Rhiannon Rose and her fire.

"Fuck," Cosmia mutters to herself. She rushes after him, and then Faris is hot on her trail.

Harvey knows he could never catch them. Then, other people start to peel off, spreading out in different directions, and Harvey tries to catch where they all go. Kae bolts toward the house. Calath runs toward the cabins. Eurydice chases after Faris, and just when he catches sight of Rhiannon Rose sitting still, he realizes Titus is gone.

Harvey spins in a circle. He couldn't have looked away for more than a second. Titus could have slunk away when all of them were staring at the forest. Is Harvey certain Titus was here when they heard the scream. He grabs his cane and only bounds two steps before his calf seizes. He crumbles, clutching his leg.

"Eurydice!" he shouts.

She turns back to look at him, furrowing her brow. She's closing in on the fence line now.

"Get to the truck!" he shouts. "Stop him!"

Eurydice stares out at the forest. She was only going to move in a bit and try to climb a tree. Hiding at a vantage point, covered by the mismatching shadows of the leaves, she would be able to see what goes on. She twists her head toward the trellises, past which the broken-down truck is exposed in the empty cornfield.

She won't be hiding. Maybe she'll have Harvey though, and that's better. So, she heads off.

~~~

Calath gets to their cabin. She lifts the mattress on the bunkbed, feeling along its lip until she finds the slit. In it is the key to the shed. Benji only has two, and gave her this one to use so long as she promised to keep it out of the hands of the other delinquents. Calath grabs it under the cover of darkness and slips out of the shack.

They hurried along the back of the farm, past the quiet chicken coop. The hens are sleeping, sung drunk potentially like the rest of them. Calath was used to slipping around unseen. They didn't need the noise of the city as obfuscation. Before working in a mechanic shop, loud noises startled them. Thankfully, not even the chickens wake from the sound of their late feet.

Calath hasn't spent that much time in the shed, but already they know it well. Calath grabs a flashlight, the metal a familiar and sharp cold. It's not inherently unlike Dovey.

As she digs through the shed, looking for other light sources, anything that might count as a weapon should they be overtaken by a potentially violent Gale, Calath thinks of the sky in the day. Photographs of it in Hell's Haven, were a blue sky happened at least once a year, didn't do the hue justice. Calath hadn't really thought about the sky before coming. In North Marcanty it's ever changing. In the early hours of the morning it erupts in orange and yellow, molten heat peeking out behind the horizon. It has clouds, white ones, fluffy and thin. Calath neither cares much for soft things nor for flames that aren't blue. The sky in the day, one that feels so far away as she digs through the back of the shed, praying she does not see Gale's fist, is her favorite.

Still, even the sky is not as blue as Dovey's eyes.

~~~

She'll have time now. Kae hurries into the building, up the stairs, not careful the noise she makes and no need for fear. She gets to the top floor and rounds past Benji's room to the back of the house. She squats, her thighs pinched and aching after two weeks of farmwork. Kae was made for her father with spindly fingers and knobbly knees. Her make was designed for mid-calf skirts, crossed legs, hands folded in her lap, and neck held upright. She might as well have been an android.

Breaking into Benji's secret rooms would be against an andorid's programming. Calath can think for herself.

Split jingles on her wrist. The charms make shoplifting harder. It's supposed to be a deterrent, but has only made came more clever.

She jams the lock picks into the door and begins to twist. She concentrates on fiddling with her fingers rather than the seconds that tick by, one after the other. It's been more than a minute. At some point, she passes her record. Her knees begin to ache. She kneels. Then, she's crossing her legs, reaching up, arms aching. Calath made it seem so easy, but usually it is not quite so impossible.

Something clinks.

