Chapter Text
The bell began ringing just before dawn. There was nothing particularly unusual about it. It signaled the start of shift, exactly as it would aboard ship when daylight and nightfall shifted as they traveled eastward. But the ship’s shifts paid no attention to the changing position of the sun. As the ship moved further eastward, each of the three shifts would begin with the sun slightly higher in the sky, and end with it slightly lower, until they made landfall on what had once been San Francisco, locking each shift’s working day into a single, unchanging arc swept out by the sun and stars. Kina would be able to explain it better. She always had an aptitude for reading every arrangement of the stars. Seyka was a sailor. If you needed a ballista manned, or a sail hoisted, she was your girl. If you needed to know where you were in the middle of an open ocean, you were asking the wrong sister.
The bell’s deep, deliberate tone rolled through Legacy’s Landfall and out across the bay, carried on wind and rain. Somewhere beyond the walls of her tiny cell in the detention tower, workers would already be stirring from their beds. Dock crews were preparing for the morning tide. Marines were changing shifts. Diviners were hurrying toward archives and ruins that had survived a thousand years only to become subjects of argument.
Life went on.
Seyka sat on the edge of a narrow cot and listened to the bell until the final note faded. When it did, she listened to the rain. It had been raining steadily almost since she’d been locked into the aged, concrete walls that had been repurposed for a prison. It rattled softly against the wall behind her. Over the days she’d been here, it had found its way through some unseen crack overhead, dripping steadily into a shallow puddle in the floor.
Drip… Drip… Drip…
The sound had been annoying on her first day here. Now, it felt almost comforting. It was proof that time was still marching forward. At any rate, the cell contained little else. A cot, a blanket, a bucket. A narrow slit of a window to small for escape was positioned too high in the wall to see through unless she stood. She had stood many times anyway. At first she’d done it to look outside. Later, she’d done it because there was nothing else to do.
Now, she just remained seated. It’s not like there was much left worth looking at anyway. Her execution was scheduled for sunrise.
That thought should have frightened her. Instead, it felt oddly distant, as though it belonged to someone else. A week ago, she’d still believed that the truth mattered. Three days ago, she’d still believed that someone would intervene on her behalf. Yesterday, she’d believed that there might still be a mistake to correct. Now, there was only procedure. The trial had happened, the verdict delivered, the sentence pronounced. The machinery of the Empire was turning exactly as intended.
Seyka rested her forearms on her knees and stared at the opposite wall. A crack ran through the concrete from floor to ceiling. She’d memorized every bend in it. Every branching line. Anything to keep her mind occupied. Anything to avoid thinking.
That strategy had lasted, perhaps, ten seconds, but then her thoughts had betrayed her once again. The Burning Shores. Warm sunlight reflecting off of the ocean. The loud fwap of a Waterwing’s wings striking the air. Aloy’s laugh…
Seyka closed her eyes. No. Not that. Not now.
She drew in a slow breath and let it out. She focused on the rain, on the crack in the wall, on the puddle by the door. She focused on literally anything else. The memory retreated, for a while anyway, and another took its place.
Alva.
This one was harder to dismiss, mainly because it made no sense. She should have been there, at the trial. She should have bene arguing with officials. She should have been demanding records. She should have been questioning witnesses until everyone involved regretted allowing her into the room. She’d be threatening the careers of anyone who dared harm a hair on Seyka’s head.
Alva had never been particularly good at accepting authority when authority was being stupid. Which, admittedly, happened fairly often. Yet, she hadn’t appeared. Not once. No message, no explanation, nothing. The absence bothered Seyka more than the death sentence. Not because she blamed Alva – she didn’t. Something was wrong. She couldn’t explain why she felt so certain of it, only that she did. The trial had felt… managed. Questions were redirected. Requests were denied. Witnesses all suddenly unavailable. People who should have gladly spoken to her character were nowhere to be seen. It was as though invisible hands had quietly arranged every piece on the board before she ever entered the room.
Without thinking, her hand reached up for the place near her right temple where her focus should have been. Her fingers, yet again, met empty skin. For a moment, she simply sat there, feeling foolish, before she lowered her hand again. The Focus was gone, confiscated weeks ago, yet some part of her mind still expected it to be there. A tool, a companion, an connection to a world larger than the Empire’s carefully constructed version of history. Gone, just like everything else. Just like she would be within the hour.
The bell rang again, closer this time. This wasn’t the harbor bell. This was the signal from within the tower. The changing of the watch. Seyka straightened. It wouldn’t be long now.
Footsteps echoed faintly somewhere below. She could hear doors opening and closing. She could hear muffled voices, not enough to understand what they were saying, but enough to recognize them as the sounds of a building preparing itself for another day. Or perhaps preparing itself for an ending.
Down the corridor, she heard a key turn in the lock. Then it turned in another lock. Closer this time.
Then another. She heard footsteps climb the stairs steady, unhurried, and certain. Coming for her.
Seyka rose from the cot and smoothed the wrinkles from the plain, gray tunic they’d given her, and she waited.
The footsteps stopped outside her door, and for a moment, nobody moved on either side of it. Rain whispered against the walls. Water dripped onto the puddle in the floor. The same crack in the wall watched the statue-still woman as she awaited whatever was on the other side of the door.
A key slid into the lock, and with a scrape of metal against metal, the bolt withdrew. With a groan of tortured hinges, the door swung open, revealing three marines waiting beyond it. Seyka recognized exactly none of them. That wasn’t an accident. The officers overseeing her imprisonment had been careful about that. There were no familiar faces, no former squadmates, no one who might remember sharing a campfire or surviving a machine attack together. Nobody who had been under Londra’s control and who might show her a sympathetic face. Just strangers.
The Marine in front carried a slate and stylus, not a weapon, but it may as well have been one. He was literally checking off items on a list that ended with her body riddled with arrows. The second held a lantern, casting more light than her eyes had seen in a week. The third stood silently beside them.
The lead marine glanced at the slate before looking up at her.
“Seyka.”
Not Marine Seyka. Not Lieutenant. Not Petty Officer. Not even prisoner. Just a name. A thing to be checked against a list.
She met his gaze. “I’m still here.”
The Marine ignored the remark. “Stand for inventory confirmation,” he said.
Seyka almost laughed.
Inventory. In context, the word sounded absurd. What, exactly, did they think she was hiding? But she stepped forward anyway.
The Marine began reading.
“One gray tunic,” his stylus scratched across the slate. “One pair of trousers,” scratch, “one weather cloak,” scratch, “one pair of boots,” scratch. He frowned at the slate as if expecting more. “Do you possess any additional property?”
The question was obviously ceremonial. Everything she’d owned had been taken weeks ago. Still, hearing it spoken aloud stirred something unpleasant in her chest. Once, she’d possessed armor. Weapons. Rank. Maps. Tools. A Focus. All the trappings of a life spent in service to the Empire. Now, a comprehensive list of everything she owned in the universe could fit on half a page.
“No,” she answered, finally.
The stylus scratched once more, and the Marine nodded. “Inventory complete,” he announced. He gave a quick nod to the second Marine.
The lantern bearer stepped forward carrying a folded bundle of cloth. Gray. Plain. Seyka already knew what it was. The clothes she would wear to her execution.
“Remove your cloak,” the Marine said.
She hesitated. It wasn’t because she intended to resist. She wouldn’t even make it to the end of the corridor. It was because the cloak she was wearing was hers. Or it had been, anyway. It was the last piece of clothing she still recognized. The last thing that felt even remotely familiar. Slowly, she unfastened it, handing it over to the Marine. He took it without comment, folded it, and placed it in a canvas sack.
And just like that, it was gone. Forever.
Not that “forever” was much of a time commitment at the moment.
