Chapter 16 #2
The sample pouch pulses between us. Both of us look. Blue light leaks through the wrap in a slow beat. Not the wrong rhythm. Not natural, either.
The cloth nearest Sera’s blood darkens, then glows faintly. I go still.
Sera’s eyes narrow. “That seems new.”
“Yes.”
“Useful new or panic new?”
I do not answer.
“Kavor.”
I lift the pouch carefully and bring it closer to her arm. Not touching. The glow brightens. Sera inhales. The bandage over the cut catches faint blue at the edges. My heart stops for one brutal beat.
The epis responds to her blood. Or the residue. Or both. Not enough information to know. Too much to ignore.
Sera looks from the sample to me. “Is that supposed to happen?”
“No.”
“Of course not.”
The sample pulse shifts. Blue. Pause. Blue. Not once. Pause. Again. A different rhythm. Slower. Closer to breath. Sera’s breath. I look at the rise and fall of her chest. The glow follows. Her breathing quickens. So does the sample’s pulse.
Her eyes widen. “Kavor.”
“I see.”
“Why is it doing that?”
“I do not know.”
“That is becoming less charming.”
“It was never charming.”
“No, it was briefly charming when you were wrong less often.”
The glow brightens again, reflecting on her face. She looks afraid. Not of the tunnel. Not of the gray thing. Afraid of herself.
“I didn’t do anything,” she says.
“I know.”
“I touched the wrap.”
“Yes.”
“And bled on it.”
“Near it.”
“Kavor.”
“I do not know.”
Her mouth tightens. “But you’re thinking something.”
Too much. Mate stories. Old stories. Epis reacting to blood, bodies, need. Compatibility. Resonance. Bijass. A bond not yet named, but already placing its teeth gently around the shape of us.
No proof. Only fear. Only wanting. Only the way the red in me went still when she said the sample first. Only the way the epis breathes with her.
“I am thinking many things,” I say.
“Pick one that doesn’t make your face look like a locked door.”
I look at the sample. Then I look at her bandaged arm.
“Epis strengthens life,” I say slowly. “It responds to living systems. Heat. Blood. Pressure. Sometimes sound. Perhaps your blood woke it.”
“My blood?”
“Perhaps.”
“That is not better.”
“No.”
“Could it be the gray residue?”
“Yes.”
“Also not better.”
“No.”
She leans her head back against the stone and closes her eyes. Not sleep. She is too tense for that. Thinking. I let her, watching the passage instead.
The deep zemlja pressure has moved farther away, not closer. That is good. The wrong rhythm has faded for now. Also good. The dead chamber behind us still settles with tiny cracks and falls. Bad, but not immediate.
We have a sample. We have proof. We have a gray thread. We have her blood in the bandage and in my memory.
We need to move before her pain stiffens, before predators scent the blood through cracks, before the passage shifts again. But she needs one moment. I can give her one. Maybe two.
Her eyes open.
“Don’t look at me like that.”
“How?”
“Like you’re deciding whether to carry me.”
“I have decided many times.”
“I will bite you.”
“I do not doubt that.”
“You should care more about that.”
“I do.”
“Not enough.”
“No.”
Her mouth almost smiles. Then pain drags the expression away. I make a choice. A dangerous one.
“We should wait until the bleeding slows.”
“We should move before the tunnel changes.”
“Yes.”
“That was not an agreement.”
“It was both.”
She studies me. “You’re learning my tricks.”
“You have many.”
“I’m full of them,” she says.
“Yes.”
The sample pulses again, soft and blue. Her gaze drops to it. This time there is no awe. Only calculation and fear. And something she would deny if I named it: want.
“Can it help the wound?” she asks.
The question is quiet enough that the stone almost swallows it. There. Need, spoken like shame. My chest tightens.
“I do not know,” I say.
Her mouth twists. “Right. Of course.”
“But maybe.”
She looks at me. Hope is crueler when it is small.
“Maybe,” she repeats.
I unwrap one fold of the sample pouch. Not enough to expose the strand fully. Enough for light to spill across her bandage. The blue glow touches the cloth. Sera sucks in a breath.
Pain? No. Surprise.