Kae pulls her tools back. The curved hook snapped off inside the lock. Her heart starts to race.

~~~

"I know who you are," Harvey looks at Rhiannon Rose, flames between them.

She looks at the fire, not past it. Rhiannon Rose hasn't thought about Harvey since she announced she wasn't afraid of him. Maybe he is keen to play games but Rhiannon Rose finds them just as dull as the events her socialite mother wanted Rhiannon Rose to enjoy. Harvey stares at her still.

"They call you Hestia," Harvey says.

Rhiannon Rose doesn't look up, "what an odd nickname."

"They sacrifice their homes to your hearth and they can afford to eat that month," Harvey looks at her. "It's apt."

"Is there a point to this?" she glances at him, if only for a second.

Heat flashes in his face, and Harvey wonders if that is what Rhiannon Rose feels before she burns down a house. All of them are properties owned by the poorest landlords, either handed down through families from years past or ones who are lobbying the city to clear out Cocta. Some rent out there, but the number of squatters seems to grow higher. The lords won't lower the rent. Somehow, Rhiannon Rose has become a vigilante hero. Yet, she doesn't even know it.

Maybe she doesn't feel the burn of rage. Maybe that is why she sets fires.

"Would you recommend I go cybernetic?" Harvey leans forward on his cane, an ugly smirk on his face.

Rhiannon Rose doesn't shift her arm or leg. There's a magnifying glass in her wrist, one she can slot out with the right tools. Benji has given her access to them, shown her where they are in the shed, and maybe he has the only key but she could have broken down the lock. Certainly, it would make fire-starting easier. Yet, she tore apart his homestead looking for a magnifying glass. Cosmia was lounging at the firepit.

She's not ashamed, she tells herself. She uses the hand in the garage all the time, even though mechanics are generally more accepting of them. There is a reason augmentation isn't common even among The Arch. Despite the flame, her arms feel cold. Heavy.

"Scale of one to ten, rate your daily pain," the words feel mechanical, ill-fitting. Eventually, she'll get used to them. They'll become part of her.

The grin on Harvey's face starts to fade, "three, if I'm just sitting idly or doing nothing. If I'm moving a lot on a day, or I moved a lot the day before, six. Occasionally a seven."

"Can you handle a fifteen the day of your surgery, a thirteen for the next month, a ten until your third-month post-op, and then by the time you are a year out, nothing?"

She finally looks at him.

Harvey breathes in smoky air, "I don't think I know who you are, Rhiannon Rose."

~~~

Titus has finally cracked open the truck door, broken pieces of metal raining onto his feet, when he hears the woman scream. Titus bends over, flush with the prickly rust of the door. He inhales and exhales. Then, its gone. Titus pulls himself up, knees clicking from the force, and he tries to look through the truck windows, brown with dust and dirt and years. Some of the photos in Benji's house have a similar tint, Sepia, old.

Titus tries to look through the glass toward the woods when he hears a second scream. He pulls the door open and slides into the truck, closing it behind him. He huddles his body folding himself where the pedals of the car lie. He rests his head on the peeling leather seat. A centipede crawls across it, and Titus covers his mouth to hold in a scream of his own.

It's a woman. Not Gale, who bolted last Titus saw. Maybe one of the girls went after him, but Titus can't imagine any of them screaming. Not even the women in his cabin, Kae and Calath, who seem as soft as they are silent.

Titus twists his head, trying to get a better idea of the truck. Suddenly, he wishes he was more into retro films. They are easier to come by then records, more difficult to find than books, and he loves both. There's a stick in the middle, for driving, but he isn't sure why cars hundreds of years ago had them. There are pedals on the ground, one for going faster and the other slower, but Titus wouldn't be able to guess which is which, and then there is a third pedal too, and he's got no idea what that is far. He doesn't know how to hotwire a truck. He could reprogram it if the farmer wasn't an old-world moron.

Now, he's stuck inside. And surely, whatever got whoever is going to come for him.

Outside, Eurydice prowls. She skulks closer to the truck. It's exposed now without the corn. She doesn't have a flashlight. If it weren't such a risky procedure, she would have already upgraded her eyes to allow for infrared capabilities. Certainly, it would help her skulk out bounties. Now, sneaking around and looking for whoever Harvey fears, she doesn't feel that same thrill.

