“Even if you don’t know what you are?”
“Especially then.” Jeb met his gaze steadily. “You’re more than the sum of your parts, Rhyx. More than borrowed memories and foreign blood. The fact that you love Alina, that you’d die to protect her—that’s you. Not some fragment of a dead civilization or a cyborg’s combat programming. You.”
The words settled into Rhyx’s chest like stones dropping into still water.
He’d been so afraid—afraid that he was just an echo, a collection of ghosts wearing borrowed flesh. Afraid that the feelings he had for Alina weren’t real, just chemical reactions in a body that didn’t truly belong to him.
But hearing Jeb speak—another being caught between worlds, another creature remade by forces beyond his control—he began to believe that maybe the fragments didn’t matter. Maybe what mattered was what he chose to do with them.
“She is my mate,” Rhyx said, and the certainty in his own voice surprised him. “Whatever else I am, whatever pieces made me—that is mine. That choice. That love.”
Jeb nodded slowly. “Hold onto that. It’s the most real thing you’ve got.”
They continued through the canyon in comfortable silence, checking for signs of intrusion. Rhyx found himself paying closer attention to the terrain now—not just the tactical assessment that came automatically, but the deeper sense of the land itself.
The thrumming was stronger here.
He stopped, pressing one hand against the canyon wall. The rock was warm beneath his palm, warmer than it should have been under the thin Martian sunlight.
“What is it?” Jeb asked, alert.
“The planet.” Rhyx closed his eyes, focusing on the sensation. “I can feel it. Like a heartbeat.”
“A heartbeat?”
“Not exactly. More like…” He struggled for words to describe something that had no equivalent in any language he knew. “Like something waking up. Stretching. Reaching towards the surface.”
Jeb was quiet for a long moment. When Rhyx opened his eyes, the cyborg was watching him with an expression he couldn’t quite read.
“Alina said something similar. Before the storm, before she found you—she was tracking unusual readings. Biochemical signatures that shouldn’t exist.”
“The cavern,” Rhyx said. “The plants there. They’re growing without sunlight, without water from above. They’re connected to something deep.”
“To Mars itself?”
“I think so. I think…” He paused, uncertain how to explain a feeling that was more instinct than knowledge. “I think the planet is changing. Has been changing for a long time, but slowly. So slowly that no one noticed.”
Jeb’s eyes narrowed. “Until now.”
“Until now.”
They stood in the shadow of the canyon walls, two hybrid beings contemplating forces older and vaster than either of them could fully comprehend.
“Change is coming,” Rhyx said finally. “I can feel it in the rock. In the air. In my own blood.”
“Change can be dangerous.”
“Yes. But it’s also…” Rhyx searched for the right word, pulling from memories that might have been his or might have belonged to someone long dead. “Necessary. Without change, there is only stagnation. Only slow death.”
Jeb was quiet for a moment. Then something shifted in his expression—a softening, an acceptance.
“That’s true,” he said. “I learned that the hard way.” He touched his own chest, where metal and flesh met beneath his clothing. “I spent years fighting what I’d become. Trying to hold onto what I’d lost. It nearly destroyed me.”
“What made you stop fighting?”
“I realized that change isn’t the same as destruction. Losing parts of yourself doesn’t mean losing yourself entirely. It means becoming something new.” Jeb’s voice was steady now, certain. “Something that might be better.”
Better. Rhyx turned the concept over in his mind.
