Her mouth opens. Then closes.
“You are learning my face,” she says after a long pause.
“Yes.”
“Annoying.”
“Yes.”
She looks back to the pool. “If we can’t stop all of it, can we slow this part?”
“Perhaps.”
“Useful perhaps or panic perhaps?”
“That categorization is poor.”
“That categorization is excellent.”
“The pool drains into the old channels there.” I point to the low arch beneath the waterline, half-covered by glowing roots and mineral crust. “The white-gray structure wakes when the signal comes. If the channel mouth is blocked, the siphon may slow.”
“Blocked with what?”
“Stone. Growth. Collapse.”
“Collapse sounds like a permanent solution wearing a murder cloak.”
“It is dangerous.”
“That was implied by murder cloak.”
I look at her. Pale. Bleeding. In pain. Still making words sharp enough to keep fear from finding her throat.
I love—No.
The thoughts and feelings rise again, too large for the chamber inside me where I keep my restraint.
Not now.
Not while blue light answers her blood. Not while the sample beats between us like a second heart. Not while the old system is drinking and everything beneath the City becomes a trap.
“Could we break the anchor?” she asks.
“The one above is gone.”
“There may be another near the pool.”
“True.”
“Can you sense it?”
I close my eyes. Signal. Stone. Water. Living growth. Wrong metal. Zemlja pressure. Sera’s breath. Sera’s blood. Sera, too close. Too much. I open my eyes.
“There.” I point to the broken arch, half-swallowed by strands beyond the pool. “Something answers there first.”
Sera tracks my finger. “Can we reach it from the ridge?”
“No.”
