Half-eaten fruit sits on the stone beside her. Purple skin, pale flesh, seeds like tiny stars.
"Krilly. What did you eat?"
"Fruit." She looks up, and the smile widens. "Delicious fruit. Bebo said it was safe. I had two before he finished the full scan."
"Preliminary analysis confirmed edibility for human consumption," Bebo crackles from the core unit. "However, secondary chemical analysis indicates psychoactive alkaloid compounds. Effects include reduced inhibition, increased verbal honesty, elevated dopamine and oxytocin, mild euphoric states, and—" A pause that manages to sound apologetic. "Enhanced physical sensitivity."
"Truth fruit." My blood drops three degrees. The facility botanical database listed it asVeridex euphoria, native to the lowland canopy. It does not grow in the canyon system. She must have found it near the passage entrance where the lowland vegetation encroaches. "How much did you eat?"
"Two. And a half." She holds up the remainder, cheerful and doomed.
"Effects duration at that dosage: three to six hours," Bebo supplies. "Peak onset within thirty minutes. The physical sensitivity component manifests as increased tactile awareness and reduced personal space boundaries."
Reduced personal space boundaries. With a woman who kissed me twenty minutes ago and told me she'd been wanting it since day one. Who is currently sitting on the moss bed within arm's reach, looking at me with chemically dilated pupils and a smile that promises absolute catastrophe.
"I should—" I start backing toward the passage.
"If you leave this cave, you'll be in an unsecured canyon system with an open shoulder wound and active predators," Beboannounces. "I am obligated to note that this would be medically inadvisable."
Krilly's smile turns triumphant. "You're trapped in here with me."
She's right. Tactically, infuriatingly right. My shoulder needs rest, not a solo patrol through hostile territory.
Which means I am spending the next three to six hours in ten feet of space with an uninhibited Krilly Baxter.
"This is going to be a very long night," I say.
"On the contrary," Bebo responds. "I predict it will feel remarkably short."
Krilly laughs, bright and uninhibited and devastating, and the color in my markings deepens before I can suppress it.
Three to six hours.
I have survived arenas, facilities, three months in a murder jungle, and an apex predator named Pudding trying to tear out my throat.
None of it prepared me for this.
8
No Filter
Horgox
Maximumdistance.That’sthestrategy. Five metres of stone between us, my back against the far wall, every centimetre a barricade I am telling myself is adequate while every nerve ending in my body calls me a liar.
Krilly sits cross-legged on the moss bed, pupils blown wide, cheeks flushed the shade of her hair. The truth fruit has turned her expression into something between a confessional and a detonation countdown: the particular focus of someone whose brain has decided every thought she’s ever suppressed should exit her mouth immediately, in order of devastation.
She opens her mouth. Catches herself. A visible effort, the muscles in her jaw tightening, her hands gripping her knees. Three seconds of the old Krilly fighting the new chemistry, her expression shifting between the woman who keeps things back and the version the fruit is building from the raw material of her honesty.
The fight lasts exactly three seconds.
“Your shoulders are absurd,” she announces, and the defeat in her own voice suggests she’s aware she lost.
“I—thank you?”
“That’s not a compliment. It’s a formal complaint. I’ve been trying to learn jungle survival from you for days, and every time you push a branch aside, your shoulders do thisshiftingthing and I lose approximately thirty seconds of critical instructional content.” She gestures at me accusingly. “I can’t identify six edible plants because your deltoids are unreasonable.”
Something hot and inconvenient moves through my chest. My tactical mind files this as relevant intelligence: she watches my shoulders during navigation instruction. It also, unhelpfully, calculates the number of times I’ve pushed branches aside in her presence and cross-references each instance against her subsequent performance accuracy.
