Rhyx considered the question carefully. Was he okay with it? The guards had been following orders, operating within the framework of loyalty and duty that he understood instinctively from his own fragmented memories. In another context, he might have respected their dedication.
But they had chosen to serve people who would have hurt Alina. Who would have used him as a specimen, a curiosity, a weapon. Their deaths were not something he celebrated, but neither were they something he regretted.
“I am… at peace with it,” he said finally. “They made their choices. I made mine.”
Jeb nodded slowly, something like approval flickering in his enhanced eyes. “Good. Regret is a luxury we can’t afford out here.”
“But will it be enough?” Alina leaned forward, urgency clear in every line of her body. “Will GenCon stop pursuing us now that Martin’s gone? He was the one pushing for the investigation, the one with the connection to their people?—”
“No.” Jeb’s interruption was gentle but firm. “They won’t stop.”
Alina’s face fell. “But without Martin?—”
“Martin was a tool, not a mastermind.” Jeb rubbed a hand across his jaw, the servos in his cybernetic arm whirring softly. “GenCon doesn’t care about one ambitious scientist. They care about what they can profit from. And they know something is happening in those mountains—something valuable enough to pursue even without concrete proof.”
“Then we’re no better off than before.”
“I didn’t say that.” Jeb glanced at Mattie, some silent communication passing between them. “Martin’s death complicates things for them. They’ll need to find a new inside contact, a new way to access the research data. That buys you time.”
“How much time?”
“Months, maybe. A year if we’re lucky.” He shook his head. “But eventually, they’ll find someone else. Someone just as ambitious, just as willing to bend the rules for profit and recognition. That’s how they operate.”
Silence fell over the little dome, heavy with implications. Rhyx watched Alina’s face, reading the calculations happening behind her eyes—the weighing of options, the assessment of risks, the gradual acceptance of what needed to be done.
He knew what she was going to say before she said it. He could feel it in the way her spine straightened, the way her chin lifted, the subtle shift in her scent from anxiety to resolve.
“Then we proceed with the original plan.”
The words hit him like a physical blow. He’d expected her to hesitate, to bargain, to look for some middle path that would let her hold onto the life she’d built here. The lab was her passion, her purpose, the thing she’d worked towards for her entire adult life. And she was willing to walk away from it.
For him.
“Alina.” His voice came out rough, scraped raw by emotions he couldn’t name. “Are you certain?”
“Yes.”
“But your work. Your research. Everything you’ve accomplished?—”
“Is meaningless if I’m not free to share it.” She turned to face him, and the determination in her eyes made his chest ache. “What we found in that cave—the plants, the ecosystem, the evidence of what Mars used to be—it could change everything. Not just for colonization, but for understanding our place in theuniverse. But only if it’s shared freely, openly, with people who want to use it for good.”
“And GenCon?”
“Would lock it away. Exploit it. Turn it into another revenue stream while the rest of humanity struggles to survive on a dying planet.” She shook her head. “I won’t let that happen. I can’t let that happen.”
“Even if it means leaving?” The question felt dangerous, weighted with fears he couldn’t quite articulate. “You would give up your lab, your colleagues, your entire life here… for me?”
“Not just for you.” She reached out, taking his hand in both of hers. Her skin was warm, soft, impossibly fragile against his scaled palm. “For us. For the future we could build together. For the chance to be free, really free, somewhere they can’t reach us.”
“Such a place may not exist.”
“Then we’ll make one.” Her smile was small but genuine, lighting her eyes with something that looked almost like joy. “The cyborg settlements in the outer territories—Jeb says they’re always looking for people with useful skills. Scientists, engineers, anyone willing to work. They don’t ask questions about where you came from or what you’re running from.”
“They would accept me? Even as I am?”
“The cyborgs have seen stranger things than a golden-scaled alien with wings.” Mattie’s voice was gentle, her eyes soft with understanding. “They’ve been modified, enhanced, transformed into something most humans don’t recognize as human anymore. If anyone can understand what it means to be different, it’s them.”
Rhyx looked down at his hands, at the fine golden scales that caught the light, at the claws that could rend and tear but had learned to touch with tenderness. He thought about the wings folded beneath his skin, waiting to unfurl again. About the fragments of memory that still surfaced at unexpected moments—echoes of a civilization long dead, a world long lost.
