By the time I report to Upper Gate Three, the personal-effects inspection is over and Gran's key is hidden among the spare couplings in my repair pouch. The officer who checked it earlier turned the dark metal over once, called it a keepsake, and handed it back without asking where it came from. I have not taken it out since.
The gate chamber is wider than any training hall, built around a set of sealed doors that run from floor to ceiling. A Ministry crawler waits beyond the marked loading line, its thick wheels stained with old dust and its outer shell covered in dents. It is the first vehicle I have seen that was made to survive the surface instead of simply moving people through the Sanctum.
Liora stands beside the crawler with her pack at her feet, checking the seals on her gloves for the third time. Zandor is farther down the line, rolling his shoulders as though he is about to enter another sparring match. Tam has opened the side panel near the crawler's rear wheel and is studying the power lines inside it, while Nadi waits beside him with both hands tucked into the pockets of her coat.
No one speaks to me when I arrive.
They all saw what happened to Aren. Even if they do not know what my power is, they know it is not something they have seen before. The space they leave around me is not large, but I notice it.
Sorid steps out of the gate office carrying a thin tablet and looks over the six of us. "Packs in the crawler. We leave as soon as the outer pressure check clears."
The sealed doors behind him begin to unlock one after another. A deep mechanical sound moves through the chamber, followed by a thin breath of air that smells of metal, dust, and something I cannot name.
For the first time in my life, I am close enough to the surface to smell it.
We load our packs into the crawler and climb in through the rear hatch. The inside is narrower than it looked from the platform, with two rows of metal seats facing a central console. Tam takes the systems station without being told and begins checking the power display. Sorid moves into the driver's seat while the rest of us strap ourselves in.
He brings a route map onto the front screen. A thin line leads from Upper Gate Three to a Ministry relay station less than fifty kilometres away.
"Our job is to inspect the reading from this relay, collect the data core, and return," he says. "Its instruments recorded an energy fluctuation three days ago. It could be a damaged line. It could be nothing. We confirm which one, then we come home."
The route is close enough that the word expedition suddenly feels too large for it. Even with the surface checks and the slow travel expected outside, we should be back well before the seven days Yansley gave us.
Sorid assigns the watches without making a speech of it. Tam is responsible for the crawler's systems. Nadi will monitor vibration and movement through the hull. Liora and Zandor will rotate at the forward viewports once we are above ground. He gives me the terrain recorder and points to the small screen beside my seat.
"You log anything that does not match the route map," he says. "Tracks, damage, structures, changes in the ground. Call it out before you touch it."
I nod and secure the recorder against my knee.
The crawler shudders as the final inner door seals behind us. Then the floor tilts upward, carrying us through the long access tunnel toward a place none of us can see yet.
The tunnel grows steeper as we climb. At first, the crawler stays on its wheels, jolting over the seams in the access road, but Tam reaches across the console when the walls begin to widen.
"Lift field is ready," he says.
Sorid checks the power display. "Keep it low."
The wheels fold partway into the crawler's body, and a steady vibration passes beneath my boots. We rise less than a metre from the tunnel floor, just high enough that the broken concrete no longer throws us from side to side. The crawler can lift farther if it has to, but only for a short time. A few metres of height drains the power cells quickly, and anything more would leave us stranded before we reached the relay.
It is not really flight. It is closer to skimming over the ground, using the field to clear ruts, fallen stone, and the jagged remains of old roads.
The final tunnel lights disappear behind us. Ahead, the outer doors begin to separate.
Every screen in the crawler darkens automatically, but the light that enters still hurts. I raise an arm across my face and see a strip of colour beyond the opening that I cannot understand at first. It is too wide and too bright to be a wall.
Then the crawler passes through the gate.
The sky fills the entire front viewport.
It is pale blue above us, deepening toward the horizon where clouds hang in long grey bands over a flat stretch of broken land. There is no ceiling, no light panel, no line where the world ends. Wind strikes the crawler's hull hard enough to make the frame shake.
No one says anything for several seconds.
