Speck's movement seemed to roll more heavily side to side as the day went on. Challis' hips ached, and she tried again to shift. Her boots were strapped gracelessly to the stirrups. And in case Challis got the idea to slip out of her boots in an escape attempt, Drunnel had looped the rope up and over her thighs at least once. It pressed tighter on her left, and every move she made seemed to dig it in deeper.

Her fingers were getting too numb to move. The second time a water canteen was pressed to her hands, Challis had to squeeze it between her palms to keep from dropping it while she drank. She couldn't twist the lid on or off.

The lush surroundings she had soaked in before now seemed to loom over her just out of reach. A warmth pressed onto her skin, closer and thicker than the dry, dusty heat of Oedolon. When she concentrated, Challis would feel her awareness spinning out around her, like a spider sending out thin tendrils of webbing. It caught on every wriggling piece of energy within twenty feet in all directions, from big heavy ones like the horses and thrikes to scores of tiny bits darting around in the tree branches. A deeper undercurrent of energy filled the air and dug down into the rich soil of the forest floor. Challis listened to it, the lifeblood of the jungle, its heartbeat of growth and its desperate hold on survival.

Then the painful emptiness yawned into her, breaking open the raw wound. She wanted nothing more than to feel Rasalas' arms around her, and to hear his voice, always there. Challis fell to tears again, and she would cry until her bones ached. Trying to keep it quiet just made it harder.

Drunnel let her cry. He brooded in silence, a cold and clammy presence on her left like a constant wet wind that she couldn't turn away from. When he did speak, he hardly had to lift his voice at all. Challis heard it easily, without wanting to.

"Okay. Do it again."

She gritted her teeth, trying to wipe her nose on her sleeve. It got grosser and less successful every time.

Then, she aimed her mind at Drunnel's horse. Its breath came first, heaving in and out in time with its thudding steps. Huge muscles tightened and rolled, and sweat gathered in stretches over miles of brawny black hide. A whiffling snort surprised Challis, then she pushed forward again and gathered all her concentration into one idea, one command: STOP.

The mass of horse slowed, creaking and settling into the dirt with unthinking submission. Challis slid back into her own head, an ache brimming behind her eyeballs. Speck had stopped too, and Challis was breathing hard.

"Good," Drunnel said, his voice as pleased as a father praising his child's shot at a target. He was all but laughing. "Really well done, Chall."

She turned her head away, her nose wrinkling in revulsion. She would have preferred a raking insult. But she kept quiet. If her grief could have made room for it, she would have felt a certain sense of pride and astonishment at her own abilities. Drunnel's tripwire tingled warmly over the back of her neck, but no part of her could enjoy it. Not yet.

By mid-afternoon, they had passed through miles of the unseen jungle, far from any settlement. Challis was surrounded by the authorities of the group, who completely ignored her as they discussed and bantered back and forth. Nothing they said about their plans, the maccotons, or the patrols was of any interest to her. She sat, sore and numb and sticky with sweat. Occasional bouts of anxiety fluttered to the surface of her thoughts, a base fear of what Drunnel could, and probably would, do with her. It made her feel sick. She had nothing, nothing in the world, except for a forced dependence on the man who had had her brother murdered.

The rope on her thigh loosened. Something pushed against her boot, and Challis felt the ropes sliding away. When the same happened on the other side, she realized that Officer Lars was calling out orders from somewhere nearby. They were stopping. She gasped in relief and wriggled both boots out of the stirrups, arching her back to ease the ache. The rope around her wrist was untouched. Without waiting, she felt around awkwardly for the saddle's horn with her forearm and hooked onto it to swing a leg over the side. She could have made it to the ground on her own, she was sure, but then two strong hands came out of nowhere and took hold of her sides under her ribs. They steadied her on the ground, and Challis twisted away as quickly as she could. She had been manhandled enough today, and even helpful physical contact was repulsive.

"Bremmer!" Drunnel's voice broke out loudly right next to her. "Take these two. Get Mencken's help. I've got her."

His fingers closed around the top of Challis' arm. They recoiled just for a moment, and she felt a bitter amusement that he was holding right where she'd been wiping her nose all day. Her feet stumbled over rough ground until Drunnel finally sat her down with her back to a tree. The rope around her wrists was pulled taut to the side as if he was pressing it to the dirt with his foot. Challis kept her words to herself, unwilling to give Director Haske the slightest satisfaction of hearing her voice. She heard him curse, and call out again. His voice was snappish, commanding, and carried none of the smiling reassurance that had fit so well with his first appearance in Polescos.

