They weren’t sure if GenCon had believed the story about the avalanche but, based on the reports they’d heard, they weren’tsearching for him in any obvious way. They didn’t need to raise any questions.
You can pass for human at a distance,she had said, practical as always.But the station quarters are too close. Someone would notice the scales. The pupils. The fact that you’re nearly a foot taller than the biggest miner there.
As always, she was right. He hated that she was right.
The sun had moved a full handspan across the pale sky since she’d disappeared into the station’s main trading hall. Too long. Even accounting for the bureaucratic delays she’d warned him about, it was taking too long.
He closed his eyes and reached out with senses no human possessed. The ice beneath him sang with subtle vibrations—the deep bass notes of geological shifts, the crackling soprano of surface freeze patterns, the familiar rhythm of their claim site forty kilometers to the north. He filtered through the noise, searching for anything that felt wrong.
Nothing.The station hummed with ordinary activity. No alarms, no unusual movement patterns, no indication of trouble.
She is fine,he told himself.She is always fine.
Movement caught his attention as a snow crawler emerged from the station’s vehicle bay, its treads cutting fresh tracks through the packed ice. For a moment his heart leapt, but then he realized it was the wrong model moving in the wrong direction. But as it passed the outer marker, he spotted the second vehicle behind it.
A fade blue vehicle with the distinctive scratch pattern along the driver’s side where she’d scraped against a rock formation threemonths ago. With the slight rattle in the left tread assembly that she kept promising to fix but never quite got around to.
Jaz.
He was moving before his mind caught up with his body, scaling down the outcrop and making for the rendezvous point they’d agreed upon. The crawler was already turning towards him, its driver clearly as eager to close the distance as he was.
The moment she killed the engine, he wrenched open the passenger door and climbed inside.
The cabin was cramped but he didn’t care. He pulled her out of her seat and into his arms, ignoring her startled laugh, burying his face in the curve of her neck where her scent was strongest.
Mate. Safe. Home.
The words weren’t English. They were something older, something that emerged from the scattered fragments of his memory like water finding cracks in stone. He didn’t need to translate them. She understood.
“I was gone for four hours,” she said, but her arms came up around him just as tightly, her fingers finding the gap between the thermal layers of his disguise to reach the scales beneath. “That’s perfectly reasonable for a supply run.”
“Four hours and seventeen minutes.”
“You were counting?”
“I am always counting.” He pulled back just enough to look at the familiar features, the amber eyes that held his reflection, and the faint flush the cold had brought to her cheeks. “It is interminable when you are not within reach.”
“You’re so dramatic.”
“It’s not dramatic if it’s accurate.”
She laughed again, that warm sound that had become his favorite thing about this strange new world. Six months, and it still amazed him that she had chosen this.Chosen him.A creature from a dead civilization, awakened into a future he didn’t understand, carrying memories that came in fragments and instincts that sometimes frightened her.
But she stayed. She always stayed.
“The trade went well,” she said, pulling back to settle into her seat but keeping one hand on his arm. She needed space to drive, but she also understood his need for contact after their separation. “Better than expected, actually. Kerensky tried to lowball me on the rare-earth prices, but I had data from the southern exchanges showing the current market rates.”
“You were prepared.”
“I’m always prepared.” She started the engine, pointing the crawler north towards home. “The look on his face when I pulled out the comparison charts was almost worth the drive.”
He allowed himself a small smile. “You enjoy the negotiations.”
“I enjoywinningthe negotiations.” She guided them confidently around a pressure ridge. “I picked up everything on the list, plus some extras. New filtration membranes for the water system, upgraded sensor arrays for the deep-core scanner, and—” a sidelong glance “—two cases of that tea you like.”
“The one with the?—”
“The bitter root notes that taste like ‘properly frozen minerals,’ yes.” She shook her head. “I still don’t understand your palate.”
