“Because he’s useful,” I say, and the inmate whimpers like he understands the word.
Jordan’s eyes narrow. “How?”
I crouch, grab the inmate’s jaw, and tilt his face up. His pupils are blown so wide they swallow the iris; there’s a faint chemical stink on his breath that burns the inside of my nose.
“Hey,” I say to him, conversational, like we’re two guys at a bar and he’s not half out of his mind. “You know the vent routes?”
He blinks slowly, drool cutting a line through dust on his chin.
“Listen to me,” I say, sharper now. “Do you know the vent routes to the station maintenance bays? Nod if you do. Shake your head if you don’t. This is the part where you pretend you’re still human.”
He stares.
Then—barely—he nods.
Jordan sucks in a breath. “You’re kidding.”
“No,” I say, and I stand, hauling the inmate up by the collar like he weighs nothing. He’s all bones and chemical hunger, light in my grip, and he shakes as I drag him along.
Jordan stares at my hand on his collar. “You’re… bringing him?”
“Yeah,” I say. “He’s our map. Also our decoy, if we need one.”
Her expression hardens. “That’s?—”
“Practical,” I finish for her. “Welcome to Yatori.”
She opens her mouth, then closes it again, jaw flexing like she’s chewing on words she doesn’t want to swallow. Finally she says, “Fine. But if he tries anything?—”
“I already killed two,” I remind her, and my voice comes out flatter than I mean it to. “He knows the rules.”
We move.
I keep us in the wash for a few minutes, then angle up through a narrow cut where the rock walls squeeze close enough to block line of sight from above. The stone here is warmer, sun-baked, rough under my palms when I brace to climb; it scrapes at my scales and drags dust into the grooves. The air tastes like minerals and blood and that lingering ozone from the field, and every so often the wind shifts and carries the distant, amplified broadcast again—declaring execution, declaring righteousness, declaring a war it wants to start.
Jordan keeps glancing back toward the station like she expects it to follow her.
“Stop looking,” I tell her.
She shoots me a glare. “Excuse me for wanting to know if the murder building is still murdering.”
“It is,” I say. “Looking won’t change it.”
“It might change what I do next.”
I pause long enough to face her fully, letting the inmate sag against the rock behind me. Jordan’s chest rises and falls fast;her cheeks are flushed from running, her lips dry and cracked, eyes bright with anger trying to cover fear.
“You want to do something next?” I ask. “Good. Then you stay alive long enough to do it. That’s the deal.”
She holds my gaze. For a second she looks like she wants to spit in my face.
Instead she asks, quieter, “Why are you helping me?”
I could lie. I’ve lied to survive. I’ve lied to win. But out here the air strips lies down to bone.
“Because you’ve got something they want,” I say. “And because you’re not drooling on yourself like everybody else. Those are my two reasons. Don’t make it poetic.”
Jordan’s mouth twitches, like she hates that she almost smiled. “Fair.”