"Nadari, take her, will you? I need a minute and she probably does too. Help her out."

Challis felt her stomach twist and realized he was right. Before she could think about it any longer, another set of hands lifted her to her feet and started leading her away. A scratchy woman's voice came then.

"Oh, lass. You're a slop mess," she said starkly. "I swear, that man. I don't know the full of what's going on, but if he thinks he can dog-tie you this whole trip it'll come raining down on his circus-striped head before long. Come on."

The tone of the words tapped into Challis' sullen thoughts like the bright plink of a hammer. She decided she liked this person, no matter what else she was, who could stand with her against Drunnel in opinion if nothing else. Nadari's manner was brisk and efficient as she helped Challis in the trees, and she even sliced a blade through the ropes tying her hands. ("Not a chance of you runnin' blind through here," Nadari said.) Challis felt a swollen tingling as the feeling started easing back into her fingers.

A wet cloth scrubbed ungently at her face, Nadari's hand holding her head in place as if she were a child. Her upper lip was sensitive, and the breeze wiped cold across her raw cheeks.

"Thank you," she tried to say, but her throat closed it in. She had to clear it twice before words could even come out. "Thank you."

"Lass, I've got nothing else for you. If I cut against the Director's grain it'll be hell for me and my team. You need to just…"

Nadari stopped, and Challis felt hands on her shoulders. She tried to aim her face at where Nadari's eyes probably were. She felt very young, very lost.

"You need to hold on," Nadari continued in a low voice. "It'll be alright. You'll see."

When Drunnel finally pushed some food into her hands, Challis devoured it without hesitation. A leafy tree trunk pressed against her back, and the ground was gratefully soft after the hours in Speck's saddle. As soon as her handful was gone, something hard like an apple rolled into her fingers. If food kept appearing like magic, Challis thought, she could bear this.

The tree root against her boots suddenly shifted, and Challis realized with a start that her footstool had been Drunnel's leg. Nugget, the smallest things were the most shocking. Blindness had been a close companion before, familiar if frustrating as hell, but its meanest trick was taking the most basic assumption and proving it wrong without warning.

Drunnel tapped her shin as he stood up. "Listen, and learn, Challis. Everything that follows is your doing."

Challis stopped breathing, and a chill ran down into her gut. She lifted her head, fearfully listening for whatever he could be talking about. Please, she thought desperately. Don't drag anyone else into this. More voices than usual seemed to be gathering around her, hushing into whispers. She felt her breath start again in short bursts.

Twigs crackled nearby, then a short silence. Goosebumps swarmed over Challis' arms.

"Tofflar," Chief Bosk said, from twenty feet or so to her right. Challis turned her head toward the sound, but her stomach dropped at the name. "In light of recent events," he continued, "given your actions, and blatant disrespect to an officer above your station, and open threat to our company's Director-in-chief in the presence of those considered your peers and subordinates…" His voice rose in volume just enough for the words to cut through the air. "Your duties as thrike patrol captain are terminated. You are hereby exempt from further communications aside from those with me or your commanding officer, Director Drunnel Haske. Effective immediately."

The words rang against the gentle buzz of the rainforest. Challis leaned her head back against the tree trunk, trying to blink away tears. She couldn't help picturing Thax's expression, not now, but when he had blocked Drunnel's horse on the path earlier and demanded what no one else dared to say. For the first time since she'd known him, Thax had stood up for her. And this is what he got. Damn the man, and damn the mission. The expedition was sliding downhill fast, and the amount of disaster in just two days was enough to drive her insane.

"Do you have anything to add?" Chief Bosk's gruff voice was saying.

Thax did. "I admit to questioning the final part of your decision, sir," he said in a gentle, lighthearted tone that surprised Challis. "I'd expect to answer to Captain Lakko if you allow me to continue riding a thrike on this expedition. Unless you want me on a horse. Which you shouldn't. I'm hopeless when there are more than two legs happening between mine, you know what I mean, sir?"

Challis choked, and titters erupted from the mostly younger crowd in the trees. The noise evaporated in seconds, however, and she wondered whose expression had shut it down.

"Your commanding officers warrant absolutely no disrespect," Lars said sternly.

"Even from you. Think a lot of yourself, don't you, Tofflar?" Bosk went on, unruffled. "You’ve forfeited your right to speak further." He paused just long enough that Challis could almost hear the quip on Thax’s lips before he was interrupted. "But I’m afraid Captain Lakko has returned to Oedolon on FHF business."

