He doesn’t move.
“Not happening,” he says.
I stare at him, the anger sitting just under the surface, sharp and ready.
“You don’t get to make this call,” I say.
“I just did,” he replies.
The silence that follows stretches tight.
“You come back,” I say finally, my voice lower now, more controlled. “You better have a damn good explanation.”
A flicker crosses his expression.
“Yeah,” he says quietly. “I will.”
Then he turns.
And walks away.
I stand there for exactly half a second before I start moving again, twisting my wrists, testing the restraint, feeling for weak points.
“Unbelievable,” I mutter, working the angle. “Absolutely unbelievable.”
The material bites just enough to tell me it’s not going to give easily, but not enough to stop me from trying.
“You really thought that was going to hold me,” I say under my breath, shifting my grip, bracing the restraint against the edge of the rock.
I pull.
Hard.
It doesn’t snap.
“Okay,” I mutter, adjusting. “Then we do this the hard way.”
I shift again, testing the angle, the tension, the give.
“You don’t leave me behind,” I whisper, more to myself now than anything else.
Because this isn’t over.
CHAPTER 30
HRASK
The tunnel doesn’t feel like a tunnel anymore once I cross the threshold into the base’s understructure.
Stone gives way to composite plating in uneven patches, the texture shifting under my boots from loose grit to something engineered, smooth but worn in places where movement has passed too often to hide it. The air changes with it, losing that raw mineral dryness and picking up the sterile edge of filtration systems, sharp and faintly chemical, like it’s trying too hard to convince you everything here is clean.
“Yeah,” I mutter under my breath, keeping my voice low as I move along the maintenance corridor. “That’s a lie.”
“You’ve done this before,” I murmur to myself, more grounding than question. “So don’t screw it up now.”
The corridor narrows ahead, branching into two paths, one lit by low, steady strips along the floor, the other darker, less maintained, cables exposed along the wall where panels haven’t been sealed properly.
“Maintenance always gets lazy,” I say quietly, angling toward the darker path.
