Page 46 of Bride of the Enemy Alien

Rhazek pushes himself upright. “It is learning.”

“Wonderful. We found alien metal with ambition.”

He turns to me. “Can you feel the next pulse?”

I stare at him. “I’m sorry, are we pretending this is normal?”

“No.”

“Good.”

“Can you?”

I want to say no. I want to be useless. Just for one beautiful, decorative moment, I want to be the wrong person for a horrible job.

The ground trembles under my boots.

Once.

Pause.

The next beat builds under the sand, gathering pressure. I feel it pushing toward the core, toward Rhazek, toward the place in my chest that answered when his markings flared.

“Again,” I whisper. “It’s going to lash again on the next pulse. Wider.”

“Where?” Syin asks.

I look at the core. I don’t see the answer so much as feel where the pain will open.

“Left side. Low. Toward Renn.”

Renn moves without arguing. Bless his increasingly survival-oriented heart.

The pulse hits. Three filaments whip out where he had stood a heartbeat before, slicing empty air. Syin snarls an order, and Renn and Orek shift formation.

Rhazek is watching me in a way I cannot afford to understand.

“Stop,” I say.

“I did not speak.”

“Your face is speaking.”

“My face has no useful information.”

“It’s annoying anyway.”

Somehow, impossibly, he looks amused. Then it’s gone.

The next pulse gathers.

The core’s green light turns brighter, thinner, hungry enough to make my teeth ache. This one is different. Not a lash. A reach.

“For me,” I say.

Rhazek’s expression goes lethal. “Run.”

“No.”