"Look at her! Under all the mud and the stains, she'swhite. Silver-white. She's basically a giant, terrifying, murder-capable snowball." The creature tilts her head at the sound of the name, those green eyes considering. "See? She likes it."
"She is an apex predator with claws that cut stone."
"And her name is Snowball. Deal with it."
The sounds from the tunnels grow louder. Multiple creatures, moving fast, the scrape and click of claws on stone echoing from multiple passages. Canyon dwellers, drawn by the roar.
Snowball's head swings toward the tunnel entrance where the sounds are loudest. Her lips pull back from teeth the size of my fingers, and the sound she makes is pure territorial fury.
Then she moves.
Deliberately, unhesitatingly, she positions herself beside Horgox at the entrance. Another body between the threat and the person who freed her.
Horgox stares at the creature standing shoulder-to-shoulder with him, then at me. "It—"
"She."
"Snowballis going to fight with us?"
"Snowball is going to fight with us." My molecular torch is already in my hand, set to maximum cutting. "She knows what side she's on. The side that takes the collars off."
Something crosses Horgox's expression. Not amusement, not exasperation. Something warmer, fiercer. The look of a male watching someone do exactly the thing he fell for and knowing he's powerless to stop any of it.
"When this is over," he says, "I need to tell you something."
"When this is over," I agree.
The first canyon dweller bursts into the chamber.
Snowball meets it with a roar that shakes the mountain, and the battle begins.
7
What Breaks Open
Horgox
Thecanyondwellercomesin fast, serrated teeth aimed at my legs. The blade arcs down, redirecting its momentum, but two more flank us from the left passage and a third scrambles across the ceiling with claws that gouge stone.
Snowball meets the ceiling-crawler mid-drop. Eight feet of newly freed fury, silver-blue veins blazing along her spine, wrong-jointed arms catching the dweller and hurling it against the chamber wall hard enough to crack basalt. The sound she makes is territorial and absolute:this space is claimed, these beings are mine, the cost of challenging that is death.
Krilly fights with her molecular torch. Bright flashes that blind, precision cuts through grasping claws. We've been partners for days, and the synchronisation has become instinct. She draws attention; I deliver follow-through. I shield; she exploits the opening. No words. Just trust operating faster than language.
A dweller gets past my guard, coming straight for her. Snowball intercepts before I can move, slamming it down with a force that reverberates through the floor. Then those luminous green eyes find Krilly, and Snowball rumbles. Low, deliberate.I protect what freed me.
Then the second wave hits.
More dwellers pouring through the breached tunnels. And behind them, something larger. Another specimen, the same ursine bulk and wrong-angled limbs, but this one is bigger than Snowball. Darker fur, almost black. Its movements are mechanical, efficient, eerily precise. No rage, no hesitation. The flat, programmed violence of a being operating under collar control.
Its collar blinks steady red-red-green-red.
Snowball recognises it. The sound she makes is different from her combat vocalisations. Anguished. A call that carriesrecognition and grief, directed at the collared specimen with a desperation that transcends species.
They know each other. Crate-mates, maybe. Imprisoned together, escaped together, and now one is still enslaved and the other is watching it come with murder in its programming.
The collared specimen attacks with the terrible efficiency of something that has no choice. Snowball fights back, but she's weakened from the infected collar's months of damage. The controlled specimen is larger, uninjured, and its mechanical precision has the unrelenting quality that compliance technology demands.
Snowball is losing.