Challis pushed her thoughts up and away, but not before a horrid flash of memory of Lakko’s snarling face, and his body flattening Rasalas on the concrete while he strangled him. She shuddered out of it and tried to listen again.

She heard Drunnel speak from where he stood at a distance, the voice still clear to her ears. It was a low, stern rumble.

"Badge and firearm."

After a tense minute or two, the noise resumed. Someone tromped over and lifted Challis by her arm. A wet whisper tickled the hair by her ear, and she reacted as if it were a fly buzzing too close. The grip tightened.

"Enough of that," Drunnel said sharply. "Talk to me. We have a few minutes. What do you see?"

Challis didn't answer. Drunnel pulled her so she had to concentrate on walking. His voice kept piercing into her brain, now a low mutter. "I need to know how that tripwire dosage affects you. We'll have to build up more power, and stamina, if you're to hold your own against a maccoton."

She couldn't care less about such things anymore. If Director Haske wanted to treat her as a project, he would have to give her more incentive than that. And he had already taken away the last thing that mattered to her.

A rushing sound broke into her thoughts, scattering them as she became aware of a huge space opening up in front of her. The sun's heat landed unbroken on her skin, and Challis breathed in a wild, tangy scent that seemed to be floating down from somewhere above her. A nearby waterfall, or maybe a river, sent its noise reverberating up to the sky. Challis knew the atmosphere. It was one she had known her entire life: the vague canyon-like quality of the air around her. She could just picture the high green walls of a valley spreading out above her as if she were a bug in a trench. Maybe it would collapse in on itself and bury her and this whole expedition.

"There are more than a million different species of insects in the rainforest," Drunnel said from beside her. He had released her arm. "Teeming over and inside every layer of growth in the vegetation. The jungle is alive with their movement. Can you feel it?"

Challis didn't move, trying to press flat her awareness. She didn’t care what he did or threatened to do. She instead treated herself to the satisfying image of Thax's barb shooting straight into Drunnel's gut. Or mussing that stripey hair of his.

He laid a hand on her shoulder. "Just try it. Please, Chall?"

She turned, whacking his arm away from her. "Don't call me that," she snapped.

His voice came through a grin, and Challis realized he had done it all on purpose, baiting her. "Just tell me what you can feel."

"There's a world of efflux and energy," she finally said. "A great comfort to me, the knowledge that there are creatures out there who aren't forced to obey your every word, Director Haske."

He laughed easily. "That's fair." His voice eased around behind her. "But they could obey yours."

She crossed her arms. The movement shifted the tripwire that wrapped around her neck.

Drunnel moved over to her other side, watching her carefully. So much of her profile was shared with her brother's, he thought. The nose and forehead were the same, though Challis' was softened by her hair and the warm honeycomb tone of her skin. The sleek tripwire sent tiny reflections dancing on her neck and chin, combining beautifully with the Cormellican patch, bright with energy. Drunnel could imagine its influence slipping into her spinal cord and up to her head with help from the tripwire. It was targeting her midbrain, the thalamus, the most protected part of the brain. Solar-powered mini currents, especially combined with nerve impulse upgrades, had been a nightmare to work with during the early stages and walked the fence of legality. So of course, it had been Lakko's idea. But when they had roped it all together into a workable product, he had offered Drunnel the best of the batch.

Draped around Challis' neck, it looked natural. Constantly brimming solar energy had its place and, paired with a medical anomaly like her, it had enough potential to push the FHF to the topmost position in all of Petchkan. All it would take was a dozen maccotons. And she was the way to get them.

"Just try it," he said again, letting his eyes wander over her. She glared unseeing toward the far waterfall. "I'm as interested as you are to see what you can do."

A clutter of branches snapped behind her. Challis could feel Drunnel's gaze move away from her, and she almost gagged in relief. If Rasalas had been here, he would have punched the man's face off.

"Yes?" Drunnel asked, annoyed.

The other man's voice was unfamiliar. "It's done, sir."

"Thank you. Get him back to his mount."

"You want him on thrikeback, sir?"

Drunnel paused, though Challis guessed it was only for dramatic effect. "Clip its wings."

Another voice, a young man's this time. She recognized it at once.

"Oh, don't do that, please." Thax's throat was hoarse. "That's as impractical as it is cruel, sir."