She expects it to come. The heat of the chase, the way her fingers feel electric as she slinks along the ground, careful of her footsteps. The truck is too dirty to examine well, and Eurydice kneels to see if the mark is hiding under it. A sliver of moonlight isn't enough to see. None of it is enough to feel.

Eurydice liked bounty hunting. Somewhere along the way, saving Pya had become something she enjoyed. The Lyre girls were geniuses. Pya created the most complex illegal AI in Neo Elysian history. Eurydice created escape routes. She captured men, innocent and guilty alike. The leader of the King's Gang had made a hymn of her name. Blythe, Blythe, Blythe. She was supposed to enjoy the dance of predator and prey.

When she is close to the truck, she looks over into the truckbed. Her shadow seeps in through the window, and Titus begins to shake.

One more step, and she hears the crunch of metal beneath her feet. She whips her hand out and throws the door open.

Titus tries to scramble backward but slams into the stickshift.

"Out," Eurydice commands. "Now."

When she steps back, Titus straightens himself out. He tumbles onto his feet out of the truck. Dirt coats the front of his shirt from where it pressed into the seats. He is wobbling when he looks at her.

"Where are you from?"

She scowls, barring her teeth, "your nightmares."

"Cliché," Titus rolls his eyes. "You from The Sticks? Cocta?"

Silver eyes catch the moonlight. Eurydice recognizes him, a bit. She was never the proper amount of social. Her mother would know, her sister definitely. He's from The Arch, just like Rhiannon Rose, and he's got no idea she grew up there too.

"If you can get one of the mechanics to fix this truck so I can drive it off the lot, I'll give you everything I have," he tells her. It's true enough. He'll never be able to satisfy the condition, but it's not a lie. "I'm a Silver. A Lord."

A Silver. He sees the recognition in her face at the name.

"Just like any other Silver," she spits on the ground. "A moron. You think you're just going to drive... where, exactly? Credits are worthless outside of the Adam Collective. You're not a Lord. You're a captive."

He crosses his arms. Eurydice grabs him by the wrist and rips him toward her. He yelps, and she slams his back into the truck. Titus groans and if she weren't holding up his weight, he'd crumple to the ground. Her arm across his throat pins him in place.

"You want my help, Silver?" she asks, leaning in close enough that she can see the sparkle in his tooth as he catches his breath. "Learn that money isn't going to get you anywhere. It's all favours."

Titus scoffs, nearly coughing as she presses her forearm into his windpipe.

"Is that why you're acting as Harvey's attack dog?"