The bandage gleams faintly where blood has seeped through. The bleeding slows. It does not stop, but it slows. My hands go cold. Sera watches it happen. Neither of us speaks. The world shifts. Not in the stone. In us.
Epis does not heal like a miracle from a child’s story. It strengthens. Extends. Supports life. But this is immediate enough to matter. Too immediate to ignore. Sera’s breathing turns shallow.
“Kavor.”
“Yes.”
“That means…”
She cannot finish. Neither can I. That means epis may save the City.
That means her blood may interact with it.
That means the gray thing wanted it. That means every secret in the Council chamber is too small.
That means she is not only guide, not only route-runner, not only starving human with a map.
No. No. Not yet. Do not turn her into resource.
Do not make the same mistake as every hungry power that ever looked at epis and saw possession. I fold the cloth back over the sample and pull it away from her wound. The light dims.
Her eyes flash to mine. “Why did you stop?”
“Because we do not understand what it is doing.”
“It slowed the bleeding.”
“Yes.”
“Then use it.”
“No.”
Her face hardens.
“No?” she repeats.
“It responded to you. To your blood or to the residue. I do not know which.”
“So we test.”
“Not on you.”
“I am already bleeding.”
“That does not make your body a testing ground.”
The words are hard and her anger falters. I do not soften my voice. Some truths need stone around them.
“We use what we understand,” I say. “We do not let need turn you into a resource.”
She goes very still. For one breath, I think I have said too much. Then her gaze drops. Not away. Down to her bandaged arm.
Her voice comes low. “The City would.”
I know. She does not need me to say it. But silence would be cowardice.
“Yes,” I say.
Her throat moves.
“Rosalind might not,” she says.
“No.”
“Adran…” She stops.
Political math crosses her face. City math. Survival math. The kind that weighs bodies against futures and calls the scale necessary. I curl my claws. She sees and shakes her head once.
“Don’t become terrifying over something that hasn’t happened.”
“It has happened before.”
Her eyes lift. Not understanding. Not yet.
Old Tajss. Old wars. Epis as a prize. Bodies as routes to power. History repeating beneath glass and hunger. I cannot explain all of it here. Not while she is bleeding. Not while the tunnel is cracking. Not while my own restraint is stretched thin.
“Later,” I say.
Her eyes narrow. “I hate later.”
“I know.”
She shifts to stand, but it is too soon. I rise with her and she points at me.
“Do not.”
I stop. She stands more slowly this time. One palm to the wall. Her knees are steady enough. Her face is too pale. But upright. The math is still bad, but not as bad as before.
She looks at the sample pouch. “Keep it.”
“I intended to.”
“Not because I can’t.”
“No.”
“Because if it reacts to me again, we need space between us until we know why.”
“Yes.”
The words cost her. I hear the shape of it. She wants to hold the light. Wants proof in her own hand. Wants it, and gives that want away because survival demands it. Not self-erasure this time. Choice. Different. Important.
I lift her pack. She reaches for it.
I hold it out, then pause. “It will pull on your arm.”
“I know.”
“I can carry it.” Her expression sharpens. Before she speaks, I add, “Not because you cannot. Because your arm is wounded and we need your balance more than your pride.”
“Insulting.”
“Yes.”
“Accurate.”
“Yes.”
She stares at the pack. At me. At the passage ahead.
Then she lets out a furious breath. “Fine.”
Victory should not feel like grief. I secure her pack against my own. She looks smaller without it. No. Not smaller. Less armored. I dislike that even more.
The wrong rhythm pulses once in the distance. Faint. Farther ahead now, not behind. Sera turns toward it.
“So the thing is moving.”
“Yes.”
“Toward what?”
I listen. The passage beneath us angles deeper, then bends west. The pulse travels through cut stone channels, not just tunnel stone. It is not random. It is not merely calling zemlja. It is going somewhere.
“Toward old structures,” I say.
“Under the City?”
“I do not know.”
Her face changes. Fear, this time, for something more than herself.
“Then we move,” she says.
I step beside her. She takes one careful breath, then starts forward. Not fast. Not steady enough. But moving.
The sample pulses against my chest, faint and blue. Her blood darkens the bandage. The gray thread rests wrapped in my pouch. And somewhere ahead, beneath old Tajss stone, the wrong rhythm waits.
Once. Pause. Again.