Page 107 of Bride of the Enemy Alien

“Arcan removed a collar.”

“And left the deeper leash.”

The words are bait. I know bait. I spent years watching fighters die because someone knew which insult could make them turn their back at the wrong angle.

Still, the buried hook burns.

“He did not leave it,” I say. “He failed to kill me by taking it out.”

The male’s gaze sharpens. “Loyalty. How quaint.”

“No. Math.”

That makes him laugh softly.

Locks hammer onto the frame, but the cage never opens. Rig arms catch the outer rails and drag the whole assembly deeper into the larger chamber.

Light hits me in layers: amber work lamps, pale surgical glare, green receiver glow, then the deeper blue-violet stain I hoped never to see reflected in enemy metal.

Epis.

Not fresh growth. Shavings, residue, maybe old dust and remnants. It lies in a glass basin at the center of the chamber, too small to be useful on its own, but more than enough to condemn Tajss.

My stomach turns cold.

The fate of Kessa’s city is in that basin.

The gray-armored male watches my face. I give him stone too late. He saw.

“There,” he says, pleased. “That matters to you.”

“You brought dust in a desert and called it treasure,” I say.

“No.” He gestures to the basin. “We brought dust to a receiver and listened to what answered.”

There are four guards in sight. Two near the cage rails, one by the receiver console, one at the outer passage. Another presence beyond the passage, heavier footfall, wingless, breathing through a filter. Pilot or cutter. Not enough for a full strike force.

Enough for an extraction crew. Enough to take samples. Enough to send proof. Not enough to hold if Kessa finds the weak point.

She will. She reached the ridge. What I do not know is whether the enemy knows she is there.

The connection between us draws toward the dunes. It is faint, stretched thin by salt, distance, pain, and her anger, but it is still there, bright under the ash.

Kessa is close. Too close and yet not close enough.

The guard by the console slots a narrow rod into a cradle beside the receiver. Green light runs its length in the same broken cadence the hook has been using on me.

Once. Pause. Again.

Beneath it comes another pattern. Rougher. Human. Close enough to Kessa’s rhythm to make recognition strike and wrong enough to make anger follow it. An imitation built from what the fragments recorded.

The receiver hum deepens. The hook at my throat pulses with it, then pauses, waiting.

The gray-armored male steps to the console and places two fingers on a cracked black panel.

“We need confirmation before transmission. Your body gives us one axis. The plant residue gives us another. The City gave us panic, authority movement, heat routes, and an old source answer. But the female,” he says, and I learn a new place inside me where murder can live, “she gives us pattern.”

I do not move. Movement would tell him too much. My voice comes out even.