"That's not happening."
"That's protocol."
"Then I'm breaking protocol." My voice comes out harder than I intend. Harder than banter, harder than flirting, the real Krillybeneath the jokes. "You're not going through interrogations alone. Not after everything. I'll fight Mother Morrison, I'll fight STI, I'll fight whoever I need to fight to stay with you during processing."
"You'd risk your career."
"I'd risk considerably more than my career." My hand finds his forearm, fingers pressing against the jade. "We survived a murder jungle. We freed Snowball and Pudding. We're in this together, which meanstogether. Not 'until it gets complicated.'"
His hand covers mine. Holds it there. The markings beneath my fingers warm, and I feel the shift of something new under the jade: a faint shimmer, opalescent, the wavelength Bebo logged last night. The claiming color, beginning.
"You're extraordinary," he says quietly.
"I'm stubborn. Different thing."
"Same thing, with you." His thumb traces my knuckles. "We'll figure it out. Whatever comes after rescue, we face it the way we've faced everything. Together."
"Together," I agree. Then: "But first, tonight."
The shimmer in his markings brightens. "First, tonight."
"Drone signature detected," Bebo announces, and the wordtonightdies in the sudden cold. "Single unit, approaching from the southeast. Non-standard pattern. It's running a search grid that will intersect the canyon system in approximately fourteen minutes."
The beacon. If ApexCorp's drone picks up the beacon's pre-transmission calibration signal, they'll know we have communication capability. They'll jam the frequency, or worse, triangulate our position before we can transmit.
"Kill the beacon's passive emissions," I say, already moving to the core unit. "Bebo, can you mask the calibration signature?"
"I can cycle to dormant mode, but it will require a full recalibration before transmission. Estimated time: ninety minutes."
Ninety minutes. Added to the remaining hours, pushing everything back, tightening the window.
Horgox is on his feet, blade in hand, scanning the canyon overhead for the drone's approach vector. The male who kissed me with devastating restraint this morning is gone; in his place is the tactician, the survivor, the one who reads threat trajectories the way I read circuitry.
"How close does it need to get to detect the calibration signal?" he asks.
"Within five hundred metres, depending on its sensor array."
"The canyon walls provide some shielding. If we move the beacon deeper into the tunnel system—"
"The basalt scatters the signal. That's why the canyon works forus, but moving it deeper means less broadcast range when we do transmit. There's a sweet spot; I need to recalculate for the new position."
His eyes meet mine. Not the heated look of the hot spring. Something harder, sharper. The look of a male who has been surviving institutional threats for longer than I've been alive, and who understands that the universe will not politely hold its dangers aside because two people want a night together.
"Do what you do best," he says. "Fix it."
So I fix it. Hands working while Horgox takes a position at the canyon entrance where he can watch the sky. The drone passes overhead twelve minutes later, its scanning beam cutting through the canopy above the canyon rim, and we hold our breath while the basalt does its job. The beam sweeps past. Continues southeast. Recedes.
"Clear," Bebo confirms. "The drone did not detect any emissions. However, I recommend expediting the recalibration.ApexCorp's search patterns have been widening for three days. The next pass may be closer."
My hands are steady, but my heart is hammering. Not from fear; from the specific fury of a woman who has had enough of this planet and this corporation and every obstacle between her and the life she's choosing.
Horgox returns from the entrance. His hand settles on my hip for three seconds, thumb tracing a circle through the jumpsuit fabric, and then lifts away and leaves a cold spot that aches.
"How long?" he asks.
"Sixty more minutes for recalibration. Then we transmit on the first clean window."
He nods. Doesn't saytonight. Doesn't need to. The promise is in the circle his thumb traced, in the color warming beneath his skin, in the way his eyes hold mine across the fire with the steady burn of something that's been building for days and knows it doesn't have to fight anymore.
