I could do this.
Before I left the shelter, I carved another mark into the bone. Three horizontal lines, same as yesterday. My signature now. Proof of passage. Proof I was still thinking, still planning, still here on my own terms even if my body had other ideas.
I circled the perimeter of my shelter and found what he'd left me: one direction. Northeast, toward the skull on the horizon. Every other route was blocked by fresh construction, walls that rose ten, fifteen, twenty feet high.
A maze. He'd built a maze around me while I'd tried to sleep. While I'd fingered myself uselessly in the dark, he'd been shaping my path.
I wasn't lost. I was being herded.
I had to admire the work even as rage built in my chest. The load calculations alone would have taken me hours with proper tools. He'd done them in the dark, by feel, with materials he'd gathered from god knew where. The craftsmanship was beautiful. Deliberate. The work of someone who understood structure the way I understood structure.
At least this monster was honest about trapping me. My family had used love and obligation and guilt. He was just using walls.
I started walking.
The maze shiftedthroughout the day.
Paths that had been open when I passed closed behind me. New walls appeared at intersections, funneling me along a routeI hadn't chosen. I tested every barrier I came across, looking for weaknesses, looking for handholds that might let me climb over.
Nothing. The walls were too smooth, too high, too perfectly constructed. Even where the bone was rough enough for grip, the angle was wrong, designed to prevent exactly what I was trying.
He'd thought of everything.
At one intersection I found evidence of his planning. Scratches in the bone surface that weren't weathering. Tool marks. He'd carved guidelines for himself, mapping out the maze before building it. I traced the marks with my fingers, reading his intentions the way I'd read blueprints.
This section was designed to curve. To lead me in what felt like a straight line while actually spiraling me inward toward the center. If I hadn't noticed, I'd have walked three times the actual distance while thinking I was making progress.
Clever. Methodical. The work of someone who planned before he built.
At least he was better at this than Jonah had ever been at anything.
The walking was its own kind of torture. Every step made my pants drag across my swollen clit. The seam hit the same spot over and over, creating a rhythm of stimulation that kept me perpetually on edge but never pushed me over. By midmorning, I was stopping every fifty feet to press my hand between my legs, trying to ease the pressure, trying to create enough friction to tip me into release.
It never worked. My body knew the difference now. It would only accept one thing.
I hated it. Hated him. Hated myself for the wetness that soaked through my pants and left dark patches visible on the fabric. Hated that I'd started thinking about what it would feellike to stop fighting. To go to my knees and let him do whatever he wanted. To finally, finally be filled.
No. I wasn't that far gone. Not yet.
My legs were burning by noon. The terrain was uneven, the bone surfaces angled in ways that made my ankles work constantly to maintain balance. My calves cramped. My lower back ached. The tonic was draining resources I needed for basic movement, and the dehydration from constant arousal made everything worse.
The walls around me told a story as I traveled through them. Tool marks. Deliberate cuts where the bone had been shaped to fit specific angles. He wasn't just moving these structures; he was carving them, fitting them together like a master mason fitting stone.
I stopped at one junction and examined the join between two massive femurs. The cut was clean, precise, angled to create interlocking teeth that held without any external support. I'd used similar techniques on the Huang retrofit, back when I still thought my career might go somewhere before the debt ate my life.
This was better. Cleaner. The work of someone who'd been perfecting the craft for longer than I'd been alive.
Grudging respect. The bitter recognition of meeting someone who understood what I understood, who saw the world in terms of load and balance and structural integrity.
He was still a monster keeping me in a cage. But he was a monster who could build.
I needed water.
The marked water source appeared around a corner, a natural basin in a pelvis formation, filled with clear liquid that smelled clean. Too convenient. Too perfectly placed. But I didn't have a choice. The heat was brutal, the tonic was making me sweat constantly, and the fluid loss from my perpetual arousalmeant dehydration would kill me faster than whatever he was planning.
I knelt beside the basin and drank.
The water was cool. Clean. Tasted like mineral dust. I drank deeply, grateful for something my body needed that I could?—
