“No worse than usual.”
“That is not reassuring.”
“It was not meant to be.”
I should move. Instead I hold her too close for one breath. Only one. Her face is near my throat. Her good hand grips the edge of my harness. Not pushing away. Holding.
Choice. A fierce little claw in the dark.
The channel beneath us pulses again, and the blue beneath her bandage flares against my chest. She stiffens. I feel the system notice us. No other word fits.
The old network notices the contact. The unfinished bond. Her blood. My burned hand. The absence of the sample above us. All the pieces of a pattern still close enough to connect. White-gray lines crawl along the floor toward my feet. I bare my teeth.
“No.”
The network does not care. Of course not. Machines do not fear anger unless it can break them. I can break many things. Not enough.
“We have to move,” Sera says.
“Yes.”
“Up?”
“Not the way we came.”
The shaft above continues to crumble. Voices echo faintly, but too far. The chamber floor will not hold another rescue from above.
I turn toward the lower passage. It angles down first, then curves upward, old service stone broken open by a channel seam. Air stirs faintly from that direction. Hot. Dusty.
City air. Maybe. Or a dead pocket. I hate maybes.
Sera’s head shifts against my shoulder. “Do you hear it?”
“The zemlja?”
“No. The alarm.”
I listen past her breath, past my heart, past the old network’s cold pulse. Three strikes. Pause. Three. Faint. Ahead.
“Yes.”
“Then that way.”
“The zemlja is also moving that way.”
“Of course it is.”
I begin walking.
Each step must be silent enough not to call, fast enough not to die, smooth enough not to jar her ribs. The passage is too narrow for my wings, too broken for speed. Sera’s body stays tense against pain, but she does not ask to be set down.
That trust almost bends me worse than fear. The red waits. Not gone. Never. It stalks beside us in my blood, watching for weakness.
The passage pulses. White-gray light crawls along the walls and under the dust. Sera’s bandage answers faint blue. She presses her good hand over it.
“Kavor.”
“I know.”
