Chapter 8: Landing in the Dark

The ship came down wrong.

Marcus heard it before he saw it — a low, asymmetric groan in the cloud cover, the sound of something moving through atmosphere at an angle it hadn't been designed to hold. He had stationed himself at the edge of the Hendricks property's treeline, where the standing corn from three seasons ago had gone to rot and the waterlogged ground made no noise under boots if you stepped carefully. He had been there for forty minutes. He had the landing coordinates marked on a handheld unit stripped of its wireless capability, and he had Tomás parked on the Route 50 side road with the truck idling and the flatbed covered, and he had eleven minutes before the next Kree patrol rotation came through the corridor.

The groan shifted pitch. He watched the sky.