Page 118 of Bride of the Enemy Alien

They reached me.

Kessa must have read every lie I left and hated me for each one, which means she followed them exactly. She has the terrible gift of making anger useful.

The handler stands behind the damaged receiver with a curved metal wand in one gloved hand. He looks at Kessa the way masters looked at new fighters when trying to decide whether the muscle, temper, or fear would sell best.

I pull against the cage.

The command rewards me.

Pain snaps through the anchor in my throat, bright and surgical, and my knees nearly buckle. The bars flare. The ring around Kessa’s ankle pulses, and the damaged receiver answers through the floor track beneath my cage. Her living rhythm hits the hook under my throat without the broken rod between us.

Once.

She sucks in a breath.

Pause.

The mark under my skin twists.

Again.

Kessa’s gaze locks on mine.

“Don’t,” she says.

The handler smiles. “Responsive pair confirmed.”

Renn shifts behind the low rail housing, ready to throw the knife. Kessa does not look away from me.

“Renn,” she says, voice low and sharp, “if you throw that damn thing, I will haunt you through seven ration audits.”

His jaw flexes. “Understood.”

Good. She sees it. The knife, the sudden movement, the protective instinct, all of it would become proof. The machine is not trying to kill her. Death is dull evidence. A living response is better.

The command pulls again.

Go to her.

Break the cage.

Take her.

I strain against the bars before I obey. The bars bite into my palms. Green light crawls over my fingers and finds the old conductive channels buried beneath the plates of my forearms. The machine has learned enough to know the cruelest shape obedience can take. It does not tell me to hurt Kessa.

It tells me to protect her.

The arena masters learned that lesson too. A body resists pain for itself. It will crawl through fire for what it has already failed to save.

A chain with a beloved name on it weighs more than iron.

“Rhazek,” Kessa says.

The command surges so violently that I taste more blood. The cage bars bend under my grip.

“Do not say my name,” I force out.

She looks hurt for a heartbeat, then calculating. I see the moment she turns my words in her mind, weighs them against what the machine is built to collect, and cuts a new path through the rubble.