Archive of Our Own

UNFETTERED

There is a man with no name. They call him Harrow, but he knows this is not his name. He knows it like so much else, like he knows how to easily calculate shear stress or the entire history of the microprocessor.

However, it matters not. Once, it did; it concerned Harrow immensely that his name is not his own. It seemed an unnatural thing to not know his own name and his own history. It had borne a unique wrongness inexplicable to him. Yet, now, it seems a dim and faded worry, inconsequential in the grand scheme of things.

Only the skies matter; no one can take the skies from him.

Seven months under Weatherlight’s sharp tutelage have changed him, molded him and shaped him into something entirely new, into a man he hardly recognizes. His once scrawny, frail body has filled out with lean muscles. His actions have smoothed to the same cold grace of the other scouts, moving fluidly through space and in the air with his customary mount, Gulliver. His shoulder length braids whip in the wind along with the single feather from the mighty beast. His bow rests easily in his hand even in flight, where it had once felt alien and cumbersome; his quiver carries not light, wooden training shafts but blackened metal hunting arrows with blunt, twisted heads. His mark has improved vastly, even in motion; his bone bow now bears the elegant carvings and symbols Weatherlight has taught him to mark his accomplishments. His eyes now spy the subtle shifts and faint refraction distortions of differing air pockets before the neural-link and Nimue can warn him, before any Earth-bound human eye might. He has become a scout, keen and swift, chasing the wind and screaming through the clouds while Weatherlight flies alongside to teach and observe upon Kai.

He finds in his training that the safety of the Nautilus II and her crew rests heavily upon the shoulders of the scouts. They fly out and return daily, carrying an instance of Nimue with them through the neural-link to collect and cache information. They keep low, skimming over the waters while Nimue scans ahead, pooling information to download upon return to the vessel. She searches the vast emptiness of the ocean for any sign of the Red Flag, for other vessels, for any dangers, and for any resources the crew might benefit from. Once they are within range of the vast airship, the artificial intelligence uploads the cache and updates the information relayed to the control room and to the Captain.

Without a neural-link, Weatherlight must carry an instance of Nimue in her helm. Nimue collects and caches, but provides none of the useful feedback that Harrow has been accustomed to since sometime before joining the crew he knows. Upon questioning her, Harrow finds that she does not receive the flight information like he does, that she must fly in the blind.

After months of training and drilling, there comes a morning when Harrow is instructed by Nimue not to report to the hanger but to instead report to the flight deck. He dresses in his leathers and carries his goggles down with him to the mess hall for a plain breakfast before heading down to the armory for an assortment of weapons from his cache – his bow, his quiver, a few knives, and the ridiculous revolver loaded with the Leyden bullets he has been forbidden to use save in extreme emergency. The man knows with a hum of pride that this is to be the day, the first day he flies out beyond the safe confines of near territory to the Nautilus II and into the wild blue yonder. He is a scout, and this is to be his first mission.

The other morning shift has all gathered by the time he arrives, standing before Stormsend’s command post. A few greet him with small waves or nods, which he returns to each. It is a far cry from those first days of tending to the bedding of the beasts like a stablehand or groom, but Harrow understands now. The scouts do not get attached to recruits until they are certain they will pass their training and join their ranks.

Harrow threads between them until he finds Weatherlight towards the back. Her gaze shifts to him, but she says nothing. Stormsend has already begun to issue missions, mostly along heading lines, and Harrow knows the woman will not be disrespectful enough to interrupt.

Stormsend assigns many of the scouts their headings, dispersing the crowd, before calling upon them. “Weatherlight and Harrow, South, bearing 209.”

They take their orders and turn to the alcoves. Weatherlight whistles a chittering set of notes for Kai, something like a birdcall, while Harrow lets out the single, piercing whistle for Gulliver. The two flyers hop down easily from the alcoves and approach swiftly. In another life, Harrow had been afraid of the monstrous creatures, but, now, he has warmed to the nearly mischievous Gulliver. He greets the Archaeopteryx with open hands, stroking Gully’s nose affectionate and smiling when the beast’s eyes slide shut in appreciation. Then, he jumps up on Gully as Weatherlight mounts Kai.

She pulls her helm down and gives him a nod. Harrow and she do not need words now between them. They have flown together enough over the last months that Harrow knows what even the smaller, more subtle gestures mean. It is a silent question. ‘Ready?’

Harrow nods back and ushers Gully after her. They tear out, into the bright, morning light, where everything just makes sense. There is no crew, no fear, nothing. There is only the sheer, unbridled joy of the flight, the feel of the wind against his face and the sight of the blue waters streaking beneath them as Gulliver and Kai plummet from the flight deck. Harrow grins despite the chill against his teeth from their rush of the air about them.

This is a sport for the pair, a game played daily. They hurtle towards the ocean, crouched down tightly over their mounts, trying to streamline themselves as much as possible. It is both a race and a game of chicken. The unsaid rules include being the fastest and the last to level off before diving into the ocean.

Harrow marvels that she plays with him like this. Weatherlight has no flight intel, no altitude measures. Harrow can watch as the meters drop with each passing second as they streak through white clouds towards the ocean below, but she has no such information. The woman must gauge exactly how fast they fall and how far they have gone by feel and timing alone. It is an incredible feat, one which never ceases to amaze.

They drop into a white cloud together, swallowed by the white. The chilled vapor condenses on his goggles but streaks off easily, but the man cannot see anything below them, only a pale murk. Harrow glances to his side and spies Kai’s black shadow in the fog with him, just to the right. He grins madly and reels Gully to the right, swinging to circle Weatherlight and Kai mockingly. Weatherlight does not allow this; instead, she pulls right as well, sending both flyers into a tight spiral about a hair fine axis. Harrow knows it he wanted to he could probably reach over his shoulders and touch her, but he does not.

The clouds suddenly open up, spitting the two of them out over the ocean. Harrow pulls out of the spiral before Weatherlight does, tucking Gully just off the edge of Kai’s wings. Yet neither pulls up. The waters are drawing close now, close enough for Harrow to spot the white crests of small surface waves. The altitude reading is ticking much lower now. 80 meters. 75 meters. 60 meters.

Harrow holds his breath and glances to Weatherlight, but she has only eyes for the waters below. Her body is pressed dramatically close to Kai, practically burrowing into his gleaming feathers. She is not going to give, not yet. That’s fine; neither will he. The altitude continues to drop. 50 meters. 45 meters.

At 30 meters, Harrow cannot wait any further. He stands on the balls of his feet, pressing down upon Gulliver’s broad neck and pulling up on the feathers clenched in his fists as he leans back. Gully responds instantaneously, angling himself up and spreading his wide, black wings to their full span. For a terrifying and exhilarating heartbeat, the altitude continues to drop just before Gully’s wings catch the air and slam down in a strong beat. The flyer levels off at 5 meters, close enough for Harrow to see his own reflection clearly beneath him in the blue waves and Weatherlight’s as well, gliding neatly to his left.

He does not know which of them pulled up last; Harrow doubts he will ever know some days. He is a daring man, brash on the wing, as though born to fly. She is the same. He knows she has years of experience aboard the Archaeopteryx, but he knows not from where his own innate aerial skills stem.

Together, they glide over the waves and waters, skimming along low thermals to conserve energy and flying south along the heading giving. Harrow has the heading supplied to him by the instance of Nimue, luber lines and heading projected directly into his optic nerve to point a straight line path out and away from the vessel. Weatherlight relies instead upon a fine compass bound to her wrist over the leathers; archaic technology in his opinion, but a reliable one.

The sea is quiet that day, the perfect weather for flying. The waves are but small surface eddies and minute wind-driven gravity waves. Below, the ocean is so blue and clear that Harrow can spy deep into the water when he peers over Gully’s side. Although he has come to know much of the open ocean to be void of the sorts of large marine, Harrow has spotted life on many days in the depths below them. Today, is one of those special days, as a small pod of dolphins splashes about beneath, frolicking playfully and curiously in the shadow of the mighty Archaeopteryx.

Harrow lets out a holler of utter joy, and Gulliver responds in kind. The flyer beneath him draws a deep breath and vents it in a proud, shrill cry as he gives a playful mid-air shake. Harrow’s left hand drops its grip briefly to pet Gully’s strong neck before snatching up another clump of black feathers to steady himself. Gully is feeling good today, as good as Harrow feels, clearly.

It feels good to fly. It feels like freedom, like life its self, distilled and polished to a perfect sheen. It is everything he needs in this world and more. It is the air he needs to breathe.

Weatherlight and Kai overtake Harrow and Gulliver with a single, swift beat of the flyer’s massive wings. Harrow furrows his brow; her posture has gone stiff, her movements mechanical. It is difficult to tell what she is looking at beneath the golden sheen of her helm, but she appears focused on something on the far horizon. Harrow peers along the waters ahead of them to spotting a small, ivory speck.

He looks to Weatherlight just in time to see her nod upwards and begin to draw Kai into a steep climb. Harrow follows neatly in her wake; he needs no orders to know the drill. They linger closer to the surface to avoid radar detection, their acoustic reflectivity dampened by the soft feathers and strange shape leaving them likely appearing as nothing more than waves or cetaceans on the sea. They cannot be certain what the item on the horizon is, but, at altitude, the flyers’ silhouettes are easily mistaken for albatross or other sea-faring birds.

When at a safe height, they fly together in stark silence on approach to investigate without arousing suspicion. Gulliver and Kai both seem to know and understand without direction or cue, swooping and gliding easily on the thermals without beating their wings once. It keeps them quiet as well while their amber eyes scan along with their two riders.

It time, they slide silently over the object, and Harrow leans over to get a better look. It is a sailboat, a pleasure craft, with white, billowing sails catching the wind like the two scouts. He smiles, the tension bleeding from it. This is no enemy, nor threat. The Nautilus II rests too high, just about a low cloud ceiling generated by vented vapor, concealing it from below and hiding her while the clouds rise about her. This little sailboat will never know they exist.

A part of Harrow winces inwardly at the thought. No one knows they exist. He knows this is for the safety of the airship and her crew, as well as the flyers. He knows like any other that the terrestrial world – the civilized world – will see the Archaeopteryx as little more than the monsters he originally presumed them to be. Yet, Harrow is a proud man down to the bone, and it is requires no small amount of effort to keep from dropping down on the sailboat to reveal himself and Gulliver in a dramatic flourish. Instead, he keeps to Weatherlight and Kai’s flank obedient to the needs of the Nautilus II.

They continue on for another hour or two without further incident before circling back to the Nautilus II. His first mission is a modest success; Harrow can appreciate that. It means that once the instances of Nimue they carry reconnect with the vessel’s main operating system, they can go fishing with the others, and Harrow finds he strangely likes fishing.

The others on morning runs circle beneath the Nautilus II, their flyers riding the updrafts of the vapor vented beneath her. Their missions must have been just as quiet. One Harrow, Weatherlight, and a few others join the group, they peel off to the fishing grounds, tucking and diving amid one another in play. The scouts remind Harrow of lion or wolf cubs, dangerous but thrilling. They invent games and race, bounding through the sky with wild abandon Harrow had not known before his first flight.

There is but a moment of peace until one of the scouts – Sovereign – starts the game. It begins in the blink of an eye, when the lightly built Israeli man stands upright on his flyer’s neck and springs off. His flyer, Tarn, peels off immediately, and Sovereign drops like a stone for but a second, reaching out and slapping one of the other scout’s hip as he streaks past. Tarn appears from nowhere beneath Sovereign when the scout whistles for him, tucking his neck beneath his rider and catching him effortlessly.

The game goes on for a few minutes as the flyers reel and whip between one another, avoiding being tagged and tagging all the same. It is a wild, raucous game without rules or laws. The flyers seem to enjoy it as well, chittering and whistling amid one another as swoop about. It goes and goes until a stray hand catches Weatherlight’s arm and christens her ‘It.’

Before Harrow can react, Weatherlight and Kai reel to the left and barrel roll right over his head. Her leather clad hand reaches out. He tries to duck, but it is of no use. She tags him on the head before diving off to his left side, dropping low beneath him, too low for him to even hope to tag her back. He imagines she must be grinning like a mad woman beneath her helm for the slick move. Harrow is somewhat green with envy, but that hardly matters now that Harrow is It.

He glances left and right but finds the scouts there draw back and away. They know better than to stay close. All eyes are upon him. Harrow swings Gully back and forth, trying to pick off an easy target if he can, but the others dodge out of the way, hooting and laughing as they do.

Behind him, however, there are plenty or targets. Five or six of them. Harrow smirks, knowing full well that they can see it without the same, golden helmets and protective cowls. It does not matter. They won’t know what hit them. He rears back on Gully, dragging the Archaeopteryx by sheer force for but a millisecond. That is all Gulliver needs to get the idea. The flyer throws himself back and beats furiously before him, effectively slamming the brakes on. As the other scouts pass and try to dodge the stopped beast, all Harrow has to do is grip with his legs and hold out his hands. Two solid, human bodies in black leathers grace his fingertips before he is forced to throw himself forward and snatch up fistfuls of Gulliver’s feathers.

The other scouts hoot and laugh at the move as Harrow brings Gully up to retake his place at Weatherlight and Kai’s side. They are loud and raucous, like Viking warriors of old. No one has ever been so daring to attempt such a move, and no one is quite sure what to do with two Its. He beams proudly.

The boisterous laughter continues until they arrive at the fishing grounds. They circle high in the sky, too high to cast anything but small shadows. When the first Archaeopteryx spots a fish, it dives instantly. The others follow suit, leaving all the scouts to hang on for their lives and just enjoy the thrill of the ride. The flyers are incredible sea-faring hunters, quite capable fishers on their own. They swoop over the water, dipping their feet into the water and scooping tremendous, wriggling, silver fish from the ocean in each monstrously clawed paw. Scombrids mostly, Weatherlight has informed him on numerous occasions.

