But she was ten, it was soon. The empathy, sensitivity, and logic that could qualify her as a sublime clinician also crippled her everyday life as the callous people around her set her up to fail. Caiden hugged her, careful of the bruises peeking over her shoulder and forearm, the sight of them igniting a well-worn urge to protect.

“I’ve got you,” he said, and pulled out twigs and leaves stuck in her hair. Her whole right side convulsed softly. The crowds, noise, and light washed a blankness into her face, meaning something in her was shutting down. “You’re safe.”

Caiden took her hand—firmly, grounding—and backtracked through the crowd to the Flat Dock edge.

The anxious look on his mother’s face was layered with disapproval, but his father smiled in relief. Leta clutched Caiden’s right hand in both of hers. His mother took his left.

“The overseers just said gather and wait?” he asked his father.

“Someday you’ll learn patience.”

Shuffles and gasps rippled through the assembly.

Caiden followed their gazes up. Clouds thinned in a gigantic circle. The air everywhere brightened across the crowds more intensely than the compounds’ lights had ever lit the bovines.

A hole burned open overhead and shot a column of blinding white onto the Flat Docks. Shouts and sobs erupted. Caiden stared through the blur of his eyelashes as the light column widened until the entire plate burned white. In distant sectors, the same beams emerged through the gray.

He smashed his mother’s hand in a vise grip. She squeezed back.

A massive square descended, black as a ceiling, flickering out the light. The angular mass stretched fifty meters wide on all sides, made of the same irregular panels as the aerators. With a roar, it moved slowly, impossibly, nothing connecting it to the ground.

“I’ve never…” His mother’s whisper died and her mouth hung open.

Someone said, “It’s like the threshers, but…”

Massive. Caiden imagined thresher blades peeling out of the hull, descending to mow the crowds.

The thing landed on the Flat Docks’ plate with a rumble that juddered up Caiden’s soles through his bones.

A fresh bloom of brightness gnawed at the gray above, and beyond that widening hole hung the colors and shapes of unmoving fire. Caiden stood speechless, blinded by afterimage. Leta gaped at the black mass that had landed, and made her voice work enough to whisper, “What is it?”

Caiden forced his face to soften, to smile. “More livestock maybe? Isn’t this exciting?” Stupid thing to say. He shut up before his voice quavered.

“This isn’t adventure, Caiden,” Leta muttered. “Not like sneaking to the ocean—this is different.”

“Different how?”

“The adults. This isn’t how it’s done.”

Caiden attempted to turn his shaking into a chuckle. “The bovine all dead is a new problem. Everything’s new now.”