The replacement cloak was coarser, cheaper. It was made with undyed wool, with no markings, no insignia. No indication that the woman wearing it had served the Empire at all. The Marine handed it over and she pulled it over her shoulders. It smelled faintly of salt and storage. It was clearly someone else’s garment. Someone else’s life. It was exactly what Compliance intended. She was no longer the Marine, the Lieutenant, the woman who saved Fleet’s end, the woman who fought alongside –
She shook her head, banishing the thought. No. Not now.
The lead Marine reviewed the slate in his hand one final time before he cleared his throat. “By order of the Imperial Administration of Legacy’s Landfall, all military rank, honors and official distinctions are revoked effective immediately.”
The words landed harder than she expected. Not because she hadn’t been prepared for them, and not because she respected the ruling. It was because of how casually it had been delivered. Years of service and sacrifice, reduced to a single sentence read from a slate.
The Marine continued. “All associated privileges are hereby withdrawn,” scratch, “all records are to be amended accordingly,” scratch. “Inventory complete,” he closed the slate with a soft click.
Silence settled over the corridor. Seyka stared at the damp concrete floor. She’d expected to feel anger at this moment, or outrage. Instead, she just felt tired; profoundly, impossibly tired.
The lead Marine tucked the slate between one arm, moving out of the way of the door to allow her to pass.
“Compliance Officer Talan has requested a final audience before sentencing is carried out,” he said.
Requested. As though Seyka had a choice. The irony almost drew a smile. Almost.
The Marine gestured towards the corridor. “It’s time.”
Seyka glanced back into the cell. The cot, the bucket, the puddle beneath the dripping water, the crack running the length of the wall. For the briefest moment, she felt something unexpected: reluctance. The cell had been miserable. It had been cold. It had been lonely. It had been hopeless. All by design. But it had been the last place where anyone expected anything from her. The last place she’d been allowed to simply exist. Beyond the door waited judgment, or at least the performance of it. The door closed behind her, and she heard the sound of the lock turning. For the first time, Seyka realized she would never see that cell again.
The rain had eased into a falling mist by the time they left the detention tower. Landfall was waking. Workers moved along the docks below, their voices carrying faintly through the damp morning air. Lanterns still glowed beneath awnings and along elevated walkways connecting the settlement’s structures. Beyond them, ancient towers rose from the flooded ruins of the old city, their broken silhouettes half-hidden by fog.
Seyka descended the concrete steps between the two marines. No shackles bound her ankles, only a rope bound her wrists behind her back. Neither was necessary. The entire colony knew where she was going. Marines were on guard, bows at the ready, fully prepared to move her execution up an hour if she gave them the tiniest excuse. Armed and armored, she gave herself even odds of at least getting away. Now, she was unarmed, wearing no more protection than a thin tunic. She might take down the first one or two that came at her, but someone would get a lucky shot in before she made it out of the main street.
Off to her right, a pair of dockworkers paused to watch as she passed. One looked away immediately. The other stared until a nearby Marine noticed, then he suddenly found something else to occupy his attention. Nobody spoke. The thick silence followed her through the settlement.
The sound, or lack thereof, reminded her of the trial. Not what had been said, but rather what had not been said.
The memory surfaced unbidden.
The hearing chamber overlooked the bay. Once, it had been a meeting hall used by the ancestors. Glass walls, ancient metal beams. This was a room made for decisions. The Empire had draped banners over much of it, as though the light fabric could somehow make the ghosts of the Ancestors less inconvenient. Seyka remembered standing alone before a long table of officials. Compliance officers, administrators, diviners. Faces were carefully arranged into expressions of impartial concern. The verdict had not yet been delivered, but she had known. Everybody in the room had known. The decision had been made long before she arrived.
A gull wheeled overhead, its cry pulling her briefly back to the present.
Then the memory returned.
“Your request for additional testimony is denied.” One of the officials had spoken those words. He’d pronounced it calmly, without explanation, and without apology. Denied. The same answer she’d received all afternoon. Requests denied. Evidence denied. Questions redirected. Witnesses unavailable. At first, she’d fought it. She’d argued. She’d demanded answers. Eventually, she’d just started counting their denials. By the end of the trial, she’d lost track of how many of her requests had been summarily denied without any justification, but the count of those that had been accepted stood at a firm zero.
The procession turned onto a broad walkway overlooking the harbor. Ships bobbed at anchor beneath the gray sky. Some had arrived recently. Fresh vessels from across the ocean, bringing supplies, personnel and orders. The Empire’s reach growing longer with every passing month.
Another memory surfaced.
“Do you contest the charges?” The presiding official had asked. The question itself had almost been insulting. Not because of the charges, but because of the performance. The illusion that her answer might somehow matter.
“As stated?” Seyka had replied, “most of them.”
Murmurs had spread through the room. It wasn’t outrage, not exactly. It was discomfort. Officials preferred cooperation. They preferred confession. They wanted submission. They wanted anything that made the process easier. Truth complicated things. Truth required effort.
The rain strengthened slightly. Droplets of water gathered at the edge of her borrowed cloak. Ahead, the streets began climbing towards the higher levels of the settlement. Towards the cliffs. Towards the execution grounds. It was convenient, in a way. Clean. Efficient. The condemned were made to stand on the cliff, their heels just on the edge of it. The near simultaneous impact of ten or twelve arrows in the condemned’s center-of-mass made them fall backwards into the ocean a hundred or more meters below, where the currents carried their body out of sight within minutes. Seyka kept walking.
The memory refused to let go. One moment remained sharper than all the others. It was a question she’d asked near the end of the proceedings. Not because she expected to get an answer, mind you, but because she genuinely didn’t understand. She’d looked along the rows of seats. She’d looked at the officials, at the observers, at the diviners… at the empty spaces between them, and had finally asked: “where is Diviner Alva?”
The room had gone still. Not dramatically. Subtly, but enough. Several of the officials exchanged glances. One Diviner had suddenly become fascinated by the document in front of him. Another avoided eye contact entirely. No one answered immediately. The silence itself had been the answer. At the time, she hadn’t understood why. Now she did. The realization had dawned slowly over the following days. Alva hadn’t chosen not to come. She’d been removed. She’d been sent somewhere else. Somewhere convenient. Somewhere far enough away that she couldn’t interfere. Because this much was certain: Alva would have interfered.
The thought almost made Seyka smile. She could practically hear the argument. The endless questions. The refusal to accept obvious nonsense simply because someone important had declared it official. No, Alva would never have allowed the proceedings to pass quietly, which was exactly why she had never been given the chance.
A Marine walking behind Seyka shifted position. The movement drew her attention to the present once more. The settlement was thinning now. Buildings were giving way to open ground. The cliffs were visible ahead through the mist. The destination was drawing closer. The trial was over, the verdict had been delivered. The sentence was just waiting to be carried out.
Yet, that single unanswered question lingered. Not because it could save her – it couldn’t. Because it revealed something important. The Empire hadn’t simply decided to kill her. It had prepared. It had been careful, deliberate, patient. They’d removed every witness, every record, and every inconvenient voice that might affect the result. Each piece had been removed from the board before the game had even begun.
That realization should have made her angry. Instead, it left her with a strange sense of clarity. She’d spent weeks wondering if she’d missed something. Could she have argued differently? Presented different evidence? Chosen different words? Now, at the end, she finally knew the truth. Nothing she said would have mattered. The outcome had been decided long before anyone had entered that room.
Ahead, a cluster of tents stood on the rise overlooking the sea. Imperial banners snapped in the wind. The Marines escorting her adjusted their course toward them. Compliance Officer Talan was waiting, and for the first time that morning, Seyka felt something stir beneath the exhaustion. It wasn’t fear, at least not yet. It was curiosity. She found herself wondering what final lie he intended to offer before they killed her.
