Jamen shot her a warning glance. She crushed the temptation to argue further. There were times she had to remember she was his hanjin, his aide, and not his advisor.

“He’s unlikely to touch them until things are much worse. The rivers depend on those mountains.” Jamen scratched his chin and yawned. “I’m sorry, Mother. It has been a busy few days. We shall retire.”

The room allocated them was smaller than his residence. The house had a creaky feel to it and lacked the robustness of the city dwellings. Paige rather liked the way the floors bowed slightly and the walls had cracks in places. The imperfections were homey and reminded her of her parents’ house, which was built out of wood and battling termites.

Jamen stretched out on the bed. Paige eased his feet out of his boots and undid the ceremonial belt he wore around his waist. He opened his eyes as she crawled up the bed to lie next to him.

“Thank you,” he said softly.

“I often undress you,” she said with a shrug.

“I was referring to your behavior with my mother and sister. They were impressed.” He turned onto his side and ran his finger along her face. “What would you like to do tomorrow?”

“My choice?” she grinned, pleased that she’d made him happy.

He nodded.

“Take me somewhere that isn’t a city. Show me what the real Halos would look like if the Vendu hadn’t terraformed every inch of the land.”

He pursed his lips. “There isn’t much left, except the buffer zone.”

“Buffer zone?”

“The stretch of land by the barrier. It’s not cultivated or built upon. It runs the length of the boundary and acts as a buffer. It’s the one place that still has wildlife, although only the hardiest of creatures and plants can survive it.” He rolled onto his back and closed his eyes. “I suppose we could take a private shuttle. There is a landing area near one of the observation stations they use to monitor the barrier.”

She rested her head on his chest and listened to his slowing heartbeat. No sex tonight. That was okay. She could quite happily lie like this all night.

“Sounds like a plan, then.”

He snored softly.

* * *

Paige kicked the dirt up with the toecap of her shoe and the red dust billowed, caught on a gentle breeze. The ground was covered in black stones, similar to pieces of charcoal, and the shrubs that poked out here and there were spiky or covered in tiny leaves. The buffer zone was a red desert—what had she expected? A lush tropical wilderness, no, but something greener perhaps.

However, even though it was a desert environment, the landscape was beautiful and natural. If this was untainted Halos, it possessed an enduring quality, like the deserts back at home. Craggy rock formations provided shade, which, even with the plastering of sunblock and wide-brimmed hat, was necessary. Jamen had insisted jeans and long sleeves covered her pale skin and his mother had provided the lotion with a whimsical smile. She hadn’t questioned their decision to visit the buffer zone, but Paige could tell she thought it a crazy idea. How to explain humans’ love of crazy things? The need to test the limits of what was possible was something that the Vendu would find strange. They saw only technology and how it shaped their world, and certainly nothing adventurous if it didn’t involve fighting.

The scale of the region was vast. She’d not anticipated it would be as wide as a hundred miles or cut off from any kind of civilization. The landscape changed from fertile plains and urban centers to nothing in the blink of an eye as they journeyed toward the zone. Jamen had hired a private shuttle, one that wasn’t equipped with an automated pilot, so he flew it himself and with a confidence that shouldn’t have surprised her. He was a bottomless pit of secret skills and each new thing she discovered about him thrilled her.

The landing had been bumpy and he’d apologized as the craft skidded to a halt. The rough handling wasn’t his fault; there was no concrete or anything firm to land on. From the outpost, which was an unmanned observatory that recorded seismic activity, they stretched their legs and walked in the shadows of the rocks. He held her hand for a time, before his palm became too hot and clammy. Both of them would need long cold showers when they returned to the house.

“Where is the barrier then?” she asked.

“This way. You can’t see it. It’s demarcated by rows of horizontal laser beams. Every few kilometers there are generators that create the force field that rises into the stratosphere, but the red lines only go as a high as the shuttles fly—it’s a precautionary measure to warn pilots.” He led her away from the rocks and with their backs to the sun, they strolled, keeping their pace slow.

The lively sky before them was an angry mixture of fiery reds and hazy yellows. Now and then, she was convinced she saw flashes of lightning. However, the volcanoes weren’t visible, only the fire they spewed out. Distances were hard to gauge, so she guessed the mountains were far enough away not to create lava flows this close to the barrier.

She sniffed the air and the invisible particles stung the lining of her nostrils. There was an acridity in the air, like the pungent flavor of burning wood, but

without the presence of actual smoke. If this was the ‘clean’ air on the safe side of the barrier, she wondered how bad it was on the other side.

Something darted across in front of them. Paige squealed and clutched a hand to her heart. “What the—?”

The little creature circled a spot, sniffing the dirt with its long snout, before moving into the shadows of a spiky bush. It had the head of pig and tail of a fox. There was life in the small, dried-out canyons—hidden, but there.

Jamen stood next to her. “They’re quite common. I don’t know what to call them in English.”

They concluded there were no common words when it came to describing the wildlife—both of them lacked the vocabulary.

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