Chapter 8
MAUG
Ishould not have taken the note.
Should’ve let the wind chew it, shred it, let the sulfur air bleach it until it turned to dust. That would’ve been the smart thing.
The hard thing. The right thing. But no—I took it.
Slipped it from where she’d left it tucked in a rock crevice near the edge of the perimeter, like she didn’t care if anyone found it.
Maybe she wanted me to. Maybe she knew I was watching. Hell, maybe she was bluffing.
But I took it.
And now it lives in my hand like a wound I keep picking open.
It’s just a scrap of paper. Fragile. Thin.
Curled now from the heat and damp. Human ink, scrawled in tight, earnest loops.
“You’re not what they say.” That’s all it says.
No name. No plea. No signature. But I know who left it.
I can smell her even on this—floral soap, metals, sweat, and something indefinable. Something sharp and sweet and real.
Jillian.
That soft name roots itself in me like a hook. I should’ve thrown it from my thoughts. I should’ve erased it from my mouth. But I whisper it now, when I’m alone in the mist rising from the thermal springs. I trace the letters into the soil with a claw, then wipe them away like they mean nothing.
But they do.
And that’s the problem.
I watch her more than I should. I know this.
I’m not some lovesick pup. I’m Odex. Built for war, bred for fury, trained to cleave bone from body.
My people don’t pine. We don’t hope. And yet—I linger in the cliffs above her camp like a damned ghost, watching her move through that mess of prefabs and dust. Watching her fire off arguments at her superiors, waving her compad like a sword.
Watching her crouch in the ash, brushing at some half-melted crystal like it’s holy relic.
She treats even the smallest thing like it matters. Like it belongs.
But she doesn’t.
None of them do.
This planet doesn’t want them. It told me that the moment I clawed my way into its caverns and begged it to kill me slowly. The sulfur winds screamed no. The heat hissed no. It kept me. It cursed me to live, and now it punishes them for my continued existence.
The vents are shifting. I can feel it—like the world beneath my feet is inhaling too sharply, waiting for the scream. The pressure is wrong. The air’s changed its taste. There’s too much ozone, too much iron. And the stingtails? They’re migrating early. Way early.
That shouldn’t happen. But it is. I saw the trails two nights ago—grooved tracks carved into the high plateau west of the crags.
Something’s driving them faster, angrier.
Maybe it’s the heat signature, maybe it’s the shifting tectonics, maybe it’s just this place deciding to lash out again. But they’re coming.
And I can’t ignore it.
I consider warning them again.
I really do.
But then I remember the last time—the hiss of laser fire, the sharp sting of a graze wound splitting open my shoulder, the shouts of “Odex!” like it was a curse.
The way she ran to the commotion, eyes wide, breath misting in the cold, staring up at me like I was myth come alive.
No one else saw. Not really. But she did.
And she didn’t scream.
Still, the memory of the gunshot rings in my skull like a bell. They didn’t even wait. Just fired. And now, every time I so much as shift on the cliffs, I hear it again—that snap, the sizzle, the red-hot line of pain.
I should leave. For good. Go deeper into the southern crevasse. Let them die like all the others. But the note…
Damn that note.
I move through the caverns now with restless claws. My cave is too quiet. The spring bubbles steady behind me, but it offers no peace. I pace, I snarl, I glance again at the slip of paper lying atop a rock like a forgotten relic. I should burn it.
But I don’t.
I don’t because something in her voice—that unwavering tone, that reckless belief—sounded like truth. She doesn’t think I’m a monster.
She might be wrong.
But she might be right.
And if the stingtails breach the eastern valley before dawn, her little camp won’t stand a chance.
I stop pacing. My hand clenches. The steam curls around my horns, clinging like ghosts.
I have to choose.
Let them burn.
Or break my exile.
Again.
The decision is taken from me.
I don't get to weigh it. Don’t get to stand there pacing over heat cracks and second-guessing my damn conscience. Because the universe doesn't wait for me to figure my heart out—it just rips.
It starts with the scream.
Faint. Fractured. Human. Carried down from the upper ridges by the pressure-shift wind that always tastes like copper and regret.
I stop dead mid-step—one clawed foot half-sunk in the soft gravel near the cave’s mouth—because the pitch of it.
.. gods, the pitch. Not terror. Agony. Raw, ruptured-throat kind of pain.
Then silence.
Then another scream—shorter this time. Gurgled. Final.
“Damn it,” I mutter, already sprinting.
The rocks blur past as I claw and bound over boulders slick with mineral sweat, each footfall a thundercrack in my bones.
I move fast—too fast for a human eye to track.
My breath is molten in my chest, a furnace stoked by panic I pretend is just adrenaline.
But I know—know—something's gone wrong. Not just predator-wrong. Not animal-hunt-wrong. Foul wrong.
By the time I smell the blood, I’m too late.
It coats the rocks. Spattered. Soaked. Clotted.
Thick in the air like rust and ruin.
Carson. It says on his clothes.
He’s—what’s left of him—is slumped against a jagged rise of obsidian, half-draped in his own entrails. One arm is missing, and his face is a ruin of wet pulp. His chest is torn open like a snapped crate, and one boot still twitches, like nerves haven’t gotten the memo.
I stop short. Breath catching.
Not sorrow. I barely knew the boy. I don’t mourn what I didn’t hold.
But rage?
Oh. That I feel.
Because this isn’t my kill.
This wasn’t me.
And I know what it looks like.
The claw marks are deep. Messy. But they’re wrong.
Too narrow. Too hooked. Odex claws don’t curve that way.
The tearing’s all upward, as if something small but strong latched on from below.
There’s a melt pattern, too—around the wounds.
Acid traces. Like something spat on him, then chewed through the rest.
Not me.
But they won’t care.
I kneel, fast. Just long enough to dip a claw into the blood, sniff the edges. Burnt meat, bile, and something fungal. Spore-threaded. I catch the faintest trace of decay—active rot, not decomposition. Parasite work. Maybe fungus. Maybe something worse.
But it won’t matter.
They’ll come. They’ll see. They’ll scream “Odex!” and raise rifles, and there won’t be time for words—not that they’d hear ‘em from me anyhow. My face, my body, my damn existence will be enough to confirm their fears.
I curse and vanish into the nearest gulch, shadows swallowing me whole.
Not ten heartbeats later, the marines arrive.
They thunder across the rocks in disorganized formation—no discipline, no tight cover. Civilians with guns playing at being soldiers. I watch from behind a cleft, crouched so low the stone grates my horns. Their voices echo.
“Holy shit!”
“Is that—? Oh, god—”
“It’s Carson!”
One kneels. The others sweep the area with plasma rifles half-raised. I recognize the bald one—Fisk?—his helmet’s off, eyes wide. He gags and turns aside.
Grady shows up last, barking orders. “Secure the zone! No one moves till we ID what did this!”
“I don’t need a forensics read,” one of the others says. “Look at the size of those tears. This was the Odex.”
I growl low. Fools.
They take readings. Someone tags the body. Grady’s pacing now, jaw clenched, eyes scanning the horizon like he knows I’m close.
Then he says it.
“Prep the charges. Full perimeter lock. If that bastard’s still out there—we’re not waiting this time.”
There it is.
War.
Not declared. Assumed.
I watch the first fusion charge get slammed into the earth, its base hissing as it activates.
And I sink back into the black, heart pounding with the rhythm of wrong.