Canvas walls snapped and strained in the morning wind. Marines moved between the supply crates and signal posts, speaking in low voices as rain drifted in from the ocean. Beyond the encampment, the cliffs dropped away toward the restless gray water below.
One of Seyka’s escorts pulled aside a canvas flap. “Inside,” he grunted, his voice flat. She ducked inside.
The command tent was warmer than she expected. Not comfortable, just dry. Maps covered a large table at the center of the room. Several showed the coastline surrounding Legacy’s Landfall. Others depicted territories further inland.
The Forbidden West. Regions Seyka had only begun to understand during her time with Aloy. A brazier glowed softly in one corner. Standing beside it was Officer Talan. He looked like someone who had spent his life exercising authority through institutions rather than through physical force. He stood perhaps slightly taller than the Marines who had escorted her to his tent, his black hair had only started to gray, and thin lines had formed along his prominent cheekbones consistent with a man just barely entering the latter half of middle age. His dark, administrative coat was trimmed with silver embroidery, and his high leather boots were polished to a shine, despite the mud of Legacy’s landfall. He looked up as she entered and walked towards her at a measured pace. Seyka could discern no forked tail, no cloven hooves. To the contrary, he looked like a teacher or a senior Diviner. He looked like someone who, under different circumstances, she might have once respected. But there was something about him that made her uneasy. He didn’t appear cruel or tyrannical. He looked like he could reasonably justify every decision he’d ever made, and that was probably worse. A cruel man can be resisted. A man who convinces himself that cruelty is necessary is much harder to fight.
He waited until the flap closed behind Seyka, separating her from the Marines outside before he spoke to her.
“Thank you for agreeing to see me,” he said, his voice steady.
Seyka laughed a short, humorless laugh, “did I have a choice?”
“No,” he said, calmly.
Well, at least he was honest.
He gestured toward an empty chair.
Seyka remained standing. She stood stock-still, her spine at perfect attention. Old habits die hard.
After a brief moment, he nodded as though her decision to remain motionless had confirmed something. “As you wish,” he said.
The heavy silence stretched between them. Rain tapped against the canvas overhead as Talan studied her carefully. He didn’t look like an executioner studying a condemned prisoner. It was more like a teacher disappointed by a promising student.
The expression irritated her immediately. “You didn’t bring me here to watch the weather,” she said.
“No,” he agreed. He folded his hands behind his back. “I requested this meeting because I believe the situation remains… salvageable.”
Seyka blinked. Then she stared. For a moment, she wondered if he had lost his mind. “’Salvageable,’” she repeated.
“Yes.”
“My execution is scheduled for sunrise,” she replied.
“Technically, it’s scheduled for shortly after sunrise,” he corrected, “but your point is well taken.”
The correction was so absurd, she almost laughed again. Almost. Something told her, though, that that wasn’t the proper response. Instead she shook her head. “What, exactly do you think you’re offering me?”
“Exile,” he replied, simply. The word hung in the air, unexpected.
Seyka frowned. “You convicted me of sedition.”
“I did.”
“You sentenced me to death,” she continued.
“The committee sentenced you to death,” he corrected her again.
Seyka’s eyes narrowed, “you were a Marine before you were a Compliance Officer. So was I, and I’m getting shot in a few minutes. Don’t you think we can be honest with each other, at least in this room? Haven’t I at least earned that much?”
“Fair point,” he conceded.
“You sentenced me to death,” she repeated.
“Yes,” he didn’t correct her this time.
“And now you’re offering exile.”
Talan nodded. “The sentence can still be amended,” he told her.
Something about the way he said it made her skin crawl. Not because it was cruel, but because he clearly considered himself to be reasonable, compassionate, even.
“You would be transported beyond Imperial jurisdiction,” he went on, “stripped of rank, citizenship, and authority. Your name would be removed from all official records. Your future actions would no longer be of any concern to us.
Seyka stared at him. “You mean I disappear.”
“If you prefer,” the answer came without hesitation. Not a denial, not even an attempt to disguise the reality. It was simply an acknowledgement. You disappear.
The brazier crackled softly. Outside, the wind rattled the tent poles.
“In exchange, you will make a public statement.”
There it was: the actual price. “What statement?”
“That your conclusions regarding the Ancestors were mistaken,” he said, evenly.
“No.” The answer emerged instantly. No thought required. No consideration needed. Simply certainty.
Talan sighed. Not dramatically. It was the weary sigh of a man who had expected exactly that response. “You haven’t heard the full proposal,” he said.
“I don’t need to.”
“You should.”
Seyka crossed her arms.
Talan regarded her for a moment, then continued anyway. “You need not claim dishonesty.”
Okay, interesting.
“You need not confess wrongdoing.”
More interesting.
“You need only acknowledge that you interpretations were influenced by outside parties who lacked proper understanding of Imperial doctrine,” he said, as if he were asking her to run an errand.
Seyka barked a laugh. This time she couldn’t stop herself. “Aloy,” she realized.
Talan inclined his head. “Aloy.” The name sounded strange in his voice. It sounded clinical, categorized. As if it was a name among many filed away among other administrative concerns. The sound made Seyka unexpectedly angry.
“You want me to blame her,” her voice hardened.
“I want you to preserve stability,” the counter came immediately, as if it had been rehearsed, and as if the distinction were obvious.
Seyka stared at him. For several seconds, neither one spoke. Finally, she asked the question that had been gnawing at her for days. “Where was Alva?”
Talan’s expression remained unchanged, but something flickered behind his eyes. The tiniest fraction of a second of hesitation.
There, at last, was a weakness.
“Diviner Alva was assigned to other duties,” he told her.
“That’s pretty convenient timing,” she spat back at him.
“The Empire’s needs are often inconvenient,” he was clearly irritated, but his voice betrayed none of that irritation.
“That’s not an answer,” Seyka told him.
“No, it’s not,” he replied. Still no irritation entered his voice. Nor did anger. Merely impatience.
Seyka stepped forward. “Did she know?”
The question landed harder than she expected. Talan looked away briefly. He looked towards the maps; toward the bay beyond the canvas walls; anywhere except for at her, and in that moment, she knew. Before he spoke, before he answered, she knew.
“No,” he said quietly.
The certainty hit like a spear. He'd been the puppet master all along. He'd been the hands behind the scene removing very witness, every appeal, every inconvenient voice. She’d suspected, of course, but now it was certain. The realization should have made her feel better. Instead, it made her furious. Not at Alva; at the calculation, at the precision and the sheer cowardice of it.
Talan saw the understanding settle across her face. When he spoke again, his voice had softened. “Diviner Alva possesses admirable convictions.”
Seyka said nothing. Somehow, it didn't sound like he meant it as a compliment.
“Convictions would have complicated matters,” he continued.
There it was: the closest thing to an admission she would ever receive. The truth wrapped in bureaucratic language. Complicated matters. As though justice were an inconvenience, and truth were a scheduling conflict.
The rain intensified outside. Neither one spoke for a moment that stretched into a short eternity. Finally, it was Talan who straightened, and broke the silence. “I had hoped you would be practical.”
Seyka met his gaze. “You mistake me for someone else.”
The disappointment in his expression returned. No theatrics, just genuine disappointment, as though he truly regretted what was about to happen, which somehow made him even worse. “Perhaps,” he finally said, simply. Then he nodded at the entrance.
The meeting was over, the offer withdrawn. The machinery of the Empire was resuming its work. With a snap of his fingers, the canvas door of the tent was pulled aside, revealing the Marines on either side.
Without hesitation, Seyka walked towards it. Before she stepped outside, Talan spoke one final time. “You’re making a mistake,” he said.