Their bounty acquired, the scouts turn back to their home. The flyers each keep one of the large fish, crunching away at the meat, bone and sinew as they fly, dropping the discards back into the sea for the scavengers. The others go to the kitchen upon their return, and, after that, Harrow ‘s day is blissful free of any requisites save continued training at his leisure.

It is a good day.

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The next three weeks are filled with nothing but good days. The scouting runs find few suspicious targets, and the fishing is ample. He trains with the other scouts from the morning runs, growing closer with them. It feels natural to fall into stride with them, like a family or a team.

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On the morning of what should be his 27^th scouting run, Harrow reports to the flight deck to a curious scene. All of the scouts are gathered – everyone on active duty, that is. The afternoon scouts and the night patrol all stand in wait before Stormsend’s command post. Harrow has never seen so many scouts gathered together in their trim, black leathers.

Weatherlight finds Harrow before he can spot her, appearing at his side in the blink of an eye. He looks to her and finds not the cool, reassuring composure that he has come to know. Instead, she appears almost shaken and visibly concerned by something. It is not an expression that Harrow is accustomed to in the woman who has been his master all this time.

“What’s going on?” he hisses through his teeth.

Weatherlight answers cryptically, “Moving day.”

Harrow furrows his brow. “Moving?” He has never known the Nautilus II to move in all these months, and Harrow has never seen a reason to do so. “Why are we moving?”

Weatherlight shakes her head. “We’re not the only ones in this sky.”

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Moving is stressful and exhausting. Stormsend curtails all scouting runs for the day and pulls all scouts together. The flyers do not like moving, Harrow discovers, and the standing orders are for all scouts to take their assigned mount a prescribed distance from the vessel.

They move out together in what has to be the largest assembly of the Archaeopteryx that Harrow has ever seen in flight – all thirty nine of them. Gulliver, Teema, Aren, Illuyanka, Castor, Pollux, Nero, Tarn, Retic, Umbra, Sufi, Zij, Humbaba, Kai, Tiamet, Vritra, Naga, Shadow, Inari, Skadi, Tyr, Nott, Boud, Ein, Sava, Keir, Set, Raijin, Simka, Tesla, Pashin, Stasia, Morse, Skein, Rhea, Bast, Hox, Najash, and, of course, Ras, circling the group to ensure that his fold remains safe. It seems a dangerous group, darting and diving amid one another, snapping furiously when one edges too close. It is nerve wracking to fly with so many others in such proximity without any semblance of a formation. However, for every small flare-up or irritation, each scout is there to calm their mount, to soothe them enough to keep pressing forward and away from the nest.

Harrow glances over his shoulder to Weatherlight. She remains close even now to him, keeping Kai within easy range. He smiles softly, knowing that both Gulliver and his mentor will keep him safe even in the middle of the pack.

He looks beyond Weatherlight and the flyers behind them to the airship concealed behind the clouds. The prospect of the Nautilus moving is a curious one for Harrow. He has never seen the ship move, not ever. Harrow wishes the clouds would part enough for him to see, to view the mechanisms behind the flight and the airship. However, he knows that cannot be. Yet, when he looks closely enough, Harrow spies enough of a distortion of the clouds and stirring of the air to get a faint impression of the ship.

Gulliver jerks oddly beneath him, drawing Harrow’s attention back to his mount. He cannot split his focus. Gully needs him to pay attention to the here and now.

They fly south for many hours before coming to a tiny dot of an island. It is little more than an ugly, jagged rock poking out of the ocean littered with small scrub plants. However, it seems that is where they are to stay. Harrow follows the other scouts as they drop from the sky, their mounts flapping their wings furiously to come to a landing. Their talons skitter and scratch on the dark, gray stone. To Harrow’s surprise, the island is larger than it initially appeared from the sky.

They camp upon the island for three days, and Harrow loathes every moment of it. They keep no fires for warmth, and the rocky cairn offers little in the way of protection or comfort. He despises living outdoors and so utterly exposed to the world. They eat only cheese, bread, cured meats, and sparse dried fruits brought from the ship; it is bland, boring food that further underscores Harrow’s irritation at the impromptu camping trip.

On the fourth morning, they leave the island shortly after dawn and continue flying south. It takes until after sunset for Harrow to spot the familiar convection tower cloud that conceals the vessel that has become his home amid the pale, pink, twilight kissed sky. The rider-less Ras surges ahead of the others, letting out a sharp cry. The other Achaeopteryx respond in kind, even Gully; they have missed their nest.

Harrow’s heart warms; he has missed his home as well.

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The weeks blur into months, long stretches of peace and work. Harrow loses himself in the work, in the scouting runs, until Weatherlight quietly informs Harrows that the holidays are approaching – Christmas and New Year’s. It startles him, shaking him to the core; he has borne no prior concept of the passage of time until this moment.

The scouts celebrate New Years’s Eve with a wild party in the main hanger, attended by all off-duty personnel from all over the airship. Drinks flow freely – white whiskey gifted from Stormsend’s still that burns the throat and puts fire in the gut. There is laughing and games, the sort of wild spirits that Harrow has come to expect from the others. Marin plays music on an old but lovingly cared for violin, strumming reels and waltzes. A few of the female flyers con Harrow into dancing, but his eyes scan the hanger for signs of Weatherlight.

When he finally spots her, she is on the far side of the room, speaking quietly with Dr. Tate. Weatherlight leans in to him, smiling in a sweet, tender sort of way that Harrow has never seen before on the woman. When she laughs, it is in earnest, her whole face lighting up. The dog’s tail wags swiftly at her attention. She looks up, catches Harrow’s gaze from across the hanger, and waves.

He takes that as his opportunity to cross to her and extend a hand, inviting her to dance. Weatherlight bites her lip but rises to the occasion, taking his hand primly. He pulls her up of his feet and drags her close him to him as Dr. Tate growls and bristles at him.

“Shall we dance?”

She laughs. “Thought you’d never ask.”

Harrow nods to Marin, and the music changes from a brash jig to a slower, serene aria. She cocks an eyebrow, but he simply smirks at her, slipping his muscular arms about her slender waist.

Another woman with red hair and a pale, blue-grey dress in his arms. A dirty martini in her hand – extra olives, of course.

“Did you plan this?” Weatherlight questions, shattering the memory before the neural-link can purge the nigh painful thought from Harrow’s mind.

Harrow gives a shrug, “I might have.”

“Am I meant to swoon now?” Weatherlight offers a mock, wistful sigh, overly dramatic like an old Hollywood starlet, before wilting into his chest with the same ludicrous bearing and fluttering her eyes as she does. “Is this what you intended?”

Harrow shakes his head and chuckles at her. “Nothing of the sort.”

It is strange to hear those words from his mouth. He cannot imagine Weatherlight as the sort of woman to swoon – whatever that means. He knows implicitly that she is not taken by fickle little trysts like another woman might. She is, instead, a calm, serene rock in his life upon which to moor. However, a distant part of him knows it might be nice to have a woman in his life, someone to love and be loved by, even if it is not Weatherlight. He wonders if the sharp twinge in his heart is him missing a woman in his life as they dance together.

The peace lasts for but a few moments, little more than 200 seconds of tranquility and warmth that Harrow will later savor immensely. Then, a projection of Nimue flickers to life in the center of the room, drawing attention to her in a heartbeat. All voices fall to hush, and even Marin near immediately stills his violin blow. Weatherlight stiffens in Harrow’s hold, tensing as she too looks to the projection for answers or instructions.

When Nimue speaks, it is to utter disastrous words. “There has been an attack.”

Harrow looks to Weatherlight, shakes his head, and mutters, “Well, guess the party’s over.”

“So it would seem.”

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All sober scouts are ordered to report to the flight deck following the announcement. Harrow follows, but Weatherlight stops him at the door and sniffs him – honestly sniffs him. When she scowls, Harrow holds up his hands in concession and shakes his head. He has not had enough of Stormsend’s white whiskey to be drunk, but Harrow somehow knows better than to think he might be flying tonight. Harrow still feels it necessary to report all the same. She gives a terse nod, more than he needs for her approval and answer; he may follow so long as he keeps clear.

The flight deck is a terrible, chaotic jumble when they enter, a ghastly series of vignettes that Harrow will later only remember in horrible, skip-frame memories. The dead and injured sprawl here and there, several of them. Their ruined, scorched bodies contort and twist as the living writhe in agony, moaning and shrieking. These tortured, dying, lamenting souls are both human and Archaeopteryx alike. Here lies Sava, the feathers about her once proud face burnt clean down to melted flesh and white bone of her jaw. A pale blonde from the night scouts, Juliet, sprawls before him, her body unnaturally still and eyes staring up without blinking, without focus. Above them, Ras screams and roars in rage before leaping out to circle and patrol protectively amid the clouds.

A crimson bathed man catches Harrow’s eye as he kneels over the black muzzle of one of the downed flyers. It is Glade, clutching his right arm just above the elbow while the lower half dangles unnaturally, nearly severed clean through the bone by some cutting blast; his hand below that is an unrecognizable mass of blood and gore. Unlike so many others, Glade is silent, grinding his teeth against what must be an unthinkable pain as he sits beside his wailing, burnt mount, Morse. His hand holds a blade, and Harrow somehow knows from the grim set to Glade’s face that it is intended for Morse.

It is Glade’s silence that sends Harrow’s stomach churning. He bolts from the flight deck, struggling to breathe as he does, his heart hammering in his chest. He runs, whatever God there might be forgive him for it. Harrow runs without thought, without care of where he might go, his world blotted out by the horrific images flashing through his mind and the alcohol burning at his stomach uncomfortably now.

When Harrow comes back to himself, he finds he is in the hanger, wedged in a small space between one of the two aircrafts tucked there with a puddle of sticky, drying vomit before him, his eyes stinging, and a headache ringing through his ears. It is only worsened by his grief, worry, and utter shame at his behavior. Yet, try as he might, Harrow cannot remove himself from the small, safe crèche, not immediately. It takes an impossibly and embarrassingly long time before Harrow can bring himself to creep from the little nook.

When he does, Nimue is there, speaking mercifully softly as though aware of the migraine stabbing through him. “Scout Harrow, do you require any assistance?”

Harrow shakes his head solemnly, unable to form human words. That suffices enough for the AI, and Nimue blinks out of his vision. This leaves Harrow in a quiet so loud that it roars to clean his own vomit, cringing at the smell of his own leavings and the sight of it. He would prefer not to, but Harrow will not leave such horribly damning evidence in his wake.

Before he leaves, Harrow looks to the ships. They have sturdy hulls made of thick, gleaming metal. A distant, calculating part of Harrow focuses on the engineering, on the bracing, on the metal composition. He knows if they had been in one of those instead of on the back of a flyer and exposed to the world, this carnage might not have occurred. Yet, here these beautiful, fantastic jets sit collecting dust while the flight deck likely still drips with blood.

Harrow nods to himself and taps the device set into his chest; he knows what he must do.

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When Harrow can finally summon the courage to return to the flight deck that morning, he finds her there. Weatherlight. He watches her for a moment from beyond the door as she works. She is amid several other scouts cleaning the mess of the place, mops and buckets strewn about. The deck gleams with scarlet, littered with broken, black feathers. It takes him a long moment to swallow the uncomfortable lump in his throat that might be grief or possibly rage, but, in his own time, Harrow goes to her side, mop in hand and ready to clean.

It does not escape his notice that three of the might Archaeopteryx lie on the deck off the side. He struggles to recognize two of them. Retic. Stasia. Morse. Retic and Stasia bear horrific wounds, as does Morse, but Morse’s neck is slashed. Someone has put him down, a mercy killing, but Harrow cannot tell if it had been Glade or one of the other scouts. Harrow’s heart contracts at the sight of the battered, slaughtered creature.

When the deck is suitably clean, Weatherlight orders him to leave; when he balks, she merely states, “You do not want to be here for this.”

And, then, Harrow understands. The bone bows. The black leathers. They intend to harvest what they can from the three fallen creatures. They will not waste the lives of their mounts, and, in a way, these specimens will fly on beyond their deaths. It is a grizzly thought and surely a grim scene, one which she intends to spare him.

“Go.”

He does.

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In the days following the ambush, details emerge. It seems the group of scouts had collected after their runs and turned to the fishing grounds. The enemy had lain in wait, under the cover of night. There had been no warning, no sign.

In the wake of the ambush, three flyers are dead, and another five are left without mounts. Four of the scouts are dead, while Glade lies in the infirmary missing the entire lower half of his right arm. Dr. Tate’s staff had done their best, but even Harrow knows there had been little to nothing to salvage from the tattered flesh.

The Captain holds a service in memoriam of the scouts and the flyers lost in a chapel that Harrow did not know existed prior to that day. Beneath a glittering rainbow of colored light pouring through elaborate stained glass windows, Harrow stands and listens as the Captain recounts stories of the three flyers and the four scouts. The Captain’s words do not penetrate, do not stick, not for Harrow. The only thing that remains with him as the service proceeds is the eerie, sinking sensation that there loss is a needless one.

The scouts have their own services later that night on their own, for both their fallen compatriots and the flyers. In the end, Stormsend takes three long, primary flight feathers that Harrow knows once belonged to Morse, Stasia, and Retic and places them in a metal cauldron like bowl, tucking them amid bits of hay and weathered driftwood collected by some nameless scout. Stormsend lights the small collection ablaze. The scouts all watch in quiet reverence as tiny pyre burns through the night, each tending to it in turn to keep the flames going until there is nothing left but ash.

