The Expanse stretched out before them in shades of grey and blue as the light faded, the mountains behind them shrinking with every step until they were just shapes on the horizon. David kept looking back, kept checking the shadows for movement, kept waiting for the masked men to reappear and finish what they'd started. But the trail behind them was empty and the night was quiet and after a while he stopped looking back so often.
Lucas was walking beside him, his usual energy drained by the climb and the fight and the long day of running. He wasn't talking for once, which was how David knew he was exhausted. Lucas talked through everything, pain and fear and excitement all got the same treatment, a stream of words that filled whatever space they were in until there was no room for anything else. When he went quiet it meant something was wrong.
Becca was ahead, her eyes on the path, her shadows moving around her feet in the growing darkness. She'd been quiet too since they left the cave, her face turned toward First Landing like she could see it already, like she was trying to pull them all there with the force of her will.
"How far to the safe zone?" David asked, mostly to break the silence.
Becca didn't turn around. "Six hours at least. Maybe more in the dark."
"We're not making it back tonight."
"No."
Lucas kicked a stone off the path. "So we're camping in the Expanse with people trying to kill us somewhere behind us. Great. Love that."
David looked back again, saw nothing, looked forward again. "They're not behind us."
"You don't know that."
"They found what they were looking for. Or they found out they weren't going to find it. Either way they're gone." He didn't believe it fully but saying it made it feel more true.
They found a spot to camp an hour later, a clearing with enough visibility to see anyone coming and enough cover to hide if they needed to. Lucas built a fire without being asked, his hands moving through the motions he'd done a hundred times before on a hundred other trips into the Expanse. Becca disappeared into the trees to check the perimeter and came back five minutes later with nothing to report.
David sat by the fire and watched the flames and tried to process everything that had happened.
The egg was in his shelter. Somewhere that was his and only his, somewhere the second system had given him and no one else could reach. He'd put it there without thinking, without planning, without knowing if it would work. And it had worked. The egg was safe and the masked men had found nothing and his father's legacy was still hidden.
But the man's words kept coming back to him. You don't know what that thing is. You don't know what it can do.
He didn't know. He'd held it in his hands, felt it pulse beneath his fingers, felt something inside it waiting to wake up. But he didn't know what it was or why his parents had died for it or why people had been hunting it for eighteen years. He had the egg and the crystal and his father's journal and none of it told him what he actually needed to know.
Lucas sat down beside him with a ration bar in each hand. "Eat. You haven't eaten since we left the cave."
David took the bar, unwrapped it, bit into it without tasting anything. "You okay?"
"I'm fine." Lucas was eating his bar in three bites, the way he always did when he was hungry. "Tired, hungry, a little stressed about the people who tried to kill us, but fine overall."
"I'm sorry."
"For what?"
"For dragging you into this. For not telling you what was going on. For all of it."
Lucas stopped chewing and looked at him. "David. I've been your friend for like ten years. You think I care about any of that?"
"You should."
"I don't." Lucas finished his bar and reached for another one. "You're my brother. You've been my brother since we were kids and you punched those guys who were beating me up. You don't apologize for being my brother."
David looked at the fire and felt something in his chest loosen. "I'm not good at this."
"At what? Having friends? Being honest? Existing without brooding?"
"All of it."
Lucas laughed, a real laugh, the first one David had heard from him since they'd entered the cave. "Yeah I know. It's fine. I'm good at it for both of us."
Becca came back to the fire, her face lit by the flames, her shadows retreating as she got closer. "There's no sign of anyone following us. We're clear."
She sat down across from them, her movements careful, controlled, the way she did everything. David watched her for a moment, watched the way her eyes moved to the darkness beyond the fire, watched the way her hands stayed close to her daggers even when she wasn't holding them.
"You knew," he said. "About the people in the cave. You knew who they were."
Becca's eyes flickered to him. "I knew they were professionals. The same kind of people who attacked Kaito. That's all I knew."
"But you recognized something. The way they moved, the way they fought. You recognized it."
She was quiet for a moment, the fire crackling between them, Lucas pretending to be very interested in his ration bar. "My family trains assassins, David. We train people to move like that, to fight like that, to track like that. The people in the cave, they were trained by someone who knows what they're doing. Someone who has resources. Someone who's been doing this for a long time."
"And you don't know who?"
"I know who it could be. I know who has the resources and the training and the reason to want what your father left behind. But I don't know for sure." She met his eyes. "And I'm not going to guess. Not until I have evidence."
David thought about Director Chen, about the way she'd watched him after the awakening, about the warning she'd given him that wasn't really a warning at all. He thought about Kaito's words, about someone inside the system helping the people who killed his parents, about records that disappeared when anyone got too close.
"What if it's someone we can't touch?" he asked. "Someone with protection, with power, with the whole system behind them?"
Becca was quiet for a long moment. "Then we find a way anyway. That's what people like us do. We find a way."
Lucas had finished his second ration bar and was reaching for a third. "People like us? Who's people like us? What am I in this scenario?"
"You're the one who keeps us human," Becca said, and there was something in her voice that David hadn't heard before. Soft, almost. "The one who reminds us why we're fighting."
Lucas stared at her for a moment, his hand halfway to the ration bar. "That's the nicest thing anyone's ever said to me. I'm going to remember it forever."
"Please don't."
"Too late. It's already in the memory vault. Right next to the time my mom said I was handsome."
David laughed, the sound surprising him, and for a moment the weight on his chest lifted. They were alive and the egg was safe and the people who had killed his parents had failed again. Tomorrow they would walk back to First Landing and go through the portal and figure out what came next. But tonight they were here, in the Expanse, with a fire and each other and the darkness held at bay.
---
They took turns keeping watch through the night, David taking the first shift, Lucas the second, Becca the third. The stars in the Expanse were different than the stars on Earth, brighter somehow, closer, like the sky was thinner here and the universe was pressing against it from the other side.
David sat with his back against a tree and watched the darkness and thought about his father. The journal was in his pack, the crystal in his pocket, the egg in his shelter. Everything his father had left behind was with him now, everything except the man himself.
He pulled the crystal out and held it in his palm, watched it catch the firelight, watched the colors shift and pulse. There was something in it, something that had been waiting for eighteen years, something that had spoken to him in the vault.
*You're my son. That's enough.*
He put the crystal away and closed his eyes and tried to remember his father's face. The vision had given him something, a glimpse, a moment, a ghost. But he wanted more. He wanted to know what his father sounded like when he laughed, what his mother looked like when she smiled, what it felt like to be held by people who loved you.
He'd never have those things. He'd have the journal and the crystal and the egg and the list of names. That was what his parents had left him. A purpose. A fight. A reason to keep going.
When Lucas came to relieve him, David was still sitting with his back against the tree, his eyes open, his mind somewhere else.
"Your shift's over," Lucas said, sitting down beside him. "Go sleep."
David shook his head. "I'm not tired."
"You're always tired. You just don't notice because you're too busy brooding." Lucas nudged him. "Go. I've got this."
David stood, his legs stiff, his body finally admitting how much it needed rest. "Wake me if anything happens."
"Nothing's going to happen. We're safe." Lucas settled against the tree, his eyes already scanning the darkness. "We're fine."
David lay down by the fire and closed his eyes and for the first time in days, sleep came easy.