She paused. Rain and wind rushed through the opening ahead. For a moment, she considered answering. She considered arguing. She considered explaining. Then, she remembered the trial. She remembered the verdict. She remembered the firing squad waiting beyond the cliffs. Nothing she said would matter, so she simply looked back over her shoulder. “You know that I told the truth,” she said, simply.
For the first time all morning, Talan had no answer.
Seyka stepped out into the rain, and left him standing alone beside his maps.
The wind had shifted while she was inside. It came off of the bay now, cold and damp, carrying the smell of saltwater and machine oil from the harbor below. The Marines resumed their positions on either side of her. No one spoke. The execution ground lay somewhere ahead. It wasn’t far – close enough that she could feel its presence without even seeing it, like the edge of a cliff hidden in fog.
One step at a time, the procession continued. Landfall gave way to open ground. The muddy path wound upward along the bluffs overlooking the camp. Below, the settlement stretched across the flooded ruins of San Francisco. Dock cranes rose from ancient foundations. Ships rocked at anchor. Smoke drifted from cook fires beginning to appear throughout the colony. It was, for all appearances, an ordinary morning, and she found the normality of it all vaguely offensive. The world should have the decency to stop for just a moment. Instead, workers loaded cargo, sailors repaired rigging. Life continued.
The realization felt strangely familiar. She remembered standing beside Aloy after Londra’s defeat. The world had nearly ended. Again. And yet, the next morning, people still needed breakfast. They still needed shelter. They still needed to repair roofs and mend fishing nets. Tomorrow, they’d eat breakfast, arrange shelter, repair roofs and mend fishing nets. The world seldom paused for individual tragedies.
A cluster of citizens stood near the path ahead. They had clearly been waiting. They weren’t cheering. They weren’t protesting. They were simply watching. The Marines slowed slightly as the procession approached. The crowd parted. No one spoke.
Seyka recognized a few faces. Dockworkers from Fleet’s End, a salvager she’d once helped rescue from a machine attack. An older woman whose grandson had served with the Marines. People she knew, or had known. Most refused to meet her eyes, not because they hated her, but because they were afraid. The distinction mattered. A young man finally looked directly at her. His jaw tightened. For a brief moment, she thought he might say something. Instead, he lowered his gaze and the procession moved on. Silence followed it.
“Brave bunch,” one of the escorting Marines glanced toward her. His tone wasn’t hostile, just uncomfortable. Seyka almost felt sorry for him. Almost.
Further up the path, another group waited. This time, she recognized one of them immediately. Marine First Officer Jerran, from Fleet’s End. He’d served under her command during several machine clearing operations in the early months after they’d been flung ashore in what had once been Los Angeles. He was a good soldier. Reliable, steady under pressure. He stood rigidly at attention as she approached, his eyes fixed on the horizon, as though she weren’t there. The performance lasted until she drew nearly level with him, then his gaze shifted, only for a second. Their eyes met. No words passed between them. None were needed. Regret, respect, helpless anger. The emotions flashed across his face before disappearing behind discipline once more. Then he looked away. The moment was gone. Seyka continued walking.
Oddly, that brief exchange had hurt more than the entire trial. The officials had never pretended to care. Jerran did. Many of them probably did, and none of them could do anything. That was the true power of the Empire. Not force, or weapons, or technology. Their true power was the ability to convince decent people that obedience was the same thing as duty.
The path climbed higher. The settlement gradually fell away behind them. Ahead, the cliffs emerged from the mist. Dark stone, wind twisted grass, and a sheer drop to the crashing surf below. The execution ground. She could finally see it now.
Simple. Functional. A flattened section of earth surrounded by rope barriers. A pair of tents stood to either side. Rows of spectators stood, pressing up against the rope barriers. A line of Marines was already assembled near the edge of the bluffs. Their bows already strung and ready.
She felt surprisingly little. She didn’t feel the panic she’d been anticipating. Nor did she feel anger. She didn’t even feel resignation. It was just a growing sense of uncertainty. Her story was ending. That much was unavoidable. The only question was how.
The thought brought Aloy back to the forefront of her mind. She’d spent most of the morning trying not to think about her; trying not to remember.
Trying not to imagine what might have been.
It had worked about as well as expected.
Aloy would hate this. The thought arrived with unexpected clarity. Not because she would try to stop it, though she probably would. Not because she would fight everyone involved, though she definitely would.
No, Aloy would hate the unfairness of it. She would hate the waste. She’d hate the deliberate stupidity of intelligent people choosing lies because the truth was inconvenient.
A small smile threatened to appear. Seyka suppressed it immediately.
One of the Marines noticed it anyway. “What?” The question slipped out before he could stop himself.
Seyka looked toward the sea. Rain drifted across the water in long, gray curtains. Far beyond the horizon lay the Empire. Far beyond that, every choice that had led her here.
“Nothing,” she said.
The Marine frowned, but did not ask again. The procession continued, step by step, closer to the cliff, closer to the firing line, closer to the end. And, perhaps for the first time all morning, Seyka fully accepted that nobody was coming. Not Alva, not her sister, not some last-minute messenger carrying an eleventh-hour reprieve.
Not Aloy.
Especially not Aloy. Aloy didn’t even know. The realization settled over her with surprising gentleness. Not despair, just truth. Whatever happened next, she would face it alone.
The wind strengthened. Ahead, the Marines of the firing squad took their positions, and the procession did not stop.
The wind never stopped moving on the cliffs. It swept in from the Pacific, carrying mist and rain and the distant smell of saltwater. It tugged at clothing, rattled tent ropes, and sent the banners surrounding the execution ground snapping sharply overhead.
Seyka stepped calmly through the rope barrier. The crowd was smaller than she expected. Perhaps fifty people, maybe sixty. Enough to witness, not enough to create a spectacle. The administration had chosen its audience carefully. There were officials, officers, selected citizens – people whose opinions mattered, but whose silence mattered more.
The Marines escorting her guided her toward the center of the clearing. The ground beneath her boots was muddy from days of rain. Ahead, the firing squad stood waiting. Ten Marines, perfectly aligned, ceremonial armor perfectly polished despite the weather. Their long bows at rest, at least for the moment. Each had a single arrow nocked. From that range, they couldn’t miss. The force of the arrows striking her ribcage would practically liquify her heart and lungs, sending arrowheads and fragments of bone through essentially every major blood vessel between her neck and her navel. She’d be dead before the momentum of the simultaneous strike of ten arrows had a chance to drive her lifeless body over the edge of the cliff and into the surf below.
Considering the circumstances, the sight should have felt threatening. Instead, it felt strangely familiar. Seyka had stood inspections before. She’d led formations before. She’d watched Marines line up before missions. The uniforms were the same, the discipline unchanged. Only the purpose was different.
A gull wheeled overhead. Its cry vanished into the wind.
The escorting Marines stopped. One of them – she couldn’t tell if it was Lantern Marine or the other one – stepped behind her and she felt fingers working at the rope binding her wrists.
For a brief, absurd moment, she thought they were setting her free. The rope came loose, and her hands fell to her sides. The Marine immediately stepped away. It wasn’t freedom. It was procedure. A condemned prisoner could not be executed while bound. The realization was oddly funny. Trust the Empire to care about appearances, even under these circumstances.
Seyka rubbed at her wrists. The skin was raw. Nobody objected. Nobody seemed concerned that she might try to flee. After all, where would she run? There was nowhere. Not anymore.
An official emerged from one of the nearby tents. Seyka recognized him immediately as the same man who had presided over much of her trial. He hadn’t really been running things, of course, but he’d appeared to be. It was unlikely that even he was aware of the full extent of his powerlessness during her trial. He looked immaculate, despite the weather. Not a single strand of hair was out of place. He carried a waterproof document case tucked beneath one arm, because of course he did. The Empire would probably document the weather if given the opportunity.