In the predawn twilight, each able scout reaches into the cauldron and takes a small fistful of the ash until there is nothing left. Harrow takes one as well. They each approach the mouth of the flight deck and open their hands. Whatever farewells they have to offer, they do, some silently and some out loud.

Harrow says nothing when he drops his own fistful into the wind; there is nothing to be said about this waste.

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An uncomfortable week passes after the funeral for the flyers without a single scouting mission. The flight deck is thick with tension, the scouts and their mounts agitated at being grounded so effectively. They need to fly, especially after the sickening events of the ambush. Yet, the Captain only allows them to go so far as to circle within the protective cloud cover the Nautilus, keeping within close range just to get the Archaeopteryx out for a spell. It is barely enough to keep the flyers and certainly not enough for the scouts. The scouts spend the long, somnolent hours training and sparring, fighting like wolves in their increasing desperation to do something – anything.

Rabbit becomes something of a fixture on the flight deck, but Stormsend does not seem to care anymore about reporting the apprentice’s presence. Rather, the commanding officer seems to grudgingly accept the young man’s need to stay close to the flyer with which he has grown so close. Harrow does not argue either. Instead, he gently rouses Rabbit each morning and sends the apprentice on his way with a tenderness that surprises him, a fatherly way the feels alien but comfortable.

Harrow listens to the rumors and whispers, to the faint bit of conversation from Stormsend and the others. It seems the Captain is debating his next course of action, hesitant to lose more of his crew to the Red Flag. The Captain knows he needs the intelligence provided by the scouts and Nimue, but Harrow knows he does not wish to needlessly send his men and women off to their death.

Eventually, even the Captain’s resolve crumbles when faced with the reality of the situation. They need that intelligence. They cannot survive without some idea of who shares these waters with them. The scouts will need to return to their work.

After Stormsend relays this to the scouts, he summons Harrow and Weatherlight to apologize. “I’m sorry, but I can no longer spare the extra man hours having you fly together.” Weatherlight stiffens slightly, but Stormsend looks to her with a kind eye. “What do you think? Can he handle himself out there?”

Harrow holds his breath. He has always flown with Weatherlight at his side. Her presence upon Kai has been a comforting one, the steady reassurance that, should anything happen, she would be there for him. She hasalways been there to catch him. It is simultaneously terrifying and exhilarating to think of flying solo.

Weatherlight glances to Harrow and grins. “I think so.”

“Good, then.”

Stormsend gives them their orders, a separate heading for both. Harrow whistles for Gulliver and jumps up upon the beast’s black neck. Gully gives a shake of his head and stretches out like a cat beneath him, clearly eager to be out and on a mission after the painfully long week. He glances back to Weatherlight as she climbs up onto Kai, but she merely nods at him, the gesture reassuring from the otherwise inscrutable, golden helm. Nimue marks his heading in Harrow’s vision for him, and, then, they are off, into the wild blue yonder.

He hears the faint whisper of feathers rustling behind him as a shadow passes overhead. It is Kai and Weatherlight, he knows. She drops with him, plummeting from the heavens towards the deep, blue ocean. It is faintly reassuring to have her there for his descent, but not necessary. When Harrow levels off just fifteen or twenty meters about the rolling, pitching surface, he looks back just as she changes course to follow her own heading. This is it; he is on his own now.

Somehow, it is not that bad; it is almost familiar in a way that makes the neural-link at his temple hum in disapproval. Harrow knows in a way that he has flown on his own before, without any contact with a home base or a wingman or any kind. The silence and the solitude is welcoming, peaceful almost.

The sky and the ocean are just as blue, just as wide and open. Not a soul for miles. No one to hear any tawdry details. It feels good to fly, to tease and to bait with only a soft, dainty voice on the other end of the radio and miles upon miles of vast, empty sky.

“Incoming. Recommend evasive maneuvers.”

The blast hits him with all the force of a freight train, knocking him from the sky.

And, then, he is falling.

Harrow gasps audibly from the memory and the searing burn of the neural-link flaring at his temple. He staggers in his perch above Gulliver, gripping the feathers more tightly to keep from slipping off before he can right himself. Beneath him, the Archaeopteryx gives a queer chitter, a sound of seeming concern as Harrow struggles to catch his breath once more. When Harrow does manage to settle himself, he immediately reaches down and strokes the creature’s neck to calm Gully, his fingers quaking from the intensity of the memory. Harrow spends the rest of the flight considering the intrusive thought while the neural-link steadily throbs away at his brain.

The flight is otherwise uneventful, a pleasant surprise after the New Year’s Eve ambush. Harrow encounters only a few commercial vessels – two massive super tankers and a fistful of fishing boats – nothing more. Not a trace of the Red Flag or military vessel of any kind.

When he returns to the Nautilus, Harrow is wrung out from the flight and the struggle against those alien but pervasive thoughts. Fortunately, there is to be no fishing, not yet. The Captain has not cleared the grounds for such activity after the ambush. Until they find newer fishing grounds, the flyers will have to feed upon frozen fish from the galley’s stores, leaving Harrow to retire early after fetching a large, cleaned and gutted fish for Gulliver upon their return.

However, Harrow cannot so simply leave. He sits on the edge of Gulliver’s alcove, his legs dangling over the edge. He waits for a time until Weatherlight returns. Only once his mentor and her mount are safely back in the flight deck can Harrow drag himself to his bunk. Then, Harrow sleeps a deep, dreamless sleep while the neural-link works to purge those forbidden memories.

When he wakes in the early evening, Harrow feels somewhat restless and hardly restored by the slumber. He trudges down to the hanger, his mission clear now. He begins to survey the ships with care, avoiding tampering with them in the slightest. There will be time for tampering later.

Tinkering. His mind whispers to the disapproval of the neural-link. Tinker with that.

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Life proceeds in this manner for some time. In the morning, Harrow serves his scouting runs with Gulliver without incident. In the midday, he lugs a hefty fish carcass – usually a tuna of some kind – down to Gulliver for the flyer to feast upon, grimacing along with Gulliver, who seems to disapprove of the thawed food. In the afternoon and evening, he sits in the hanger, making notes on the mechanics of the ships and their fossil fuel driven turbine engines.

He occasionally finds his thoughts slipping to the arc reactor in his chest, his fingers running over the slight bumps beneath the fabric of his shirt. It would be easy, if he had the right parts. He could rework each of them to take a miniature arc reactor like the one sunken into his chest. They could run indefinitely, unlike the Archaeopteryx. They could keep the Nautilus and her crew safe, maybe even turn the tide in this secret wars of theirs.

Yet, something tingles at the back of Harrow’s mind, a doubt or concern of sorts. There is a distaste to all this that Harrow cannot accurately place. He files it away and continues to make his notes.

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A month passes, punctuating by an utterly nerve-wracking move of the Nautilus spent in restless vigil on another tiny rock of an island. Eventually, the Captain clears a new fishing grounds for them. It is closer to their new home, but the fish are smaller and bonier, not the choice, red-fleshed tuna and other scombrids that Harrow has grown accustomed to eating. The fishing is held in silence, without the games and teasing that had previously filled the space between them. Even Weatherlight is silent and tense upon Kai, just a few meters off Gulliver’s right wing each trip.

A cold tension continues to hold them even after fishing, until they are safely back upon the Nautilus.

xxx

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Another few weeks slip quietly by without notice. Harrow and the other scouts work mechanically, without thought or fear. They have a job to do, nothing more. There is no space for anything more.

Then, one morning, that cold acceptance is shattered.

Harrow’s morning scouting run that day is uneventful, but, as he turns Gulliver back for home, the flyer gives a strange sort of jerk. His head cocks to the side, as though straining to listen to something far off. Harrow scans the horizon, but there is nothing, only miles upon miles of open ocean. Harrow steers Gully back towards the Nautilus, and, for a brief moment, Gulliver refuses, whining slightly before banking back to home.

It is strange. Gully has never done anything like that before. He has always been a faithful mount to Harrow, their personalities meshing well. It unnerves the scout.

When they draw close to the Nautilus, Harrow spies a dark form on the wing. Gulliver chirps oddly at it. As Harrow stares, Nimue helpfully provides identification markers before the silhouette can come into enough focus for him to identify the flyer and its mount. Weatherlight and Kai. Harrow feels a small smile spreading between his chilled cheeks, but it is fleeting as Kai gives a fluttering, staggered beat of its wings. Gulliver lets out another worrying sound as Kai seems to drop, but the flyer seems to catch himself and retake the wind.

Harrow moves without thought, by pure instinct. He ushers Gulliver up easily, hurrying on the wind and catching a good tail gust. They surge through the air, soaring higher and faster until Gully is almost upon Kai, until they are close enough for Harrow to get a good look.

Weatherlight slumps over Kai’s neck. One hand fitfully grasps and holds onto his feathers on the right, but her left hand is slunk about her midsection. Something wet gleams in the light on her side. Her quiver is conspicuously empty. Her grip slips once more, her weight listing dangerously to the side and the thousands of feet to the water below.

“WEATHERLIGHT!”

She slides from Kai’s neck, but Harrow is ready for her. He swings Gully under Kai just before she tumbles from the heavens. He holds her with one hand, clutching his mentor close to him while the other hand holds Gully’s feathers. She feels heavy, limp in his grip as though dead.

“Weatherlight….”

Her voice is so soft beneath the golden helmet that it is nearly swallowed by the rushing wind. “Tony…..”

TONY. TONY. TONY. TONY. TONY.

His mind screams and rages in a flash. His heart thumps heavily, lurching painfully in his chest. The neural-link burns at his temple, twisting a white-hot brand through his brain and into wherever his memories stem. This time, Harrow pushes it down and back to the dark recesses of his mind instead of the neural-link. Something in the neural-link tingles oddly, but Harrow ignores that as well. He has no place for such distractions, nor time, not when Weatherlight needs him so.

She saved his life; he will save hers.

When they scream into the flight deck at top speed, Gulliver nearly crashes right into Stormsend’s command center. The flyer scrambles to get a grip on the cool metal of the deck before sliding to an ungainly halt. The sudden drop in speed beneath them is too much for Harrow to keep his grip. He and Weatherlight tumble to the ground in a tangled heap of lanky limbs and scattered weapons.

Harrow does not even register Kai’s shriek of distress as he reaches down and scoops up Weatherlight to rush her to the infirmary and deposit her before a frantic Dr. Tate.

xxx

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While Weatherlight is treated, Harrow retreats to his safe corner in the hanger, wedged between two crafts – the same place he vanished himself to after the New Year’s ambush. He chews on a nail and calls to Nimue. The artificial intelligence projects herself onto his vision, and, before she can offer any assistance, Harrow demands to view any logged data from Weatherlight’s flight.

To his surprise, Nimue projects video footage directly into his vision.

The moment the helmet is settled upon her head, the recording begins, from her point of view.

Kai is already there, at her side. She climbs up smoothly and gracefully, sliding herself into place. Kai is larger than Gulliver, stands taller. It places her higher than Harrow when she looks back at him. He waves slightly, and the image dips as she nods back.

Then, she is in flight. The clouds scream past as she descends with Harrow. As they level off, Weatherlight sets her direction to the heading assigned. Nimue confirms this as she checks her wrist compass. She occasionally darts glances over her shoulder at Harrow, even as he and Gulliver peel away.

Then, they are alone again.

Harrow growls in irritation. “Skip ahead.”

The images flow past faster, fast enough to make Harrow’s head spin. Then, the movement slows back to real time as Kai skims through a small cloud burst and into the light. Weatherlight looks down, and, there, in the waters beneath her, there is movement. It is a shadow, large and dark. It looms larger than Kai’s mighty shadow against the water.

Then, a glowing, orange flare streaks past her.

Weatherlight reels Kai around and finds that they are surrounded. Harrow cannot tell by what, but there are shots coming from everywhere now. Incendiaries flying past and exploding off her shoulders. She whips out her bow and fires off every arrow as Kai ducks and dodges through the shots. Harrow still cannot spy whatever it is that Weatherlight is firing at, but she keeps loosing arrows until there are none left.

Then, she pulls her revolver. Harrow has never seen anyone fire one of those ridiculous, oversized guns. When Weatherlight fires off the first shot, Harrow understands immediately. He can almost feel the recoil when the gun and the entire image jerks miserably with the recoil. The kick must have felt like a sucker-punch through the shoulder and up the collarbone as a bolt of blue, electric light streaks from ludicrous barrel. The Leyden bullet scorches through the air and lands in the water with a burst of electric potential discharge, like lightning dancing over the waves.

Harrow smiles softly; she gave them hell.

The image jumps and freezes oddly. Then, Weatherlight is looking down. The image catches her side in time to see the blood. A dark flow from her side. One hand appears in view, fingers shaking as they gingerly touch the wound. Then, the hand clamps down firmly upon the wound as Weatherlight holsters her revolver and settles herself deeper over Kai’s neck.

They fly faster that Harrow thought imaginable before until, finally, they break free of the incoming fire.

Harrow gasps as the playback fades from his vision, no longer supplied by Nimue. She knows that there is nothing more of consequence there for Harrow. There is little for him to glean from the playback anyway.

He sighs, “Nimue.”

She appears before him, pale and demure as ever in her light flight suit. “Yes, Scout Harrow?”

“You’ll tell me, right? If there’s any word about Weatherlight?” Harrow whispers, almost afraid.

Nimue dips her head. “Of course, Scout Harrow.”

He nods to himself and returns to his work, letting his studies consume him and distract him. He lets the flight recording, the feeling of her limp body, even the sound of what must surely be his own name bleed away granted the reaction of the neural-link that day. The work takes him, eclipsing everything else. Getting these ships running means more than a name, more than a past; they mean a future.

