Chapter 20 Lia
LIA
The farther we go, the quieter Tomas gets. He’s not calmer, but quieter.
And it’s the wrong kind of quiet. The kind where words take effort, where even breathing feels like something you have to remember to do on purpose. His grip tightens on Travnyk’s forearm, knuckles pale, and this time he doesn’t bother pretending it’s nothing.
“I’m not—” He stops, swallows hard. Tries again. “I’m not dizzy. It’s more like… my head’s full.”
Travnyk slows, adjusting so Tomas doesn’t have to keep up with a pace that’s too fast. Pausing his steps, Travnyk crouches and presses two fingers to the floor, then to the wall. His brow furrows.
“The particulate density is increasing along this route,” he says. “Still diffuse. Still below acute thresholds, but higher.”
“For humans,” I say.
“Yes.”
Rakkh growls under his breath. “Then this route is unacceptable.”
“It may be unavoidable,” Travnyk replies evenly. “The ship is channeling flow inward. The further we go, the more contained the environment becomes. I think there will be less of whatever is causing Tomas to react.”
“That doesn’t help him now,” Rakkh snaps.
Travnyk straightens, unoffended. “It will.”
I step closer to Tomas, crouching so we’re eye level. His pupils are still too wide, his skin faintly flushed.
“Look at me,” I say softly.
He does, but it clearly takes effort.
“Talk to me,” I prompt. “What do you feel?”
He frowns, searching. “Like… pressure. Not pain. Like being underwater without the water.”
My stomach tightens. Rakkh’s tail flicks once, sharp.
“We are not leaving him,” Rakkh says.
“I know,” I say quickly. “I’m not suggesting that.”
The ship doesn’t react to our pause. The light ahead remains steady, the walls unchanged. It isn’t rushing us. That’s almost worse.
“This isn’t an attack response,” I murmur. “It’s a byproduct.”
Travnyk’s gaze sharpens. “Explain.”
“It’s not targeting Tomas,” I say. “I don’t think it seems him as a variable. Whatever’s affecting him is… waste. Residual output from systems that were never meant to run while buried.”
Tomas blinks slowly. “So I’m getting poisoned by accident.”
“Yes,” I say gently.
“That’s… great.”
Rakkh bares his teeth. “Then we stop the output.”
“I don’t think we can,” I say. “Not yet.”
His eyes lock on mine. “Why.”
I hesitate to say it, not because I think I’m wrong, but because the answer terrifies me.
“I don’t think the ship knows it’s hurting anyone,” I say quietly. “I think it assumes anyone inside is… compatible.”
Silence stretches. Travnyk exhales through his nose.
“Then this system predates modern human parameters.”
“Yes.”
“And possibly modern Zmaj ones as well,” he adds, glancing at Rakkh.
Rakkh’s jaw tightens, but he doesn’t argue.
The corridor bends ahead, the walls darkening to that deep indigo shade. Fine white etchings trace along the metal now, faint and branching—like conduits, not decoration. The air feels denser here, colder, cleaner… and somehow harsher.
Tomas sways.
Travnyk catches him and hauls him upright with one arm, holding him against his side like he weighs nothing. Tomas doesn’t protest. He presses his forehead briefly to Travnyk’s shoulder, eyes squeezed shut.
“Okay,” he mutters. “Okay, that’s… yeah. That’s worse.”
“We need to move,” I say. “But not like this.”
The ship hums—low, steady. It’s not reacting; it’s listening.
I step away from the wall and into the center of the corridor.
Rakkh’s head snaps toward me. “Lia—”
“I need to test something,” I say, heart pounding.
I don’t touch anything. I just breathe. Focus. The way I did earlier, when I tried to shape intent instead of panic. This place wasn’t built to hurt. It was built to preserve and sustain. To wait for… something or… someone.
“I know you don’t see him,” I whisper, not aloud, not exactly. “But he’s with me.”
The vibration under my boots shifts. It’s not stronger or weaker, but it is different. The light along the floor flickers, then steadies again, slightly dimmer.
Travnyk inhales sharply. “The density just dropped.”
