Purgonis is vast. The southern hemisphere is a wasteland even I don’t venture into. I could vanish there. Die slow, die forgotten. But I stay here. Near the cliffs. Close enough to see the smoke if something burns.
Maybe that’s the punishment I chose.
Maybe that’s the part I haven’t admitted until now.
I stare at the ceiling, watching faint plumes of condensation drift from a crack in the rock. They rise and vanish, rhythmic. Like breath. Like pulse.
“Stupid,” I mutter, voice gravelled and dry. “Softening.”
But I don’t believe the words. Not entirely.
I reach down and pull a chunk of dried sting tail from the ration pouch by the wall. It smells like sulfur and old leather, but it fills my stomach. As I chew, the tang coats my tongue—sharp, gamy, spiced by the minerals it absorbed from the soil. There’s no comfort in it. Just fuel.
My claws tap against the stone beside me, restless.
Maybe I should do something. Maybe I should warn them.
But how?
They see me and scream. Shoot. Run.
Even if I wanted to speak to them, what would I say?
"Hello, I’m the creature your ancestors painted with blood and fear. I’m here to help."
Idiocy.
I finish the meat and toss the bone aside. It skitters across the stone and lands in the pile with the others. The noise echoes far too loud for such a small thing.
I lean my head back and close my eyes.
Tomorrow, the students will venture farther. They always do. Some to map. Some to play scientist. Some because they don’t believe in monsters until teeth are in their flesh.
And when it happens—someone will have to clean up the mess.
It won’t be me.
I swore I was done bleeding for causes that weren’t mine.
But as I sit in the dark, the image of her face refuses to fade. That look in her eyes, like she was trying to solve the planet instead of survive it.
I don’t know why it haunts me.
But I don’t sleep.
I sit, awake.
Listening.
Waiting.
Still too close.
CHAPTER 3
JILLIAN
By the third day, the romance of alien world fieldwork has peeled away like sunburned skin.