The official took his place beside a small wooden podium. He reached into his case and unfurled a scroll in front of him. The crowd quieted. Even the wind seemed to soften.
“Seyka,” the official’s voice carried clearly across the bluff, “former Marine of the Imperial Expeditionary Fleet.”
Former. The word landed hard. Not because it mattered. But because it almost did.
The official continued. “Having been found guilty of dissemination of prohibited knowledge, collaboration with foreign elements, sedition, and repeated acts of defiance against lawful Imperial authority – ”
The charges blurred together. She’d heard them enough that the words no longer carried meaning, just intent. Any one of the charges was enough to condemn her. Charging her with almost a dozen different capital crimes seemed like overkill. After all, they could only execute her once.
The Empire had spent years teaching its citizens that knowledge was sacred. Now, it was killing her for taking that lesson seriously. Under different circumstances, the irony would have been amusing.
Rain struck her face. She blinked it away.
The official continued reading while around her, the crowd remained silent. No cheers, or jeers. There was no celebration, just observation. People were witnessing something they would later pretend they had not witnessed. They were mentally rehearsing the story they would tell themselves afterward. There was nothing unusual about that. If there was one thing she’d learned with her short time with Aloy, it was that humans had always been good at looking away.
The reading finally ended, and the official rolled the scroll closed. “Do you wish to make a final statement?”
The question hung in the air.
Seyka looked out toward the sea. Gray water met gray sky, with no visible horizon. It was just an endless wash of storm clouds and ocean.
She considered remaining silent. There was dignity in silence, but silence was exactly what people like Talan relied upon. So instead, she spoke.
“Everything I told you was true,” she said simply. No speech. No dramatic declaration. Just the truth.
The effect was immediate. A murmur rippled through the crowd. Several heads turned. One of the Marines of the firing squad shifted his weight. Another lowered his eyes. Their decorum from a moment ago lost for just a fraction of a second.
The official’s expression tightened. Not much. Just enough that from the center of the execution grounds, Seyka could see it. Then he stepped back. The ceremony was over.
The commander of the firing squad stepped forward. Seyka didn’t know him, but he was a veteran. He was older than most at Landfall. His face gave nothing away. His right hand rose, holding a thin strip of red fabric draped over it.
A blindfold.
Seyka looked down at it for a moment, then back up at the commander and gave her head a small shake.
Fuck ‘em. If these Marines were going to shoot her, they were damn well going to have to look her in the eye when they did it.
He looked at Seyka for a moment, not as a criminal, or as a hero; simply as a person. For a brief moment, Seyka wondered what he thought of all this. She decided that it didn’t matter. He was a part of the machine as much as the official presiding over his trial had been.
He gently backed her up to the edge of the cliff, her heels standing just at its edge. Far below, she heard the crash of waves against the sheer, vertical rocks.
The commander took a few steps back and raised one hand.
In the Marines’ hands, ten long bows came up as one, the synchronized motion almost beautiful. Ten weapons leveled at her chest.
Rain ran down Seyka’s face in thin rivulets. She did not wipe it away.
The world seemed to narrow. The crowd faded. The tents faded. Even the wind seemed to fade. There was only the line of Marines in front of her and the sounds of the ocean behind her.
And the strange stillness that settled over everything.
This is it. The thought arrived without panic, without resistance. It came only with acceptance.
She thought of Fleet’s End, of Kina, of the first time she’d flown on the back of a Waterwing. She thought of the Burning Shores.
And finally, inevitably – Aloy.
But she didn't remember her charging into battle in Londra’s bunker, or fighting machines. He didn't think of her out somewhere saving the world. She was just… smiling. The memory hit with, she was certain, more force than the arrows would in a moment. It was a simple moment. A quiet conversation after everything had been over. A possibility. One neither one of them had known how to name.
Seyka let out a slow breath. That, more than anything else, was what she regretted. She didn’t regret dying – if you waited long enough, that part was inevitable, one way or another – she regretted never finding out what might have happened if they’d had more time.
The commander drew himself up, his voice cutting through the rain.
“Ready!”
The firing squad steadied themselves, their bows drawing fully back.
One of the diviners had told her once that in firing squads of old, one of the rifles was prepared with a blank so that they would never know for sure if they’d fired a fatal shot. The reasoning was that if each of the squad knew there was a chance that they were shooting a blank, their aim would be more true.
That wasn’t possible here. There was no such thing as a blank arrow. It also wasn’t needed. The Empire had groomed these men so thoroughly to believe that obedience and duty were one and the same that not one would hesitate. She had no doubt that were it possible to recover her body from the waves below, they would find all ten arrows perforating her with pinpoint precision.
“Take aim.”
Ten weapons adjusted a fraction.
Seyka stood straight. No blindfold. No kneeling. No fear. If these assholes were going to shoot her, they’d shoot her, not whatever trembling, sniveling, broken, disgraced traitor the Empire needed her to be.
The commander opened his mouth.
And somewhere, far across the bay, a machine screamed.
The scream echoed across the water. Long, mechanical and unmistakable.
The commander’s mouth closed, and for several seconds, nobody moved. Rain hissed against armor. The wind tugged against banners. Far below, the ocean crashed against the cliffs.
Then the sound came again. Closer this time. A machine call. Not the challenge of a single machine defending its territory. Not a hunting cry. It was something else. Something Seyka had never heard before and couldn’t identify.
The commander frowned. Several of the Marines in front of her exchanged uncertain glances. Behind them, members of the crowd began scanning the forest around them.
“What is that?” someone whispered.
No one answered. The commander looked toward the officials gathered near the tents. Compliance officer Talan stood among them. Watching, calculating. The interruption had annoyed him, but had not alarmed him. Not yet.
The commander drew a breath. “Maintain position,” he called to the firing squad.
The ten Marines recomposed themselves, but their perfect posture was just a little more tense. They held their bows just a little more tightly, though they again trained on Seyka.
The moment stretched, and in it, another machine call rolled across the bay. This one was closer; much closer. Heads in the crowd began looking around again. Their unease was now impossible to ignore. People were shifting their weight, murmuring, looking toward the fog-shrouded ruins north of Landfall.
A Diviner stepped toward one of the signal stations peering through a spyglass.
“What do you see?” Someone asked.
The Diviner didn’t answer immediately. Seyka watched as his posture stiffened. Only slightly, but enough to let Seyka know that something was definitely not right.
A third scream echoed through the morning. A fourth. Another.
Different voices, different machines. The sounds overlapped, layered together. The realization spread through the crowd like a raging fire. There wasn’t a machine. There were machines. Many of them. Dozens maybe.
The commander lowered his hand. The firing squad remained frozen. Nobody had trained for this. There were procedures for executions, followed to the letter. There were procedures for machine attacks. They were less rigid, to be sure, but unmistakable.
There were no procedures for both at once.
The Diviner finally lowered his spyglass.
“Sir.”
The commander turned to face him. “What?”
“Movement.”
“How many?”
There was a moment’s hesitation, then, “I don’t know.”
That answer drew immediate attention. Diviners usually knew. Their job description was literally “know stuff.”
“What do you mean you don’t know?” The commander took two steps towards him.
“There are too many.”
The words settled over the bluff like a cold rain, and silence followed.
In the stunned silence, the sound of a distant horn from the direction of Landfall was deafening. One long blast. The official warning signal.
Procedure.
Every Marine on the bluff immediately turned toward the settlement.
A second horn answered, then another. The alarms spread across the colony; signal towers calling to one another, warning posts relaying messages. The sound rolled through the bay. This wasn’t routine. This wasn’t a drill. This was real.