Rakkh stiffens. “What did you do?”
“I didn’t give it a command,” I say, breath shaky. “I gave it context.”
Tomas exhales, long and shuddering. Color returns to his face by degrees.
“Oh,” he says weakly. “That’s… better. That’s a lot better.”
The corridor ahead opens another fraction, revealing a wider space beyond—walls smoother, seams tighter, the air noticeably clearer.
Containment. Not a destination—but a threshold.
“It can compensate,” Travnyk murmurs. “If it understands the need.”
Rakkh looks down at me, eyes molten. “You should not have to do that.”
“I know,” I say. “But if I don’t, it won’t realize there’s a problem.”
The ship hums again—subtly altered, retuned. It’s not approval or disapproval, but it is an adjustment.
We move forward slowly, Travnyk carrying Tomas now without comment or strain. Tomas’s head lolls briefly against his shoulder before he straightens, embarrassed.
“Sorry,” he mutters.
“Do not apologize,” Travnyk says flatly. “Survive.”
As we cross into the wider chamber, I feel it again—that pressure behind my eyes, that sense of systems aligning. The ship is operating and every adjustment it makes costs something.
Outside, beyond layers of metal and sand, that cost is bleeding into the desert—into the roots, the water tables, the creatures that don’t know to leave.
Here, inside, Tomas is the warning. I have the sinking feeling that he won’t be the last.
The chamber beyond the corridor isn’t large—but it feels deliberate in a way that makes my skin prickle. It doesn’t seem to be a junction or a staging room. This space was meant to hold something.
The floor curves gently downward toward a shallow basin at the center, its surface smooth and dark, almost glassy.
The walls rise in a continuous arc, uninterrupted except for fine seams that radiate outward like fractures frozen mid-spread.
Pale lines of light trace those seams—not bright, not aggressive—steady and constant.
The air here is cleaner, but it smells faintly metallic, like sterile instruments and cold stone. There isn’t a hint of dust, or rot, and definitely no desert sand. Tomas inhales cautiously, then again, deeper this time.
“Okay,” he says, surprised. “That… actually feels normal.”
Travnyk nods once. “Environmental compensation zone.”
“For who?” Rakkh asks.
Travnyk’s gaze slides to me. “For her.”
Of course it is.
My stomach churns. Travnyk eases Tomas down against the wall, but he doesn’t step away. Rakkh remains angled protectively, one wing subtly curved to shield us both from the center of the chamber. I can feel his tension through the air, tight and contained.
“This place isn’t dangerous,” I say quietly, trying to be reassuring.
“That does not mean it is safe,” Rakkh replies.
The ship doesn’t react to either of us. That, more than anything, unsettles me. The muscles in my shoulders are so tense it’s making my head throb.
I step toward the basin—not touching, not crossing any obvious boundary, but the light shifts. It’s subtle, adjusting its intensity to follow my movement. It seems less like it’s leading, more like it’s accommodating.
The surface of the basin ripples. It’s not liquid, but also not solid.
It’s something in between. I crouch slowly, heart pounding, and peer down.
The darkness beneath the surface isn’t empty—it’s layered.
Stratified. I can’t see what’s below, but I feel pressure, containment, and restraint on some internal way that doesn’t make sense.
“This isn’t a power core,” I murmur.
Travnyk moves closer, careful not to crowd me.
“No, this looks more like it is a regulator.”
“How do you know that?” I ask, my stomach tightening.
Travnyk shrugs and grunts. He points one of his thick, green fingers at faint lines that thread through the… whatever material this thing is made of. Liquid metal? Organic metal?
“The pattern,” he says simply. “Resembles a throttle, a regulation of power. Or… something.”
I see what he does and in my mind it looks similar to the veins in a plant. The lines, sometimes only visible with magnification, that move the ‘power’ or energy through the leaves and into the stalk. It makes sense.
“Okay, but… what? What is it regulating?”
Travnyk doesn’t answer right away. He emits a low rumbling sound as he leans over, closer, studying it carefully. He traces some of the lines with his finger, carefully not touching as he does.
