Lin's voice clipped the air: "Plan B now."
The deck smelled of wet rope and hot metal as men scrambled; small balloons rolled from chutes like loose thoughts.
Ren's palms pressed the pendant through his shirt until the fossil's edge dug a crescent into skin.
"Launch them wide," Lin barked, hands a blur on ropes and valves. "Spread the signature. Scatter the trace. Make 'em chase ghosts."
Kira tossed a coil and grinned a savage grin.
"Cheap smoke, expensive headaches. My kind of trick."
The false balloons unfurled and climbed, each fitted with a scrap of heater and a scrap of blinking residue—Lin's mechanical mimicry of an energy signature.
They popped up in a scatter like startled birds and loosed tiny puffs of white.
"Spread left!" Lin snapped. "Port and starboard—now!"
Ren hauled the last line and felt his shoulders burn from holding suppression for so long; the tuner in his pocket ticked a protest.
The bracelets Li had given him tapped a soft rhythm where metal met skin, the sound that meant home like a distant bell.
"Tracker nodes will pick whichever shines brightest," Lin said, voice a machine recalibrating. "We make them choose wrong."
A wind of soot and hot glue stung Ren's nose.
The mimic balloons chirped and blinked then died like fake fireflies.
The Guild's observation hull above them hesitated, its crew shouting coordinates into little instruments.
For a breath the sky was a hunt field with many possible prey.
Kira leaned in, breath steaming in the fog.
"You did good," she said, quick and rough. "Don't lose your head now."
Ren caught a glimpse of the scar under his ear and tightened his jaw.
The memory of the saw's sting was a tendon that tightened whenever danger smelled like metal.
He pushed it down and kept to the ropes—action as thump to drown thought.
The Guild split its response, crews peeling off to follow the decoys.
Lin's stunt worked—their watchers multiplied, wires and eyes scattering like a bad rumor.
But the main observation ship held, engines whispering with renewed focus.
"They're angry now," Lin muttered, eyes cold as a blade. "They feel played. A cornered merchant is worse than a starving beast."
Kira spat, agile hands already rerouting lines.
"We gave them hunting grounds and they want trophies."
Ren steadied himself against a mast.
The Echo pulsed a single, invasive message into his skull—clinical, immediate.
EMERGENCY MISSION AVAILABLE: DISTRACTION ACTIVE — ACTIVATE DISCIPLE FORM FOR 10s; REWARD: 10 PADs; PENALTY: SEVERE EXHAUSTION + HIGH CAPTURE RISK IF FAIL.
The words sat like a coin in his throat.
The idea of flashing himself—becoming the signal—was a small, hot trespass on every lesson he'd chewed through since the Devourer.
Lin's hand found Ren's shoulder in a quick, noncommittal squeeze.
"Don't be heroic," he said. "Your form is a lighthouse. It's for last resort."
"You want me to be the decoy then?" Ren's voice came out too thin. "Ten seconds and we get away."
Lin's eyes cut to the horizon, then back.
"And then they'll know your signature by sight. They'll have a sample. You become a classified specimen in their ledgers. No."
Kira's jaw worked.
"They'll come for you with cages if you flash. If they don't, someone else will."
Lin's face softened—practicality wearing the mask of kindness.
"There's a middle ground. We can bleed their detectors with false traces. We can change our thermal map. We can twist our wake. Your energy should be preserved."
Ren swallowed and turned the tuner between his thumb and forefinger until the small cog warmed.
The Echo chimed the mission's value like a merchant's coin: ten PADs.
The ledger read reward and risk in blunt numbers.
"But if we don't pull something big?" Ren asked. "They'll follow the strongest scent. We can't outlast their patience forever."
Lin's mouth was a line.
"Then we lead them away smart, not spectacular. Smoke and mirrors, not human bonfires."
Ren drew breath and let the decision sit like a stone in his chest.
Each choice braided consequence: PADs, safety, the journal and map under his shirt, the promise he'd given Li to come back whole.
He looked at Kira; her face was a map of worry and resolve.
"Do it your way," he said quietly. "I refuse the Echo."
Lin's thumb came down like a stamp.
"Good. Keep the card in your hand, not in the fire."
They wove through fog banks, the Sussurro Curioso a living seam of fabric and wood.
Lin piloted like a man with a compass in his bones, threading thermal currents and eddies to gain gimpy speed.
Instruments spat numbers and small curses.
Ren bent to help with a trimmed sail, fingers numb and clumsy.
Suppression was a slow erosion—channels sang with pain at the edges.
He staggered once and gripped the deck; bile rose and slid back down like a promise swallowed.
"You okay?" Kira asked, hand on his elbow.
Her fingers were warm through the fabric; the touch was an anchor.
"Fine," Ren lied and let the lie do real work.
The tuner hummed low; the pendant pressed against bone.
Li's bracelets chinked, a small hymn he mouthed in his head to steady the aching.
The Echo sent an irritated pulse—protocols noted his refusal, tagged it as anomalous.
Lin's eyes flicked to the sky where the Guild's main hull churned like a bad thought.
They had one more trick: fake wakes, decoy puffs, a course that bent like a river around rocks.
He toggled a set of valves; small fake trails puffed from the stern in staggered timing.
"We buy time," Lin said. "We don't burn a fuse."
Ren moved like a man stitched together with guesswork—mend sails, untie lines, watch the horizon.
The cost of suppression hung like a stone.
The Echo's clinical ledger displayed risks: channels erode, recovery requires rest and more.
Ren felt the numbers mark him in muscle.
The chase tightened.
The Guild's ship had tasted a pattern and refused to let go; their main hull cut through fog like a slow knife, engines humming with an intent that made the air electrical.
Lin barked orders and Lin's contraptions spit out false signatures as they feathered away.
The Sussurro Curioso leaned into a thermal draft and leapt; ropes whined and sails shivered.
Kira kept watch with the practicality of someone who names screws for friends.
"If they redouble, we run dwarf paths—fungus isles and dead-air eddies," she said. "But if they close, it's hand-to-hand or they take samples."
Ren's ribs ached, his vision fringe blurred.
The Echo pushed another option, clinical and cold: instant fame and danger for ten PADs.
He pictured cages, surgeons' gloves, Sorren's polished smile cataloguing him like an exhibit.
Lin's hands moved steady on the wheel.
"We can buy the PADs," he said. "We can lose more."
Ren straightened.
The bracelet's metal pressed a reminder.
Li's voice—practical as a stone—echoed in the memory: Fly begins on the ground.
Leaving as himself, not as a spectacle, would keep him with that ground.
He looked at the interface in his mind—the Echo's pale ledger—and then at Kira, whose hand had left a grease print on his sleeve as if to claim him.
"I refuse," Ren said.
The words were small but clean.
The Echo's reaction was a metallic blink that felt like surprise tasting the air.
A voice not unkind but clinical registered: UNEXPECTED. RATIONALITY OVERCOMING SURVIVAL INSTINCT. INTERESTING.
But now, without the trick, the Guild ship approaches.
Its cannons begin to glow.