Page 90 of Bride of the Enemy Alien

“Everything you say is accurate until we find the piece you chose not to say,” Adran says.

Kessa’s mouth flattens. The blow lands even though he aimed it at me. I do not look at her. I deserve the wound and more. Deserving has never made a blade less sharp.

“The local listener recorded your stop signal through the sphere,” I say. “It recorded that you will not spend me without witness, limit, and consent. It logged which words make you hesitate.”

Kessa goes pale in the lamplight, not with fear. With fury. Good. Fury keeps blood moving.

“So we change the signal,” she says.

“It will learn the change.”

“Then we don’t use a signal.”

“It will learn silence.”

“Then we flood it with noise.”

“It will learn what noise you choose.”

She clenches her jaw. “Do you have anything useful to contribute, or are we just listing all the ways everything is terrible?”

I want to laugh. I do not.

“Everything is terrible,” I say. “That information is useful if we stop pretending we can make it clean.”

Renn mutters something that sounds like a prayer and an insult being forced to share one breath.

Kessa turns toward the slates spread on the low stone table. Her route markings fill the surface. Not maps in the off-world sense. Not distance and direction alone. Weight. Crowd flow. Bad ceilings. Old vents. Water if jar stores hold. Areas not for children and ones to never use during heat-shift. Her marks are a language made out of people surviving what should have ended them.

Whatever is listening through the return path has learned the alphabet. It will learn every correction she makes while believing she is hiding them. I look at the wall ring again.

There is a way. There is always a way, if one is willing to pay the price with flesh. Krix taught me that. Arcan tried to teach me something different. Kessa almost has, but almost is not enough.

“If it knows the plan,” Syin says, “then we do not plan in this room.”

Kessa nods sharply.

“We split decisions. No full route written in one place. No full team briefed at once. Renn takes false supply counts through North Three. Syin pulls two quiet watches near the east heat vents, but not enough to look valuable. Rosalind keeps the sphere locked down here with Merra and Virn. Adran, you stop arguing with me long enough to make your seals useful.”

Adran’s eyes narrow. “Useful how?”

“You know every door you have locked since the machine woke. Unlock the ones that move civilians away from source-side stone and lock the ones that look like obvious military paths. Make the City ugly to read.”

A muscle jumps in his cheek.

Rosalind looks amused. “That was almost diplomacy.”

“It wasn’t,” Kessa says.

She is building a maze while the enemy watches her hands.

The pride that rises in me is a dangerous, useless thing. Bright as flame in a dry room. I want to see the map she makes. I want to stand beside her while she turns a living city into something no hunter can swallow.

I want time. Time with her. Time to truly get to know her. Time to allow these feelings to grow.

That is the greed speaking.

The hook pulses again.