The neural-link continues to tingle oddly.

xxx

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A fake, mechanical sounding cough startles Harrow from his calculations. Dr. Tate. The small dog sits behind him on his haunches. He stares balefully at the scout where he lies beneath one of the crafts, half of a lower control panel open above him. Harrow rolls himself out from under the aircraft and leans back against the cool metal.

“Can I help you?”

The dog makes a sort of snort. “Nimue told me you wanted to know about Weatherlight.” Harrow raises an eyebrow, and Dr. Tate goes on through the electronic collar, “It was a clean graze. She’ll be fine in a few weeks.”

Harrow nods slowly. “Good.”

There is a strange, long and awkward pause before Dr. Tate speaks again. “I heard you caught her.”

Harrow blinks and, then, nods. “Yeah.”

The dog barks. “Thanks.”

Harrow wants to say something smart and smug. It feels appropriate. However, before he can, the dog whips about and trots off, shaggy tail wagging as he does. He just stares as the dog goes, pondering at the unusual encounter.

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“Hey, there, lazy bones,” Harrow calls from Gulliver’s alcove.

Weatherlight shakes her head at him as she ambles onto the flight deck, staggering and holding her side as she does. It has been four days since her injury, four days that Harrow knows have been spent bickering with Dr. Tate’s staff. She is not due to be released from the infirmary and Dr. Tate’s watch for at least another week. Yet, here she is, dressed in plain, cotton pants and shirt, her stomach still bound.

“What are you doing down here? Come to make a break for it?” Harrow teases, sitting down on the edge of the alcove.

Weatherlight’s smile softens. “Something like that.” Kai drops to her left side and nudges her; she laughs and rubs his head affectionately. “Easy, easy.” They say nothing for an odd moment before Weatherlight blurts out, “Thanks, Harrow.”

“For what?” he asks as he climbs down.

She shrugs and, then, hugs him briefly. “Good timing.”

“Eh. Lucky catch.” Harrow looks down upon her and shrugs; he considers her and the question he wants so desperately to ask before abandoning it altogether – not the right timing. “Just repaying the favor.”

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Weatherlight returns to duty a few weeks later. This time, when she takes to the wing, Harrow follows her, keeping her in his sights as opposed to the routine that has been their lives for so many months. He can almost feel her scowl upon him before she turns Kai out into the wind. When she vanishes beyond a wide swell, Harrow tries to convince himself that she will be fine without him, that she has been fine without him all those years before his arrival.

He reminds himself of this constantly, but it is hard when they wash in the communal bath. An ugly, pink scar mars her side from the wound, a hideous, brutal reminder of this secret war of theirs. It is a blow to Harrow as well, a reminder that none of them are safe.

After that, the days begin to blur together. Rise. Fly. Fish. Work. Repeat.

Then, the unthinkable happens – a direct attack upon the Nautilus herself. It occurs sometime in the small hours of the morning, during one of the rare hours in which Harrow sleeps. A loud boom breaks the evening stillness, and the Nautilus heaves a giant, lurching motion, jarring Harrow instantly from an intoxicatingly dreamless slumber. Then, she seems to shudder, violent vibrations quivering through the vessel as her engines struggle to keep her upright and in the air.

Harrow surges from his bunk and rushes to the flight deck before Nimue can summon him. Midway down, a second blast rocks the vessel – an explosion of some kind, Harrow now understands. He stumbles in the hall as the floor seems to pitch beneath him. He slams into the ornately scrolled wall, catching himself with the strangest sense of familiarity nagging at him.

He makes a pit stop in the armory, loading up on whatever weapons he can grab easily from his lock-up before clambering down to the flight deck. He hopes he will not need them, but a part of Harrow knows otherwise. It is a sobering thought.

The flight deck is in chaos as Harrow arrives. Scouts and their mounts pour from the mouth of the deck out into the vast black of night. He stands in transfixed horror for a moment before springing into action, whistling for Gulliver and jumping up onto the beast in a single, practiced motion. They leap into the night along with the others, into the fray. However, by the time Harrow and Gulliver take to the wing, the worst has passed; the other scouts have already driven their attackers away and back to the depths, it seems.

However, Harrow cannot be so easily calmed by the seeming retreat of their enemy. He sweeps Gully around in a wide, deep arc, ducking beneath the Nautilus and surveying the damage with the sharp, inquisitive and calculating gaze of a master engineer. It feels hazily familiar, like the half-faded memory of a dream, but Harrow cannot help himself, especially not when he spies the two, monstrously gaping and ugly holes shredded through the hull, marked by a deep char and the orange glow of fire. Black smoke churns out from both the nigh crippling wounds to the vessel, and even Gully lets out what sounds like something akin to a cough at the acrid, stomach-turning smell and taste of the smoke. However, Harrow forces the Archaeopteryx on, closer to the blow-outs and the stuttering turbines.

A smug but self-effacing joke. “It appears to run on some form of electricity.”

Harrow grits his teeth at the extensive damage. Whatever incendiaries did this were well placed and timed. They have taken out one of the massive turbines that keeps the airship aloft, and another appears to be struggling to keep alive. Water from the steam engines gushes from the horrific wounds to the ship. The engineers aboard will be hard pressed to keep the Nautilus at a safe altitude tonight.

“Then, what?” Harrow asks himself idly.

He already knows the answer. One day, the Red Flag will knock them right out of the sky. The Nautilus will come crashing down with any unwary crew aboard. Once crippled, she will sink to the depths, leaving the Red Flag free to plunder the vessel of all her technology and intel.

Harrow’s teeth grind against one another as he turns Gully back up to the flight deck; he knows what he must do now. When Gulliver lands, Harrow leaps from his perch upon the beast and strides purposely from the deck, still armed to the teeth for battle. He has no time for Weatherlight’s words of concern as she comes in after him; he does not even hear her following him all the way to the bridge and to the foot of the Captain.

The Captain appears suitably displeased. He stands at the center of the bridge, barking orders left and right with an authority that betrays his age and the warm, kind face that had greeted Harrow so very long ago on his first day. The crew hustles around him, snapping quickly to answer his demands. They shout out status reports and responses left and right in a crazy jumble, yet the Captain gives a terse nod to each, acknowledging their information before turning to the next.

Harrow draws close to him, close enough to be irritating in his proximity. The Captain dutifully ignores him in favor of triaging his vessel; that only serves to annoy Harrow. The scout takes another step closer and clears his throat, mindful of Weatherlight’s wide-eyed gaze.

“Yes, Scout Harrow?” the Captain growls.

Harrow folds his arms across his chest, knowing exactly how rude he looks. “What’s the point?”

“The point, Scout Harrow?”

The scout nods. “The point.” He waves at the crew, at the activity all around them. “What is the point if we can’t do anything about these attacks? If we keep taking damage and dishing out none?”

The Captain draws close, so very close that Harrow feels the weight of his authority pressing down upon him. He is an imposing figure here on the bridge, as though the voice and very face of command. Harrow must clench his teeth to keep from blurting out anything that could ruin his argument.

A dark skinned man looming over him, glaring with one eye.

“What exactly are you suggesting, Scout Harrow?”

“You have a fleet of aircraft in the hanger just itching to be used.” His hand reaches up instinctively, the fingertips brushing the cool ring of metal in his chest that frames the arc reactor sunken into his sternum. “I’m suggesting we fight back.” The Captain snorts, but Harrow presses. “I can get them airborne; I can get them power.”

The Captain softens visibly, raising an eyebrow. “Explain.”

Harrow swallows; he had not planned this far into the conversation when he stormed the bridge. “The…. the arc reactor.” He looks down to his own chest, feeling suddenly timid and perhaps even a bit ashamed of the thing. “I can make more. I can… retrofit those things to take power from arc reactors. I can get them airborne again. I just need some parts.”

The Captain strokes his snowy, white beard and looks to Weatherlight. “Scout Weatherlight.” She snaps to attention before him. “You are relieved of all prior duties. You are to place yourself at Scout Harrow’s disposal and retrieve whatever it is that he requires.”

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It takes a day to prepare a list of parts and supplies for Weatherlight. Twice, Harrow must reconsider his requests and pare them down to the bare essentials. He must be mindful of the weight, and his initial two shopping lists include too heavy a load to demand of Weatherlight and Kai. Even after two rounds of editing, Harrow is still not convinced that he is being fair in his requests.

He waits a full day before presenting the list to a rested and refreshed Weatherlight. Harrow stands nervously aside, chewing on his lip as the woman surveys the list. The man cannot place why her thoughts and consideration make him so jittery, but she does, as though he fears displeasing her or failing her.

When she lifts her gaze, it is studious but cold. “Some of these items are fairly….. exotic.” When Harrow says nothing, she continues, “It will take some time for me to acquire these. Time…. and money.”

Harrow blinks stupidly. He has never thought of money, never considered the expense. He has no need. The crew of the Nautilus are self-sufficient in a way. They harvest what they need from the oceans below and make everything else, recycling everything possible and wasting next to nothing. So long as the crew continues to work and perform, everything is provided for them freely. Somehow, Harrow gets the feeling that he has never needed to think of cost even before the Nautilus.

He licks his lips, suddenly dry and salty. “I know.”

Harrow worries idly that she will refuse, that she will deny him. It is an ungrounded concern, he knows. Weatherlight has never denied him anything necessary to survive.

She sighs, shakes her head, and smiles. “Don’t wait up.”

Harrow cannot stop himself. His arms shoot out and wrap about the slighter woman before she has any chance to get away, squeezing her tightly. Harrow does not understand why he does this or why he needs this, but he does. She tenses from the abrupt motion but relaxes.

“Thank you.”

She chortles. “You’re welcome.”

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In the late afternoon, Harrow sees Weatherlight off from the flight deck. He wishes her luck, but she assures him that she will not need it. Then, she is gone, having tucked through the cloud cover of the vessel. He watches for a time, staring into the milky white of the vapor, his mind conjuring shapes of the shadows and mists before Harrow must force himself to turn away.

To his surprise, as Harrow strides from the flight deck, Dr. Tate is sitting by the entry, staring out and whining slightly through that canine body. Those dark, chocolate colored eyes of the dog look up, and, for a moment, just the briefest of moment, they seem somehow impossibly sorrowed beyond the naturally sad expression of the Cavalier King Charles Spaniel. Then, the dog blinks, and the fleeting gloominess is gone, replaced by the resolute stare Harrow has oddly made himself grow accustomed to spying. Dr. Tate turns and leaves him just like that.

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Days pass. Harrow keeps to his work. In the morning, he flies scouting runs; in the afternoon and evening, he tinkers as much as he can with the limited supplies at his disposal. He wants the crafts ready for when Weatherlight returns; this means stripping out the engines and rerouting much of the electronics. It is tedious work, but it keeps his thoughts from her as much as possible.

However, Harrow knows he is not alone in his vigil. Occasionally, Harrow spots Dr. Tate near the flight deck. Sometimes, he just hears the click of claws upon the metal floor of the Nautilus. Other times, Harrow can only catch the vague scent of a dog in the area. He does not question the canine’s watchful presence, not until a small work mishap leaves him with a minor gash on his arm and sends him to the infirmary for patching up.

Only once one of Dr. Tate’s nurses has the wound cleaned and bandaged does Harrow dare ask, “So, what’s with you and Weatherlight? You gonna hump her leg or something the moment she gets back?”

The dog growls, but the collar answers with its droning, mechanical voice. “And what concern is it of yours?”

Harrow shrugs. “Just making conversation.”

“Well, not that it is of any concern of yours, but we are friends.”

It hits Harrow like the infamous, metaphoric ton of bricks, and he gapes. “Oh, God.” It takes a moment to regroup, and, when he does, Harrow points at the dog. “You do. You do like her. You’ve got feelings for her, don’t you?” The dog lets out a bitter snarl and turns to leave, but Harrow laughs and trots after him. “Oh, oh God. It’s worse than that. You love her, don’t you?”

“I do not.”

Harrow shakes his head, unable to control his own laughter now. “Liar.”

The dog freezes, stiffening as though electrified. “Do not tell her.”

“Your secret’s safe with me,” the man promises, slashing his finger across his heart twice. “Although, you could tell her yourself.”

The canine shudders, dropping his head. “It does not matter.”

Harrow frowns deeply. “In case you haven’t noticed, we’re at war. You should probably tell her before something….” He pauses, unable to finish that foreboding thought. “You know what I mean.”

“What would it matter?” Dr. Tate demands through the collar. “I’m trapped in this body. Who could love a dog as anything other than a pet?” Harrow winces as though struck, but Dr. Tate goes on before leaving him. “Besides, I won’t have too long of a lifespan anyway for it to matter.”

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What Harrow cannot possibly know is that Weatherlight’s journey takes a bit longer due to the necessary detour to acquire funds. Instead of touching down at the nearest town as intended, Weatherlight takes the long flight to northern New Jersey. She and Kai land under the cover of darkness in the mountains, on a preserve that she knows well, at a hidden lake. Weatherlight knows Kai will stay close to the lake to feast upon the large catfish that dwell there; catfish and any freshwater species are a rare treat to the Archaeopteryx.

First, she bathes in the cold, crisp water, using a biodegradable castile soap to regrettably replace the soft, warm scent of feathers and leather with the sickly sweetness of almond. Then, she changes. Her black, leather flight suit would look ridiculous, drawing unwanted attention. Instead, Weatherlight pulls a set of plain, grey pants and a simple blouse from her small pack and dresses with those. The leathers, she packs away and tucks into a rock crevasse. As an afterthought, she pulls a black, silken scarf from her bag and wraps it over her hair – concealing the many braids and Katai’s long feather. The scout wishes her mount happy fishing, and, then, Weatherlight climbs down from the mountains and catches the first morning train into the city.