Then the terrain recorder in my hands turns on by itself.
For a second, I think it has reacted to me again. Then the screen fills with the ordinary surface survey display, showing the road ahead in layered shades of grey and amber. The recorder has an exterior trigger. It begins scanning when the crawler clears the gate.
I let out a breath and secure it against my knee.
The ground outside is nothing like the flat, empty wasteland shown in our training films. The old road cuts through long ridges of rock and sand, but grass grows in the cracks along its edges. Low trees with pale trunks stand in clusters farther away, bending under the wind. I see the skeleton of a building half-buried in a dune, then the remains of a line of vehicles disappearing toward the horizon.
Liora is the first to move closer to the viewport. She does not touch the glass, but her eyes stay fixed on the clouds.
"They are moving," Nadi says quietly.
They are. The clouds change shape as we watch them, breaking apart in one place and gathering in another. Nothing inside the Sanctum does that without someone controlling it.
Sorid gives us time to look, but not much. Once we are clear of the gate, he begins running checks at regular intervals. Tam reports on the lift field and power draw. Nadi listens through the hull whenever the ground changes beneath us. Liora and Zandor take turns watching the front and rear viewports for movement. I compare the road ahead with the route map and call out damaged sections before we reach them.
For the first hour, the relay marker on the map seems close. A dark ridge sits ahead of us, sharp enough to look as if we will reach it before the next check. Two hours later, it has barely grown larger. The sky makes distance difficult. Everything looks near until the crawler moves toward it, and then it keeps moving away.
By the time the sun has shifted behind the clouds, the road has narrowed to a strip of cracked concrete between drifts of sand. Sorid slows the crawler and lowers the lift field until we are only a handspan above the ground.
"Watch the surface," he says.
I lean over the recorder. The road ahead is clear for several metres, then the density reading begins to flicker.
"Sorid."
He looks at the display immediately. "Tam, drop the field. Wheels down."
Tam's hands move across the console. The crawler sinks toward the road as its wheels extend, but the ground beneath the front end caves in before they can take its weight.
The crawler lurches hard to the left.
Zandor catches the side rail before he is thrown from his seat. Liora braces one hand against the ceiling. Sorid turns us away from the collapse, but the road breaks wider beneath the rear wheel, dragging the crawler toward the opening.
For one suspended second, the lift field holds us over darkness.
Then the power warning screams, and the sky disappears behind a wall of sand and broken concrete.
The crawler drops hard enough to tear the breath from my lungs. My shoulder strikes the side of my seat, and the terrain recorder slips from my hands before I can catch it. For a moment, there is only the sound of metal dragging over stone.
Then we stop.
The crawler is leaning sharply forward, its front end buried somewhere below us. Sand presses against the lower half of the viewports. A warning tone repeats through the cabin, slower now, as though even the system is losing power.
Sorid has one hand against the driver's console before I have managed to lift my head. "Nobody opens a hatch," he says. "Tam, isolate the lift cells. Nadi, check whether the ground is still shifting. Liora, injuries. Zandor, hold that panel clear. Kaelen, find the medical kit."
Everyone moves.
Tam drags himself back into his seat and opens the power housing beneath the console. Nadi presses her bare palm against the slanted floor, closes her eyes, and sends a small returning tremor through the hull. Zandor catches the loose rear panel before it can fall across the equipment racks, planting his feet against the buckled floor until the metal stops moving.
Liora reaches me first. "Can you move your arm?"
I test it carefully. Pain shoots through my shoulder, but nothing feels broken. "Yes."
"Good. Get the kit."
The storage compartment has jammed shut. I pull at the handle twice before Zandor releases the rear panel long enough to wrench it open for me. Inside, most of the supplies are still secured. I pass bandages to Liora while Sorid climbs over the centre console to check Tam.
"The crawler?" he asks.
Tam does not answer immediately. His hands are black with dust from the open housing. "The lift field is gone. The front wheel assembly is twisted, and the main relay took the impact."
"Can you repair it?"
