First Landing hadn't changed since the last time David saw it. The same prefab buildings, the same dusty streets, the same mix of hunters and merchants and people who'd come to the Expanse looking for something they couldn't find on Earth. The portal had deposited them at the edge of town just after dawn, the light different here than on Earth, thinner somehow, like the sun was further away even though it wasn't.
Lucas stretched his arms above his head, taking up space like he always did, his bag slung over one shoulder. "Feels like coming home. Remember the first time we came through here? You almost got us killed by that horned rabbit thing."
"I wasn't almost killed by a rabbit."
"You were definitely almost killed by a rabbit. Becca saw it, ask her."
Becca was already walking toward the center of town, her eyes scanning the buildings, the people, the movement at the edges. "I saw someone almost trip over a rabbit. Not the same thing."
"See? She agrees with me."
David shook his head and followed Becca, Lucas falling into step beside him, still talking, still filling the silence with noise. It was comforting, having him here, having both of them. The deep Expanse stretched out beyond First Landing, days of travel through territory no one had mapped in years, and walking into it alone would have felt like walking into something he might not walk back from.
They stopped at the supply depot first, a squat building at the center of town where hunters bought their gear and sold their cores and traded stories about what they'd found in the deep zones. The woman behind the counter looked up when they walked in, her eyes moving over them with the practiced efficiency of someone who'd seen a lot of people come through with a lot of different reasons for being here.
"You three heading out?" she asked, her voice flat, uninterested.
"Deep Expanse," David said. "C-rank zones and beyond. We need supplies for at least two weeks."
The woman's eyebrows rose slightly. "Beyond C-rank? There's nothing out there but ruins and things that haven't been mapped since the portals opened."
"We're not looking for things that have been mapped."
She studied him for a moment, then shrugged and started pulling supplies from the shelves. Rations, water purification, medical kits, the kind of gear that people took when they didn't know what they were going to find or how long it would take to find it.
David paid with the credits the Moon Clan had given him, more than he'd ever seen in his life, enough to buy whatever they needed and still have plenty left over. Becca had tried to give him more before they left, had shoved a credit chip into his hand with the kind of finality that said she wasn't going to take it back. He'd kept it, tucked it into his pocket with the crystal and the list and everything else he was carrying.
Lucas loaded the supplies into their packs, humming something under his breath, acting like this was any other trip into the Expanse, like they weren't walking into something that had gotten people killed.
"You nervous?" David asked him quietly.
Lucas looked up, his expression shifting for just a moment. "Yeah. A little. You?"
"Yeah."
"Good. Means we're not stupid." Lucas grinned, the mask back in place. "Stupid people don't get nervous before they do dangerous things. We're gonna be fine."
David wanted to believe him. He wanted to believe that three people with a map and a journal and a crystal could walk into the deep Expanse and find something that had been hidden for eighteen years. He wanted to believe that the people who'd been hunting for it wouldn't find them first.
He wanted to believe a lot of things.
---
They left First Landing by mid-morning, taking the northern road that led past the D-rank zones and into the territory where the survey maps stopped and the wild things began. The road was little more than a path after the first few miles, worn down by hunters who went further than most, and it disappeared entirely after they passed the last safe zone marker.
Lucas took point, his size and strength making him the obvious choice for whatever they might run into first. Becca was behind him, her eyes moving constantly, her shadows flickering at the edges of David's vision. David brought up the rear, the journal open in his hands, checking their route against the maps his father had drawn.
The terrain changed slowly at first, the familiar scrub of the lower zones giving way to thicker vegetation, taller trees, ground that hadn't been walked on in years. The mana was thicker here too, pressing against David's skin like humidity, making the fire in his chest flicker and pulse in response.
"This is where the survey teams stopped," Becca said, pointing at a marker half-hidden in the undergrowth. "Everything past this point is unmapped. The government didn't think it was worth the risk to go further."
David looked at the journal, at the path his father had drawn, leading into the mountains that rose against the horizon. "He went further. He built something out there."
"Your father was a legend, David. Legends do things ordinary people don't."
They pushed on.
The first day was hard, the terrain rougher than any of them had expected, the path his father had drawn not matching anything they could see on the ground. David stopped a dozen times, checking the journal, checking the crystal, trying to make sense of symbols his father had drawn twenty years ago. Becca found them water at a stream she remembered from some map she'd studied, and Lucas scouted ahead, his density shifting as he moved, making himself heavier and lighter as the ground required.
They made camp at dusk, finding a clearing that gave them visibility in all directions, the kind of place someone who'd spent time in the Expanse would choose. Lucas built a fire without being asked, the flames catching the underbrush, and they sat around it eating rations and listening to the sounds of the night.
"What do you think it is?" Lucas asked eventually. "The thing in the vault. What do you think he was protecting?"
David stared into the fire, thinking about his father's face in the vision, the way he'd looked at the light in the center of that underground chamber. "Something worth dying for. That's all I know."
Becca was quiet for a moment, her shadows pooling at her feet, moving in ways that had nothing to do with the firelight. "My grandmother told me once that the Phoenix Clan was different from the other clans. That they had something the others didn't. Something that made them powerful in a way that couldn't be measured by ranks or abilities."
"You think that's what's in the vault?"
"I think your father died to protect something, David. And I think the people who killed him have been looking for it ever since. Whatever it is, it's important. Important enough to wait eighteen years for."
Lucas tossed another branch on the fire. "Then we find it first. We find it and we figure out what it does and we make sure the people who want it never get their hands on it." He looked at David. "That's why we're here, right? That's what we're doing."
David nodded slowly. "That's what we're doing."
---
The second day was harder than the first.
The ground rose as they approached the mountains, the trees thinning, the air getting colder, the mana thicker and more resistant. David could feel it pressing against his fire, pushing back, making him work harder to maintain the warmth that kept them from freezing in the higher altitude. Lucas was breathing hard beside him, his size making the thin air harder to manage, and even Becca was showing signs of strain, her shadows slower to respond than they'd been in the lower zones.
David stopped at midday, pulling out the journal, checking their progress against the map his father had drawn. The symbols were clearer here, the path more defined, like his father had known exactly where he was going when he'd marked this territory.
"We're close," he said, looking up at the mountain ahead. "Another day, maybe less. The vault is in there somewhere. Hidden where no one would find it without knowing what to look for."
Becca moved to stand beside him, her eyes on the mountain. "There's a cave system in the eastern face. The survey records mention it, but they said it was unstable, not worth exploring." She looked at David. "Your father knew how to hide things."
"He knew how to protect things." David started walking again, faster now, the exhaustion of the past two days forgotten. "There's a difference."
They found the cave entrance an hour before sunset, a crack in the mountain's face that would have been invisible from any distance. David felt the crystal pulse in his pocket as they approached, felt something in the mountain responding to it, to him, to the blood that ran in his veins.
"This is it," he said, his voice barely a whisper. "This is where he built it."