The crowd began to stir. People looked at one another, looking for reassurance, but finding none in those around them.
For the first time since the interruption began, Seyka noticed Talan. His expression had changed. Not dramatically. There was a slight narrowing of the eyes, a tightening of the jaw. The first visible crack in his composure that she’d seen all morning.
Interesting.
Whatever was happening, it wasn’t expected. The thought should have been pleasing to her. Instead it made her nervous, because if Talan didn’t know what was happening, the situation was genuinely serious.
The commander turned toward the firing squad. For a moment, Seyka thought he might proceed anyway and finish the execution before the situation deteriorated further. It was a definite possibility.
But firing squad executions followed an extremely strict procedure, practically choreographed to the most minute detail. By those same procedures, the only weapons allowed at the execution site were the bows carried by the firing squad, and each had only a single arrow. Whatever was happening, if they shot her first, they would literally be throwing away the only arrows they had to shoot at… whatever was coming.
Another horn sounded. This one was much closer. Urgent. Insistent.
A runner appeared at the edge of the bluff. He was moving fast. Too fast, as it turned out. He was slipping on the mud, nearly falling as he rushed forward in a near-panic.
One of the Marines stepped forward. “Halt!”
The runner ignored him. He stumbled through the rope barrier and nearly collided with the commander. Rain was streaming down his face. His chest heaved. He looked terrified.
Not frightened. Terrified. The distinction mattered.
The commander grabbed his shoulders. “What is it?”
The runner struggled for breath. For a moment, no words came. Then, he pointed toward the northern ruins. “Machines,” he said between heaving breaths.
“We know that,” the commander said, annoyance clear in his voice.
“No,” the runner shook his head violently, “you don’t.” The fear in his voice silenced everyone nearby; the crowd, the Marines, even the officials. The runner looked from face to face as though searching for someone who would understand and know what to do. Finally, he managed: “they’re not attacking each other.”
No one spoke.
“They’re moving together.”
The wind howled across the bluff. Rain lashed sideways. Somewhere beyond the fog, another machine screamed. Closer now. Much closer.
The runner swallowed. “There are dozens. Maybe hundreds.”
The silence that followed felt enormous. Then, from somewhere below the cliffs came a sound Seyka had heard many times before: the rhythmic thunder of dozzens of machine feet striking the ground. Not scattered, not random. It was a herd, moving fast. Moving toward Landfall, and getting closer by the second.
The ground began to tremble. At first, the vibration was subtle, barely noticeable beneath the wind and rain. Then it came again. Stronger. A low, rhythmic thudding that seemed to rise through the cliffs themselves.
The runner hadn’t been exaggerating. Something was coming, and it was coming fast.
The commander’s voice cut through the growing unease. “Clear the civilians,” he announced.
From there, training took over, and the Marines moved immediately. Crowd control, evacuation routes and defensive positions became the familiar responses to an unfamiliar problem. But they were limited in their ability to respond – they had ten arrows between them against, if the panicked runner was to be believed, hundreds of machines.
The firing squad finally broke formation. Several of them turned away from Seyka, their attention toward the settlement below.
For the first time since stepping onto the execution ground, Seyka was no longer the center of anyone’s world. The realization felt strange. Seconds earlier, she’d been literally standing on the precipice of death. Now, she was an administrative detail.
The thunder grew louder.
The commander stepped toward the edge of the bluff, higher on the hill so that he could see more clearly. He gestured for the Diviner to raise his spyglass again. Rain streamed down the polished lens.
He looked. He froze. For a heartbeat, he simply stared, unable to speak. Then, he lowered the spyglass, slowly, as though afraid that sudden movement might somehow make the vision real.
“Oh.”
He was unable to stop the word from slipping out. His tone wasn’t one of fear, or even alarm. It was pure disbelief. A refusal of his mind to believe what his eyes had just clearly seen.
The commander snatched the spyglass from his hands and looked for himself. Seyka watched the color drain from his face.
“Sound the defensive alarm,” he announced, without hesitation or debate.
Every Marine within earshot, including Seyka, knew what that meant. The stripping of rank, awards and insignia had not erased her knowledge. This was not a call for caution, nor of readiness. This was an emergency. This was the highest level of response available. The horn towers throughout Landfall answered almost immediately, and the sound rolled across the bay. It was deep, urgent. Relentless. A warning intended for the entire colony.
People began running and the crowd dissolved. Officials abandoned their carefully composed dignity. Spectators pushed through the mud towards the roads leading back to the settlement. Several nearly fell. Others did. Nobody stopped to help.
Fear was spreading through the crowd now. Real fear. The kind of fear that ignored status, that ignored rank, and ignored procedure. Seyka turned towards the northern shoreline. The fog was thinning, only slightly, but enough. Enough that with her own eyes, she could see real movement.
Machines.
At first, she thought they were Clawstriders, but then she realized they were too large.
No, scratch that. Not too large. Too many.
Shapes emerged from the mist one after another, then dozens more appeared behind them. A river of metal flowing south.
Clamberjaws. Chargers. Leaplashers. Longlegs. Fanghorns. Ravagers. Grazers. And yes, Clawstriders. Machines that should not have been traveling together. Machines that usually avoided one another. Yet, they were moving as a single mass. Driven by something or perhaps fleeing something.
Or drawn by something, maybe? She couldn’t tell.
A shell exploded somewhere below. One of Landfall’s defensive ballistae had opened fire. A second shot followed, followed by a third. The machines did not stop. The herd flowed around obstacles, through obstacles, over them. It reminded her of the relentless lava flows of the Burning Shores that had ignored trees, buildings, machines and animals alike in its unstoppable downhill trajectory.
A roar erupted from deeper within the fog. It was louder than the rest. Heavier. It was the kind of sound that instantly changes every plan in the vicinity.
Several marines looked toward the source. One whispered a curse. The silhouette appeared only briefly. It was massive. Armored. It moved through the herd like a ship cutting through the waves, then it vanished back into the mist. Seyka felt her stomach tighten. Whatever was driving the herd was huge. She didn’t recognize the outline, but with the singular exception of the Horus she’d faced with Aloy, it was the largest machine she’d ever seen.
The commander lowered the spyglass, his face grim. “Move everybody back to the settlement,” he ordered.
“What about the prisoner?” one of the Marines asked.
For a moment, nobody answered. The absurdity struck Seyka immediately. Her execution had not technically been cancelled. She was still standing exactly where she’d been when the interruption began. Still condemned, still unarmed, still wearing the clothes that had been chosen for her to die in.
But suddenly, the world had become much, much larger than her. The commander looked toward Talan. As much as he seemed to be orchestrating her execution, the commander clearly knew that he wasn’t the one in charge here.
Talan stood motionless beneath the whipping banners. Rain streamed down his coat. For several seconds, he seemed to be running a series of calculations in his mind. Balancing priorities, assessing risk. Considering the optics, the procedure. He was balancing the equation of how it would look if they carried out the execution in a haphazard way against how it would look if they left her behind to be killed by the machines.
Then another explosion echoed from below, followed by screams.
“Take her with us,” he ordered. Not because he cared. Seyka was a dead woman walking, no matter what he did. He just refused to let chaos make the choice for him.
The Marines moved toward Seyka, and at that exact moment, the first machine reached the outskirts of Landfall. A wooden watchtower shattered. One moment, it stood, strong, unyielding. The next, it simply exploded into debris. The shockwave rolled across the bay. Several people on the bluff stopped moving. They stopped breathing, and as far as Seyka could tell, they stopped thinking. Everyone watching understood the same thing. The defenses had already failed.
Then came the second impact. Closer. A section of the cliffside path below the execution ground collapsed in a shower of rock and mud. The earth jumped beneath Seyka’s feet.
