Her hands find the tracker where it sits against my ankle. Her fingers run along the band with the same clinical precision she used on my harness, on Snowball's collar, on every piece of technology she's ever decided to understand rather than fear.
"This one doesn't shock you." Her voice is steady. Professional. "Doesn't order you to kill. Doesn't carry compliance protocols or pain triggers or termination codes." Her thumb traces a line just above the band, across the skin of my ankle. "It keeps you alive long enough to testify. That's leverage, not ownership."
The distinction is simple. The distinction is everything.
"And when this is over," she says, looking up at me, "it comes off. That's a promise I'm keeping."
My hand finds her hair. The gesture is instinctive, the gentleness deliberate. In a medbay that looks too much like a facility, kneeling at my feet in a gown that's too big for her, she has just reframed the thing on my ankle from a chain into a tool.
"I believe you, little flare."
They separate us for statements. The investigator, Ramos, takes me through the timeline. When he asks about Krilly, I give him the truth.
"She freed me. Every choice she made was hers. Every choice I made was mine. We chose each other. Clearly, consciously, with full awareness of what it meant."
"The claiming mark," Ramos says. "The bond."
"Permanent neurological pair-bonding. Mutual. Voluntary. Initiated by her. My species' bonding doesn't function under coercion. It requires authentic mutual desire."
The corner of Ramos's mouth twitches. "I'm beginning to see why Deputy Director Morrison authorised the expedited hearing."
When the door opens and I see Krilly in the waiting room, her heartbeat comes roaring back to full volume in my chest. I cross to her without hesitation. Sit close enough that our thighs touch. My hand covers hers on the armrest, and the bond settles into the harmonic quiet of proximity.
Mother Morrison enters and briefs us. Tomorrow morning. Director Luzrak has been monitoring ApexCorp's operations for months. Our evidence is the missing piece. She tells Krilly about her parents, and the sharp, complicated grief that hits Krilly travels through the bond like a crack in glass.
"Room 247, residential block. Shared quarters because Baxter will refuse separate rooms and I'm too tired to argue with her about it." A glance at the claiming mark on Krilly's throat. "Get some rest. Tomorrow is going to be long."
Room 247 is small, functional, and the most luxurious space I have occupied in decades.
I have not had a door I could close in four decades. Have not had a room that wasn't monitored, surveilled, designed for containment. The arena barracks had open-plan layouts so handlers could maintain visual on assets at all times. The jungle had no walls.
This room has a door. And the door has a lock. And the lock is onmyside.
My hand finds the control panel. The door slides shut. The lock engages with a click that resonates through my chest with a weight disproportionate to its mechanical simplicity.
I stand there, hand on the panel, for longer than I should.
Krilly doesn't say anything. Doesn't ask. Just crosses to where I'm standing, slides under my arm, and presses her face against my chest.
We stay like that. The door locked behind us, her heartbeat in my chest, the room quiet and private andours.
"I'm disgusting," she says eventually, muffled against my shirt. "Nine days of jungle and I smell like a compost heap that gained sentience."
"You smell like engine grease and mineral water and specificallyyou." Her scent is the thing my enhanced senses associate with safety, with home, with the particular Varkaani brain chemistry that meansbonded mate, protect, keep.
"That's sweet but also wrong. I need the shower immediately." She pulls back, then looks at me. Looks at the bathroom door. Back at me. "You also need the shower. You smell like combat and Stompy and nine days of not having plumbing."
"Your point?"
"My point is that the shower is there, we're both filthy, and the bond is going to make separate showers an exercise in mutual torment because we'll both be naked ten feet apart and fully aware of it." She tilts her chin up, practical and defiant. "Might as well be efficient."
"Efficient," I repeat.
"Time management. Very responsible."
"Bebo," I say. "Is there a medical argument for shared decontamination showers after extended jungle exposure?"
"There is absolutely no medical argument for shared showers," Bebo says from the core unit on the kitchenette counter. "However, I can confirm that both of your cortisol levels would benefit from the stress-reduction effects of physical proximity and warm water. Also, Krilly's heart rate increased twenty-two percent when she suggested it, which suggests her motivation is not purely logistical."
