The plain moved past the windows in a slow, familiar blur, ochre sand, flat horizon, the distant promise of the walls somewhere ahead, invisible but pulling at us like a magnet you could feel in your teeth.
The escort truck slowed at the boundary of the Forsaken City, flashed its lights once, then turned back in a wide arc of dust. We continued alone.
Nobody slept. Nobody spoke. Just the low rumble of the engine and the specific heavy quiet of people who had been through something together and were still turning it over in their minds.
"What was that?" Mercury said suddenly from the front.
"What?" Sherry asked, still pressed against my shoulder.
"You don't hear it?"
I had been hearing it for minutes. Irregular, insistent kicking from the boot. Dull thuds against metal.
"The infected," Harmione said.
Mercury let out a short laugh. "I'd completely forgotten we were carrying it."
The murmuring started then, small observations, people remembering the specimen in the back.
