Page 64 of Bride of the Enemy Alien

“Can it still send?” she asks.

“The tracker cannot. The relay can answer if something stronger calls.”

“From where?”

I look past her to the south, where heat makes the horizon ripple. The kedi ran that way before the tracker broke, but the creature was not choosing the path. The device was broadcasting through the line of least resistance.

“Dead drop,” I say.

Syin’s nostrils flare. “Meaning?”

“A receiver,” I say. “A place built to collect what the tracker gathered if the pilot died.”

Kessa frowns, narrowing her eyes, then rolls her shoulders. She is calculating. Thinking it through. That is good. Anger will keep her alive for a little while. Calculation will keep everyone else alive longer.

“Then we find it,” she says.

I look at the green thread under my ribs. It answers her voice. And this time, she sees the thing beneath my skin answer.

13

Kessa

I blink, think, then blink again.

The green glow at Rhazek’s throat pulses as if in response to my voice. Not the wound where the tracker is. His throat.

It feels like it’s answering. Or calling. Not touching him is the first smart thing I manage. Which is irritating because every stupid part of me wants the opposite. My hands want to grab his ruined armor and drag answers out of him by force. My body wants to move closer because apparently attraction has terrible timing and no survival training. My temper wants to shove him off the nearest ridge.

People need me for routes, for counts, for a voice sharp enough to cut panic into pieces they can carry. That kind of need has edges I understand.

That glow responding to my voice is different. I don’t understand it, but instinct tells me it’s different. It means something I don’t understand. It’s not a route answer. It’s not a ration count. It reaches for the softest part of me, the one I thought I had buried under everyone else’s survival.

And underneath the want is fury. He put me on the wrong side of a ledger I didn’t get to see. Not because he wanted to hurt us, which almost makes it worse. Because he decided the cost was acceptable before any of us knew we were being counted.

I know that kind of mercy. Adults use practical words and calm voices while someone waits in a corridor to learn there wasn’t enough.

I force my hands to remain at my sides. Uncurled, appearing relaxed though I am anything but.

The tracker lies broken on the stone. The kedi has vanished with my token. The desert keeps burning because the desert isn’t impressed by my personal crisis.

Seven of us. I count because counting is better than screaming.

Me. Rhazek. The Zmaj, Syin, Renn, Orek. The human runners, Lio and Maro.

That’s all. No Merra to curse him quiet. No Rosalind to make the ugly decision official. No Adran to turn the ugly decision into a committee.

Just us, and one hidden relay under Rhazek’s ribs.

No one else to decide. No one to be responsible for the next, probably stupid decision. I stare at Rhazek’s neck, then his wound, then back to his one good eye.

No one else.

“We need shade,” I say.

Syin gives me a look. “We need to return.”

“No,” I say. I don’t want this. Skies above I don’t, but Syin is making exactly the wrong decision and will run with it if I don’t stop it. “If the receiver is south, taking this back to the City drags the line home. We don’t know how far the relay can answer. We don’t know if the dead drop already has the City’s direction. We do not hand it more.”