Chapter 3 #3
My hands go still on the cable. "Empty. The crates that were humming at body temperature, that had something alive throwing itself against the walls. Empty."
"Confirmed. Pre-crash scans recorded active thermal regulation and movement within sealed containers.
Current scans detect no organic material.
The crates are empty." Another pause. "Reviewing pre-crash telemetry.
Pressure fluctuations consistent with rapid container decompression occurred approximately two minutes before atmospheric entry.
The contents exited the crates before the crash. "
Six containers. Six somethings that were alive, large, running at body temperature. Loose in the jungle since before we even hit the canopy.
"Manifest classification?" My voice sounds steadier than I feel.
"Restricted. Based on available parameters, I estimate large fauna. Thermal profiles suggest warm-blooded species with significant body mass. Possibly sentient."
Horgox has turned from the perimeter. His expression is controlled, but his posture has shifted, weight forward, the stance of someone recalculating threat parameters in real time.
"My cargo," I tell him. "The biological specimens I was supposed to deliver to the ApexCorp facility.
They escaped before the crash. Six of them.
Large, warm-blooded. Possibly sentient." The words taste like something worse than acidic rain.
"Whatever ApexCorp was transporting in those crates, it's somewhere in this jungle. "
"ApexCorp doesn't ship harmless specimens in sealed, temperature-regulated crates." His jaw is tight. "What does the manifest say about their destination?"
"Facility Theta. The same facility you escaped from."
The silence that follows has weight. His eyes hold mine, and for the first time I see something shift behind the tactical mask, something raw and angry that he controls before it can reach his face.
He knows what that facility does. He knows what happens to biological specimens that get delivered there.
"We were both carrying cargo for the same people," I say quietly. "You just happened to survive yours."
He doesn't respond. But his hands curl into fists at his sides, and the jade markings on his forearms pulse darker. Not the warm shifts I've seen before. Something colder, closer to the colour of deep water.
"This doesn't change our immediate plan," he says after a moment. Voice flat, tactical. "The canyon is defensible. We reach it, establish position, assess threats including the unknowns from your cargo. Your AI calculates the beacon repair timeline, and we work toward extraction."
"Bebo?"
"Beacon repair is feasible. The emergency beacon requires new power cells and recalibration of the broadcast array, both achievable with salvaged components from the wreckage.
However, any signal strong enough to reach Junction One will also be detectable by ApexCorp monitoring stations.
Probability of corporate interception preceding OOPS response: seventy-two percent. "
"So we'd be calling for rescue and broadcasting our location to the people hunting him." The knot in my stomach tightens.
"Not necessarily." Horgox's gaze has gone distant, the way it does when he's running calculations.
"ApexCorp prioritises commercial traffic corridors during peak station hours.
Outer rim monitoring drops to minimal between oh-two-hundred and oh-four-hundred.
A targeted burst transmission during that window could reach OOPS before detection. "
"You know their monitoring schedules."
"I studied them." Flat. No elaboration on where or how or what studying your captors' surveillance patterns for a lifetime costs a person. Just the data, offered for tactical use.
Bebo processes. "A low-power burst transmission during that window is theoretically viable. Beacon repair and calibration will require four to six days, depending on component availability."
Four to six days. On a hostile planet, with ApexCorp drones overhead, six unknown creatures loose in the jungle, and a male beside me who knows more about the people hunting us than he's willing to say.
"We're committed," I say. "This isn't a quick rescue. This is survival."
"Yes." He's watching me, and there's something in his expression I can't read. Assessment, maybe. Measuring whether I understand what I'm agreeing to. "Can you do this?"
"Ask me something hard."
That lands. A micro-shift in his posture, tension easing by a fraction. Not warmth, not softening, but the specific relaxation of a male who expected one answer and got a better one.
"Krilly's vital signs indicate elevated heart rate and increased dopamine production correlating with direct eye contact with the Varkaani," Bebo announces into the silence.
"Bebo."
"You programmed me to monitor your health."
"I meant injuries. Broken bones. Blood loss. Not—" My hands are doing something frantic with cables that absolutely do not need reconnecting. "Not that."
"The data is medically relevant. Sustained elevated dopamine in a survival context can impair decision-making through—"
"Thank you, Bebo, that's enough diagnostic reporting for one morning."
From the perimeter, a sound. Low, brief, quickly suppressed. If I didn't know better, I'd say Horgox Ka'reen, escaped gladiator, decades a weapon, three months a fugitive, just laughed.
"I like your AI," he says. First time his voice has held anything approaching warmth since the wreckage, and he directs it at the machine instead of at me, which is so perfectly, frustratingly in character that I want to throw a circuit tester at his head.
"You're both terrible. Let's move."
The three kilometers to the canyon takes four hours.
Four hours of dense jungle, skirting predator territories, wading chest-deep through a stream that's blessedly non-acidic, and scrambling up a rock face that Horgox navigates like a staircase while I cling to handholds and try not to look down.
He doesn't offer to carry me. He does position himself below me on the rock face, close enough to catch, and I pretend not to notice the tactical kindness in that.
The canyon is everything he promised. Narrow entrance, defensible walls, and the first place in nine days that doesn't feel like it's actively trying to kill us.
