Page 63 of Bride of the Enemy Alien

“A blood relay,” I say.

Syin’s face hardens. “Krix.”

“Krix used it.” My voice is rougher than I want. “Krix did not invent every cruelty in the universe.”

“Did Arcan know?”

That comes from Kessa. She cuts to the door that matters even while the room is on fire, though we have no room and the fire is inside me.

“He knew there were remnants,” I say. “He did not know which ones were still alive. Neither did I.”

She catches the hesitation. There it is. The part that will cost.

“You suspected.”

“Yes.”

Maro exhales. Lio looks away. Syin’s tail scrapes the sand.

“That is a coward’s word,” Syin says, his voice so low it is almost a growl.

The fact that I understand Syin is the only thing that keeps me from wanting to end him. If the arena has taught me nothing else, I did learn humility. Or at least to wait until the right moment to take on someone.

“No,” I say. “It is an accurate one.”

Kessa does not look at Syin. She looks at me.

“You came anyway.”

“The warning had to arrive.”

“You came with a hidden relay in your body and didn’t tell us.”

“I did not know for sure what remained, whether it would wake, or whether they could activate it.”

“You didn’t know it wouldn’t.”

I could speak of the flight from Krix. Of Arcan’s people cutting the visible collar from my throat with stolen med knives while alarms screamed through the walls. Of the arena surgeon who told me the deep hook could not be removed without killing me. Of years spent waiting for a signal that never came, then convincing myself silence meant death.

All those thoughts crowd my head. Any of them would explain, but none would excuse. None of them changes what I brought here.

Noise. Nothing more. I push it down and answer with the simple truth.

“No,” I say. “I did not.”

The desert gives us only heat and blood and the quiet clicking of cooling metal. Then the broken tracker on the stone gives one last faint spark. Kessa whips toward it.

No pulse follows. No line. No call. Only the mark under my ribs responding with cold heat. The device is dead. The relay is not.

Kessa rises. The movement is smooth enough to frighten me.

“Wrap it,” she says. “Salt cloth if we have it. Ash if we don’t. Nobody bleeds near the tracker. Nobody touches Rhazek’s wound. Nobody repeats his rhythm by accident, and if that sounds impossible, congratulations, you understand today.”

Maro lifts one hand. “I understood hours ago and would like credit.”

“Denied,” she says, shaking her head. Then her gaze cuts to me again.

There is hurt under the anger. A small, sharp thing she has no time to name. I know because I have spent years giving nameless things jobs. A mechanism of survival when you are locked in a cage and waiting.