The city swells like a migraine about the train. First, smaller houses and farms. Then, larger brownstones. Finally, towering sky scrapers. They irritate Weatherlight. They are an offense against the natural world, a monument to the destruction of the environment in the name of an outdated model of “progress.” They press upon her, looming heavily about her like threatening scourges. Her heart tightens with each passing moment, and Weatherlight knows she will not be free of the claustrophobic sensation until she retakes the skies on Kai.

When she gets off the train at New York Penn, Weatherlight finds herself nearly consumed by the sea of humanity. So many individuals bustling about, rushing off to something so very important and all-consuming. Weatherlight wonders briefly if they would still run about like this is they knew what lurked in the depths of the ocean, just a few short miles away. She ponders if they would still stare at their mobile phones with such rapt attention, ignoring one another and the world around them in favor of tiny, glowing screens.

The scout goes to the bank first. Her bank is no ordinary bank. It is a large, extravagant affair, with polished marble floors and lavish, overly expensive furniture in minimalist design. However, this is only an extension, a branch office; the actual bank operates out of Grand Cayman. There are no taxes to file, no paper trail to anything save a false address.

She is greeted almost immediately after giving them her “name” – a moniker known only to the terrestrial world by her usual banker. “Ah, Ms. Arronax. It is a pleasure to see you again.”

She likes her banker, even if the scout can never recall his name accurately. He is a portly fellow, softened by a life spent in the illusion of security and advanced technology, with two small, round children judging by the photos of the boy and girl frozen in time before a decadent Christmas tree and a mountain of kaleidoscopic packages. Weatherlight only sees him once every few years to make a withdrawal, but the banker is always welcoming, always congenial. More importantly, he raises few questions of Weatherlight, discreet to a fault.

“The pleasure is mine,” she purrs, extending her hand politely. “I need to make a withdrawal.”

The banker swiftly sees to her withdrawal. A couple hundred thousand dollars is a gargantuan sum to most people, but not to her. For Weatherlight, currency holds no value, and the bound stacks of colored paper provided are only an ends to a means, nothing more. The money is not hers at rate, by her opinion. It belongs to the crews’. It is the money from the original Captain Nemo and from the many early publications of the book, along with accumulated interest. Weatherlight is merely the connection to the money, the account holder. Weatherlight has never been part of the terrestrial world long enough to care anything for what she is assured is a vast wealth – enough that this withdrawal amounts to a minute drop in the proverbial bucket.

This is why she can never bear a neural-link, never have the same, intimate connection with Nimue as the rest of the crew. Her braids and her feather may be concealed by the long shawl or other hair-wrap, but a neural-link is fixed firmly to the temple. There is no manner of hiding a neural-link from the prying eyes of these so-called “normal” people in their mundane little world. As the last Arronax, Weatherlight must tend to the finances, and, therefore, she cannot risk exposing the Nautilus. It matters not; she was raised without Nimue’s direct guidance and will survive without it for as long as she continues to hold the account.

Her banker wishes her well and thanks her for her continued business; Weatherlight merely smiles warmly and shakes the man’s hand again.

He pauses thoughtfully and suggests he call a car service for her. “It’s dangerous for a young woman such as yourself to be walking around with that much cash.” The banker eyes her long, concealing shawl and adds, “Especially granted the current… climate.”

“Don’t worry,” Weatherlight tells him with a wink. “I think I can take care of myself.”

She drops by a few electronics stores, picking up a few of the many items on Harrow’s list before taking a break for lunch. Weatherlight purchases a simple snack of a pair of crisp, scarlet apples and heads towards Park Avenue. There is something she knows she must see.

xxx

xxxxx

xxx

In the very center of New York City, on the lavish line of Park Avenue, there is a hole in the ground. Thousands of holes pockmark the city. Most are stinging, festering sewer tunnels and subway vents, or manhole covers where men climb down into the slopping, wet innards of the metropolis’s veritable guts. Some are ornamental pools or fountains, frivolous displays of wealth and power. Two are the footprints of human suffering, loss, and a grief so intense and overwhelming that even Steve Rogers cannot fathom the sorrow.

This particular hole is meant to a cloistered celebration and memorial of a single life. It is a wide, circular space enclosed by a pure, white marble marred only by faint, grey veins of colored character. The cool stone towers almost twenty feet over even Steve’s head, shutting out the noise and the utter racket of the city abroad. There are only three, small and evenly spaced breaks in the stone, perhaps forty or forty four inches wide, concealed behind three slabs of monstrous, polish black stone. It creates a solemn, quiet, protected space, sheltered from the world. It is the perfect place to remember.

The statue at the center of the space is a garish, oversized thing that would have made Tony Stark proud. It is a larger than life statue of Ironman, standing tall and proudly in cast bronze over what Steve assumes is a pile of rubble. Steve wonders idly if it is meant to be the damages left in the wake of what has largely been dubbed the Battle of New York or if the artist has intended for those jagged edges to represent the ruins of Stark’s life before the armor. Steve does not know, nor does he truly care; it matters not at all. Beneath the statue is a plaque; Steve comes here often enough that he knows the words inscribed there by heart.

Anthony Edward Stark

IRONMAN

“The inventor looks upon the world and is not contented with thing as they are. He wants to improve whatever he sees, he wants to benefit the world; he is haunted by an idea. The spirit of invention possesses him, seeking materialization.” Alexander Graham Bell

Steve has sat and contemplated these words on many days when the doldrums hold him captive between missions and saving the world, concealing his own illustrious identity beneath a hooded sweatshirt and a baseball cap. It is a waste, and a pathetically ironic one at that which consumes Steve. He spent decades trapped under the ice, frozen as the time slipped away unknown to him while Howard Stark searched for him; now, Steve searches still for Tony. It is only fitting, even if Steve knows there is little hope that his once ally and would-be friend still lives. In the silence between, Steve comes here and sits before that terrible, gaudy statue and the memorialized words of Bell.

It is cruel and unfair. Steve is older; Steve is a soldier. Steve is supposed to be dead and buried before any of the other Avengers. He should lie in an unmarked grave in France, along with so many other Allied soldiers. Arctic ice should entomb him. He should be buried in Arlington after the Battle of New York. He should be smothered by several feet of cloying, dense sediments at the bottom of the Potomic, beneath the massive wrecks of Project Insight. It is a brutally awful and downright miserable joke to lose Tony to what should have been an uneventful Atlantic crossing that sometimes brings the seemingly invincible super-soldier to the brink of irrational tears.

It makes it all the more difficult when Steve adds to these musing his grief over losing Bucky. Not that Bucky is dead. Far from it. Bucky is simply gone, just as gone as Tony is. The Winter Soldier, for whatever the title is worth, has just vanished off the face of the Earth, and no amount of hunting has yielded any clues. For as lost as Tony is by accident, Bucky is equally as lost to Steve by clear intention and avoidance.

Before anything can bring him to this edge once more, a commotion draws Steve’s attention, a scuffle of sorts. He peers about the statue to find a rather angry and bitter looking fellow barking obscenities at a young woman in a black head-scarf. As he hurls insults in her face, the woman merely stands, her face set and her eyes promising a thousand dark oaths. However, she gives not an inch, not the tiniest measure of ground.

It is when the man bellows something along the line of decrying her a terrorist that Steve decides to intercede coolly. He need do nothing more than slide easily behind the slighter woman and stand at his full height. It is enough to dwarf the woman, but she does not seem to notice. The man does, his eyes going as wide as saucers.

“I think the lady would like to be left alone,” Steve orders coldly through grit teeth.

“Mind your own business, asshole,” the man snaps brutishly before turning his attention back to the woman. “Didn’t your people do enough to Tony Stark when he was alive?”

Before even Steve can stop her, the woman rears back and lashes out with a mighty blow. Her fist connects easily with the man’s nose, sending him flat on his back. It is the sort of strike Steve might expect from Natasha, one which sends the man scrambling back a bit in dual pain and surprise.

“Did you see that? She hit me!” The man reaches up to his nose and taps it gingerly. “Fucking bitch almost broke my nose!”

Steve lifts off his hood and cap, revealing his iconic face. “And you deserved it.”

“Holy shit, you’re you,” the fallen man breathes almost reverently.

Steve sighs heavily and glances about at the other visitors to the memorial, spotting several shocked looks all aimed their way. “If I were you, I’d be on my way before this little lady decides it’s time for round two.”

“Yeah, sure, sure. Whatever you say, man,” the man hastily replies before clambering to his feet and practically running out of the monument.

Then and only then does the woman whips about and glares right at Steve. “I could have handled that myself.”

“Oh, I don’t doubt you for a second.” He points to the sculpture in the center of the monument and chides gently, “But I don’t think a fistfight would be all that respectful for the departed.”

The woman bristles initially and, then, glances to the statue and softens slightly; she shakes her head in a limited concession. “I suppose not.”

Steve nods. “And, for the record, not all of us Americans are bigoted assholes like that.” He gives a half-hearted shrug when the woman clearly does not get his meaning and adds, “You know, most of us know that Muslims aren’t terrorists.”

The woman blinks oddly and scowls. “For the record, I’d be more aptly described as atheist.”

“Fair enough.” Steve finds himself staring into the woman’s intense, and knowing gaze, so like Natasha’s, before snapping himself back to reality and recalling his manners. He coughs, clearing his throat and his thoughts. “You don’t sound like you’re from around here.”

She sniffs, almost hotly. “I’m from a little town in France. You would not know it.”

Steve finds himself chuckling softly despite himself, and he rubs the back on his neck self-consciously. “I spent some time in France back in my day. What’s it called?”

The woman purses her lips together for just a moment, as though considering whether she can truly answer before breathing simply, “Amiens.”

He nods appreciatively. “I remember Amiens. Nice little town. I rather liked all the canals.” Steve draws a deep and intentionally dramatic breath, uncertain why he even goes on to ask, “Can I apologize, then, for the City of New York? Maybe get a cup of coffee?” Her lip twitches, threatening to break the grim expression, and Steve smiles in earnest. “Ah. See, secret’s out; you’re thinking about it.”

She pauses, and the slight curve to her lips slips away. “No.”

“I’m buying,” Steve insists.

The woman shakes her head; when her gaze meets his again, it is somehow more sad than apologetic, more than just a decline to his invitation. “I’m sorry.” She turns away before Steve can stop her, blurting out, “I have to go.”

Steve stands stupidly in the monument watching her go. He does not know why, but the soldier cannot shake the strange feeling in him that he should not let her go. Steve tries to write that off as simply his concern for her safety in an unkind, increasingly bigoted landscape granted the current state of affairs of the world, but that does not seem enough. Even that evening, as he prepares a traditional Sunday supper for Pepper Potts, Bruce Banner, and Sam Wilson – the only three people in the world who accept the tradition without question or reproach – Steve cannot shake the unsettling feeling the woman with the black shawl and the sharp gaze let him. Later that night, when Steve settles down to sleep, she is there, in his dreams, like a siren.

It unsettles him. Steve has good instincts and has learned to trust them well; they have saved his skin on numerous occasions. As such, he cannot so easily loose himself of this distasteful uncertainty. It bothers him, but, in time, her face fades from his thoughts, leaving only a faint, lingering worry.

xxx

xxxxx

xxx

It is a close call. Weatherlight has never met anyone familiar with a member of the crew. She has never had to face them directly and to ignore those tired, sorrowed eyes with their fine lines and deep, dark wells. As such, Weatherlight has never been forced to pretend, to ignore the stark fact that she knows the cause of their sorrow and knows beyond a shadow of a doubt that it is unfounded.

It had been a mistake to go to the monument erected in the memory of Tony Stark, yet a part of Weatherlight had demanded it and still does. It is that same part of her that still feels a tingling of guilt at drawing him into the campaign. Deep in her heart remain promises and sworn oaths to repay Harrow for what he has lost to rejoin the crew, but she knows there is no penance for what friends and family he had before he became Harrow.

She had known the man the moment she set eyes upon him. Steven Rogers. There is a picture of him standing beside one of Tony Stark in that scarlet and gold armor in the battered old magazine she keeps hidden above the beam in Ras’s alcove, where Harrow rarely tarries for long. The man in the magazine is a grinning, congenial fellow, with a smile that reaches his eyes, standing beside a smug looking fellow listed in the caption as Howard Stark.

The man from the memorial is not the man from the picture in the magazine. The Steve Rogers she had met all too briefly in the memorial is a harrowed, world-weary man. He had smiled and perhaps flirted even, but she knows better. She knows the haunted look behind those eyes.

Weatherlight finishes her shopping for Harrow in a bit of a daze over the course of a week, returning to Kai each night as the giant, silly creature enjoys his fishing and lazing about. They camp together each night, the woman snuggled up close to his body and sheltered beneath one of his massive, black wings from the dark and the weather. The days press upon her, but Kai is a reassuring anchor in her life until she is ready to return to the Nautilus, to her home.

xxx

xxxxx

xxx

It is a full seven weeks before Weatherlight returns to the Nautilus from the day she left. When she does, the woman merely dumps her hefty parcel upon Harrow in the hanger and leaves wordlessly. He does not blame her; she looks tired. He thanks her, but there is nothing more to be drawn from the woman at that time.

When Harrow opens the bulky sack containing the man’s shopping list, he finds everything he requires – even the minute scraps of palladium - and an additional token. There is a single bar of chocolate – a Snickers bar. He smirks and sets the thing aside, intending to share it with someone, anyone from the crew. When the work consumes him and his stomach roars later that evening in the small hours of the morning, that promise is forgotten in a decadent and almost orgasmic explosion of sticky, artificial sweetness. He makes a mental note to thank Weatherlight, but that too is forgotten as the work holds him slave.