"I gave you a job, Tofflar," Drunnel said stiffly. "Or are you going to threaten to shoot me again?" Challis subconsciously turned her head toward him, the strained undertone drawing her in as close as if he had whispered. It swelled in the air around them until it was broken by Drunnel's unexpectedly lighthearted tone, like someone had pushed a button to turn on his smile. "While you're thinking hard about that, why don't you join us for a minute. You won't see something like this every day." Challis felt him turn back to her. "Will they, Challis?"

She lifted her face up toward the distant sounds across the valley, forcing her mind to echo the calm.

Blindness was corrosive. Like a beaver's teeth to a tree, it ate away at her bearings and sense of spatial awareness and scattered them in shards. Challis, unawares, had been letting pieces fall away, viewing herself as less and less of a physical body with weight and thickness and taking up physical space, and more and more as if she were simply a floating mind. She could feel the food in her belly, warm scents tingling into her nose, but those seemed as distant as if they belonged to someone else. Her perception of those sensations and mental interpretation of them seemed the only things that mattered.

In a gradual pull, Challis was being drawn back into the sodden existence of her time in the Institute, blind and unfeeling and only aware of what she chose to pay attention to.

Until now. As she tried to settle into a blank calm, she accidentally opened herself up to her surroundings. Without her permission, the lush green efflux of the valley as a whole began to pour into her, drenching her in a silent roar of pulsing energy. It numbed her thoughts, but a frantic tiny corner of her brain realized that she didn't want that. She wanted to feel everything, sharper and more distinct, to swallow in every bit of lifeblood she could find. She wanted the stimulant. The desire became frantic, unstoppable, and her hands found the knots of the tripwire.

Without hesitation she crossed Drunnel's wire over her neck, the little part of her brain almost jibbering with eagerness. The tripwire slid through her and out the front, seamlessly bypassing her complete lack of any fear. Challis thumped down onto her knees as a crackling line of power shot up into her head, boiling tight and hot, then burst out along every nerve in her body in a surge of sparks.

It changed everything. Recharged and refocused, the single overwhelming efflux exploded into a trillion points of light. Energies, whizzing and zipping and pattering, beaded up into sharp detail that before had been blended into one big cloud.

The effluxes of the humans she had encountered so far had been unique, and complex enough to distinguish one body of mass from another. The overcrowded population of insects in the valley, however, appeared to Challis as a single all-encompassing system of instinct, too savage to be called a simple desire for survival. Here and there, sharper pricks of intellect arose from beneath a dripping leaf, or tucked inside a curling bit of tree bark, or skittered along the deep shadow line of a fern's stalk. Challis found them all. She gathered up that overarching awareness, rolled it all up into her mind until it was too big to hold onto, and lifted it with an aching strain up into the open air.

"By the powers."

The whisper wasn't the only exclamation from those watching. Goosebumps erupted on Challis' arms as a chaos of insects burst from their hiding places and poured themselves into a cloud thick enough to block the heat of the sun. The noise was almost crushing. Pure alien thrumming wormed into the ears of every mammal within two miles of the valley, and Challis could hear distant howls and whines as wild things dug for cover. A chorus of frightened whinnying came from the horses nearby, as well as shouts of surprise and terror.

She drove the swarm straight at Drunnel.

Ex-captain Tofflar hugged his arms over his head, unable to block out the wall of sound or the wriggling prickles that bit at his skin. The day had become night. Shadow coated the rainforest, and the darkness was something he could touch if he dared reach out to feel it buzzing in swarms over his arm.

Instead, he dropped to his shins, tugging down his rolled sleeves and frantically locking his fingers together behind his neck to hug his shirt collar. Curled up into a ball as he was, he couldn't help twisting and slapping at the tiny attackers that had gotten under his clothes. Everything was blurry until he noticed the gray mass being sliced by darting forms that he realized later to have been birds. The hunters didn't make the slightest difference to the density of the hunted.

Then, the assault receded. Thax spat and spluttered as insects dissolved back into the landscape, vanishing among the leaves until not an antenna was visible. It all happened so quickly that he remained where he was for a good minute while his heartbeat continued running for its life. The sun glared hot and screwed into his eyes with a vengeance. A heavy silence bounced around in his head and slowly, too slowly, spread out from him to echo its vast emptiness up to the sky.

He wondered how much of it had been real, or if the mere humming of a trillion plague-mongering vermins had driven him delirious.

Thax numbly lowered his arms and looked over toward Challis. She had collapsed on her back to the dirt. Her knees were bent and both arms sprawled to the sides as if thrown from the embrace of a storm.