Page 39 of Blightfall

“Why’d you pick Sentry?” Nedd asked.

“Because I thought it sounded fierce,” I said. “Like a guardian who protects people, you know?” I shrugged. “I know, I know. I should have picked something that suits me more, like Chatter or Sunshine or—”

“I like Sentry,” Nedd said. “I think it works for you.”

My head was doing that fizzy thing again. Which was ridiculous. Even if I was the kind of girl Nedd would see that way, he was assistant flightleader, my superior, and definitely off limits. That hadn’t stopped other flight members in the past, but I was not the incomparable Jorgen Weight. He and our old flightmate Spensa were cytonic and therefore barely under military control at the best of times. I was also not going to be spontaneously promoted to admiral and suddenly outrank anyone who might look at me sideways.

They were special. I was not. So even in an alternate universe where Nedd wanted to date me, it wasn’t meant to be.

We were both silent now—and scud, was it an awkward silence? Was I supposed to thank him for liking my callsign and thinking it suited me? But after this long pause, that would certainly be awkward. Stars, why didn’t I thank him right away?

“Why do you think it suits me?” I blurted out.

Good job, Sadie. Way to not make this weird.

“Because you want to see everything,” Nedd said. “The sentries are the ones who watch, right? The ones who see everything first and get to tell the story.”

“I do like the idea of telling the story,” I said. “In that case, you’d better be the one who gets eaten by the tree, so I can live to tell the tale.”

“Eh, they’d only take a bite out of me anyway,” Nedd said. “I probably taste terrible.”

“That would make for a funnier story if you only got bitten instead of eaten.”

“It would. Though with my luck, they’d get my good arm.”

I smiled. “I bet the story would be more entertaining if you told it.”

“Nah,” Nedd said. “No one has your flair for the dramatic.”

I wasn’t sure I wanted a reputation for being the dramatic one. “Am I dramatic?” I asked. “Or just excitable?”

“ ‘Excitable’ might be a better word. It’s good, though. Arturo and Alanik are too serious. I need help lightening the mood around here.”

Nedd was always good for that—though since his crash, sometimes he seemed quieter than before, and other times louder, like he was playing a version of himself.

“Do you ever get tired of being the funny one?” I asked.

Nedd looked at me sharply, like I’d said something wrong. Or maybe like I’d seen things he didn’t want others to notice.

“It’s not the easiest job,” Nedd said. “It often feels like there’s not a lot of reason to laugh, but we all need to keep doing it anyway.”

“Better than the alternative,” I said.

He nodded. “Much.”

Nedd’s eyes fell to the water, his jaw set. If we were dating, or even close friends, I would have asked him what he wanted to do instead of laugh. But Nedd and I weren’t close—just flightmates having a casual conversation, and I didn’t want to make it weird, so I didn’t ask.

“Yeah, okay,” I said. “You can count on me to help with the laughs.”

We fell silent again, and this time it was definitely awkward. Mostly because I didn’t know what else to say. I could ask why Nedd picked his callsign, but the origin behind Nedder wasn’t exactly a mystery. We’d just established I was supposed to be funny, but what if I couldn’t think of a joke? Did that mean I wasn’t good at that job either?

“Do you think the drones will find us here?” I asked finally, watching the lavender sky.

“They haven’t yet,” Nedd said. “That seems like a good sign.”

“Why do you think they wanted to kill us?”

“Arturo’s probably right,” Nedd said. “They learned we defeated the Superiority, and they’re afraid of what we’ll do to them.”