Marines staggered. Someone was shouting, but Seyka didn’t know who it was, or what they were yelling.
Another horn sounded. This one was cut off abruptly halfway through its warning, silenced. The herd was reaching the colony. The execution ground erupted into confusion. Orders overlapped. Marines shouted conflicting instructions. Officials demanded updates that no one could provide.
The neat structure of authority that had governed every moment of the morning unraveled in seconds, and for the first time since her arrest, Seyka saw uncertainty. Not in the crowd, not in the Marines. In Talan.
Just for an instant. One brief flicker. The realization that events were no longer under his control.
Then a deafening crash erupted from somewhere behind the execution ground. Close. Very close. Too close.
Every head turned, and at long last, the world finally came apart.
The sound came again. It wasn’t an explosion. It was an impact. Heavy enough to shake the bluff beneath their feet. Mud slid down the slope leading up to the execution ground. Several Marines stumbled. One lost his footing entirely and fell to a knee.
The crowd of spectators was no longer a crowd. It had become a stampede. People pushed toward the paths leading back to Landfall. Officials shouted. Marines shouted louder. Nobody was listening.
A blue-white bolt from a Ravager canon streaked overhead, then another. The defensive line below the cliffs had engaged. Bright flashes illuminated the rain. For a brief moment, Seyka could see the machines more clearly. There were far more than she had realized. There were hundreds. The herd was pouring through the northern approaches to the colony, a living flood of steel, cables and armored plating.
The commander drew his weapon. “Move!” he yelled, the order directed simultaneously at everyone and no one.
The Marines nearest Seyka reached for her instinctively, still trying to maintain custody, to preserve some fragment of the morning’s plan.
Then the woods to the north erupted. A machine burst onto the hillside barely twenty paces away. A Clawstrider. Its armor was streaked with mud, one side of its headplate had been torn away. Its optics burned a furious red. It slammed through the rope barrier surrounding the execution ground and crashed directly into a cluster of tents. Canvas exploded, wood splintered. People screamed.
The Clawstrider barely slowed. It was running, not attacking.
Running. As though something behind it was even worse. The machine plowed through a signal post, and vanished into the chaos beyond. For a half-second, the entire bluff stood frozen, then panic detonated. The execution ground dissolved. Marines scattered. Citizens fled in every direction.
The commander was shouting something, but Seyka still couldn’t tell what it was. The world had become noise. It was movement, and rain, and fear. What should have been an orderly, meticulously-planned and carefully choreographed event had dissolved into chaos.
A Marine grabbed her arm, hard.
“Stay with – ”
The sentence never finished. A second impact struck nearby. Something huge slammed into the edge of the bluff, the shockwave throwing everyone off-balance.
The Marine’s grip weakened and fell away from her bicep. Seyka was thrown to the mud, hard, the breath exploding from her lungs. For a moment, she saw nothing but gray sky. The sounds around her were muffled, almost to the point of silence. She saw rain, spinning shapes as her shocked system tried to make sense of what was happening around her. Then, as abruptly as it had vanished, sound returned all at once. Screams, machine calls. The crack of hum and crack of various machine weapons. A horn blared somewhere below.
She rolled onto her side just as a body landed nearby. It was one of the Marines from the firing squad. She didn’t know for sure if it was the same one who had grabbed her moments earlier. Her brain was still trying to knit together the pieces of everything that had happened in the last eleven seconds.
He hit the ground face-first, and did not move. Seyka stared. The Marine’s bow had been torn away, his armor was crushed inward.
Dead. The realization arrived instantly. No breathing, no movement, no chance. Dead.
She didn’t have time to contemplate the absurdity of the condemned outliving one of her executioners before a glint in the mud beside him captured her attention. A knife. Still half-sheathed. Still attached to his belt.
Her eyes locked on it. For one heartbeat, she considered taking it. Then, she looked beyond him. Three civilians were trapped beneath the collapsed frame of a tent. One was struggling, another wasn’t moving. The third was screaming for help.
The knife.
The civilians.
The knife.
The civilians.
The decision lasted perhaps a second, then Seyka was moving because of course she was.
She crawled through the mud toward the wreckage. Another pulse bolt struck somewhere overhead, the flash momentarily blinding her. She ignored it moving in the same direction, even though she couldn’t see her destination clearly. The trapped civilian was a young dockworker. Seventeen, maybe eighteen, and terrified. The support beam pinning him down wasn’t heavy enough to require tools, only leverage. Seyka planted her boots and lifted. Pain shot through her shoulders, but the beam shifted enough to give the dockworker just enough space to free himself.
“Run.” The word came out harsher than she intended, but the young man didn’t argue.
The second civilian was already dead. The third managed to free herself before Seyka reached her.
A machine shrieked somewhere nearby. Much too close, and she had no weapons or anything to protect her at all.
Seyka looked up from where she’d freed the dockworker. The execution ground had vanished. Not physically, of course, but the orderly arrangement of ropes, spectators and officials no longer existed. There was only chaos, and smoke, and mud. Running figures. Marines trying desperately to establish control. The Empire itself seemed to be unravelling around her.
Then, she saw Talan. The Compliance officer stood near the remains of the command area, two Marines beside him. One was pointing toward the evacuation routes, the other speaking urgently. Talan was soaked, mud stained the front of his coat, yet somehow he looked composed. He looked like a man trying to organize the end of the world into a series of neat, collated reports.
Then, his gaze swept across the execution ground. Searching, counting, assessing… looking for her. Seyka ducked instinctively behind the wreckage. Her heart began pounding. Not from the machines. Not from the destruction she’d just witnessed. From a sudden realization.
Nobody was guarding her anymore. Nobody even knew where she was. For the first time since her arrest, she had a choice.
A machine roared somewhere beyond the smoke. The sound of collapsing timber echoed across the bluff.
This moment would not last. Order would return eventually. Marines would regroup. Searches would begin. The Empire would remember that it still had a prisoner to execute.
But not yet. Not now.
Seyka glanced once more at the dead Marine lying in the mud. The knife remained attached to his belt. It was close. Within reach. It was the first useful thing she’d seen all day.
Rain streamed down her face. Her hands shook, from adrenaline, from exhaustion, from the realization that she was standing on the edge of something impossible. Minutes ago, she’d been waiting to die. Now she was looking at a path to survival.
It was narrow. It was dangerous. It was temporary, but it was real.
A massive crash thundered from somewhere behind her. People screamed, the bluff trembled again.
Seyka grabbed the knife, and ran.
The path down from the execution ground had become a river of mud. People shoved past one another, Marines struggled to establish order. The entire colony seemed to be moving at once.
Seyka ran, the knife clenched tightly in her hand. The first truly useful thing she’d possessed all day. The first thing that had felt like hope.
A machine roar echoed somewhere behind her, driving her forward. The crowd around her surged suddenly. Someone collided with her shoulder, hard. She staggered and nearly fell. The back of her hand struck a wooden railing, the knife slipping from her suddenly nerveless fingers. For one horrifying instant, she felt it slip away. She lunged after it.
Missed.
The blade bounced once against wet stone then vanished between broken planks into the darkness below, gone.
Seyka stopped, instinctively staring at the darkness beneath her feet.
No.
No.
NO.
Her mind screamed denial at her, but the gap beneath the walkway opened into a steep rocky slope disappearing toward the shoreline. There was no way of recovering it. Not now. Not with hundreds of people running. Not with machines overrunning the colony. Not with Marines searching for her.
Another person slammed into her from behind, snapping her attention back to the present. The knife was gone. Just another thing that had been taken from her. Seyka forced herself to move.