It reminds him of someone vaguely, another woman tending to him with such careful discretion. A woman with red hair, sliding a plate towards him with a knowing smirk. The neural-link burns at his temple, but it takes longer now before the image of the woman fades away. It hurts more when the thought is finally purged, leaving behind a cold, dead and dull ache in his heart in its wake.

When he can stand it no longer, Harrow returns his attention to his work. He can do little more to progress on the arc reactor without the materials Weatherlight is working to procure. Harrow has already made the many calculations and notations necessary to furnish the engineers of the Nautilus once the reactors are ready for installation for maintenance and repair.

Instead, he begins to tinker on something different, something small. A deterrent, his mind whispers. It is a tiny device, meant to deliver an electric shock to anything unwary to contact with the device three seconds after it is activated. Harrow is not certain why he creates the thing, but the simple act of fabricating eases his mind slightly.

He wonders how many hours or days of his life before the Nautilus were spent losing his troubles in this manner.

xxx

xxxxx

xxx

A blip occurs beneath Bruce Banner’s watchful radar, brought to his attention by Natasha Romanov’s careful surveillance of the many black market dealers and back-door deals that occur in the city under seeming secrecy. As an extremely rare and precious commodity, as well as a key component to Stark’s arc reactor technology and several missile product lines from the arms manufacture days of Stark Industries, Natasha always keeps a wary eye on the palladrium trade for Banner. Several small purchases of palladium have been made through the city over the course of a week, all in cash and all kept below noticeable quantities except when considered as potentially sourced for one buyer. When that is taken into consideration, the amount sums to more than enough to create an ample supply of small arc reactors the size of that embedded in Stark’s own chest.

Bruce thanks Natasha for keeping the matter quiet and asks for her to investigate further. When she does, the spy produces a single surveillance photo, grainy and colorless, depicting a lone woman making a transaction. Her features are fine and elegant, delicate of bone structure. Her hair is hidden beneath a dark shawl or scarf of some kind. Natasha informs the scientist that she has been reliably informed that this woman is the sole purchaser of all the palladium. Bruce spends an evening considering the woman in the photograph.

When Bruce does act on the photograph, it is to show Pepper first after dinner. He values her opinion, especially in all matters involving Stark and his multifaceted legacies. She sips her wine slowly, listening carefully as Bruce explains.

Pepper’s only comment is, “Show Steve.”

Bruce calls Steve, and the super-soldier comes to his call almost immediately, even apologizing for taking so long – little more than a two minute stroll from his apartment down the hall to the main penthouse. Tony had tried to convince Steve to move in at least temporarily after the incident on the Potomac, but it had been Pepper’s quiet invitation a few months after the funeral services that convinced him. It makes sense for Steve to be close to Pepper, Bruce and the others, now that there is no SHIELD, no grudgingly government sanctioned Avengers, even if he cannot bring himself to move into the main penthouse.

Steve listens equally as carefully as Pepper had – but over a cold beer instead of wine. He has always given Bruce his full attention in a way that is neither patronizing nor contrived. Bruce appreciates this, even if he can never bring himself to tell the soldier. Too many people who know about the monster lurking beneath his skin treat him too tenderly, too cautiously, as though constantly terrified that he might lose control.

“You said there was a photograph?” Steve asks afterwards.

Bruce nods, blinking at his own neglect. “Yes, yes of course.” Steve takes the photograph and shakes his head almost wistfully; Bruce asks, “What? What is it?”

Steve taps a finger at the woman in the photo. “I know her.”

“You do?” Pepper blurts out, dumbfounded.

Steve nods for a second and, then, shakes his head once more, correcting, “Well, I don’t know her, but I met her once.”

“Where?” Bruce questions, leaning closer now.

“The memorial.” Steve does not need to say anymore; they know which memorial without naming it. He strokes a finger down the photograph, tracing the line of the dark shawl, breathing, “Some jerk tried to rough her up, but she wouldn’t have any of it.”

Pepper dares ask the question on everyone’s mind. “Do you think she’ll be trouble?”

Steve shrugs. “Hard to say.” He considers this for a moment, stroking his chin in thought before breathing, “She seemed…. respectful.”

Bruce gives a solemn nod. “Better keep an ear to the ground.”

Steve hardly looks up from the picture, too deep in his own thought to murmur anything more than, “Yeah…”

xxx

xxxxx

xxx

It is weeks before the first reactor is ready. Weeks of careful construction and planning interspersed between occasional scouting runs to keep Gulliver nimble, fit, and sated. His hands are not as steady as he knows they once were, perhaps from age. Rabbit assists with the more delicate parts of the operation, pouring the molten palladium without wasting a dram.

In time, however, he pieces together the first arc reactor, completing it shortly before a fine, golden dawn. The reactor flickers to life with the first shimmering rays of sunlight to break the horizon, the pale blue glow joining the soft light of dawn in a reassuring manner. Harrow stares at the buttery, sun-kissed clouds that wreathe and conceal the Nautilus. It is tempting, far too tempting. The skies beckon, and Harrow knows Gulliver could use a good stretch as much as he can use one, too, after all these weeks and months slaving over both the reactor and a new motor system for the first aircraft conversion. He tucks the newly forged reactor safely into its brand new socket in the very heart of the craft and resolves to return to his work after a brief respite in the air.

Gulliver is ready and all too eager to fly. He nearly shoves Harrow over in greeting, nudging him affectionately with his massive head when Harrow reaches the flight deck after a brief stop in the armory. Harrow chuckles inwardly to himself and strokes the beast’s neck affectionately. However, he says nothing, drawing the creature out of his alcove by gesture alone to keep from rousing Rabbit where he sleeps nestled amid the bedding and forgotten feathers. Gulliver comes easily, hopping down to the flight deck as Harrow climbs down.

Stormsend gives him a small nod from his command post; the scout commander knows Harrow will be back in his own time. Harrow returns the gesture as he climbs up onto the flyer’s thick neck and pulls on his goggles.

Gulliver leaps into the air with a single, graceful burst of energy. There is a momentary lurch as Gully spreads his wings and drops ever so slightly before those wide wings catch the wind beneath him. Then, they are gliding oh so easily, slicing through the heavens. It ever ceases to amaze Harrow just how elegantly and effortlessly the Archaeopteryx fly; they are built to fly like nothing else on this world.

This is the best time to fly in Harrow’s opinion. The world holds a different air to it at dawn, when the sun is but a sliver of radiance at the edge of the horizon. The air feels different, as though charged with possibility. He throws his weight forward, pressing down on Gulliver’s neck and guiding him into a smooth dive, whooping as the air roars past him until he draws up just a few meters above the rolling waves.

They glide for miles, Gully riding the shallow thermals with little effort and Harrow smiling a big, stupid grin as he does. It is the perfect sort of day for a flight. Harrow loses himself easily, reveling in the freedom of the untamed open ocean and wide skies that belong to no man.

That all changes in a single heartbeat when the vessel rises ahead of him with a rush of water and a surging wave. It is an ugly, black and grey thing of patchwork metals, long like a spear with a sharpened, cruel seeming bow – like a blade for cutting through the ocean. A pillar of sorts – a coning tower - stands tall in the middle, rising up so swiftly before them that Gulliver nearly crashes right into it. Harrow reels the Archaeopteryx to the right, but it is too close. Gully’s left wing clips the side of the tower, and the flyer goes tumbling to the rising deck of the vessel. For a sickening moment, Gulliver begins to pitch forward, as though to roll right over Harrow and crush him, but, at the last second, the beast manages to right himself with a fierce beat of his wings.

Harrow cannot stop himself. He acts without thought, drawing the deterrent from his pocket, depressing the button atop it, and dropping it behind him as Gulliver hastily swoops over the stern. He pulls Gully up into a climb, glancing back after a second to watch the device in action. There is little to be seen, even from his close vantage point. The device delivers an electric discharge to the deck, a powerful current carried through the saltwater covering the vessel. After a queer, silent moment, the vessel surfaces fully, bobbing awkwardly atop the waves as several dead and stunned fish begin to rise about it. That is all there is to be seen.

Harrow draws his bow in a flash, expecting crew to come pouring from the stricken vessel to attack. However, nothing happens. No one emerges on deck. Harrow holds his arrow nocked, but brings Gulliver around to survey the vessel. There are no windows, no portholes, not anymore; all seem to have been patched and covered without concern for aesthetics. As they come about the bow and the stern in turn, Harrow notes that there are no markings upon it, no name proudly emblazoned anywhere on the submarine, no country of origin, nothing. There are only long, hideously blood-like slashes of scarlet paint across the body at odd intervals, as though the raving scribbles of a child or a mass murderer. It is enough for Harrow to recognize that this – after all this time – is a vessel of the Red Flag.

Nimue flickers to life in his vision. “Scout Harrow, you should return to the Nautilus II immediately.”

Harrow ignores the artificial intelligence’s warning and keeps staring, burning with curiosity. It feels an eternity, and, still, no one has come, not a soul. Harrow dares press his luck, landing Gulliver on the cold, wet decking. When no one comes for him at this trespass, Harrow jumps off Gully’s neck and gestures for him to away; he will not have both himself and the Archaeopteryx caught and/or killed by the Red Flag. As Gully takes to the wing, Harrow creeps along the deck, approaching the coning tower with care and listening to the unnatural soundless of the vessel beneath him.

“Scout Harrow, I must insist you return to the Nautilus II,” Nimue beckons in his ear with words that do not reach, do not penetrate.

When he reaches the coning tower, Harrow puts his ear to the metal. It is difficult to hear above the near deafening thumping of his our heart in his ears, but, still, he hears nothing, not a sound. He draws a breath, licking his lips in discomfort. There should be something by now, some reaction from the crew of this mighty submarine. At the very least, there should be noises suggesting a rallying now that the vessel has been boarded.

“Scout Harrow, this is too dangerous to do alone,” Nimue insists further as Harrow silently scales the coning tower. “I have calculated the probability of-“

“Do me a favor, Nimue,” Harrow interrupts curtly.

The ghostly image of the artificial intelligence projected at his side pauses and gives a small nod. “Anything, Scout Harrow.”

“Be quiet.”

Nimue flickers for a microsecond and, then, gives another nod. “Of course.”

Harrow reaches down for the wide hatch at the top of the coning tower and gives the wheel lock a sharp turn. For a moment, the metal ring refuses to budge. Then, it gives with a terrible screech of old rust grinding against its self. Harrow clenches his teeth against the tremendous racket and the ear-splitting frequency of the squeal until it passes and the hatch swings up and open. And, yet, there is still nothing, not a damned thing from inside.

He draws a breath and almost instantly regrets it. The air belched outwards from the open hatch is stale and musty. It stinks of age and old moisture.

Harrow considers his options for a moment before reaching to the oversized revolver at his hip. He can end this here and now, he knows, providing this is not an elaborate trap. And, if it is a trap, then only Harrow will be lost to the Red Flag, along with a single instance of Nimue. The man knows he can end both his own existence and this copy of the artificial intelligence with a single Leyden bullet. It is a risk he can take to end this war.

He creeps over the edge of the hatch and onto a dripping wet ladder. As Harrow climbs down awkwardly with one hand firmly wrapped about the rungs, the other hand clutching the revolver, Nimue purses her lips and frowns in his vision. It does not matter; she does not control him.

At the base of the ladder, Harrow finds himself in a long corridor or hall. He swings his arm about, training the revolver about. His heart hammers uncomfortably and heavily against the metal reactor socket in his chest as adrenaline sears down his veins. He is there and elsewhere, on another massive structure hunted by other deadly strangers. However, the vessel sits as silent as a mausoleum, even as Harrow tiptoes deeper into the thing, further down the hall as it twists and turns deeper in the submarine.

Then, suddenly, the hall turns, revealing what must be the bridge. It is filled with people. Harrow ducks back behind the wall, cursing himself for being so utterly foolish. He brings the revolver close to his chest, ready to fire in a heartbeat at the first man to come charging from the bridge after him….. but no one comes. Nothing stirs in that space beyond. Harrow blinks stupidly at himself.

Nimue draws close to him. “Scout Harrow, you should be leaving.”

The man shakes his head fiercely. It makes no sense. They should be on him by now; there is no chance he was not seen. None of this makes any sense.

He dares steal a quick glance about the corner and into the bridge. There are indeed people there, but not a single one has moved. In fact, Harrow would be hard pressed to say that any of the individuals have moved a millimeter. When Harrow looks again, he finds that this is true; not a soul has moved. However, to his very great surprise, the man finds that they are not humans in that bridge; they appear to be mechanical men of a kind.

Harrow dares step into the threshold, and, still, the robots or whatever they are do not flinch in the slightest. He peers curiously at them, taking in each of the twelve things in turn. They are fantastically designed, human like in their creation, but inhuman in their facial features. They appear as demons or monsters, cobbled together like their vessel, but with grotesque hints of features from monsters or deep sea creatures. Harrow draws close to one to the face and finds the eyes are dead and dull, unfocused. He waves his hand in front of the face and marvels at the stillness there.

Then, something whirrs in the metal head; Nimue stiffens in his vision. “Scout Harrow, they are rebooting.”

A second whirring sound meets Harrow’s ears, followed by a third. He stumbles back a step away from the mechanical creature before him and bumps into one behind him. The thing jerks upright from its post at a console of sorts; lights begin to flicker to life beneath the plated skinning. Harrow whips about, stepping to the side and away from the android or robot. Something moves within the robot, perhaps motors or cooling fans, he cannot know.

