“Is Iska with you?” Kira asked Tschetter.

The major didn’t answer for a moment, her expression labored from exertion. “He stayed behind in case anything happened to me.”

“So how did you find us?”

“Lphet knew about the ships sent to track you down. We just followed them. It wasn’t hard. Corrupted must have done the same.”

A shriek sounded overhead, and a cluster of dark shapes dove toward them, flapping bat-like wings. Kira ducked while lashing out with one arm. She connected with a solid, disturbingly soft body, and then the suit hardened, forming an edge, and her arm sliced through flesh and bone with hardly any resistance.

A shower of orange ichor covered her. The rest of their group suffered a similar fate as humans and Jellies alike shot down the flock. The creatures had mandibles for mouths and tiny arms with pincers tucked close against their downy breasts.

When the shooting stopped, three of the Marines were lying motionless on the ground and half a dozen more appeared injured.

Nishu kicked one of the downed creatures. “No sense of self-preservation, these.”

“Yeah,” said Tatupoa, bending to pick up one of his wounded teammates. “Real eager-like to get themselves killed.”

[[Kira here: Are these things yours?]] She pointed at the winged corpses.

[[Lphet here: No. These are also Corrupted.]]

Kira’s puzzlement deepened as she translated for the rest. Not hemoglobin this time, and there seemed to be no consistency among the shapes of the different nightmares. At least with the Jellies, it was clear the various types were somehow related, what with their shared blood, skin markings, muscle fibers, and the like. The nightmares lacked any such cohesion, aside from the consistently diseased look of their hides.

Tschetter gestured at a ridge of rock that rose before them. “The ships are just ahead, on the other side.”

As they trotted up the ridge—the Marines trailing along as they helped their injured—Nielsen said, “Look at the sky!”

The mushroom cloud had punched a large, circular hole in the overcast sky. Through the opening in the tattered billows of mist, Kira saw great sheets of color rippling across the twinkling expanse. Reds and blues and green-yellows, shifting like ribbons of gossamer silk in a vast neon display, thousands of kilometers across.

The sight left Kira awestruck. She had only seen the aurora a few times on Weyland, and never in anything but the darkest night. It looked unreal. It looked like a bad overlay, too bright and smooth and colorful to be natural.

“What’s causing it?” she asked.

“Nukes or antimatter in the upper atmosphere,” said Tschetter. “Anything that dumps charged particles into the ionosphere.”

Kira shivered. The sight was beautiful and yet, knowing its cause, terrifying.

“It’ll die down in a few hours,” said Hawes.

At the top of the ridge, Kira paused to glance back at the city behind them. She wasn’t the only one.

A horde of bodies was streaming out of the overgrown streets: nightmares and Jellies together, their previous differences now forgotten. And walking along behind them, the Seeker—tall, skeletal, almost monastic in appearance with its seeming hood and cape. The Seeker stopped at the edge of the buildings. The same high-pitched keen rang out over the fields of blasted moss, and the Seeker spread both pairs of arms. Its cape lifted as well, unfolding to reveal a pair of wings, veined and purplish and nearly nine meters across.