Chapter 9 The Longest Day #2
"It's a promise." He's stripping off his outer layers now, and watching Horgox undress is an experience I was not adequately prepared for by any OOPS training module.
The catches and straps come away with efficient movements that reveal emerald skin in sections: the scarred landscape of his chest where the harness used to sit, the jade markings warming in the steam, the blue traceries running along muscle that flexes with each motion.
The scars I freed from the chest plate, healed now into pale lines that map where pain used to live and doesn't anymore.
Because I took it out. My hands. My tools. My choice.
He enters the water with a fluidity that shouldn't be possible for seven feet of gladiator, and the spring is deep enough for privacy but small enough that maintaining distance requires active effort.
His markings brighten beneath the water's surface, the heat intensifying their luminescence, and the jade patterns turn his body into something that looks like living art.
"Stop staring," he says.
"Make me."
His eyes flash. "Don't tempt me."
"I have been actively tempting you for days. You're very resistant." I lean back against the stone, letting the heat work through my shoulders. "Twelve hours. Minus two for scouting. Ten to go."
"You're counting."
"You're not?"
"I've been counting since you opened your eyes this morning and told me you meant every word.
" He's keeping to his side of the spring, arms spread along the stone rim, head tilted back.
The posture would look relaxed to anyone who couldn't see the rigid control in his jaw and the way his hands grip the stone hard enough to leave marks.
"I'm currently at eleven hours, forty-three minutes. But who's counting."
"We're pathetic."
"We're disciplined."
"Pathetically disciplined." I duck under the water to rinse my hair, and when I surface, he's watching me with an expression that makes the temperature of the spring feel inadequate.
Water streams down my neck, my undershirt clinging, and his gaze follows the path with the focused intensity of a male memorising a route he intends to travel.
"You're doing it again," I say.
"Doing what."
"Looking at me like you're planning something."
"I'm always planning something. That's how we've survived." But the corner of his mouth curves, and the admission underneath the deflection is: yes, I'm planning exactly what you think I'm planning, and I have been for days, and every detail is specific.
"Give me one."
"One what?"
"One detail. Of the plan." I hold his gaze across the steam. "A preview. Something to think about for the next ten hours."
He's quiet for three full seconds. Then he moves through the water toward me, closing the distance in two strokes, and plants his hands on the stone rim on either side of my shoulders.
Close. Too close. His chest nearly touching mine, the heat of him blending with the spring's warmth until I can't separate the sources.
Water beads on his emerald skin, runs along the jade patterns, catches in the blue traceries.
His face is inches from mine, and the vertical pupils of those gold eyes have dilated until the gold is a thin ring.
"Tonight," he says, voice dropped to a register that vibrates against my sternum, "I'm going to start with your throat."
My brain empties.
"Here." His finger traces a line down the side of my neck, barely touching.
Not a kiss. Not a caress. A map. "And here.
" Across my collarbone. "And here." The hollow at the base of my throat where my pulse is hammering hard enough for both of us to see.
"I'm going to follow every path I've been watching you touch when you're nervous, every place you press your fingers when you're thinking, every spot where your skin flushes when you're flustered. "
"Horgox—"
"You asked for one detail." His mouth is beside my ear now, breath hot against wet skin. "This is one detail. I have many more. But the rest, little flare, you'll have to experience in person."
Then he pushes off the wall and glides back to his side of the spring like he hasn't just short-circuited my entire nervous system with a traced line and a murmured promise.
"That," I manage when speech returns, "was cruel."
"That was a preview." Entirely too pleased with himself, the jade in his markings broadcasting smug satisfaction so vivid I can read it across the steam. "You wanted something to think about."
"I wanted something to think about, not something that's going to make me non-functional for the rest of the day."
"Then we're even. You made me non-functional for the entire truth fruit conversation." He leans back against the stone, that almost-smile playing at the corners of his mouth. "Consider it balance."
Snowball chooses this moment to investigate the hot spring, her massive head appearing over the alcove rim with those glowing green eyes full of curious assessment. She looks at me. Looks at Horgox. Looks at the distance between us. Makes a rumbling sound that I swear carries judgment.
"Don't start," I tell her. "We're being disciplined."
Snowball rumbles again, sounding entirely unconvinced, and settles her bulk beside the spring with the air of someone who has decided this is better entertainment than hunting.
We dress. We scout. We check the beacon calibration and confirm transmission parameters. We eat rations from the salvaged supplies and discuss what happens after rescue with the careful pragmatism of two people who are acutely aware that "after" is a real thing that requires planning.
"OOPS extracts me," I say, cross-legged on the cave floor while Bebo runs final diagnostics. "STI takes you into custody for questioning about ApexCorp. We get separated."
"Likely." His jaw tightens. "The data on my implant makes me a key witness. They'll want me in a secure facility for debriefing. Could be days. Could be longer."
"That's not happening."
"That's protocol."
"Then I'm breaking protocol." My voice comes out harder than I intend.
Harder than banter, harder than flirting, the real Krilly beneath the jokes.