One step, then another, and another, and then, without her really commanding it to happen, she was running again. The realization followed her into the storm. She had no weapon, no supplies, no Focus, nothing. Not even a knife. They may as well have stood her nude before the firing squad for all they’d left her with. The Empire had striped her practically bare before the execution. Chaos had merely interrupted the final step.
Rain lashed at her face. The path forked ahead. One route led back toward Landfall, the other wound through old ruins overlooking the shoreline. Seyka chose the ruins. The colony would be flooded with Marines soon. The wilderness offered better odds, even if those odds were terrible.
The sounds of battle faded gradually behind her; not disappearing, just becoming more distant. Ahead lay only wilderness, unknown territory, and survival. For the first time all day, genuine fear tightened her chest. It wasn’t fear of dying, it was fear of living, because now, she actually had to figure out how to do it. But for the moment, at least, she was alive, and free, even if neither condition lasted very long.
She kept moving, not because she knew where she was going – she didn’t – but because stopping felt dangerous. The further she ran, the less she looked like a condemned criminal and the more she looked like a fugitive. A hunted animal. By the time she reached the first abandoned structures beyond the colony, she could barely breathe.
By the time she could no longer hear the sounds of the battle behind her, she could barely feel her legs. The storm had intensified again. Rain swept the coastline in cold sheets, driven by gusting wind that rattled through the ruins scattered above the bay.
Every instinct she possessed screamed that someone would be waiting just over the next rise. A Marine patrol, a machine, a search party, maybe Talan himself. It could be anything. So she walked, then she stumbled when her knees buckled under her, then she got up and started walking again.
The terrain gradually rose away from the coast. Landfall disappeared behind hills and weather-worn concreate structures left behind by the Ancestors. The city was still there. She knew it was, but she could no longer see it. That frightened her, not because she wanted to go back, but because the colony had been the last place she truly understood. It was the last place where she knew the rules. Ahead stretched only wilderness. Unfamiliar wilderness.
The kind of wilderness that Aloy crossed without a second thought.
The comparison was unfair, and she knew that. She made it anyway. Aloy would have a plan. She would know where to find shelter. She would somehow have acquired three weapons, a machine mount, a spare Focus, and enough supplies to survive a month by lunchtime.
The thought almost made her smile. Almost. Instead, it made her miss her. The realization smothered her. Not because she’d forgotten, but because there was no longer any reason not to admit it. There were no distractions, no duties, no investigations, and no excuses. The Empire had stripped all of that away. What remained was the simple truth. She missed her.
The wind howled through the broken skeleton of an ancient building. Seyka ducked inside. The structure had once been enormous. Now only fragments remained. Concrete walls, twisted steel, sections of roof that somehow still clung to the skies after a thousand years. The ruins offered little in the way of protection, but they broke the wind. It was enough for now.
Seyka leaned against a cracked wall and closed her eyes.
No.
She immediately opened them again. Sleeping was dangerous. It was a luxury for people who weren’t being hunted. Resting was dangerous. Every fucking thing was still dangerous.
She stayed where she was, listening.
Rain.
Wind.
Distant thunder.
No pursuit, at least not yet. Even the machines were unusually absent, which, when she thought about it, made a certain degree of sense. All of the hundreds of machines that stampeded Landfall had to come from somewhere, after all.
Still, the silence felt wrong. A few hours earlier, hundreds of people had watched her march towards her execution. Now, nobody even knew where she was. The change felt impossible. A cruel joke played by the universe.
Her stomach tightened. At first she assumed it was tension, then she realized she was hungry.
Of course she was. She tried to remember the last time she’d eaten. The previous evening, perhaps. A bowl of broth brought by a guard. A piece of hard bread. It wasn’t much, but to be fair, she hadn’t thought that her body would be needing nourishment for much longer.
That realization brought another one immediately behind it. Water. Food. Shelter. Every basic necessity she normally took for granted had suddenly become a serious problem. She pushed herself away from the wall, instinctively reaching toward her hip, looking for a weapon.
Nothing.
The knife was gone, somewhere on the cliffs. Her right hand continued upward, toward her temple. Toward the Focus that had occupied the same place for almost a year. Her fingers met empty skin. Again. The gesture stopped.
For a long moment, she stood motionless, rain dripping from her hair, her hand suspended uselessly beside her face.
The Focus wasn’t there. The knife wasn’t there. Nothing was there. No map. No scanner. No way to identify safe routes. No way to track machine movement. No way to contact anyone. Not even a way to determine exactly where she was. A wave of frustration surged through her, sudden and intense. She slammed her fist into the wall behind her. Pain shot through her knuckles. The wall, for its part, remained unimpressed.
“Brilliant,” she muttered, “just fucking brilliant.” Her voice was strangely loud in the empty ruin.
Condemned for seeking knowledge. Saved by a machine stampede. Lost in unfamiliar territory. Alone, hungry, weaponless, and now she was talking to herself. Aloy would never let her hear the end of it.
That last thought lingered for a moment, then faded, slowly.
Something bright flickered far behind her. She turned around gazing through one of the large holes in the concrete ruin. At first, she thought it was lightning. Then she saw another, and another.
Lights, moving. Search lanterns and signal beacons. The Quen were already organizing, already hunting.
Of course they were. Talan wasn’t the kind of man who accepted failure. What should have been an orderly execution had become an embarrassment. Her escape had only made it worse. Now, her entire situation had changed. She wasn’t merely condemned any more. Now, she was evidence. She was evidence that the Empire had failed, which meant that they would come. Tonight. Tomorrow. They’d keep coming for as long as it took.
A cold knot formed in her stomach. The machine attack had somehow saved her life – and one of these days, she was going to have to figure out exactly how: her luck wasn’t that good – but it had not solved anything. She was still alone, still hunted, still completely unprepared. The difference was that now she had something to lose: the life she’d unexpectedly been given back.
For the first time since fleeing the execution ground, she understood her situation. Landfall lay behind her, its lights scattered across the dark shoreline. Signal fires burned at several points around the settlement. She watched the lights moving across the distant hills, one after another. She could even make out patrol boats moving across the water. Small points of light gliding through the darkness. Methodically, patiently closing the net. Trying to contain her.
Containing.
The word lodged itself in her thoughts. Seyka frowned, then looked further east. The mainland could just barely be seen through the rain. A distant, dark jagged silhouette beneath storm clouds.
Wind swept through the ruin, and Seyka pulled the cloak more tightly around herself. It did little good. The thin, featureless garment that the Empire had intended for her to die wearing was waterlogged.
She stared east, toward lands she barely knew, toward tribes she barely understood, and a future she had never expected to have. Somewhere out there was Aloy. Those were the lands Aloy knew, but she didn’t. They were the lands where she needed to go.
For several seconds, she simply stared. The distance wasn’t impossible, but it wasn’t trivial either, especially for someone with no boat, no supplies, no map, and no idea where patrols were operating. The realization settled coldly over her. She hadn’t escaped. Not really. She was still trapped. The island itself had become a prison. A larger, more dangerous prison, but a prison all the same. Behind her, the Quen were spreading out. Ahead, the mainland waited across dark water, visible. Close enough to touch with her eyes, but far too far away to reach tonight.
A different kind of fear broke through her exhaustion. Not fear of death. She’d spent so much time in death’s company in the last twelve hours that it was almost comforting. It was fear of failure, because now, there was a goal, a clear one. Get off the island. Everything else could wait. Survival, food, water, shelter, the Empire.
Aloy.
All of it came after that.
She looked down at her water-logged clothing. The clothes she’d been meant to die wearing, and that she would now have to figure out how to live in. The irony was almost funny. Almost.
She looked once more toward the mainland. Toward possibility. Toward hope.
Then, she turned back toward the ruins, and toward the darkness between herself and the shore. The hunt had already begun, and somewhere below, Quen search parties were already moving into the night.