“For me.”
“Not for me.”
His head turns slowly.
“No,” he says.
There it is. The wall. I knew it would come. I smile sweetly enough to poison something small.
“That sounded almost like a command.”
“It was a boundary.”
“Your boundary does not get to live around my body,” I say.
His jaw tightens. Good. No, not good. Dangerous. Useful. Both.
“The crack may cut you,” he says.
“I have been cut before.”
“That is not an argument for being cut again.”
“The route may widen beyond the seam.”
“Or close,” he says.
“Or lead to the third site.”
“Or to a drop.”
“Or to the only living epis we’ve seen,” I say.
His claws flex once against his knee. The glow has given both of us a thing to want. Want makes everyone stupid in different directions.
I look back at the crack. It is narrow, yes, but not impossible. The rear seam angles down, then to the left. My shoulder might pass if I strip my pack. My ribs might not enjoy the experience. Ribs are famous complainers.
I know how to read tight places. City crawl ducts. Half-collapsed passages. Heat vents. Old service channels children were sent through before they grew too broad to squeeze inside.
This is not so different. Except for the wrong rhythm. The black veins. The fact that the ground may be listening with teeth. Small differences.
“We don’t go now,” I say. Kavor stills. I hold up one finger. “Do not look relieved. It’s insulting.”
“I am not relieved,” he says.
“You are doing the quiet version.”
“Yes.”
Progress. Good and bad.
“We can’t go now because the heat outside has us pinned, and I am not crawling into an unknown passage while the exit behind us is a furnace.” I nod toward the threshold. “If it tightens, we need options. Right now, we have one option, and it glows ominously.”
“Ominously?”
“Do not defend the glow. It rolled our water skin at itself.”
“It may not have been the glow.”
