My jaw tightens. The circuit traceries pulse cold beneath my skin, a constant reminder of every modification they forced on me. "No."
She's quiet for a moment. Watching my face in the dim light that filters through the roots. Her gaze tracks the traceries where they cut across my forearms, the scars they intersect, the places where technology was grafted onto a body that never consented to it. Most beings look at the traceries with fear or revulsion. She looks at them the way she probably looks at a damaged circuit board: assessing the extent of the violation.
"I'm Krilly Baxter," she says. "OOPS courier. And before you ask, I have no intention of turning you in."
"You don't know what I've done."
"You pulled me out of a pack hunt. That's enough." She shifts against me, and I'm abruptly aware of the geometry of her. Small. Curved. Warm in a way that registers against my skin despite the temperature differential between our species. "If you were what they say you are, you'd have left me."
She's wrong about that. What I am and what I chose to do in a single moment of poor tactical judgment are not the same thing.But she states it with a conviction that doesn't invite argument, so I let it stand.
"Horgox Ka'reen." The name feels strange offered voluntarily. For a lifetime of captivity, my designation was a string of letters and numbers. Before that, a lifetime ago, I had a name and a world to speak it in. "That's all you need for now."
"For now," she repeats, and there's something in her tone that says she'll be back for the rest. "Okay. So, Horgox Ka'reen, escaped gladiator. What's the plan for not dying in this hole?"
The predators outside shift. One releases a low call, testing whether the drones have moved far enough to resume the hunt. Another answers from a different angle. They're reorganizing.
"There's a canyon system roughly three kilometres northeast." I keep my voice low, watching the shapes through the roots. "Narrow passages. Rock formations that interfere with drone scanners. The predators can't navigate the tight spaces." Three months of scouting, of mapping every crevice and game trail and defensible position on this sector of the planet. Knowledge bought with sleepless nights and close encounters I don't intend to repeat. "If we reach it, we have options."
"Three kilometres through murder jungle with a welcoming committee outside." She processes this with the same matter-of-fact calm she's applied to everything so far. "What's the timing?"
"The pack won't commit while the drones are still in range. They'll wait for full clearance, then attempt to breach the roots. That gives us perhaps an hour."
"And then we run."
"Then we move. Quickly, quietly, and not like prey." I look down at her. "Can you do that?"
"The quietly part might be a challenge." She says it without self-pity, a genuine assessment. "I'm not exactly built for jungle stealth."
"No. You're not." Her boots are wrong, her jumpsuit is wrong, her size makes her vulnerable to terrain that I can navigate at speed. She'll slow me down. She'll draw attention. She'll compromise every evasion protocol I've developed over three months of solitary survival.
I should leave her. Calculate the optimal moment, slip out of this cave, and disappear into the jungle alone. She has her own emergency protocols, her own training, her own odds. Slim odds, but not my responsibility.
Except she's looking at me with those direct green eyes, and she hasn't flinched. Hasn't begged. Hasn't tried to bargain or threaten or manipulate. She asked my name, stated her own, and started planning.
Decades of forced service in ApexCorp's custody taught me every possible permutation of coercion and manipulation. I know what a trap looks like, sounds like, smells like. I know the cadence of a lie delivered under pressure and the precise body language of calculated deception.
This courier is none of those things. She's a terrible liar. It's written in every twitch and expression she makes.
"Stay close to me," I hear myself say. "Move when I move, stop when I stop. If I tell you to run, you run. If I tell you to hide, you hide. No arguments, no questions, no hesitation."
"I can do arguments-free for about twenty minutes. After that, no promises." But she nods, and the agreement in her eyes is genuine even if the words are deflection. "What about my ship?"
"What about it?"
"My AI. Bebo. He runs on a portable quantum core, about the size of my fist. If the core survived the crash, I could get him back online. Maps, environmental scans, communication protocols, maybe even a way to reach my dispatch."
Communication protocols. A way to reach help that isn't ApexCorp.
"The crash site is crawling with drones."
"Right now, yes. But you said they search in patterns. They won't stay on the wreckage forever." She tilts her chin up with a stubbornness I'm beginning to recognize as foundational to her personality. "Bebo's been with me for four years. He's family."
Family. She applies the word to a machine with the same conviction most beings reserve for blood kin.
"The canyon first," I say. "We survive the next three kilometres. Then we assess."
"But—"
