Crashed Part 15
Ken checked his rearview mirror, scanning for any reaction to the sound.
He knew it was Cellima. Still, he hoped he was wrong.
“People are turning back around, honey,” he said, forcing calm into his voice.
“Yes, I see. We should go back too,” Patty replied — her tone leaving no room for debate.
Ken began turning the truck around.
Suddenly, Patty gripped his forearm.
Hard.
“I feel her, Ken,” she shouted. “She’s afraid. She’s running. She’s killed… and she’s cornered, honey. She’s going to do it again.”
Ken felt the urgency in her voice more than the pressure in her hand.
The dogs were reacting exactly as Cellima had anticipated — driving her toward the lowest ground within miles.
If she was going to act…
now would be the time.
Cellima caught herself drifting.
Dangerous.
But it happened.
Her thoughts flickered to Orellan — to a world where all life was sacred. Where erasure was unthinkable. Yet here she was, on a foreign planet, having already erased two of its inhabitants… and now preparing to erase more.
These choices would follow her.
But what must be done, must be done.
The sound of the dogs was closer now.
Six. Perhaps seven.
She moved quickly.
From the ankle of her suit, she detached four signal boosters and pressed them into the earth at the gully’s edges — north, west, east, south.
A perimeter.
A convergence trap.
If she could drive them into the basin together, the focused beam would amplify through the boosters and erase them simultaneously.
Timing was critical.
The humans were not far behind.
If she failed to take them in one strike, the light from the focus would expose her position — and she would have only minutes to escape.
Worse, she could not retrieve the boosters once activated.
Any animal left un-erased would track her.
And next time, she would not have this advantage.
There they were.
Six of them.
Just a little further…
She nudged at their minds — gently, experimentally — unsure what it would produce, but desperate for it to work.
Still cloaked, she held her position.
They had her scent.
The first one found it.
Its head snapped upward, nostrils flaring, tracking.
Then she knew.
It had her.
The dog lunged.
She shuttered left — then upward — vanishing into the tree she had chosen earlier. The animal snapped at empty air.
Only one remained outside the basin.
It paced the perimeter, restless. Suspicious.
It would not commit.
The others were already howling, circling, closing.
The noise was growing.
It was now or never.
She activated the grid.
Light flashed — brief, violent, contained.
Then silence.
The signal boosters had performed with flawless precision.
But one remained.
The cautious one.
She dropped from the tree and ran, putting distance between herself and the basin before the humans reached it.
As she navigated the dense terrain, one thought broke through her focus.
The one called Patty.
She is near.
A roadway lies one thousand feet south.
Where she stands.
Where I must go.