![]() The scans scientists took from orbit didn’t show so much as a microbe. ![]() There aren’t even any plants on this lifeless world, no shrubs for cover or trees to hide in. This isn’t like the ruins of Chicago, full of sewer tunnels and half-collapsed skyscrapers, with infinite places to hide and move around unseen. But studying the topographic surveys and satellite images of Gaia’s surface didn’t prepare me for just how barren this landscape is. “No one will ever even see me down there.” Because if I were home, if I were scavenging a city on Earth, that would be true. “I don’t need a gun,” I’d scoffed, not bothering to add that I wouldn’t know what to do with one anyway. At the time, it felt good to surprise the Contractor-to make her eyebrows shoot up underneath her bangs and stay there. You we r e r ight, Mink, I should’ve taken that gun. ![]() The other one’s smaller, a woman, I’m guessing, by the way she stands-but even she’d have the edge on me if they knew I was here. He’s around thirty or thirty-five, and easily twice my size. One of them is taller, bulky in the shoulders. Lying facedown against the rock, I wriggle forward just enough to see the tops of their heads over the edge of the overhang. ![]() The two scavengers below are talking to each other in Spanish, laughing and joking about something I can’t understand. This is really, really not going the way I’d planned. ![]() Excerpt from ‘Unearthed’ by Amie Kaufman and Meagan Spooner One ![]()
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