"You're not going through interrogations alone.
Not after everything. I'll fight Mother Morrison, I'll fight STI, I'll fight whoever I need to fight to stay with you during processing. "
"You'd risk your career."
"I'd risk considerably more than my career." My hand finds his forearm, fingers pressing against the jade. "We survived a murder jungle. We freed Snowball and Pudding. We're in this together, which means together. Not 'until it gets complicated.'"
His hand covers mine. Holds it there. The markings beneath my fingers warm, and I feel the shift of something new under the jade: a faint shimmer, opalescent, the wavelength Bebo logged last night. The claiming color, beginning.
"You're extraordinary," he says quietly.
"I'm stubborn. Different thing."
"Same thing, with you." His thumb traces my knuckles. "We'll figure it out. Whatever comes after rescue, we face it the way we've faced everything. Together."
"Together," I agree. Then: "But first, tonight."
The shimmer in his markings brightens. "First, tonight."
"Drone signature detected," Bebo announces, and the word tonight dies in the sudden cold. "Single unit, approaching from the southeast. Non-standard pattern. It's running a search grid that will intersect the canyon system in approximately fourteen minutes."
The beacon. If ApexCorp's drone picks up the beacon's pre-transmission calibration signal, they'll know we have communication capability. They'll jam the frequency, or worse, triangulate our position before we can transmit.
"Kill the beacon's passive emissions," I say, already moving to the core unit. "Bebo, can you mask the calibration signature?"
"I can cycle to dormant mode, but it will require a full recalibration before transmission. Estimated time: ninety minutes."
Ninety minutes. Added to the remaining hours, pushing everything back, tightening the window.
Horgox is on his feet, blade in hand, scanning the canyon overhead for the drone's approach vector. The male who kissed me with devastating restraint this morning is gone; in his place is the tactician, the survivor, the one who reads threat trajectories the way I read circuitry.
"How close does it need to get to detect the calibration signal?" he asks.
"Within five hundred metres, depending on its sensor array."
"The canyon walls provide some shielding. If we move the beacon deeper into the tunnel system—"
"The basalt scatters the signal. That's why the canyon works for us, but moving it deeper means less broadcast range when we do transmit. There's a sweet spot; I need to recalculate for the new position."
His eyes meet mine. Not the heated look of the hot spring.
Something harder, sharper. The look of a male who has been surviving institutional threats for longer than I've been alive, and who understands that the universe will not politely hold its dangers aside because two people want a night together.
"Do what you do best," he says. "Fix it."
So I fix it. Hands working while Horgox takes a position at the canyon entrance where he can watch the sky.
The drone passes overhead twelve minutes later, its scanning beam cutting through the canopy above the canyon rim, and we hold our breath while the basalt does its job.
The beam sweeps past. Continues southeast. Recedes.
"Clear," Bebo confirms. "The drone did not detect any emissions. However, I recommend expediting the recalibration. ApexCorp's search patterns have been widening for three days. The next pass may be closer."
My hands are steady, but my heart is hammering. Not from fear; from the specific fury of a woman who has had enough of this planet and this corporation and every obstacle between her and the life she's choosing.
Horgox returns from the entrance. His hand settles on my hip for three seconds, thumb tracing a circle through the jumpsuit fabric, and then lifts away and leaves a cold spot that aches.
"How long?" he asks.
"Sixty more minutes for recalibration. Then we transmit on the first clean window."
He nods. Doesn't say tonight. Doesn't need to. The promise is in the circle his thumb traced, in the color warming beneath his skin, in the way his eyes hold mine across the fire with the steady burn of something that's been building for days and knows it doesn't have to fight anymore.
The beacon transmits at oh-two-thirteen station time, a targeted burst on the frequency Bebo calculated during three days of patient calibration. The signal is clean, tight, aimed at the gap in ApexCorp's monitoring coverage that Horgox identified from a lifetime of studying his captors' patterns.
"Transmission successful," Bebo confirms. "Signal strength optimal. Estimated receipt at Junction One: forty-seven minutes. Response time for OOPS extraction shuttle: six to twelve hours depending on available assets."
Six to twelve hours.
I look at Horgox across the beacon setup, the fire between us casting warm shadows across his emerald skin. The signal is sent. Rescue is coming. Everything we've survived for is in motion.
"It's done," I say.
"It's done." He crosses to me. His hand finds my waist. "No more drones to dodge. No more beacons to repair."
"No more waiting," I say, and the words taste like a door opening.
He cups my face with both hands. Studies me in the firelight as though he's memorising this exact moment: my face, my eyes, the certainty he's looking for and finding.
"Little flare," he says, and the word has weight now, history, days of being earned and withheld and finally, finally given freely. "Are you sure?"
"Ask me one more time and I'm going to show you exactly how sure."
The smile that crosses his face is something I've never seen from him before. Not the almost-smile, not the suppressed amusement, not the controlled warmth. This is open and unguarded and new, the expression of a male who has just accepted that he's allowed to have this.
"Then come here," he says, and pulls me in.