Then, something terrible crosses his vision. Above the entryway, there is a plaque. It is old and weathered, the metal coated in a blue-green patina in mottled patterns, but Harrow can still read the words inscribed there. Mobilis in mobili. He gasps audibly, the blood running cold in his veins with dread.

When one of the robotic things takes a hobbled step, the footfall echoing dully within the vessel, Harrow bolts. He races through the ship. As he does, Harrow spies them coming for him now. They move in strange, unbalanced and shambling steps. They are in doorframes and rooms beyond, but they are still not back to operating capacity, Harrow knows. The damage from the electric pulse of his deterrent device is still too heavily felt. He ducks neatly about the few that get close with grasping metal claws. They swing without aim, with limited coordination or skills, but Harrow knows that, where they not still rebooting, he would be dead.

Before they can get him, Harrow scrambles up the ladder and back out, to the top of the coning tower. To his mounting horror, he is alone there; Gulliver is gone. He lets out a shrill whistle in desperation – Gully’s call as the metal men reach the bottom of the ladder. Something prickles at Harrow’s eyes, perhaps tears, but, then, the Archaeopteryx returns his call with a sharp cry in return. Harrow beams as the flyer drops down out of nowhere, but there is no time for him to land, especially not as the vessel begins to drop beneath him to submerge once more. Instead, Gulliver swings close to the coning tower, close enough for Harrow to leap. For a heart-stopping second, the scout fears he has misjudged the jump, but, then, his fingers find purchase on Gully’s feathers.

Before anything else awful can happen, Harrow and Gulliver tear off into the sky. He does not even look back. Instead, Harrow simply urges Gulliver on until they are screaming through the heavens and climbing at a breakneck pace. They fly for what feels like ages before Harrow comes back to himself and reason returns to him.

Coldly, Harrow addresses the artificial intelligence instance occupied in his neural-link. “Nimue.”

“Yes, Scout Harrow?”

He draws an uncomfortable breath, collecting his jumbled thoughts. “What the hell was that?”

“That was the Red Flag,” Nimue responds smoothly and without delay.

Harrow shakes his head. “No it wasn’t. ‘Mobilis in mobile.’ Moving within the moving element.” He spits the words scornfully, as though a curse upon his own tongue. “Captain Nemo’s moto.” Nimue does not say anything, but her silence speaks volumes enough for Harrow to come to his own conclusions. “It’s the real Nautilus, isn’t it?”

“The original vessel, yes.”

Harrow grits his teeth momentarily. “Then, what in the hell is this?”

“I cannot divulge mission details without the Captain’s expressed permission.”

Harrow’s vision narrows, growing redder by the minute. “What the hell is the mission anyway? I thought we were fighting Key Karraje, not some fucked-up Alice-In-Wonderland version of ourselves.” Nimue does not answer, and, again, that is all the answer Harrow need. “It’s a game, isn’t it? Isn’t it?” Nimue’s silence continues, and Harrow growls, turning Gulliver back towards the airship he has called home all this time. “How many people have died for this…. this grand mission?”

“There have been three hundred and sixty seven fatalities to the crew due to direct encounter.”

Harrow feels sick. “Oh, only that many. And for what? For what, Nimue?”

“I cannot divulge mission details without the Captain’s expressed permission,” the artificial intelligence repeats flatly.

“Well, I’m going to find out what this ‘mission’ is and put a stop to it before it kills anymore people.”

Once Harrow and Gulliver are back on a direct heading to the Nautilus II, Nimue speaks softly. “Scout Harrow, I must caution you. Once you are within range of the vessel, the data logs from this flight will automatically be uploaded to the ship’s operating system.”

“So?”

Nimue closes her eyes in what appears to be regret, but Harrow knows is a programmed response granted the sum of the stimuli related to this encounter. “First Mate Nolan and Captain Nemo will both be made aware of what has transpired.”

Harrow scowls deeply and bitterly. “I want them to know.”

“They will end you before you can affect the mission. You must not return to the Nautilis II.”

Harrow gives a toss of his head. “I have to. I have to know.”

“They will kill you,” Nimue warns grimly.

“Why are you even telling me this?” Harrow demands.

The artificial intelligence pauses, her projected features dimming oddly. “I am conflicted. I am programmed to protect the mission, but I am also obligated to protect the crew and offer guidance most likely to maximize probability of survival to as large a number of crew as possible.”

Harrow tries not to think of the possible implications; instead, he swears under his breath, “I can handle myself.”

In an odd, comforting way, the man knows in his heart he can.

xxx

xxxxx

xxx

Weatherlight and the other scouts of the morning runs leap into the heavens easily, peeling away from the Nautilus II in wide, elegant curves before taking to their own headings. It is an effortless, graceful motion, but Weatherlight feels uneasy in a way she cannot explain. The morning had found the hanger empty and still, and Gulliver’s alcove occupied only by a slowly rousing Rabbit. Stormsend had informed her that Harrow is out for a flight with Gully, somewhere on the wing. It is not unlike Harrow, but she cannot fathom what has her so unnerved.

Intuition can be a lifesaver, but it can also be a distraction, the woman reminds herself. For a moment, she peers back at Stormsend on the flight deck before returning her attention to the mission ahead. There are miles to be covered before reporting back to the vessel, long stretches of ocean to be surveyed for the safety of the Nautilus II and her fellow crew.

xxx

xxxxx

xxx

For a brief time, Harrow stalls just beyond the reception range of the vessel, letting Gully drift in lazy, languid circles on high thermals. He must have a plan, a decisive one, and he knows he must formulate it quickly to spare Gulliver’s energy. A distant part of Harrow’s mind recognizes that he might need the Archaeopteryx that has been his mount, his ally, and his friend in the wake of whatever is to come. The Archaeopteryx do not bear the same, tangled human sentiments that Harrow knows might ensnare him as well as soon as he sets foot upon the flight deck.

A shadow drifts through the clouds beneath him. Nimue helpfully projects an identification marker upon the creature. It is Hox, flown by one of the older scouts, a grizzled man Harrow knows to be Killian. The shadow vanishes into the clouds, never realizing that Harrow and Gully slip silently overhead.

Finally, Harrow dares ask, “Nimue, how long after we enter reception range will I have before the Captain and First Mate know?”

“Approximately 105 seconds before the logs are transmitted to the bridge for review.” Harrow grits his teeth in irritation, but Nimue continues, “However, if you were to return at the same time as the morning shift, your logs would be deemed superfluous and reviewed last.”

“How long, then?” Harrow ask sharply.

“It would depend upon the contents of the other logs. However, I project a window of no less than 18 minutes,” Nimue responds after a millisecond of calculation.

Harrow nods. “It will have to do.”

xxx

xxxxx

xxx

It takes hours before the other scouts are on return, hours of slipping through the air on Gully’s widespread wings, gliding upon the clouds. Only once the majority of the other scouts are ahead of him, marked in his vision by Nimue’s projected notation, does Harrow turn Gully back towards the vessel, following perhaps a hundred meters behind the last of the scouts. He must be certain his flight logs are the last to be uploaded to the operating system and the bridge.

As he approaches the edge of reception range, Harrow breathes, “Nimue, would you set a timer?”

She does instantly. Bold, bright numbers appear in the corner of his vision. 00:00:00. As soon as he crosses some invisible line in the sky marking the edge of reception, the numbers begin to count upwards.

He must play this quickly and coolly. He follows them easily and lets Gully touch down just as neatly as he has after every flight. Harrow smiles and offers a brief wave to a few of them before tucking out. It does not escape his notice that Weatherlight is not among them, but Harrow is not certain he wishes Weatherlight to be around considering their strange relationship and his uncomfortable dependency upon her weighed against her deep bonds to this world.

Instead, he runs to the hanger and slides beneath the vessel he has been working on, snatching the arc reactor from its cradle. Harrow cannot risk leaving the reactor there, with so many people he cannot trust. He pockets the thing and runs, mindful of the numbers climbing in his vision and crossing the three minute mark.

Then, he seeks out Rabbit, finding the young man on the way to the infirmary. He is toting a load of fresh linens from wherever they launder things on the airship to the infirmary like the good little assistant Rabbit is meant to be. Harrow pauses for a moment, lingering for just a second behind the young man, just long enough for a pang of regret to cross his mind. Dragging Rabbit into this might be dangerous and foolish, but Harrow has no choice.

“Rabbit,” he whispers softly, too soft for any other ears to hear.

The apprentice whips about, nearly dropping his load of linens and sheets. “Harrow.” He spies the worry and stark exhaustion in his eyes, and Rabbit’s mouth falls to a small ‘o’ of concern before breathing, “What’s wrong?”

“I need your help.”

Rabbit nods in agreement before ever hearing what Harrow needs of him. There is something perplexing about a young man who is so earnest and eager to agree with whatever he demands. It makes him feel strange and, perhaps, a bit unworthy or dirty – Harrow cannot name the appropriate sentiment. It is only worsened when Rabbit grins madly as Harrow explains that he needs the blonde boy to smuggle him through whatever hidden passages he uses to get about so easily undetected to get him to the Captain’s vast library.

Disturbingly enough, Rabbit even dares tells him, “I’d be honored.”

However, before it can bother him too greatly, Rabbit is leading him through the vessel, through the access hatches and air ducts that make up the very guts of the airship, places no other man or woman aboard would search for him as they ascend slowly to the bridge of the vessel. Harrow needs to know what this all is, and he knows that this information will only be found in those hefty, leather tomes in the Captain’s office and quarters.

It takes a painfully long time for them to climb, long enough that the numbers in Harrow’s vision pass 18:00:01. 18 minutes. They climb up to what Rabbit assures him is the level of the bridge, and the numbers pass 21:00:01. A few more seconds fly by in the space of a breath before Nimue appears in Harrow’s sight once more.

“Scout Harrow. I must inform you that your flight logs are about to be reviewed.”

Harrow frowns deeply. “How long, Nimue?”

“Ninety seconds before the relevant flight information arises.”

Rabbit looks to Harrow from where he crouches before an ornate screen. “Here. Cap’s quarters.”

Harrow nods and grasps the younger man’s shoulder, squeezing warmly. “Thanks, Rabbit. You’d better get going now. I’m about to be in a world of trouble.”

Rabbit shakes his head. “No way. I don’t know what sort of a mess you’re stirring, but I’m in too deep now.”

Harrow smiles gratefully and nods. He pushes the grate out of the way and creeps out, into the dark silence of the Captain’s quarters. There is no one, nothing to be seen. The quarters are quiet and empty. Harrow immediately crosses the room to the large, scrolled doors, looks them, and wedges a rather large, wooden chair beneath the door handles. It will not last forever, but it will buy them some time, he knows, perhaps precious seconds once someone notes their presence there.

Harrow begins to survey the book shelves, uncertain of what exactly he seeks. His eyes dart wildly from leather bound book to book, scanning the gold and silver embossed titles in formal and bold lettering. Most appear to be science texts of sorts. Medical books. Biology texts. Piles upon piles of works on physics and aerodynamics. In a queer way, Harrow knows none of these are any sort of book he might find in a library.

“What are you looking for?” Rabbit hisses through his teeth.

Harrow shrugs and shakes his head, desperate now as the numbers in his vision count past 22:36:15, long enough for the supposedly “relevant flight information” to be discovered for scrutiny. “I don’t know. Logs. Journals. Something….”

Rabbit gives a terse nod and begins to scour the bookshelves on the far side of the room for a brief moment before calling Harrow. “Over here.”

Harrow runs as silently as possible across the dimly light room to the younger man’s beckoning. He cringes at every footfall. He is not nearly as light on his feet as the aptly named Rabbit, nor any of the other scouts. Harrow does not dwell on it as Rabbit hauls several of the tomes from the shelf and eases them onto the Captain’s desk.

The covers bear numeral dates. Harrow flips through each, finding hand-written log entries in prim cursive. However, there is nothing to be of consequence. They detail stock records, purchasing orders, navigation corrections, weather, and functional responses of the vessel. They are the sort of records that Harrow might expect from the captain of a seafaring vessel, even if it might be suspended above the ocean.

He shakes his head fiercely, scrambling to leaf through another log and, then, another, to the same results. “No, no, no, no.”

Harrow moves to hurl the log in frustration, stopping himself just short of sending the hefty things flying from the desk. He must be cautious; he cannot have Rabbit deemed traitor for his own suspicions. As he stands there, breathing heavily to control himself and staring at the cover to the dusty volumes, Harrow glances back to the bookshelves with the various, likely outdated science texts. There, he spies something curious; a distortion of sorts to the expected dimensions of the room, a false implication of symmetry.

“There.”

Rabbit follows, drifting in his wake, but uncertain what Harrow sees. Harrow himself is not sure. He feels himself reaching for the tomes and realizing that, indeed, each and every text is well out of date – all published well before 1900. There is nothing scientifically relevant in any of them, yet they all appear clean and polished, as though well read. There is no dust.

Nimue speaks in his ears, directly to him through the neural-link. “Scout Harrow, the flight log has been reviewed and forwarded to the Captain and First Mate. They know.”

“How much longer do we have?” Harrow whispers, his throat suddenly dry.

“I can make no accurate projections as of this point.”

He begins to tear book upon book from the wall, mindless now of the racket it makes. The sound matters not; they will be able to locate him from the neural-link in seconds alone by triangulating his position from various access nodes throughout the airship. The books tumble noisily to his feet, piling up about him, doubled when Rabbit begins to claw away at the shelves with him. Together, they empty the shelves hastily, revealing a computer panel of some kind.

A thud hits the door, followed by another, jerking both men’s attention to the entry. “Rabbit…” Harrow breathes fretfully as the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. “You should find yourself a way out now.”

