No. Not love. Not while red rules too much.
I land in a lower passage half-full of broken stone and dust. The impact drives pain up my legs. I barely feel it.
Sera lies ten paces away on a slanted shelf of old cut rock, one arm twisted beneath her, hair spilled across her face, blood bright on the bandage. She is not moving.
The red becomes a roar.
“Sera.”
No answer. The ground pulses. Once. Pause. Again.
The channel beneath her flares white-gray. Her body jerks and I move. Between one heartbeat and the next, I am beside her. My claws slide under her shoulder, then stop.
Stop. Think. Do not seize. Do not drag if the spine is wrong. Do not become fear with hands.
My breath saws through my chest. The red pushes at my eyes, my teeth, my claws, demanding movement, possession, blood. I force my hand open. I force the other beneath her neck with care. Force my senses past panic.
Breath. Faint. Pulse. Fast. Pain. Alive. Alive.
The word hits me so hard that my forehead nearly drops to her shoulder.
Alive.
Her eyes flutter. “Kavor?”
It is not a scream now. It is smaller, worse.
“I am here.”
“Fell?”
“Yes.”
“Rude.”
A sound breaks from me. Not a laugh. Not anything sane.
She blinks up at me, dust on her lashes, blue light leaking through the bandage on her arm. “Proof?”
I should have expected it, but still I hate it.
“Safe.”
“Rosalind?”
“Virn. With orders.”
Her mouth tightens. “Orders?”
“Yes.”
“Bossy.”
“Yes.”
The channel pulses under her again. Her back arches. Pain tears her breath away. The red surges so violently my claws gouge stone beside her head. Something below answers. Not zemlja. The old network.
It runs beneath this lower passage in white-gray veins, feeding light toward the reservoir, toward the machine heart, toward the City’s broken bones. Sera’s blood on the floor glows blue where it touches dust. The channel reaches for it in thin bright lines.
