“That was better before you added the command.”
“The edge is unstable.”
“Then say the edge is unstable.”
“The edge is unstable.”
“Good.”
“No closer.”
Her eyes narrow. I deserve it. I lower my head without taking my eyes from hers. A small act of apology.
The cavern pulses, living blue and wrong white light fighting beneath the pool. Sera’s skin glows faintly under her bandage again. I see it through cloth. Through blood. Through every attempt she makes to hide it. I curl my claws as her gaze flicks down.
“You’re doing it again,” she says.
“What?”
“Looking at me like I’m becoming a problem you can solve by standing in front of it.”
“You are not the problem.”
“We have covered this.”
“The reaction is the problem.”
“Also covered.”
I frown, meeting her steady gaze. The red of bijass boils. I blink slowly, pushing the primal instincts down.
“I am not certain your body understands.”
“My body and I are having several disagreements today. Get in line.”
The answer should irritate me, and it does, but it also breaks something in my chest. I look away.
The black corruption spreads from the far wall toward the pool in thin straight wounds. Every time the distant signal pulses,the old channels drink harder. Blue turns white, then gray. Then black. Some strands recover. Most do not.
The reservoir is abundant. It is also losing.
“How do we stop it?” she asks.
I listen. Not only with my ears. With claws to stone. With tail low against the ridge. With the old training of cavern Zmaj. With everything my people learned from places where sound warned before sight.
The signal travels through metal anchors and old channels. The pool machine answers. The zemlja pressure shifts in response, far below, moving around the district’s edge. Not attacking yet. Not breaching. Positioned.
This is not a single device. It is a network.
“We do not stop all of it here,” I say.
Sera’s face hardens.
“Do not make that face,” I say.
Her brows rise. “My face?”
“The one where you decide dying near the drain is efficient.”
