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The Choir stops firing.

That terrifies me more than the gunfire.

Anita sees it too.

“They know what this is,” she whispers.

Brakk grabs Sira under one arm. “I vote we leave before the haunted basement finishes booting up.”

I move beside Anita despite the pain shredding through my side with every step. “Can you open us a path?”

She nods tightly, though fear still lingers behind her focus. “Probably.”

“Confident.”

“I’m trying not to scream.”

“Reasonable.”

Her mouth twitches despite everything.

The sight nearly destroys me.

She turns toward the scanner again, but before she can interface with the chamber controls, I catch her hand.

She looks back immediately.

Smoke curls around us. Amber and silver light ripple across her face. My blood still stains her hands from trying to hold me together.

I should say something careful.

Instead, the truth arrives stripped clean by pain and terror.

“I do not care what the First Architects built,” I tell her quietly. “I do not care whether some ancient mechanism noticed us first. I want you because when this place buried a blade in my side, my first fear was leaving you alone in it.”

Her breath catches.

The scanner trembles slightly in her grip.

I continue because stopping now would be cowardice. “I have followed duty. I have followed doctrine. I have followed orders written by frightened men pretending certainty made them righteous. This is not that.”

Anita stares at me like the chamber has vanished around us.

Then she grabs the front of my ruined shirt and kisses me hard enough to make the wound in my side flare white-hot.

I do not care.

The kiss tastes like smoke, blood, panic, and relief so fierce it borders on grief. Anita presses herself against me with trembling urgency, one hand fisted in my shirt while the other braces against my jaw as if she needs proof I am still physically here.

I pull her closer carefully despite the injury, and the sound she makes against my mouth nearly breaks what remains of my restraint.

Brakk looks away immediately. “I would like it officially noted that I hate being the only emotionally stable person here.”

Sira, pale and weak against the wall, murmurs softly, “A deeply inaccurate statement.”

Anita pulls back only far enough to breathe.

Her forehead presses against mine.