"Not here." Tam looks toward the rear of the cabin. "The emergency field relay may have survived, but it is trapped behind that panel."
Sorid glances at Nadi.
"The ground has stopped moving," she says. "For now."
He nods once. "Then we get the relay, take stock, and make our first call before we decide anything else."
Outside the crawler, something loose shifts against the hull.
The sound comes again, followed by a dull scrape along the crawler's left side.
Nadi keeps her palm against the floor. "It is the wall of the collapse," she says. "Sand and stone are still coming down around us."
Sorid looks toward the upper hatch. "Then we do this quickly. Zandor, keep that panel where it is. Tam, show me the relay. Liora, stay on the hatch with me. Kaelen, bring the emergency light."
Tam crawls toward the rear equipment rack as Zandor braces the loose panel against his shoulder. The metal shifts once beneath Zandor's hands, but he settles his feet into the floor and holds it in place long enough for Tam to reach through the narrow gap behind it.
"Got it," Tam says.
He pulls free a small black case with one cracked corner. When he opens it, a compact relay unit sits inside beside a power cell and the handheld locator.
Sorid takes the relay while Tam checks the cell. "How much charge?"
Tam studies the display. "Five transmission bursts if we keep them short. The locator draws from the same reserve."
"Can the locator still give us a position?"
"It can, but not while we are transmitting."
Sorid nods as if he has expected the answer. "We use one call now. We send our location, the condition of the crawler, and the number of people able to walk. Nothing else until we know what command tells us."
The upper hatch groans when Liora releases the inner lock. Sand spills through the opening before Sorid forces it higher. A hard white light pours into the cabin, and the wind carries dust across the floor.
He looks at each of us in turn. "We are not trapped, and nobody is badly hurt. That is enough to work with. Get your packs ready. If the ground settles again, we leave the crawler and move to stable ground."
Tam hands the locator to me while he connects the relay to its cell.
The screen takes several seconds to wake. When it does, a single marked point appears beside our position, farther west than the relay station we were meant to reach.
ACTIVE RECOVERY BEACON: 18.4 KM
Sorid sees it over my shoulder.
"Make the call," he says.
Sorid goes through the hatch first, then helps Liora onto the broken road above the crawler. The rest of us follow with our packs and the supplies we can carry. Outside, the wind is stronger than it sounded from inside. It presses against my coat and fills the air with fine sand that catches on my lips and teeth.
The crawler has fallen nose-first into a collapse beneath the road. Only the rear half remains above ground, tilted at an angle between slabs of broken concrete. From where I stand, I can see how thin the surface had been. A dark hollow opens beneath the road and disappears under the sand.
Sorid chooses a patch of solid rock several metres away and sets the field relay on the ground. Tam extends its antenna while Nadi keeps watch on the collapse behind us.
"Keep it short," Sorid says. "We need four calls after this one."
The relay gives a burst of static, then a voice answers from far below the noise.
"Surface Command receiving."
Sorid kneels beside the unit. "Expedition Six. Crawler disabled after road collapse. Six personnel alive, no critical injuries. Main relay destroyed. We have a field unit with five bursts total and a locator."
There is a pause while the voice checks something we cannot hear.
"Your position is logged," the operator says. "Nearest active recovery beacon is west of your location, eighteen point four kilometres. Proceed there on foot. Maintain scheduled contact."
"The beacon was not on our mission route," Sorid says.
"It is the nearest active point available to you. Surface Command will arrange retrieval once you reach it."
The relay begins to pulse red, warning that the transmission window is ending. Sorid waits until the last possible second before replying.
"Understood."
The signal cuts out.
Tam checks the cell. "Four bursts left."
For a moment, nobody speaks. The beacon marker glows steadily on the locator in my hand, a small symbol beyond the far ridge.
Sorid looks at the broken crawler, then at the sky growing darker above us.
"We move before the road comes down again," he says. "Liora, take point with me. Tam, stay close to the locator. The rest of you keep within sight of each other."
He does not say that eighteen kilometres should be manageable.
None of us has walked eighteen kilometres beneath an open sky before.