Chapter 2: Chapter 2
“She’s a girl,” Blain explained. He had a deep voice that scared Trin and hands that seemed too big to be real. When he knelt down beside Aissa, it seemed to take years for his knees to touch the ground. With large, saucer-like eyes Aissa watched those hands. Once or twice she hitched her breath but the tears were gone, the cries, the screams. Trin thought maybe even the cut stopped bleeding once Blain arrived.
Ten years later, she had that same wide-eyed look when Trin ran into her in the hall above the waystation common room. It was late and she should’ve been asleep, they bothshould’ve, but a gunner had promised to tell Trin about Gerrick’s latest exploit if he’d touch the man and Trin was already half hard with anticipation when he bumped into Aissa. She wore a thin robe and nothing else—Trin could see the dark silhouette of her curves through the material. “Where…”
She pulled the robe closed at her throat and threw her hair back, defiant. The birthmark on her forehead looked like a burn against her pale skin. “Blain,” she said simply. “If he’ll have me. Good night.”
With that, she brushed past him. Always getting what she wants, that’s another thing Trin likes about her. She simply told his brother look, this is the way it is, and in the face of that, what could Blain do?
“You should give it a go, Trini,” she’s said. “You think Gerrick doesn’t knows you like him? The others have to talk about it. Be like, ‘there’s this kid in Arens who’s all about you, don’t you know?’ Mention your name and he’ll follow you around like a lost pup. When he comes through here—and he will, I know it—when he does, just tell him hey. It doesn’t even have to be love, you know? Wake up beside me in the morning, think about me on the run, come back here when you can. What more could you possibly hope to want?”
* * * *
The run-gun trucks tear through the open bays and crouch in the middle of the garage, idling. There are two vehicles, five men between them. Devlar hides are strung across the grilles, the beasts’ wings hang like prizes from the antennas, and caked mud eats into the rust and paint, but Trin can see Gerrick’s mark well enough. Aissa’s right, he’s finally here.
When the men file out of the trucks, Trin sees him immediately. There’s more grey in the blond hair and deeper lines around the grey-green eyes, but it’s him, it’s Gerrick, Trin would know him anywhere.
Once, years ago, Blain took Trin out to Konstas with him to trade for parts and on the run home, their engine died. Sort of ironic, Trin thought at the time, lying on the hood of Blain’s old jalopy and staring up into the nuclear sky while his brother swore at the truck. A bed full of burned out motors and none of them worked. If it weren’t for the heat baking his skin and the dust clogging his nose, he might have even laughed.
In the drowsy sun, Trin didn’t hear the devlars until they were swarming over the back of the truck. “Trin!” Blain cried. His brother gave him a shove that sent him sliding off the hood and into the dust, and before he could stand Blain grabbed the back of his shirt and hauled him to his feet.
Dark shadows flittered over the ground from preybirds circling above, sensing a kill. He got one good look at the devlars—claws and teeth and hateful eyes like drops of black blood—and then his brother foisted him into the cab of the truck, slammed the door shut behind him. Inside the heat was stifling, and Trin could hear the insidious sound of dry wings rubbing together, teeth squealing off metal, his brother’s gun firing laborious rounds into the horde.
What about when the pillshot ran out? What about when they overtook Blain and Trin was trapped inside?
He tried to peer through the windows but they were thick with dust. His heart hammered in his chest—three seconds ago, he was almost asleep. He couldn’t seem to comprehend that this wasn’t part of a sun-induced dream.
The ground rumbled like thunder and Trin wiped at the windshield, desperate to see. From out of the swirling sand rode two large run-gun trucks, one gunner on each roof, another leaning out the passenger side windows, flames licking from their guns. The driver of the closest truck held it on the run with one hand and aimed into the devlars with the gun in his other. Trin saw the driver’s hand steady on the steering wheel, felt the pellets from his gun strike the truck, each shot carefully aimed.
Later, after the devlars were dead and the men gone as quickly as they had appeared, he asked Blain who they were. “Gunners,” his brother replied. The look he gave Trin suggested that he thought the sun had melted part of his brother’s brain.
Gifts
-- Gift
received Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone