The inmate pinned under his foot groans weakly.
Lonari shifts his weight, pressing down just enough to remind the man he’s not going anywhere.
I clutch my compad tighter, knuckles white.
“Okay,” I say, forcing my voice to steady, forcing my mind to stay technical because emotion is a luxury I can’t afford. “Then what? We just… run? Until we starve?”
Lonari’s eyes stay on mine, clear and unreadable.
“We move,” he says. “We survive the next hour. Then we talk.”
Behind us, the broadcast continues to blare its manufactured declaration into the dust-choked air, and somewhere far away the station keeps screaming.
I swallow, tasting blood and ozone and fear.
“Fine,” I say, because I don’t have a better option. “But if you’re planning to kill me and take the drive, I’m going to make your life extremely annoying first.”
For the first time, Lonari’s mouth actually twitches into something like a smile.
“Yeah?” he says. “You already are.”
And despite everything—the bodies, the jamming, the lies wearing Alliance armor—I feel a thin, dangerous thread of something like momentum tighten between us, the kind that only forms when two people realize they might be the only sane beings left in a collapsing world.
“Move,” he says.
I move.
CHAPTER 4
LONARI
The wilderness has a way of making introductions honest.
No titles. No handshakes. No bullshit. You meet somebody out here and you get the raw version—fear sweat, shaking hands, breath that tastes like copper, eyes that either track threats or don’t. Jordan’s eyes track. Even when she’s terrified, they keep moving, skimming the ridgelines, the wash walls, my hands, my throat, the pinned inmate under my boot like she’s building a math problem she intends to survive.
She’s got grit. I respect grit. I also don’t trust it.
“Move,” I tell her, because the longer we stand still, the more likely those quiet “Vakutans” send a sweep team outside the station and turn this wash into a grave.
She shifts her weight and clutches her compad like it’s a talisman. “Where?”
“Not here.”
“That’s not an answer.”
I look at her—small human, wiry, dust in her hair, eyes too bright in the thin light—and I feel something ugly in my chest that I haven’t felt in a long time. Not pity. Not softness. Something like… irritation at the universe for dropping her into my lap right now, like I don’t already have enough problems.
“You want an answer?” I say, keeping my voice low. “We go sideways. We get out of sight. Then we talk. Otherwise you can stand here and argue while the next patrol finds us and you get shot for being conversational.”
Her mouth tightens, but she nods. Smart enough to choose survival over pride.
I shift my foot off the pinned inmate’s back and he tries to crawl. I let him crawl for exactly one heartbeat, then I grab his ankle and yank him flat again. His face smears in the dust and he makes a sound like a dying engine.
Jordan flinches.
I clock it. The flinch isn’t disgust. It’s something closer to alarm—like she’s recalibrating the kind of monster I am and trying to decide whether I’m the kind that eats her next.
“Why didn’t you kill him?” she asks, voice tight.
