But the rest of him, the part that had learned to trust her judgment, held steady.
“Tell me what to do,” he said through gritted teeth.
Her hand settled on his arm, warm and grounding. “Let me talk to him first. Stay visible but not threatening. Can you do that?”
“I can try.”
“That’s all I ask.” She moved past him towards the door, and it took every scrap of his self-control not to pull her back. “R-339 is not entirely human anymore, but that doesn’t make him our enemy. Remember that.”
The station’s inner door cycled open with a hiss of equalizing pressure.
The ranger stood silhouetted against the pre-dawn light coming though the outer door, his grey eyes catching that light and reflecting it back like mirrors. Behind him, his mount shifted on mechanical legs. A robotic horse, sleek and powerful, but foreign enough to make his scales prickle.
“Ms. Kour,” R-339 said politely. “You look better rested than I expected, given the circumstances.”
“I had help.” She gestured towards the station’s interior. “Please, come in. It’s too cold to have this conversation outside.”
The ranger’s gaze shifted past her, finding him in the shadows, and his eyes widened slightly, the first human expression he had seen on that partially mechanical face.
“Ah,” R-339 said. “I see.”
He dismounted with a fluid grace that was too precise to be entirely organic. The robot horse remained where it was, but Adjar had the unnerving suspicion that it was studying all of them. R-339 walked past Jaz without hesitation, stopping just inside the station’s entrance to study him.
“You’re real,” the ranger said. “The readings weren’t corrupted after all.”
He didn’t move. Didn’t speak. He kept his wings partially spread, his claws extended, every line of his body communicating a warning.I am here. I am dangerous. Do not threaten what is mine.
“Adjar,” Jaz said, her voice carefully calm. “This is R-339. R-339, this is Adjar. He’s…”
“An impossibility.” R-339 circled slowly, studying Adjar from multiple angles. “Another one. And yet here you stand.” Those grey eyes met his. “Keeper of Memory. One of the last true children of Mars.”
Keeper of Memory.Fragments of recollection tore through his mind—vast chambers carved from living ice with walls covered in crystalline formations that held millennia of accumulated knowledge. His purpose. His duty. The reason he had been chosen for preservation when so many others had been left to die.
“You know what I am,” he said, his voice rough with shock.
“I know what I have been told.” R-339 stopped his circling and positioned himself at a careful distance—close enough for conversation but far enough away to react if Adjar attacked.
“You’re taking this remarkably well,” Jaz said. She’d moved to stand beside him, not quite touching but close enough that he could feel her warmth. “I expected more questions. More skepticism.”
“Ms. Kour, I am a being who was once human, now merged with technology that my ancestors would have called magic. I patrol a frozen wasteland on a planet that humanity is trying to turn into a new Earth. Skepticism becomes difficult to maintain when one’s own existence defies easy categorization.” R-339’s expression didn’t change, but something in his voice softened slightly. “Besides, you are not the only one to have encountered… anomalies recently.”
His wings snapped fully open before he could stop them.
“Explain,” he demanded.
Jaz’s hand found his arm again, squeezing gently, and he forced himself to fold his wings back, to contain the surge of predatory alertness that the ranger’s words had triggered.
“Perhaps we should sit,” R-339 suggested. “This conversation may take some time.”
They arranged themselves around the station’s small table—the two of them on one side, R-339 on the other. The ranger moved with the careful deliberation of someone who understood that every gesture was being evaluated for threat potential. He appreciated the awareness, even as part of him resented the other male’s presence in his space.
Not my space,he reminded himself.A neutral location. Neutral ground.
It didn’t help much.
“About six months ago,” R-339 began, “we started receiving reports of unusual seismic activity. One of our rangers had an… encounter with a lifeform that could not possibly exist, one that seemed determined to attack them. It was defeated but destroyed itself in the process, leaving no trace behind.”
His wings flared again as his claws sprang free.
