“Well, he still sucks.”
She’s watching me work. Not in the annoying, are-we-there-yet way humans often watch. She’s studying. Learning.
When the seventh mine’s disabled, she crouches beside me, careful not to disturb the wirework.
“I could help,” she says. “Reflector has schematics for at least the upper three decks. Maybe not this low, but some of the system layouts must overlap. I could?—”
“No.” I snap the last trap coil and toss the remains aside. “He learns. Tracks patterns. You trigger something, he changes it next time.”
“You think he’s watching?”
I nod. “Always.”
The next corridor splits in two directions—one toward a collapsed storage bay, the other toward the venting rings. The vent path is dangerous. No cover. Limited oxygen. But the alternative is slower.
I glance back. Isolde’s adjusting her wrist cam—probably updating some kind of feed.
“You’re still filming?” I ask.
“Always,” she says. “This is my job, remember?”
“Your job is staying alive.”
“And sharing the story. Showing people what it takes to matter.” She shrugs. “The feed’s low-broadcast. I’m not pinging Meyer or anything. It’s just stored. Edited later.”
“Later might not come.”
She gives me a look. “Then at least I went out documenting the truth.”
Stupid. Reckless. Brave.
I grunt and turn down the venting ring path.
“You picked the death route,” she mutters.
“It’s faster.”
The air gets colder as we move—temperature controls down here are erratic, pulsing between humid and frost. She’s shivering by the time we hit the first airlock.
I peel off my outer pauldron and toss it to her.
“What’s this?”
“Heat mesh.”
“You gonna freeze to death without it?”
“No.”
She wraps it around herself anyway.
We move again.
The vent path opens into a service junction, one of the few places where the Hulk still runs almost entirely on backup power. Panels glow dim green. A central hub pulses with light.
But I stop short.
Footsteps.
