Page 78 of Enslak

"I'm here."

"What are you thinking about?"

I considered how to answer that honestly. "That I want to stay with you," I said. "Not because of whatever that sensation was. Not because I owe you something for saving my life, though I do." I looked down at her. "Because I choose to. Because you're the person I want to be around while I figure out who I am now."

She propped herself up slightly to look at me, and even in the low light I could see her taking that in, holding it up against something internal.

"That's a good reason," she said.

"It's also all I'm sure of right now," I said. "I want to be honest about that. There's still a great deal I'm remembering. I don't know what I'm going to find when the rest of the rooms open."

She nodded, slow and serious. "I know. That's okay." She settled back against my chest. "I'm not going anywhere while you find out."

I pressed my lips to the top of her head and kept them there for a moment. Outside, Avalon was fully dark and fully quiet. Inside, the embers of the fire had settled to a deep orange glow. I pulled the thermal blanket up around us and felt her exhale fully for the first time since the Ulkommenian ships had appeared.

"Sleep," I said quietly.

She was already almost there. Her breathing had gone deep and even by the time I finished the word, her body completely relaxed against mine with the trust of someone who'd decided to stop holding themselves up.

I lay awake a little longer, as I usually did, watching the shadows and listening to the sounds that belonged to this place and the ones that didn't. Everything that reached me was safe. The forest, the river, the low pulse of the planet settling into its own night.

I didn't know what came next. I didn't know how much more of myself would come back, or what shape the future looked like for two people who'd found each other at the end of something terrible and decided to stay. I couldn't promise her permanence when I was still learning what my own mind contained.

But she was here. I had chosen this. And for the first time in a very long time, the not-knowing didn't feel like falling. It felt like standing on solid ground and deciding to take a step forward, which was a different thing entirely.

I kept one hand warm against the curve of her back, let my eyes close, and eventually I slept too.

Chapter 17

Enslak

The sound invaded my dreams first—a low, mechanical throb that didn't belong.

My eyes snapped open, every instinct screaming wrong. The rhythm was artificial, pulsing, growing louder with each passing second. Not the wind through Avalon's canopy. Not the distant calls of nocturnal creatures. Not the gentle rush of the river.

Engines.

I was on my feet before conscious thought caught up, my body moving on pure survival instinct honed by a century of captivity. Beside me, Niki stirred, her hand reaching across the bedding.

"Enslak?" Her voice was thick with sleep, confused. "What—"

"Ship." The word came out as a growl, sharp and urgent. "Landing here. Now."

She bolted upright, every trace of sleep vanishing from her face. In the dim pre-dawn light filtering through the cave entrance, I watched her snap into focus—the shift from drowsy to battle-ready in less than a heartbeat.

"How did they find us?" Despite the fear I could smell rising from her skin, her voice stayed steady. "Binwee disabled the tracker. She promised she'd wait thirty days before telling the Prime."

The tracker.

The word unlocked something—a memory pushing through the fog of my mind, sharp and clear and terrible. I staggered.

The laboratory. Cold metal table beneath my back. Ulkommenian scientists standing over me with instruments I didn't understand, their clicking voices discussing me like I was already dead. One of them held something small—so small I could barely see it even with my enhanced vision. A needle, impossibly thin, injecting it directly into my bone marrow while I screamed and thrashed against restraints that wouldn't break.

"This is experimental," one of them said in their clicking, hissing language. "DNA-based tracking. It replicates with his cells. Becomes part of him at the molecular level. No surgery can remove it. No healing technology can detect it."

"And if it works?"

"We'll never lose another test subject."