“That’s not an answer.”
He shifts his weight slightly, and I hear the faint scrape of scales against leather, the soft clink of something—gear—at his hip. He looks me up and down like I’m a problem he’s assessing, not a person he’s rescuing.
“You’re not one of them,” he says.
“No,” I snap. “I’m not one ofanyone. I’m a contractor.”
“A contractor,” he repeats, like the word tastes funny.
I glance down at the inmate pinned under his foot. The man’s eyes roll, unfocused, mouth working silently.
“He’s drugged,” I say, because it’s obvious and because I need to anchor myself to facts.
“They all are,” the Grolgath replies. “If they eat.”
I stare at him.
His eyes stay clear.
“You’re not,” I say slowly.
One corner of his mouth lifts—not quite a smile, more like a private joke he’s not sharing.
“I don’t eat their food.”
A chill skates down my spine, not from the air but from the implication. Five years, according to the outline my brain is rapidly trying to stitch together from scraps: a convict surviving out here by refusing the rations that keep everyone else docile and feral.
I force myself to move, to retrieve my compad where it lies cracked against a rock. The screen still works—barely—holographic projection flickering like a dying candle.
The Grolgath watches me do it.
“What’s your name?” I ask, more carefully now.
He hesitates, and the hesitation is interesting. Not fear. Calculation.
“Lonari,” he says finally. “Kaijen.”
The name means nothing to me yet, but the way he says it—flat, unornamented—makes it sound like it should.
“Jordan,” I say. “Jordan James.”
“Okay, Jordan,” he replies, and the way he says it lands in my chest like a weight. “Why are you running into the wilderness instead of the station’s safe zones?”
I laugh once, sharp and humorless.
“Because the ‘safe zones’ are full of people getting executed.”
His gaze flicks toward the distant glow of the station.
“You saw?”
“I saw enough,” I say, and my throat tightens with the memory—blood on white floors, bodies dropping like they were nothing. “They’re wearing Vakutan armor, but the HUD biometric tags glitch. It’s a costume. They’re not Alliance.”
Lonari’s expression doesn’t change, but something in his eyes sharpens like a blade turning.
“Yeah,” he says softly. “I know.”
The broadcast tone swells again, louder now that the field is down and the sound carries. The station’s external speakers are pushing a message across the open terrain.
