The day’s meal was much more edible this time as Mithra roasted the rest of the meat over the fire properly. It was bland without any spices, but it was food. A little salt would go a long way, but Leah didn’t have any—she didn’t eat anything again. Mithra watched her carefully the entire time to make sure, but with her lack of cooking skills and her general disinterest in food, she was suspicious the woman didn’t actually have to eat.

  They packed the leftover steaks into the bike’s packs and took down the tent. It was much easier than assembling one and they were back on the road in a few minutes.

  Days passed much the same as they traveled. Each night Mithra set up camp while Leah hunted. She offered to go hunting with her once, but Leah shot her down. They spoke little to each other the entire time, a few sentences at most, but Mithra slowly got used to the silent presence of Leah. The woman wasn’t as emotionless and mechanical as she seemed at first. Mithra was carefully keeping her divine energy away from her emotion mark, but even without it she slowly picked up on Leah’s mannerisms. They were subtle and not always there, but there were times when her emotions slipped through.

  The hatchling was growing quickly. It was molting, the muted gray feathers slowly being replaced by a dazzling array of colors; mostly green and blue, but red was starting to peek out too. It was growing too big to sleep with her in the sleeping bag and was visibly upset by it. It took to laying on her legs as she slept, leaving her sore in the morning. It was the size of a medium dog now, growing quicker than any animal had a right to, but Leah insisted it was normal.

  “The dinosaurs aren’t natural. How could they be? They went extinct millenia before the first humans walked the earth,” she said. “Why would they follow nature’s laws?”

  “Well, obviously not all of them went extinct, if they’re here now,” Mithra said. “Maybe some hid and after the Final War they took over when the regular animals died?”

  Leah glared at her. “The Gods are responsible for the dinosaurs. Didn’t they teach you that in church school or whatever you have inside the Veil?”

  “That makes no sense.” Mithra glared right back. “They’re a danger of the outside. The Gods didn’t make them, they protected us from them.”

  “Think through it for five seconds,” Leah said. “How do they grow so fast? What do they eat?”

  “Each other, of course.”

  “Sometimes, yeah. But look around you. The dinosaurs are all predators here. An ecosystem cannot sustain itself with only predators. If they fed on each other exclusively they would die out within a few years,” she continued. “There are no plants for herbivores to eat, hence no herbivores. But with no herbivores, what do the predators eat? Nothing. The Gods sustain them.”

  “No.” Mithra shook her head. “The Gods wouldn’t create something that was hostile to humanity. They’re benevolent.” Before Leah could retort, she added, “I agree it makes no sense for only predators to exist, but there must be some other explanations. It’s not like anybody is sending researchers into the wastelands to figure it out.”

  “Well, you’re wrong,” Leah said simply. “The Gods aren’t as benevolent as you think.” She turned to leave. Mithra grabbed her arm.

  “No, you don’t get to blaspheme and just leave without an explanation,” she said.

  “What’s there to explain? It’s not like you’re going to listen.” Leah tore her arm out of Mithra’s grip. “You think you’ve got all the answers because you were born inside the Veil. The outside doesn’t work like that. You know nothing of the real world.”

  The display of emotion from Leah was surprising. Mithra’s divine energy flowed dangerously close to her mind mark as her own anger rose.

  “Then teach me about it. You show me how to set up a tent once and then barely speak to me for a week. You treat me like a child, like you have to take care of me, do things for me. You say I don’t understand, but did you even try to explain? You what, assume I’m dumb because I was born on the right side of the Veil?”

  “It’s hard to see the truth when you’ve been raised in a lie,” Leah said. “I don’t explain because it’s pointless. If you don’t see for yourself, you won’t believe me anyway.”

  “How do you know that if you don’t even try?”

  “My parents tried, and all it led to was their early grave. I’m not making the same mistake,” Leah said and stormed off. Mithra didn’t stop her.

  ?

  That went well. All the goodwill she was slowly trying to build with Mithra, gone in minutes. But what was she supposed to do? Tell the truth? Right.

  ‘We do send researchers, but the Guardians slaughter them without mercy. The Gods you’ve been raised to worship are in fact malevolent and intent on killing everyone outside of their shiny Veil. The mark on your hand is actually my parent’s signature. No, I don’t know what it means. I’d love to ask them, but they were killed by Guardians. Actually, could you ask your uncle if he was the one that did it?’ Yeah, that’d work great.

  For all her distaste for the man, Rubrick would do a better job than her with Mithra. He’d find a way to spin everything in a way that wouldn’t end with them trying to kill each other. All Leah could do was dodge the topic and hope Mithra wouldn’t bring it up again. Which she would. She wasn’t stupid, just uneducated.

  Leah watched Mithra play with the baby Q from a hill a few kilometers out. The animal was learning to fly. It spread its wings and took a running start, flapping its wings fruitlessly. After a few failed attempts Mithra lifted it in one hand and threw it forward like one would a spear. This time the Q glided for a few meters before landing in a heap. It ran back to Mithra excitedly and climbed up. She threw it again and again, the animal growing more confident with every try; it even tried turning in the air to land on Mithra’s arm so she could throw it faster.

  The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

  It would be a real menace soon. Leah was ready for the moment it turned on them, but was dreading it. It would only sour the relationship with Mithra further when she had to kill it.

  The area was clear, but Leah still kept a watchful eye. They’d have to depart soon or something worse than a few raptors would take notice. There was safety in constant movement—the more dangerous threats were inevitable, but slow. They could be tracking them even now.

  Her emotions cooled, Leah made the trek back to the camp. Mithra didn’t stop playing with the animal as she approached. Leah was about to chastise her for not paying attention to the surroundings, but no. Mithra was paying attention, constantly scanning the horizon with small head movements. She was just pointedly ignoring Leah.

