They ran through the night.

  Not a coordinated flight—just a scatter of survivors, each following their own instinct, their own terror. Dorn found them at dawn, gathered in a shallow wash half a mile from the canyon rim. Vex and Flint. Cricket. Kestrel. The pronghorn yearling. Six others—a rat with a broken tail, two squirrels who clung to each other like kits, a raccoon who couldn't stop shaking.

  Twelve survivors. Out of twenty-three prisoners in that pen.

  Dorn did the math and felt nothing. Numbers were numbers. The dead didn't care how many you counted.

  He found a place against the wash's bank, where the morning shadow still held the night's cool, and collapsed. His ribs burned where Silus's knife had found them. His lungs burned with every breath of silicon-tinged air. His paws were raw, the new skin torn away, leaving him bleeding into the dust.

  Kestrel appeared beside him. The horned lizard moved with her usual jerky silence, her scales shifting to match the sand as she knelt to examine his wound.

  "It's deep," she said. "Not deep enough to kill you. Yet."

  "Comforting."

  She snorted. Pressed something to the cut—a wad of leaves, crushed and pungent. Dorn recognized the smell. Mossback's herbs. Kestrel had been carrying them.

  "Mossback sent me with supplies," Kestrel said, answering the question he hadn't asked. "Said you'd need them. Said you'd need a lot of things."

  Dorn let her work. The herbs stung, then numbed, then settled into a dull ache he could ignore. He watched the survivors huddle in the wash, their eyes still wild, their bodies still running even though they'd stopped.

  The pronghorn yearling stood apart, facing back toward the canyon. Toward where his mother had stayed.

  Dorn looked away.

  Vex found him an hour later.

  She'd been organizing—the way some animals did when chaos hit, imposing order on a world that had none. Food had been gathered from packs, water shared out, a rough count taken of who could walk and who needed carrying. The rat with the broken tail couldn't walk. The squirrels were too weak. The raccoon had stopped shaking but hadn't spoken.

  "We need to move," Vex said, settling beside him. "The Purists will have regrouped by now. The Preacher will send trackers."

  Dorn nodded. His ribs protested. "Where?"

  "Safe ground. Somewhere they won't follow." She looked at him. "You know this country better than any of us."

  He did. He also knew there was no safe ground, not really. Just ground where you might die slower.

  "There's an old mine," he said. "North of here. Abandoned. The Purists won't go near it—too much old-world sickness. We can rest there. Plan."

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  Vex nodded. "How far?"

  "Two days. Maybe three, with the wounded."

  She looked at the survivors. At the rat. At the squirrels. At the yearling, still staring toward the canyon.

  "They'll make it," she said. "They made it out of that pen. They can make it a few more miles."

  Dorn didn't argue. He was too tired.

  They moved at dusk.

  The wounded went in the center of the group, surrounded by the stronger. Cricket scouted ahead, her fox's nose reading the wind. Kestrel ranged behind, her scales shifting to match the rocks, watching for pursuit. Dorn walked beside Vex, letting her carry most of his weight when his legs forgot how to work.

  The box went between them.

  Flint carried it now, his missing claw wrapped in a strip of cloth, his face set in lines that had nothing to do with age. The lock was dark—cool, quiet, no longer humming. Whatever had been waking inside was sleeping again. For now.

  Dorn wanted to ask what they'd seen when the box opened. What had made Vex's eyes go distant and Flint's hands shake. But he didn't. It wasn't his business.

  It still wasn't his business.

  But he was walking beside them, bleeding into the dust, and that felt like business enough.

  The first night passed without incident.

  They found shelter in a rock overhang, barely big enough for the group, and crowded together for warmth. The desert cooled fast at this altitude, and none of them had the fur for it. Dorn lay at the entrance, his back to the stone, his nose to the wind.

  Nothing followed. Not yet.

  He slept in fits, waking at every sound. A pebble falling. A nighthawk's cry. The pronghorn yearling, crying out in his sleep—a thin, bleating sound that cut off as suddenly as it started.

  At dawn, they moved again.

  The second day was harder.

  The terrain climbed toward the mine, bare rock giving way to scree, then to nothing but stone and sky. The rat died at noon—just stopped breathing, his broken tail finally catching up with him. The squirrels carried him for an hour before Vex made them stop.

  "He's gone," she said. "Leave him."

  They left him. There was nothing else to do.

  The raccoon started talking. Nonsense, mostly—names and places that didn't exist, conversations with people who weren't there. The heat, maybe. Or just the breaking of something that had held too long.

  The pronghorn yearling walked in silence, his eyes fixed on the horizon.

  Dorn walked beside him for a while, not speaking. The yearling didn't acknowledge him. Didn't seem to know he was there.

  "My mother died too," Dorn said finally. "I never found her body. Never said goodbye."

  The yearling's pace didn't change. His eyes didn't move.

  "I'm telling you this because I don't know if it helps. Probably doesn't." Dorn looked at the sky. "But you're still walking. That's something."

  The yearling walked.

  Dorn fell back, rejoined Vex. She glanced at him, said nothing.

  They climbed.

  The mine entrance appeared at dusk on the third day.

  A dark hole in the mountain's face, ringed with rusted steel and the bones of old machinery. The air around it was thick with the smell of ancient minerals—copper, iron, something that burned. Dorn's Lead-Sight eye itched at the sight of it, a warning he couldn't ignore.

  But it was shelter. And shelter was all that mattered.

  They filed inside, one by one, leaving the last light behind. The tunnel sloped downward, then leveled into a chamber where the old miners had once gathered. The remnants of their lives still lay scattered—a rusted lunch pail, a coil of rope, a lantern that would never light again.

  The survivors collapsed. The raccoon kept talking, his voice echoing off the stone. The squirrels curled together and closed their eyes. The yearling stood at the entrance, watching the dark.

  Dorn found a corner, sat down, and let the weight of the last three days settle over him.

  Vex appeared beside him. She carried the box.

  "It's time you knew," she said. "What's in here. Why the Preacher wants it. Why we carried it across half the Frontier."

  Dorn looked at the box. At the dark lock. At Vex's scarred face.

  "I didn't ask," he said.

  "No. You didn't." She set the box between them. "But you're here now. You bled for us. You killed for us. That makes it your business."

  She reached for the lock. Paused.

  "Whatever happens next," she said, "remember that we didn't choose this. The box chose us."

  She opened it.