Wrong Identity

Silas frowned, his eyes scanning the steep, jagged ascent of the cliffs. “The vents are narrow, and they're exposed. If a scout catches a glimpse of a sled on those slopes, we’re as good as tagged. It’s a gamble, Curtis.”

"It's a gamble we have to take," Curtis replied, his voice steady despite the tremor in his limbs. "The shoreline is a corridor. If we stay on the beach, we're just walking into a funnel. The ridge-vents are unpredictable—they're jagged, broken, and filled with dead zones. That's where a machine's logic fails. They'll expect us to hide in the hollows, not climb the walls."

Mara looked at the steep, vertical ascent, her expression a mixture of doubt and desperate hope. "The sled won't make it up a vent. We'll have to carry Julian. Manually."

The process was an exercise in grueling, human effort. Curtis and Silas locked arms, creating a makeshift litter to hoist Julian from the sled. There was no mechanical assist, no exoskeleton to distribute the weight; there was only the raw strain of muscle and the rhythmic, synchronizing grunt of two men fighting gravity. Every inch gained was a victory paid for in sweat and searing heat in the shoulders. As they ascended the first narrow chimney of rock, the wind howled through the vents, creating a discordant whistle that masked the sound of their labored breathing.

Halfway up the first ascent, Curtis felt a sudden, sharp prickle at the base of his neck. He froze, signaling the others to press themselves against the cold basalt. High above, the silhouette of a second drone appeared, its obsidian frame cutting a sharp line against the bruised sky. It didn't hover; it swept, its searchlight a pale, clinical beam that sliced through the mist. The beam swept down the cliffside, a slow, predatory finger of light that missed them by mere inches, illuminating the glistening wetness of the rock and the deep, shadowed crevices they were huddled in.

The light passed over them with a clinical indifference, leaving a lingering, electric ozone smell in its wake. Curtis could feel the drone’s presence not as a signal, but as a physical weight pressing against his chest. Beside him, Silas was trembling—not from fear, but from the sheer exertion of holding Julian’s weight. The old man’s head lolled to the side, his breathing a shallow, erratic, but persistent rhythm that kept Curtis anchored to the present. If Julian stopped breathing, the mission ceased to be an escape and became a funeral procession.

"Don't let go," Curtis breathed, his voice barely a vibration. He shifted his grip, his fingers cramping into claws. The basalt was slick with a thin, mineral film that made every hold a gamble.

As the searchlight receded, pulling back toward the ridge, Mara signaled from above. She had climbed a few feet higher, her body wedged into a narrow fissure. "There's a shelf," she whispered, her voice strained. "Ten feet up. If we can hoist him there, we can break line-of-sight from the beach."

The transition from the vertical climb to the shelf was a chaotic scramble of friction and desperation. Curtis felt a sudden, searing tear in his jacket as he snagged it on a shard of obsidian, but he didn't slow down. He pushed upward, his muscles burning with a raw, authentic agony that felt like the only honest thing he had ever known. With one final, guttural heave, he and Silas surged forward, depositing Julian onto the narrow ledge of rock. The old man let out a sharp, wheezing gasp as he hit the stone, his eyes fluttering open to see the grey, swirling mist of the Atlantic clinging to the cliffs.