“Output,” he says after a few moments of this.
Rakkh’s head snaps up. “Output of what?”
Travnyk gestures subtly at the basin.
“Energy. Matter. Waste products. Byproducts of long-term system operation. All of those? I do not know.”
The word waste echoes in my head. Images flash unbidden—dead plants with scorched roots, animals sick and glassy-eyed, blackened ichor where nothing should rot that way.
All the effects of whatever is leaking into the ground and poisoning the desert.
If this is the source, like it seems it must be, then it is not intentional.
“It’s not trying to poison the desert,” I whisper.
Rakkh turns toward me sharply. “What.”
“It doesn’t see it as poison,” I say. “It sees it as excess. Discharge. Something meant to be dispersed into an environment that could handle it.”
“An environment that it no longer exists in,” Travnyk says, narrowing his eyes.
“Yes,” I say. “It’s a ship. It’s supposed to be in outer space. Not crashed and half-buried into the planet.”
Silence settles, thick and heavy. Tomas lets out a shaky laugh.
“So… the ship’s been dumping radioactive garbage into the ecosystem because it thinks Tajss is still… what. Pre-war?”
“Pre-Devastation,” I say.
The basin pulses once—soft, controlled. A faint shimmer passes through its surface, then fades. The ship isn’t hiding anything, it’s trying to show me.
“It was never meant to come down this way,” I whisper. “Not without oversight. It’s not supposed to be here, like this.”
Rakkh steps closer, his presence solid at my back. He lays one hand gently between my shoulder blades. Warmth emanates from that single point of contact, welcome and distracting at the same time.
“And now what? Why is it here? How do we fix it?”
I close my eyes, focusing on the impressions pressing at the edges of my awareness. Not memories this time—systems logic. Cause and effect. Inputs and outputs looping without correction.
“And now,” I say slowly, “it’s compensating for its failure.”
Travnyk exhales. “By increasing output.”
“Yes.”
Tomas swears under his breath.
The light along the seams brightens a fraction, then stabilizes again. The basin’s surface stills, smooth and dark. The ship is informing me.
“If it keeps operating like this,” I say, forcing the words past the tightness in my chest, “the contamination will spread. Deeper. Farther from the crash site.”
Rakkh’s claws curl. “Then it must be stopped.”
“It’s not that easy,” I say, shaking my head. “If we stop it outright, whatever it’s containing will release all at once.”
Travnyk’s jaw tightens. “Catastrophic failure.”
“Yes,” I say, the implication settling like a weight on my spine.
“So what,” Tomas says quietly, “we just… let it keep killing everything?”
“No,” I say. “We change how it operates.”
“Can you,” Rakkh asks.
I hesitate, staring at the basin. I close my eyes and try to understand this strange connection the ship has with me.
The images, the ideas that I’m getting from it.
In a way it makes me feel crazy. I can’t help but wonder if this is real and if it is, why me?
It can’t be only that I’m human because if that was it, then why isn’t Tomas experiencing this too?
But it is me. And I know, with a certainty that I can’t explain, that the ship has chosen me and that I’m the only one who can do something about all of this.
“I don’t know,” I admit. “But it thinks I can.”
The basin pulses again—slower this time. The light shifts, forming a faint pattern across the floor that I recognize now not as a path, but a process. Steps. Dependencies.
The ship isn’t finished. It’s just getting to the part where decisions matter. Rakkh’s hand shifts to the small of my back, steady and grounding.
“Then we do not rush,” he says. “And we do not let it decide alone.”
I nod, throat tight. Because deep down, I already understand the cost of what the ship is asking.
It doesn’t just want authorization. It wants correction.
Intervention. A human judgment layered over an ancient war machine that has never learned how to stop.
And if I’m wrong—if I misjudge even once—the desert won’t be the only thing that pays the price.
The basin dims, the light along the seams softening into a steady glow. The ship has shown me enough, for now at least.
And as we stand there—four living beings inside a machine that has outlived its makers—I realize with a clarity that makes my hands tremble this isn’t about survival, not anymore. It’s about responsibility. And the ship has already decided who it belongs to.