  Leah packed the tent in silence interrupted only by the occasional yelp from the flapling and praises from Mithra. She stomped out the fire and covered the still smoldering pit in snow. Mithra was still ignoring her.

  What should she do about the woman? What was the approach that led to the best result? A lie, a half-truth?

  She sat down on the snow and faced Mithra. It took a few minutes of silent staring, but finally Mithra noticed.

  “What?” she said. Leah channeled her best impression of an Enclave counselor and patted the snow next to her, inviting Mithra to sit.

  “I’m sorry,” Leah said. “It’s easy to dismiss your perspective on things just because you’re a Veiler. I will try to explain, if you’ll listen.”

  Mithra gave her an unimpressed look, but sat down. A knife hidden under Leah’s thigh gave her a measure of comfort. If Mithra attacked her because of the truth, then so be it. She was ready for that. But if she was willing to listen, Leah’d gain an invaluable ally here. Before, she was trying to approach the situation like Rubrick would, with lies and manipulations. No wonder she wasn’t getting anywhere.

  “I need you to really listen. Don’t just dismiss what I say because it sounds unbelievable. I can’t tell you everything, but I will try to explain.”

  “Not a great start,” Mithra said, but Leah saw the tension in her shoulders. The stiff way she sat in, so different to when she was playing with the hatchling. She would listen, but the question remained: what’d she do about what she heard?

  “The way you’ve been taught the world works, it’s wrong. Or maybe not wrong, but not entirely true either. After the war, the Gods came down to Earth. They created a paradise and let the chosen few live in it. But in the process, they broke something. And the people they left behind scrambled to pick up the pieces. The devastation you see all around you? It’s not the result of the war. People were surviving just fine after it. Not many, mostly small huddles of panicked beings that survived the apocalypse, but we could have rebuilt. After the Enclave formed, uniting the survivors, things were looking up. And then, the Veil appeared. And the world died again.”

  Leah could see it in Mithra’s eyes. The same reaction her parents must’ve gotten from the Guardians when they explained the truth to them. The knife under her thigh itched. But Mithra didn’t attack, yet.

  “At first people weren’t too worried. A crop failing was natural. When the second died, it was suspicious. It took a few years to truly see the effects, but when all the plants started dying en masse, for no particular reason, there was panic. As the plants withered, any animals that survived the war died soon after. People starved. A second extinction event, just after the first one.

  Survivors turned to the Guardians and the Veil for help, and they did help, at first. They wouldn’t let people in, but they did give away food. They fed people long enough for the scientists to figure out how to modify mushrooms so that people could survive solely on them. And then the Gods meddled again. They revived the dinosaurs.”

  “How do you know all that?” Mithra interrupted. “It must’ve been what, three hundred years ago? How are you so sure it's the truth?”

  “We have records of the cooperation with the Guardians, as well as the nutritional research, and the rest is obvious if you know where to look. The evidence of the mass deaths is everywhere if one digs enough,” Leah said.

  “Okay.” Mithra nodded.

  “Okay? You believe me?”

  “No,” Mithra said. “Okay as in, continue. I’m listening.”

  That was better than her parents had gotten. But the worst was still ahead.

  “The Veil cut down on trade because of the dinosaur problem, but that wasn’t the real issue. Without any plants, oxygen became a limited resource. With the population culled and most all animal-life extinct it wouldn’t be much of a problem. The oxygen still in the atmosphere should’ve been enough for two hundred thousand years, at least. But the dinosaurs use it up quickly, much quicker than should be possible according to calculations. There’s ten years left at most, before it dips low enough that even with the Enclave’s tech we’ll all suffocate. That’s the problem I am trying to solve.”

  Mithra gave her a sideways stare. “The Gods wouldn’t just condemn humanity outside the Veil to die if they could help it.”

  “I don’t know Gods, but I do know facts. When my parents figured out a link between the Veil and the plant-life dying, they went straight to the Church and the Guardians. Something about the make-up of the Veil disrupts photosynthesis on a global scale. When they proposed solutions, they were turned away. Violently,” Leah said. ‘Turned away’ was a heavy understatement. The Guardians tracked and hunted her parents for thirty years, without break. “The Guardians cut all trade and have been destroying any research bases we’ve tried to set up ever since.”

  “What was the solution?” Mithra asked.

  “Destroy the Veil.”

  Silence hung in the air for a few seconds, even the hatchling stopped making noises. Mithra stared at Leah wide eyed. “So, you want my help to destroy the Veil?”

  “No,” Leah lied. “There’s another way, I’m sure. Your mark is the key, no doubt. We just have to figure out the metaphorical lock.”

  “That’s good, because I would’ve said no if you did,” Mithra said.

  “Does that mean you believe me?”

  “Answer one question first. Can a mind mark control a person completely?”

  Leah couldn’t see how that question was in any way related to the conversation they just had, but she put too much on the stake already. She was so close.

  “No. Not completely, at least not physically,” Leah said. “But it can override decision making, influence a person’s thoughts very thoroughly. It won’t let you control someone, but it can come damn close in practice.”

  “Okay, then.” Mithra stood up abruptly. Leah’s hand shot instinctively to the knife, but the woman wasn’t attacking. She was holding out a hand. A Veiler gesture. “I’ll help you. I don’t believe everything you said, it’s hard to just trust things like that on faith. But if half of what you said is right, there’s a real danger to the people outside. I’ll help you fix it.”

  Leah shook her hand and smiled. She even lowered the mask, so Mithra could see the expression. The singular breath she took without it burned, but it was worth it.

  “Thank you,” she said. “We can start with fixing your awful haircut.”