He helps me stand. Tests my weight on the ankle. It twinges but holds.
"Lean on me when you need to," he says.
I take his arm. Not because the ankle demands it. Because he offered, and the offering matters.
The canyon system reveals itself in stages. Jungle thinning, stone breaking through vegetation, walls rising on either side until our footsteps echo and the canopy is a narrow strip of sky far overhead. The entrance is tight enough that Horgox has to angle his horns to pass, which means nothing larger is getting through without significant effort.
"This is why you chose this location," I say.
"One of the reasons." He runs his hand along the narrowed stone. "The canyon dwellers can fit through. The scavengers wefought can fit through. But the thing that runs the lowlands can't."
"The thing that runs the lowlands."
"The facility records designated it Rexor Primus. Apex predator. Solitary, territorial, armored scales, approximately six meters at the shoulder." His voice is flat, tactical, the tone he uses for threats he respects. "I've been avoiding it for three months. It can't navigate the canyon passages, which is the primary reason I'm still alive."
Six meters at the shoulder. My brain converts that into a visual and then immediately tries to unconvert it.
"Good canyon," I say faintly. "I like this canyon. Let's stay in this canyon."
Inside, the passage widens into a sheltered bowl. Waterfall feeding a clear pool. Rock formations creating natural alcoves. Basalt walls threaded with mineral veins that catch the afternoon light.
Horgox pauses at the entrance to the main chamber, and his posture changes. Not the tactical readiness I've been watching for two days. Something more uncertain. Shoulders held differently, weight shifted, the way someone stands when they're about to show you something that matters.
"This is where I've been." His voice is careful. "Three months. No one else has been here."
The cave is lived-in. Not survived-in: lived-in. Supplies organised in natural alcoves with a logic that speaks of a mind that needs order. Fire pit positioned to vent smoke through ceiling cracks. Sleeping area with moss padding, worn into the shape of a body much larger than mine. Small touches everywhere that sayI am still a person, I still make choices, I still build things even when the world wants me to stop.
On a flat stone surface near the sleeping area: marks scratched into the rock. Not tallies. Geometric patterns, precise andcomplex, overlapping in ways that suggest mathematics as much as art. The kind of thing a mind does when it has nothing to work on but itself.
"You made these." My fingers trace the nearest pattern without touching the stone. Respecting the surface.
"Habit." He's standing at the cave entrance, not watching me examine his space. Watching the canyon mouth. Giving me privacy with his vulnerability. "Helps me think."
"They're beautiful."
"They're distractions." But the word doesn't carry conviction. He knows what they are. Evidence that a lifetime of arena conditioning and three months of isolation didn't kill the part of him that creates.
"Thank you." I turn to face him. "For bringing me here. For trusting me with this."
His gaze comes back from the canyon mouth. Holds mine for a beat longer than tactical assessment requires.
"You earned it," he says. And then, quieter: "I wanted to."
We fall into routine faster than I expected.
Horgox shows me the water source deeper in the cave system, mineral-rich and clean. I set up Bebo's core on the flat stone work surface and start spreading salvaged components for beacon assessment. He builds the fire, checks the perimeter, demonstrates which passages lead where and which are dead ends. The cave has three exits; he's mapped all of them, knows which are defensible and which are escape routes, has them catalogued the way I catalogue replacement parts.
When he comes back from the final perimeter check, I'm cross-legged on the stone floor with circuits spread around melike a fortune teller's cards, and Bebo is walking me through diagnostic protocols.
"Beacon repair is feasible but we're short on components." My fingers sort viable parts from wreckage salvage. "Power cells are the main gap. Everything else I can fabricate or jury-rig, but without clean power cells the broadcast range won't reach Junction One."
"Alternate power sources?"
"The emergency beacon ran on standard courier-grade cells. Buttercup's wreckage might have surviving cells, but that site's under drone surveillance. We'd need—"
"Wait." Bebo's processing hum changes pitch. "I'm detecting compatible circuitry. Very close. Within two metres of your current position."
My head comes up. I scan the cave: stone walls, moss bedding, fire pit, Horgox standing at the entrance, his harness—
