“Are you sure you’re up for it?”
She glanced back at the records room, and I saw her swallow hard. But when she looked at me again, her expression was determined.
“I’m sure. We can’t help Explorer Thex-Nol, but we can make sure his death wasn’t meaningless.”
I squeezed her hand gently, then released it. “Then let’s keep climbing.”
As we resumed our ascent, I found myself thinking about what Zara had revealed about her past. Her fear of death, her drive to understand and predict the unpredictable—it all made sense now. She’d chosen a profession that put her in direct contact with the very forces that had traumatized her as a child, not despite her fear butbecauseof it.
That took a type of courage—or stubbornness—that most people never found. And now she was drawing on that courage again, facing down her deepest fears in order to survive. To help both of us survive.
I’d started this mission thinking of her as a responsibility,someone I needed to protect. But as we climbed toward whatever waited for us in the upper levels of the tower, I realized that wasn’t true anymore.
She wasn’t just someone I needed to protect. She was someone I couldn’t bear to lose.
The distinction mattered more than I was ready to admit.
CHAPTER 8
ZARA
By the time we reached level eighteen, my legs were protesting every step. I was definitely feeling the effects of climbing all these stairs, as the distance between each level was double that of an average story on Earth. I estimated we were about halfway up the tower. I made a mental note that when—when, notif—I got back to civilization, I should probably incorporate more physical activity into my routine. Not that I’d been sedentary before, but apparently, walking around research stations wasn’t quite the same as climbing alien towers during survival situations.
“You doing okay?” Torven asked, glancing back at me as we paused on another landing.
“Fine,” I said, trying not to sound as winded as I felt. “Just appreciating the architecture.” That was a joke. Or, it was meant to be one. My attempts at humor were really bad. Torven didn’t laugh.
He gave me a look that suggested he wasn’t buying mycasual tone, but he didn’t push it. Which was good, because I was definitely too winded to keep talking.
The upper levels were noticeably different from the lower floors we’d explored. Where the first ten levels had mostly been filled with equipment, research materials, and signs of hurried abandonment, these floors were mostly empty. Each landing opened onto sparse rooms with little more than basic fixtures and dust-covered surfaces. It was like climbing through the skeleton of the tower rather than its functional areas.
“Fewer people worked up here,” Torven observed as we checked another empty level. “Or maybe these were just storage areas.”
“Makes sense,” I replied, grateful for the excuse to catch my breath. “The higher you go, the less convenient it becomes for daily operations. Although, they did have a lift. Plus, if this was primarily a weather monitoring station, most of the important work would happen at intermediate levels where you could observe conditions but still have easy access to the main systems.”
As we continued climbing, I found myself stealing glances at Torven. Something had shifted between us after my breakdown in the records room. The way he’d held me, comforted me without making me feel weak or foolish—it had created an intimacy that hadn’t been there before. I felt safer with him, more comfortable, like I could actuallytalkto him instead of just exchanging necessary information.
“Tell me about your family,” I said as we climbed past level nineteen. “You’re from Damiron’s Sola, so were your parents warriors?”
Torven was quiet for a few steps, and I worried I’d overstepped. Then he said, “My mother was—is—a healer, although she spends her time in the Sola’s gardens these days. But my father was a great warrior. He fought bravely against the Brakken. Before we found the new Destra world and established the city there.”
“That must have been dangerous.”
“It was. But he survived, which was more than many could say. I fought beside him in those final battles against the Brakken, but the warrior’s path was not one I chose to remain on once we established the new city. He…did not approve of my decision to become a pilot.” His voice carried a note of tension, mixed with something that might have been sadness. “But I am proud to have fought and won beside him and the other brave Destran warriors, then. The Brakken were…brutal. They didn’t take prisoners, didn’t negotiate. It was kill or be killed with them.”
I thought about the scattered references to the Brakken I’d encountered in my research. “They were mentioned multiple times in the preparatory literature Maya, Cleo, and I were given before we embarked on the survey job. It said they were one of the reasons the Destrans had to leave their original territory.”
“Among other reasons, yes.” Torven’s skin had shifted to darker tones, the way it did when he was thinking about difficult subjects. “My father used to say that fighting them taught him the difference between surviving and living. Surviving is just staying alive from one day to the next. Living is finding something worth protecting.”
The way he said it made me wonder what he’d found worth protecting. Or if he’d found anything at all.
“What about your parents?” he asked, clearly wanting to change the subject away from wars and his parents.
“Both scientists, actually. Or maybe that doesn’t surprise you.” I smiled, thinking about them. “They met during a research expedition to study the chemical composition of the clouds on a gas giant. Very romantic, according to family legend. My mother likes to joke that their relationship was literally built on hot air.”
“That’s where you get your curiosity about weather systems.”
“Partly. Though the tornado incident with my grandparents was probably a bigger influence.” I paused, surprised at how easily I could talk about it now. “My parents were devastated when that happened. They threw themselves into their work afterward. I didn’t see them as much.”
