“No,” Kavor says.
Everyone looks at him.
He steps forward then, quiet and massive, still marked with dust and blood from carrying me through a breaking passage.
“This corruption moved when the signal pulsed,” he says. “The system uses resonance. Blood. Epis. Living signatures. Bond. Perhaps more.”
Adran’s gaze cuts to me. There. There’s the blade.
“Bond?” he asks.
Kavor’s face goes still. The room tilts. I hate that word in this room.
In the cavern, bond was warmth and terror and his forehead resting against mine while he said he wanted my choice more than the bond. Here, it becomes evidence. A political tool. A thing someone can use.
“Unfinished,” I say.
The word tastes like blood. Kavor’s gaze touches me, only for a breath. I don’t look back. I can’t.
Adran studies us both. “So your connection woke the system?”
“No,” I snap. “The system was already waking. It noticed the pattern.”
“The pattern being you.”
“The pattern was blood, epis, old channels, and Kavor’s burned hand after the anchor reacted.” I push upright despite Ila’s warning grip. “Don’t make this cleaner than it is just because a person is easier to blame than a machine.”
Rosalind looks between us. “What anchor?”
Virn sets the broken anchor on the table.
Blue-black metal. Ribbed. Wrong. The room stares at it.
Rosalind’s expression changes in a way I do not like. Recognition, maybe. Not of the object. Of the category. Off-world. Hidden. War, coming through small things first.
“This was embedded in the channel system,” Kavor says. “Not old Tajss. Using old Tajss.”
Syin hisses something in Zmaj. Virn answers. Adran watches the exchange with too much calculation in his eyes.
“Translate,” he says.
Syin’s eyes cut to him. “No.”
Adran smiles thinly. “This is still our City.”
“No,” Rosalind says. “It’s everyone’s death if we waste time fighting over whose floor is cracking.”
That shuts him up. Briefly. The table pulses. Not a metaphor. The stone under the samples gives a faint white-gray flicker. The healthy strand brightens. The blackened sample twitches inside its wrap. My bandage flares cold.
I bite down on a gasp. Kavor is beside me before anyone else sees me sway. No. Not anyone. Adran sees, too. His eyes go straight to my arm. Damn him.
Rosalind slaps another layer of mineral cloth over the samples. “Separate them.”
Virn moves at once. Ila takes the healthy strand with careful hands. Syin takes the blackened sample like he wants to throw it into the suns. Kavor lifts the anchor without being asked.
The pulse fades. The room breathes again. I don’t. Kavor’s hand hovers near my back. Not touching. Waiting. Always waiting. It should comfort me. It does. That is the problem.
Rosalind turns to me. “Sit down before you fall down.”