She releases her hand just to punch him in the face.

~~~

Norbu runs into the forest. Off in the distance he can hear voices, yelling. He hurries through the forest, watching his feet as best as he can. He's never felt ground this uneven. Things protrude from the dirt, tripping hazards left and right. Norbu is nimble. He doesn't crash; he dodges.

Then, he hits the clearing and skids to stop himself from spinning out into the water. He barely jumps around a girl and lands on the ground. She screams again at the sight of him.

Norbu takes her in. She wears a lilac dress, stained dark at the shoulders and breasts. Her wet hair, curly and blonde, sticks to her forehead, and she recoils at the sight of him.

"Hey!" the boy with her shouts at Norbu, and he steals Norbu's attention.

Norbu glances once more, where the boy stands. Blood leaks out of his nose onto his chest. Shirtless, in boxers and nothing else, and at the base of a tree. The boy divides his attention between Norbu and the branches. Inside, Norbu catches a glimpse of Gale.

"Nice to meet you," Norbu sticks a hand out.

The boy furrows his brow. Then, he abandons Gale and staggers over toward Norbu. Of course, Norbu could run. The boy can barely stand upright. Possible concussion, something Norbu is used to looking for in an opponent.

"Oh come on," Norbu sighs, "kid, I don't want to fight you."

"I'm eighteen," the boy puffs out his chest. "And I can take you."

"You're lying," Norbu laughs. "Come on, you think I don't know when somebody's faking their age."

He lunges for Norbu, who just ducks out of the way. The boy stumbles past him.

"Dawson, come on," the girl squeaks out. "We should go."

Her voice is barely audible to Faris and Cosmia, who are just making it to the clearing. Cosmia goes to step in and Faris grabs her, pulling her back and shaking his head. Her knees feel warm. The electric buzz of a maggie in her hand, a lingering illness left in her of the virus that swept through the droids the night she was apprehended. She doesn't think about the woman who died as often as she should. Instead, she thinks about the others on her team who left instead of stop it.

She's about to speak when Faris steps inside. Cosmia isn't going to help them. Her teeth are sharpening, not as severe as Eurydice's but the modification is noticeable. Norbu already has metal caps on his teeth, and Gale's gone blue hair. Unlike them all, Faris is unmodified. The most familiar with Benji's accent.

"Hey there," Faris softens his voice as much as possible. Mimicking just a bit of Benji's speech patterns would be easier if he had more practice. Eurydice might even be better, since she mocks it sometimes late in the evening. "I hope there hasn't been a misunderstanding."

In the tree, Gale's heart pounds. He looks down beneath him. It's not a far jump. The fact he climbed it at all is a miracle. Gale presses himself down into the branches, the crisp and damp smell of wooden filling his nose. The metallic taste of blood in his mouth is worse.

Dawson turns around. He grabs the girl and tucks her in behind him. She whimpers. Faris catches her eye and quickly averts his gaze to Dawson.

"Sorry there, we're not local," Faris says. "None of us are supposed to be out here... but who can say no to a late-night swim?"

The girl peaks her head around slightly, "you're... you're from the fisheries?"

"We're just here for harvest season," Faris doesn't answer as much as he can. "I'm Faris. That's Norbu over there. And-" he spins his head around until he catches sight of the boy in the trees. "That's my friend Gale. I'm afraid we all got a bit too rowdy back at the farm. We didn't mean to scare you."

Hidden in the trees, Cosmia slowly inches closer to where Faris gestured. She spots Gale in between the leaves. Sticks crack beneath her feet, and Norbu lets out a painfully loud yawn, trying to keep Dawon's attention divided.

"Psst."

Gale glances down, sees her. She looks up at him and he swallows. She gestures for him to come down.

"He was peeping on us," Dawson says, staring between Faris and Norbu. "You all freaks?"

"He wasn't peeping," Faris says. "Just... not himself today. I swear to it. If he was peeping, I'd kick his ass myself, you betcha."

"He'd have to get in line," Norbu agrees, watching as Gale begins to lower himself to the next branch.

The girl wraps her hand over Dawson's shoulder, "he's-"

"Lottie."

She buries her head in Dawson's shoulder, "they're from the fisheries. Like Mae. Maybe he's like Mae."

"You a Mullins?" Dawson says, craning his head toward Gale.

In the tree, Gale freezes.

"He's exactly like Mae Mullins," Norbu jumps in, words rushing out of his mouth. If necessary, he'd do a backflip from where he stands just to keep Dawson looking at him. "So, obviously he wasn't meaning you both any harm."

Faris tries not to wince, instead offers a small smile.

Gale slips both his feet from the tree, dangling them down. Daring past the tree line, Cosmia grabs his legs, pulling him down. She wraps her arms around his torso.

"Glad we could chat tonight," Faris smiles. "We're going to head back now, okay? You had first dibs on the pond, so we'll swim some other time. We'll make sure to call out to see if y'all are in the water, alright? No use getting in a tizzy over something easy like this. Worst thing would be the Lord hearing about this, right?"

Cosmia pulls Gale into the tree line.

The girl nods into Dawson. He scowls tighter.

"You best not make an enemy out of me," he says. "You or the Mullins."

Norbu catches the boy's glance shift first. He grabs Faris' arm and bolts out of the clearing. Together, they chase Gale and Cosmia, sprinting toward the farm.

~~~~~

I mean, things are "resolved". Not really. There are a few, sort of, hiccups next chapter. Some big uh oh spaghettios. 

Thank you for letting me know all sorts of things you are looking forward to! I'm curious if there are any specific character development things that you are excited to see!