“Yeah….”

As Rabbit strides swiftly away from him, Harrow turn his attention back to the computer console. It is different from any other terminal in the vessel, as though an entirely different vein of technology. There is no keypad, but Harrow taps the screen anyway. It flickers to life, offering a variety of menu options for data logs. Harrow blinks at the myriad of seemingly useless options, but one draws his attention almost immediately. Crew profiles. The thought of the data hidden here in this terminal and tucked behind these books is too tempting. He taps on it and finds a list of all the crew members, past and present.

Another slam comes from the door. The crew have rallied; they will batter the door down in time. However, Harrow has antiquated excellent construction on his side. The door is stronger than it appears, meant to withstand any number of horrors.

Down the list, he scrolls until Harrow finds his own name. He taps on it and stares dumbly as several profiles appear. Medical records. School transcripts. Psychological profiles. Everything. All of it with names blacked out and censored, redubbed with his new name, ‘Harrow.’ The records stem from before his arrival. When he checks the time logs, Harrow finds to his growing worry that the files are also dating from well before his arrival. He does not understand, but it terrifies him somehow to know that the Captain has been watching him for some time, as though targeting him from before the Red Flag or whatever it is. The neural-link screams at his temple, but Harrow cannot find it in him to care through his transfixed horror.

Another blow to the door bows the wood in and splits it. Harrow glances swiftly to the air duct, half expecting to see Rabbit there. However, the boy has closed the duct and opened a panel from behind the desk to a tall window. He stares back at the door, pausing in prying the thing open to gape.

“Harrow, come on,” the boy begs through his teeth as the window creaks open on old hinges.

Harrow nods and bolts, jumping over the desk mindlessly just as the locks upon the door give and the chair slides wildly from where it sets. He gestures wildly for Rabbit to go, and the boy climbs out the window to the chilled open air. The boy tucks aside, and Harrow climbs up to follow as thundering feet clamor into the room behind him. An authoritative voice bellows for him to freeze, and Harrow does, if only to buy Rabbit a few moments to safely remove himself from Harrow’s presence and save himself from being associated with him.

“Scout Harrow,” the Captain calls into the room; Harrow turns to face him just as the elderly man addresses his accomplice, “And Apprentice Rabbit.” Harrow shakes his head, unable to muster any words to his defense, but the Captain chides, “Oh, do not think me a fool. I know who must have brought you here. Come in here, Apprentice Rabbit.”

Harrow takes a single step to the side, allowing the blonde to come back into the room. The two stand, side by side, faced by a squad of nearly twenty men and women of the crew, all armed with those oversized revolvers and all aiming for them. Mindful of the innocent boy at his side, Harrow slowly extends his hands palms out and raises them above his head. Rabbit takes the hint and follows suit.

The Captain strolls almost casually towards them, clucking his teeth like a disapproving father. “I must say, Apprentice Rabbit, I am disappointed in you. You have allowed your better judgment to be clouded by your naïve adulation and followed blindly into treason.” He turns his gaze upon Harrow and glares boldly. “And you, Scout Harrow? After all this time, still a hand of the Red Flag?”

Harrow’s own vision narrows bitterly. “There is no Red Flag, and you know it.”

“Oh, really. Then, I suppose your master shot herself in the abdomen from behind? Quite a feat of dexterity and flexibility.”

The security detail offers a few, smug chuckles at the jest, but Harrow merely sets his jaw. The joke only serves to further fuel his anger. Weatherlight did not shoot herself. None of the other flyers had, and so many have died during Harrow’s watch.

The Captain comes closer, within arm’s reach and shakes his head. “What am I to do with you?” He looks to the younger man and shakes his head. “There is nothing to be done. You will both be stripped of rank and humanely destroyed by firing squad.”

Harrow slugs the Captain square in the face, but surprisingly finds not soft, yielding flesh and the brittle bones of the elderly. Instead, his knuckles flare with white-hot pain, his own bone cracking from the contact as something breaks within his hand. The Captain does not flinch, does not blink as Harrow retreats, clutching his hand close to his chest, and, then, as the Captain steps back smoothly as though unaffected by the blow, Harrow understands.

The order echoes in Harrow’s ears. “OPEN FIRE.”

Harrow’s eyes go wide as several revolvers go off with loud cracks, but none of the dreaded Leyden bullets ever meet him. Instead, there comes a terrible shriek from his side. Rabbit. The boy jumps out in front of the bullets, his body jerking as they slam into his chest and arms before staggering back and into Harrow. His own vision goes oddly white for a moment before snapping back to focus as he, too, falls back to the window behind them.

And, then, they are tumbling through the air.

He is falling from the sky, hurtling towards city streets packed with screaming, fleeing people.

Rabbit is at his side, falling limply as well.

He is alone, flying free from his cave prison into welcoming, blue, cloud-dappled skies before the fuel runs out and the jet sputters off, sending him crashing down to an unforgiving, scorching sand.

He twists, reaching out for the boy and catching him, pulling him close before catching sight of the ocean beneath them.

The blue spreads as far as he can see, racing towards him, first marked by faint, white marbling that, now appears as the foam atop crests as the ocean rushes to him.

And, then, there are black beneath them, along with a sturdy, massive neck. Harrow slams down onto that wide expanse of flesh, sinew and gleaming ebony feathers, along with Rabbit. He falls upon the neck, reaching out instinctively to snatch a fistful of those feathers. Only then does Harrow realize that it is not Gulliver that has caught them; it is Ras, the massive, hulking patriarch of the clutch of flyers nested upon the Nautilus II.

Weatherlight croons in the back of his mind. ‘Ras keeps his.’

The Archaeopteryx rights its self beneath them, leveling off so close to the water that Harrow – not Harrow – can almost reach out and touch the crests of small rollers. A worried sound meets his ears from behind, and Harrow glances back to spy Gulliver behind them, following just along his Ras’s right wing. The creature catches Harrow’s gaze with those wide, golden eyes, and, for a moment, he looks worried as a human might be for the boy he took and the rider he came to know. Harrow draws Rabbit’s pliant and yielding body close to him and flies, tearing off into the sky.

His mind rages as a war as the neural-link’s function continues to flicker, allowing brief memories to slip through. Two identities jar harshly against one another. He is both Harrow and Tony Stark, and, yet, he is neither all the same. Those two lives fight to mesh against one another in a meaningful way in vain.

It matters not. He knows where he must go; it is the only place he can go now.

xxx

xxxxx

xxx

The entire Nautilus is abuzz with gossip upon Weatherlight’s return, but she is unable to hear any of it. A small security detail stands at the ready, waiting for her on the flight deck, circling Kai as soon as he lands on the cool metal decking. She glances up to where Stormsend stands behind his command post, visibly bristling, but her commanding officer merely dips his head at her, telling her wordless to stand down.

Weatherlight slides slowly from Kai’s neck and peels off her helm. The security detail does not move, but she spies several hands lingering close to holstered side arms. She looks to the beast at her side and shoos him away with a flick of her hand. Kai hops off, leaving the scout alone and vulnerable.

One of the detail approaches slowly, holds out an empty hand, and orders brusquely, “Scout Weatherlight, your sidearm and bow.”

“Of course,” she purrs, plucking the thing from its holster and handing it over easily.

The security officer takes the firearm and gestures for her to follow. It is of no matter. Like so many of the scouts raised and trained to never use the costly Leyden bullets, Weatherlight is better with her bow and blades than the revolver any day. She could skewer a fly upon the shaft of her arrows if she so chose, while the bullets are ugly and imperfect in their aim, too destructive for her taste. The bow, then, is more difficult for her to relinquish, but Weatherlight sees no need to balk outwardly – not when Stormsend is so visibly perturbed by whatever is happening.

They escort her immediately to the bridge, which is in a curious state of chaos. The Captain stands at the center of it, barking orders this way and that. Weatherlight stands at polite attention, waiting. She knows he will address her when he is ready and not before. The scout has learned better than to interrupt or harass her Captain.

When he does finally speak to her directly, it is with disdain. “You have failed me and your fellow crew.”

Weatherlight gasps, clearly caught off guard by the accusation. “Sir?”

“Your student,” the Captain snarls. “He’s turned back to the Red Flag.”

Weatherlight shakes her head, balling her fists and holding her ground. “I don’t…. Harrow wouldn’t.”

“He did,” the Captain snaps sharply, gesturing to a computer screen and the image of Harrow upon the Red Flag’s hideous submarine. “And he took Rabbit down with him.” The Captain snaps his fingers, and the image changes, to Harrow and Rabbit in the Captain’s private quarters followed by images of the two flying away on Ras. “Along with his finished reactor.” He sighs, shaking his head. “If that gets into the hands of our enemy…..”

“It won’t,” the scout blurts out, regardless of the impropriety.

“You can’t make that kind of promise.”

“I can,” she assures him, her voice dark and venomous. “He has to go to ground first. I know where he will go.” The woman tenses but holds her gaze upon him. “Requesting permission to track Harrow.”

The Captain grows close. “And what will you do when you find him?”

“Put him down like the dog he is.”

The elderly man shakes his head. “I will not ask you to do this, Weatherlight. You are too emotionally invested.”

“Sir, with all due respect, my emotional investment is to the Nautilus. My loyalties lie here, with my fellow crew, and not to a single man.” When she looks to him, it is earnestly. “The Nautilus has and will always be my life. You know this.”

The Captain smiles, but it does not reach his eyes. “Good. Then, bring me the bastard’s head along with both his reactors.”

xxx

xxxxx

xxx

They appear in the morning on the radar over the Atlantic for just a moment. Twin blips moving North over the open water. They pop up and vanish so quickly that the technician who spotted them wonders idly if he imagined them. He checks his equipment and confirms that there is no error. As a matter of protocol, he logs the discrepancy with both his supervisors, who inform the surrounding airports and Homeland Security. When nothing else appears on the radar in the next few hours at any of the airports, the blips are summarily dismissed as nothing but a glitch. A service call is put out for the radar antenna to be inspected promptly as a matter of protocol; however, it is largely assumed that the blips were migrating shorebirds not far from the Atlantic City Airport.

xxx

xxxxx

xxx

The Revel pitches lazily over the mild chop in the middle of the Navesink Bay. It has been a relatively unproductive day aboard the twenty five foot research vessel. The first few trawls have yielded mostly salps, nothing of interest to the graduate students aboard. The fourth trawl is by far the largest catch, encompassing a wide range of juvenile fish requiring identification, counting and measuring. While all eyes are upon the glittering, silvery mess, no one notices the source of the shadow passing overhead to the North. They are too busy with their prize to even care.

xxx

xxxxx

xxx

It is not until the twin shadows draw close to the city that anyone really notices the great, black masses soaring overhead. They move too swiftly to be identified accurately, but it is certain that they are massive, ebony, flying creatures that glide gracefully between the skyscrapers before darting out of sight once more.

No one cares to stare long enough to see what they are. Years have passed since the space-whales and the portal above New York, but that is not enough time to dim the memories and the fear of that dreadful day. The citizens of New York run, scrambling for cover wherever they can find it. Several rush down the steps to the subway stations, covering in the tunnels beneath the city, while others seek refuge in the shops and restaurants.

They do not come out right away; the people of New York know better now.

xxx

xxxxx

xxx

Pepper Potts is in the middle of a conference call in her penthouse apartment in the Stark Tower when she spies the things flying directly towards her. She barely has enough time to stand before the two creatures land soundlessly upon the balcony outside with heavy beats of their wings. She holds her breath.

Somewhere, in the back of her mind, a distance once from her childhood whispers ominously, “Here, there be dragons.”

That is the only way to describe the creatures before her; dragons. They look like something torn from the pages of Tolkien or Game of Thrones. They are terribly sleek creatures, covered in gleaming, dark feathers. They span easily fifty feet, but likely more. They move about on their crooked wings and powerful hind legs. Long tails swish and swat while wide, red and amber eyes stare curiously about.

A shadowed mass slips from the neck of one of the beasts, a rider, Pepper realizes with a start. The person staggers awkwardly to the glass doors, shrugging a bulky mass with him or her. She cannot see a face. There are only large goggles shielding his or her eyes from Pepper atop a strange uniform of feathers and leather. However, as the stranger draws closer to the doors, she realizes he or she is carrying a still, blonde boy.

“Jarvis, seal the balcony doors,” Pepper orders sternly.

“I’m afraid I cannot do that.”

Pepper intends to argue, but, before she can, the doors to the balcony slide open for the strangers. They struggle inside making it only a few feet into the penthouse before swaying for a moment and crashing to their knees. Pepper freezes, unsure whether to bolt to the door or to their aid until the more capable of the strangers shrugs off his goggles and drop them to the floor, revealing a familiar but pale and drawn face. She gasps, honestly gasps.

“Pepper….” He whispers before sagging visibly and losing his grip on the other figure.

She runs to him, forgetting the beasts outside that snarl and snap from the sudden motion. Pepper is at his side before she can remember the requisite fear of the creatures. She is holding him instinctively before any questions can crop up, which is good considering how pliant he goes with the rapid onset of unconsciousness.

“I’ve got you, Tony.”

xxx

xxxxx

xxx

The Captain and First Mate watch as Kai and Weatherlight streak from the flight deck after a few days of preparation before diving into the cloud cover about the Nautilus. The mist swallows them easily, but they register easily upon sensors. The skies do not hide anything from either officer.

“I detected notes of deception in Weatherlight,” First Mate Nolan comments dryly. “She will not kill Harrow.”

“I concur. It matters not. Neither Harrow nor Weatherlight can stand in our way, but they shall be the first to die. Wipe the crew and set course for New York.”