"You've been calibrating that same junction for twelve minutes."
"It's a complicated junction."
Our eyes meet, and the air between us does something that shouldn't be physically possible. He looks away first. I look away second. The canteen sits between us, untouched, radiating a domestic intimacy that is somehow worse than the overt tension.
"We should scout the canyon," he says. "Map the escaped specimens' movement patterns. Understand what we're dealing with before the beacon window opens."
"Yes. Outside. Moving. Excellent plan." Anything that puts distance between me and the feel of his chest under my palms and the way he breathedlittle flareagainst my shoulder like it was pulled from somewhere he couldn't reach to stop it.
The canyon is beautiful in daylight, and I am trying very hard to appreciate it for its geological significance rather than for the fact that the narrow passages keep forcing us into proximity that makes my skin hum.
Purple-tinged basalt walls rise on either side, threaded with mineral veins that catch the light. Bioluminescent flora clings to the rock faces, pulsing faintly in response to our movement. Water trickles somewhere ahead, the sound softened by stone.
Horgox reads the canyon the way I read circuitry: without thinking, instinct and expertise braided together. He shows me claw marks gouged into the stone along the passage walls, deep grooves carved with methodical precision.
"Territory markers," he says, crouching to trace one with careful fingers. "Whatever escaped your cargo hold is claiming this section of the canyon system."
The grooves are nearly an inch deep. I kneel beside him, studying them. "How big does something have to be to carve stone like that?"
"Considerably larger than the scavengers we fought. The spacing between the claw marks suggests a bipedal gait, maybe seven or eight feet at full extension." He examines the pattern more closely. "And these aren't random. There's repetition, structure. This is communication, not destruction."
"Saying what?"
"Territory claimed. Others stay away." His jaw tightens. "ApexCorp doesn't create mindless animals. Whatever this is, it's intelligent enough to establish territory and communicate boundaries."
The wordcreatesits badly in my mouth. Made, not born. Modified, not natural. The same thing they did to Horgox; the same thing they'd have done to whatever was in my cargo hold.
We round the next bend and I stop walking.
The canyon wall to our left has beendestroyed. Not gouged or marked. Destroyed. A section of basalt six feet wide has been smashed inward, rubble scattered across the passage floor, the rock face bearing impact damage that looks like something drove into it at full speed. Above the impact point, claw marks dwarf the specimen's territory scratches. These furrows are a foot wide and four inches deep, carved through solid stone with a force that my engineering brain calculates and then refuses to process.
"That's not the specimens," I say.
"No." Horgox's voice has gone flat. "That's the Rexor. The one I told you about." He examines the damage with the assessment of someone who has spent three months respecting this creature's territory. "These marks are recent. A few days old. It's been expanding its range since the drones increased their search patterns."
"The drones are driving it toward the canyon system."
"Possibly. Or it's hunting the escaped specimens. Either way, it's closer than it's been since I arrived." His jaw tightens. "The canyon entrances are still too narrow for it. But if the passages collapse from this kind of impact—"
"Then our safe zone isn't safe anymore." The sheerscaleof the destruction. Something hot and furious builds in my chest. This planet. This endless, relentless planet with its acidic rain and its apex predators and its corporate drones and now a six-metre armoured nightmare casually smashing the walls of the only place we've been able to sleep. "Stompy."
"What?"
"That's its name. I'm not calling it Rexor Primus like it's a product designation. It's Stompy. Because it stomps things and I hate it."
Horgox stares at me for a long second. "You've named the most dangerous predator on this planetStompy."
"If I can name my spare parts, I can name the thing trying to collapse our bedroom. At least Stompy's name is honest."
Something crosses his expression that might be exasperation or might be the realisation that he's stuck in a canyon with a woman who processes existential terror by assigning aggressive nicknames.
"Stop." His hand comes up. The predator-alert stillness, every line of him changing.
I freeze. Behind the nearest formation, pressed into a shallow alcove, his body shielding mine against the stone. His chest against my back, his arms on either side, his breath warm against the top of my head. The root cave all over again, except everything has changed. In the root cave I was terrified of the stranger pinning me in the dark. Now my body catalogues the position with an entirely different kind of awareness, and I have to fight to keep my breathing steady because the feel of his hips against my lower back is doing things to my concentration that no amount of professionalism can override.
"Movement," he breathes. "Southeast. Fast."
Through a gap in the rock, I see it.
