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"I'm moving, aren't I?" the merchant says. He's having a hard time focusing, but that might just be the shock. "And you look like I feel! Let's try to figure out where we are."

You help Alexius up onto another low hill. You can see grass, moss, thick jungle plants you don't recognize.

"You know," the merchant says, lowering his voice, "we're in a lot of trouble. Stralchus might be a crackpot, but I agree with him—I don't want to take orders from those robot things."

"They're moving," a controller says, raising her voice so you and Alexius can hear.

Your watchers have started to slip sideways down the hill. Still half-hidden by mist and small trees, they move like something has spooked them. They're definitely carrying spears, not rifles.

The wind shifts, bringing with it a carrion reek stronger even than the dead still strewn around your crippled craft. The three watchers vanish into the underbrush, and you feel yourself instinctively crouching beside Stralchus and Alexius as some primitive part of your brain reacts to the stink.

"What is it?" Control asks, her many bodies looking all around, unsure what's startled the living people. Then the controllers stop and turn as one to regard the thing that comes out of the mist.

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