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“It’s okay,” she said. “It doesn’t matter now.”

“Where are you? What do you see? Give me everything you can.”

She opened her mouth to answer him. Then she looked up, and Korrak was standing a few meters away in the shadows. He hadn’t moved at all. He was watching her with his arms at his sides and his tail curled around his feet, silent and motionless. The glow of the lichen shone faintly on the scales of his shoulders. His face was calm, but his eyes were dark, and she knew him well enough by now to see what was in them. He was waiting for her to go. He had been waiting since the moment he told her about the drill.

Behind him, the river ran quietly past in its ancient carved channel.

Her hand tightened on the beacon. Before she could say anything, there was a click on the line, and a pause, and a burst of static. When the voice came back, it wasn’t Ethan’s.

“Ms. Valente.” It was a man’s voice, smooth and even and very calm. “This is Bruce Bentley, Special Projects Division. I’m glad to hear you’re alive.”

She knew the name, because everyone at GenCon knew it. Bentley had been head of geology once, before he moved up into the division that nobody ever quite explained. The division that showed up when something interesting was found and then kept it very, very quiet.

What is Special Projects doing on a rescue for a survey engineer?

“Mr. Bentley,” she said carefully.

“I’ll be taking over coordination of your recovery from here,” he said. “I’m sure you understand. We need to move quickly, and I need to know exactly what we’re drilling into. Describe your surroundings for me. Every detail. The size of the cavern, the condition of the rock, the air, anything you’ve observed.”

She didn’t answer immediately.

“Ms. Valente?”

“I’m here,” she said. “The signal’s bad.”

“Take your time.”

She looked at Korrak and thought about the spillways, and the notched overflow wall, and the long, perfect channel that had been carved by hands so long ago that the stone had worn smooth. She thought about the gardens, and the green air, and the dark fruit, and the warm pools. She thought about the domed chamber with its map of rivers glowing on the ceiling, and the scar where someone had scratched part of it away.

She thought about him waking alone in the dark and clearing silt from the channels every night for months without knowing why, because it was what he was.

She thought about what Special Projects would do if they knew.

They would come down here with lights and drills and sample bags, and they would map every channel and core every wall and bag every leaf. They would find the gardens and the carvings and the warm pools, and they would take them apart to see how they worked. And they would find him, and they would take him away.

She had never once lied on a report in her life, not in eight years of engineering. Not when her supervisors wanted a load rating fudged, not when it would have been so much easier to sign off on a bad weld and walk away. She had been the difficult one, the stubborn one, the one who wouldn’t bend. It had cost her promotions and friendships and a relationship or two. It had put her on this survey in the first place, the odd one out on a team that didn’t want her. She was quietly proud of it. It was the part of herself she had never doubted.

She took a deep breath and pressed the button.

“It’s a cave,” she said. Her voice was steady. She had no idea how. “A dead cave. Old lava tube. The ceiling’s high, maybe fifteen meters, and it’s stable. I’ve been checking it. The walls are basalt, the floor’s rubble from the collapse. I’ve been rationing my protein bars.”

“Water?”

She looked steadily at the river.

“There’s a patch of old ice at the back of the cavern,” she said. “I’ve been chipping it loose and melting it inside my suit. It’s barely enough to drink.”

“Any other features? Passages? Anything unusual?”

She glanced at Korrak. He was watching her with his head tilted slightly, and she didn’t know how much of it he understood. Maybe all of it.

“No,” she said. “Nothing. Rock. Dust. It’s a dead cave.”

There was a short pause on the other end. She had the uncomfortable feeling that Bentley was thinking.

“All right,” he said at last. “Stay where you are. Stay close to this signal. The drill team estimates four to five days to break through, depending on the rock. We’ll maintain contact when we can. Conserve your beacon battery.”

“Understood.”