They had to say their goodbyes to Trian at the wall. He was too sick to come with them, and eventually Rial recognised that. Tala stood awkwardly by as the men hugged their farewells, discomforted by the emotion of the moment.

Mead could hold the crowd in stasis[1] for potentially a lengthy amount of time, and throughout that time those trapped within would be all-but-insensible to what was occurring outside, but through some process they did not understand this time was not fixed but indeterminate. The field could snap off without warning at any moment, and the likelihood increased the longer they waited. Trian was going to return to her home… no, no longer her home… and see out his remaining days there. The city’s people should at least not realise he had been involved.

They had come to the wall by the back streets, carefully wending their way through the least-inhabited areas to avoid encountering any of those who had not been in the square, and now they stood next to the black lustre of the sheer sides. Energy poured in an attenuated thread from Mead back the way they had come.

Tala already knew how Rial had got in, but they would leave through the gate.

“Are you sure?” said Rial.

“I’m sure,” she replied. “You say Mead can melt a hole through these walls without damaging their integrity, but I’m not going to take the risk. We are not endangering these people, whatever you say about fusing it shut again. No-one will be on this section during the day.”

She was right. It was a simple job to slide out the heavy wooden bar that held the small secondary gate shut, and Trian assured them he had the strength to push it back once they left. Tala could see the worry on Rial’s face, but she could see he also recognised the futility of arguing.

The energy pouring from Mead snapped off with a crack at almost the same time the door closed behind them.

“Oops,” said Mead. “That was sooner than probability thresholds indicated. Within the expected range, though.”

Rial stared wide-eyed at the machine in his hands.

“Now? Seriously?”

He turned back to the gate where they could both hear the bar sliding into place.

“Trian?” he called.

“It’s ok,” came Trian’s voice, straining to be heard. “It’s done. I’ll be gone long before they get here. Go.”

Tala grabbed Rial’s arm and pulled him back from the metal of the door.

“We leave before they realise what’s happened. They’ll be confused for a while yet. Come on.”

She strode away quickly, hoisting the small backpack she carried higher onto her shoulders. The first sun was already beginning its slow descent and she wanted to be as far away from the walls as possible before it set.

The hours passed quickly. They were almost to the nearest campsite, by coincidence the same site they had rested at months ago, when Rial let out a soft laugh.

“What? What is it?” Tala demanded, turning back to glare at him. She was too hot and tired for this.

“I was remembering a time long ago, when I first left the village,” answered Rial. “This reminds me of that, though I had expected to be the one leading this time. Instead…”

Tala stopped in her tracks. She didn’t know when she had unconsciously fallen into the old habits of an expedition leader, but she had been pacing confidently ahead without any knowledge of their final destination. She felt her face redden in realisation, which only served to annoy her.

“Well, you left us north of here and headed north so I assumed…”

Rial smiled.

“I did go north, it’s true, but where we are going now is west of here. I’m sorry,” he said, adding a shallow bow, “I promised to tell you everything but there’s so much...”

“And exactly how long were you going to let me lead us in the wrong direction?”

Rial looked perplexed.

“Wrong direction? No, this is the fastest way away from the city walls, and the only walled site I know of around here. Are there others?”

Tala grunted a reply that may have been an affirmative or a negative. Rial was at least wise enough to know when not to push his luck. He fell into silence.

Later, they both lay staring at the stars as the moon rose, lying out next to each other on bedrolls a few feet apart. A chill wind revealed their breath in the starlight.

“So we really came from out there?” asked Tala.

“Correct. From a planetary system known as Sol on a planet known as Earth. And before you ask, as my owner has many times, there is little else recorded in my memory. This information is more of a place-of-origin data tag as opposed to a galactic frame-of-reference. I can, however, list over nine million six hundred thousand species types on that planet and their respective physical tolerances, along with two point four million forms of technology used as both offensive and defensive assets,” said Mead, the flood of words pouring out in quick succession.

The silence that followed was long and deep.

“Does he speak like that a lot?” said Tala, towards the sky.

Rial grunted an affirmative.

“It, not he. And unfortunately, yes. You get used to it, even pick it up. I don’t sound a thing like my former self.”

“Over the course of your ownership of this device EGG analysis and stored data indicates an approximate change of 4.4% in vocal fold movements, most of which can be attributed to continued maturation during the early periods of ownership. Speech patterns can be seen to have changed on a superficial level that fits standard models of lexical drift over such a period, but there is no chance you are an imposter,” said Mead.

“I think it likes having someone new to talk to,” said Rial, once the machine had finished.

“As an interface designed to establish a working connection between the user and weapon, I am capable of adapting my semantic algorithms to those present, but I can assure you I have no preference regarding…”

“Mead,” said Tala forcefully. “Shut up.”

The machine fell into silence.

It was strange, but Tala found it easy to relax despite the lack of a guard on the wall. Rial assured her that Mead would ‘scan’ the area[2] and alert them to the presence of anybody or anything that appeared to be heading their way, and she believed him.

Rial told her of his life, starting in a small village somewhere in the mountains to the north, until they both fell asleep.

They left at first light, heading towards Manorest.

[1] It almost seemed annoyed when they called the mechanism of creating a distortion in the electromagnetic fields of a certain volume of space through the manipulation of the relative motion of electrons by the term but, as Rial said, it was the machine that had taught him the word in the first place. At least they didn’t add ‘quantum.’

[2] She would have been shocked to hear how big of an area.