Page 75 of The Brightness Between Us

“—and therefore the trail I was on led me right past it,” I say. “All perfectly logical.”

“How did you survive?” Ambrose asks.

“I drifted in the current as far as I could, and when thewarbot finally got close, it stopped. Its transport arrived and picked it up.”

“Yes, that’s what I saw, too,” Ambrose says grimly.

“Why is that bad news?” I ask. “We’re alive.”

“Because there’s no good reason for them to call off hunting me, except that it’s not necessary anymore.”

“Not necessary anymore? What does that mean?”

Ambrose squeezes my arm.

Ah. I see. The world has greater things to worry about.

The war has escalated yet again. The Fédération military either needs the warbot to win a conflict elsewhere, or can’t risk keeping it here. Where we are.

“I think I get it now,” I say, sitting up.

“I suspect no one’s going to be worrying about you and me for a very long time,” Ambrose says.

“Even so, we should be careful,” I say, taking a moment to focus so I won’t betray that I’m shivering. “I won’t be able to sleep for a while, so I’ll take the first watch.”

“Actually,” Ambrose says. He unloads his pack, then tests whether the rotten bench in the shelter will give way before resting his weight on it. “I brought WakeSleep up from Mari.”

“WakeSleep?” I ask. “What’s that?”

Ambrose gets a head-of-the-class tone to his voice that I’m starting to recognize. “Natural sleep shuts down higher cognitive functions so your memories can be pruned downto what’s useful while your muscles rest. WakeSleep cycles your individual sleep stages, but without the loss of consciousness. You’re asleep, but also awake the whole time. Parts of your brain flicker in and out, but you can think and look and process and still come out totally rested after a few hours.”

“Which means we can both be on watch,” I say.

“We could even try to march onward,” Ambrose says. “But we’d be moving like we’d had a bottle of PepsiRum each, so maybe that’s not the wisest idea.”

I look suspiciously at the silver packet Ambrose shakes in the air. “Since you rescued my pack it means we have perimeter triggers, too,” he continues. “I’ll place them around the shelter, and they’ll give us a hundred-meter warning if another warbot or a human or even a big animal approaches.”

I nod, impressed. “You have some plans.”

“I didn’t arrive here totally unprepared, no,” Ambrose says. He grins and looks down at his body, still soaked and streaked with mud from the river crossing. “Despite appearances.”

He pulls two foil packets out of his bag and lets me pick one. I didn’t think he would poison me, but I still appreciate the gesture.

I open the packet, pour the powder into my mouth, and quaff it with water from Ambrose’s canteen.

“There’s another nice bonus to WakeSleep,” Ambrose says, watching me swallow. “It’s got a meal’s worth of calories in it, too.”

Once we’ve placed the perimeter alarms, we sit around the heat stick. Ambrose and I are wide awake, but Sheep is already snoring in the corner of the two remaining walls. Ambrose’s bag is packed and ready. We have nothing to do until dawn but to listen for the perimeter alarms.

And maybe talk about what we discovered from the trial of Devon Mujaba.

As my eyes adjust to the semidarkness, Ambrose’s outline comes into fuller focus. He rubs his neck. “Did you... what did you know about the sabotage?”

“I had no idea the sabotage was happening,” Ambrose says. “I thought we were recording a reel that would reveal the truth to the world. But Devon Mujaba used me as a cover to do his own work.”

“So you didn’t modify any of the protozygotes yourself?” I ask him.

Ambrose looks around before answering. I only know because the moonlight on his eyes flashes with the movement of his dark irises. The earth starts to spin under my body; probably an effect of the WakeSleep. Ambrose said taking it was a good idea, but I feel drunk and I don’t like it. If we survive to camp another night, I won’t be taking any more of this drug.

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