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Finally, Tania slipped into the suit She’d practiced putting it on without an assistant, but even so she had to squirm and strain id pressure webbing that snaked through the round, but even at itsthe veinlike substrate still ht Tania had watched sensories set in Victorian tirams for the heroine to have to squeeze painfully into a corset before invariablythe hero She felt the same pain now, only over her entire body And, sheoutside to meet her

Of course, the last time she’d worn the suit, Skyler had been there This uably she’d been the hero on that excursion Then another darkly huht now, Russell Blackfield was probably wearing the suit Skyler had worn She shook her head, still unable to fathoood reason At least that’s what she kept telling herself

She didn’t have her headset on, so Vanessa’s voice ca, Tania Are you ready?"

Out the porthole she could just see the first hints of daylight on the eastern horizon "Putting my helmet on now Give me five minutes, then wait at the porthole for an a-okay"

The hele of her seat and studied it, fighting a flood of memories from her trip into the Builder’s ship Asthe helmet now seemed to crystallize, to amplify, the basic truth: She’d died in this helht, and filled her mind with one vibrant picture until it blotted out the rest The circle of green-glowing towers, standing vigil at the base of that wall of rock The Flatirons She’d had to look up the terree the strange rock forround, to her they looked like the walls of so pulled back into the earth

Tania focused on that picture in her mind, and pulled the helmet over her head

She walked between her two co behind Once they ithin the trees all sign of the alien towers vanished, and Tania shifted her focus to where she stepped The ground was a patchwork blanket of -fallen pine needles Both crunched pleasantly under her boots but both presented problems The snoas slick here One false step and she’d fall, which under any other circuh But out here one tiny puncture of her suit carried terrifying consequences

The pine needles were another matter It surprised her to find they provided even less traction than the ice Worse, they were centi chunks of rock or s if she wasn’t careful

It made the hike a slow and tedious process, and it was only after tenthat Tania suddenly realized she’d never seen snow before Not in person, anyway

"Hold up a sec," she said

Vanessa immediately knelt in a defensive posture "What did you see?"

"Nothing," she replied "That’s the problem I’m so focused on my feet I haven’t even looked up I just need a second to … center esture to Pablo that Tania assuh her suit told her the terees Celsius, she felt perfectly comfortable Even when she knelt and touched some of the snow, the suit’s construction allowed none of the cold to seep beyond its outer layer Tania frowned It ht as well have been a sensory Even the forest sounds were piped into her hel theet to the towers, I can open the mask and breathe this air She’d never been able to breathe the air in Hawaii but i vegetation In comparison, this place seemed crisp and pure, like a drink of cold water

"Okay," she said "Let’s go"

"One moment," Pablo said

She turned to look at him The tall, thin man was crouched beside a tree, his hands cupped over hisonto his fingers to warloves?"

He shook his head Then he pointed at a patch of ice by the tree "Tracks here Hu barefoot in this cold"

Tania backtracked to his position and looked at the footprints They were fading in theby this tree," theour plane See these two deep ones? Then it turned and went toward the towers"

Tania felt a chill then, the kind her suit couldn’t coht they always attacked"

"No," he said He stood up and glanced around, sniffing the air "The ones you see are the ones that attack, so it can feel that way Al theripped by primal eht, others to flee"

"Fight or flight," Tania said, nodding Her experiences had been so clouded by the battles around the colony that she’d forgotten the fundamental symptoms of the disease

"Exactly There used to be others, too Those anted to play, or even love As you can iine, few like that survived ht type It probably becaines but ran when it saw us e the creature was baiting them She held her rifle at the ready when they continued

The farther into the foothills they went, the lih the trees, white patches blanketed round

They crept the last hundredthe towers had created Vanessa took up a position next to a tree, and Tania placed herself directly across from her at the trunk of another Pablo crouched in the snoeen the He rubbed his upper arms as they studied the scene

Just like in Beleed in an alhly half a kilometer in diameter In Ireland there’d been a purple do Tania still found hard to believe In Belem, the toere cloaked in a hu

Here the entire circle of towers rested in plain sight, which so Nearly half of the toere positioned on the ground ae The other half extended up onto the rocky face of one of the five Flatirons Each had carved a small flat space upon which to rest, and hints of the violence used to do this were there in the form of rocks and debris that trailed down the rock face like tears