"You scouted this." The space is too perfect to be accidental. Defensible entrance, water source, natural shelter, rock that would interfere with scanning frequencies. "This is your fallback position."
"One of several." He's doing a perimeter check, moving through the space with the familiarity of someone who's been here before. "This one has the best combination of water access and drone interference. The basalt composition scatters thermal and motion scans."
"So we're invisible up here."
"To the drones. Not to everything." He checks a narrow cleft at the back of the canyon, then returns. "We'll need to set a watch schedule. The canyon predators are smaller than the pack that cornered us, but they're territorial."
"I'll take first watch." When he starts to object: "You braced a collapsing ship this morning and hiked three kilometres carrying most of our supplies. I'm tired; you're exhausted. Let me do this."
He studies me for a long moment. Then nods, once, and settles into one of the alcoves with the controlled descent of a male who won't admit how much his body needs rest.
"Four hours," he says. "Then wake me."
"Four hours."
His eyes close. Not sleep, not yet; his breathing is too controlled, his posture too ready. But the pretence of rest, offered to a stranger who asked him to take it. A concession.
I set up Bebo's core in a sheltered niche, run the power interface, and start cataloguing salvaged components for the beacon repair.
The work is familiar. Calming. My hands know what to do with circuits and wires and broken things that need fixing, even when the rest of me is running on fumes and adrenaline residue.
"Krilly." Bebo's voice, low. "He's asleep."
I glance over. Horgox's breathing has changed, deepened, the rigid control finally surrendering to exhaustion.
In sleep, the hard lines of his face ease slightly.
Not soft, exactly; he'll never be soft. But less fortified.
The jade markings on his forearms have settled to a steady, dim glow, and the blue traceries pulse faintly with his heartbeat, monitoring systems that never switch off.
"He's been awake for over thirty hours," I say. "He wouldn't rest in the root cave. Kept watch all night while I slept."
"His cortisol levels, extrapolated from the biosignature data I can access at this range, suggest chronic sleep deprivation consistent with sustained threat conditions over an extended period."
Three months of sleeping with one eye open. Before that, a lifetime of whatever gladiator rest looked like. No wonder he sleeps like he's expecting an attack.
"Bebo, what do we know about Varkaani? Species data, anything in your files."
"Limited. Varkaani originate from beyond the Threshold Territories.
Long-lived by human standards, durable, adapted for high-gravity environments.
ApexCorp's bio-engineering division has a documented history of acquiring and modifying individuals from multiple species for arena combat programs. The blue circuit traceries visible on his body are consistent with ApexCorp's gladiator-grade augmentation technology.
" A pause. "The green markings are natural.
Bioluminescent emotional communication, analogous to human facial expression.
The artificial traceries do not respond to emotion because they were never designed to. "
Something about that distinction makes my throat tight. His own body, speaking a language they couldn't silence, overlaid with their technology that speaks nothing at all.
"He told me forty years. In their custody."
"That is consistent with the timeline referenced in the Sector Nine security advisory, assuming current estimated Varkaani lifespan parameters."
"And the circuit traceries? Can they be removed?"
"Insufficient data. Gladiator-grade augmentation is typically integrated into the nervous system at a structural level.
Removal would depend on the depth of neural integration, and I lack the medical scanning capability to assess that from here.
" Bebo pauses again. "You're asking because you want to fix him. "
"I'm asking because—" Because his skin is his own and the traceries aren't. Because he maintained his own equipment in the arena the way I maintain Buttercup, and the parallel makes me sick.
Because he caught me when he should have stayed hidden, and he braced a collapsing ship when I told him to run, and he sleeps like a soldier and teaches me moss patterns in case he doesn't make it, and I have known him for less than a day and I already want to take a plasma cutter to everything ApexCorp ever built. "Because it matters."
"Noted." Bebo's voice carries something that might be warmth, if AIs could feel warmth. "I'll add it to my research queue."
The waterfall hushes over the pool. The canyon walls cut the worst of the wind. Horgox sleeps, and I keep watch, and the jungle screams its territorial disputes into a sky that's turning the colour of a bruise.
Four to six days. That's what we've got.
My hands find the beacon components, and I start sorting viable parts from wreckage. Working the problem. Doing what I've always done: keeping broken things alive, one repair at a time.
When Horgox wakes in exactly four hours, sharp as an alarm, his eyes find me first. Not the perimeter, not the entrance, not the canyon walls. Me, cross-legged in the alcove with Bebo's core glowing softly beside me and beacon components spread across the stone.
"Anything?" he asks.
"Quiet night. Two canyon predators sniffed around the entrance but didn't commit. Bebo's been running environmental scans." I stretch, feeling every bruise and stiff muscle from the day. "Your turn to rest was well earned. You actually slept."
"I don't sleep."
"You did tonight."
He looks at me for a long moment. Whatever he's thinking stays behind his eyes, locked away with everything else he isn't ready to share.
"Get some rest," he says. "Dawn comes early, and tomorrow we start building something defensible."
"Partners?" I ask. Not sure why I need to hear it confirmed. Maybe because everything in my training says a solo courier doesn't partner with fugitives on hostile planets. Maybe because Mother Morrison would have a very specific look on her face right now.
"Partners." He says it like it costs him something, but he says it.
Good enough. For now.