Chapter 17
JILLIAN
Ican’t stop thinking about him.
My data sheets are a disaster—half-finished notes, charts left unlogged, sample vials stacked in mismatched trays like some amateur’s workstation. I’ve never been this disorganized in my life, but no matter how many times I sit down and try to focus, my pen stills. My gaze drifts. My mind wanders.
Back to him.
The one who isn’t supposed to exist.
The one who saved me.
The one with eyes like twin suns burning through every lie I’ve ever told myself.
I keep telling myself it’s shock. Adrenaline. Trauma, maybe. He killed a sting tail in front of me—ripped it apart like it was nothing, stood over its twitching body while the blood soaked into the dirt. That kind of thing sticks in a person’s brain.
But that’s not what I remember most.
It’s the way he looked at me. Like I wasn’t just another human in his territory. Like I mattered. Like he recognized something in me I didn’t even know was there.
He was huge. Terrifying. All muscle and dark fur and ancient scars carved into skin I don’t have the language to describe. But his eyes… they weren’t monstrous. They were aware. Curious. Alive in a way that made the rest of the world feel dim by comparison.
I see them when I sleep.
And I dream of nothing else.
“Jill? You coming to the lab meeting?”
Darwin’s voice is muffled through the tent flap. I jolt like I’ve been caught doing something I shouldn’t. Again.
“Yeah,” I call back, faking a yawn. “Just—give me a sec.”
He hesitates. I hear it in the pause before his footsteps recede. I don’t blame him for not pushing. I haven’t exactly been subtle lately. I’ve been off, and everyone knows it.
Still, no one asks. Not really.
Not after Carson.
They think I’m grieving. And I am. Just not the way they think.
I leave camp before first light.
Every day now.
I tell them it’s for field samples. Soil erosion studies. Airflow measurements. I make up words, toss them around like a smokescreen. No one checks. No one follows.
Grady’s got the marines tightening the perimeter after the sting tail attack. Sensors are up. Drones in the sky. Ciampa says we’re “entering a period of high volatility,” which is his way of saying everything’s gone to shit and he doesn’t want to be blamed for it.
But me? I just want to breathe.
So I head out early, while the air’s still cool and sharp in my lungs.
The path I take isn’t mapped. It twists between rock shelves and sharp drop-offs, through old lava veins turned to rust-colored valleys.
The route shifts every time I walk it—like the planet’s still deciding where everything belongs.
And each time, I notice something new.
A stone turned just so, pointing like an arrow. Scratches etched into bark or cave wall, symbols I can’t quite decode. Once, a pile of bones—carefully arranged. Not human. Not warning.
Guideposts.
I don’t let myself say who I think they’re from. Not out loud. Not even in my head, not really.
But I follow them.
And I hope.
I climb the ridge again by noon. Same ledge. Same wind tugging at my hair, the scent of ozone and mineral salts in the air. There’s a hollow silence here, broken only by the distant whine of a drone circling the upper canyon. It doesn’t come this far. Too steep, too narrow. Too wild.
I sit on the pelt he left me. The fur is worn soft now beneath my hands, the scent of it faintly metallic and earthy. It shouldn’t feel like safety.
But it does.
I close my eyes and whisper his name.
Except—I don’t know his name.
So I say, “You.”
The word is quiet, barely a breath. The wind carries it away like a secret.
“You know I’m not afraid of you, right?” I murmur, not expecting an answer. “Not even a little.”
Silence.
Just the crackle of dry brush beneath the ledge, the hum of the earth breathing under my boots.
“I mean, sure. At first. You were this… enormous, growling, clawed… thing. I thought I was dead for sure.”
I smile to myself, a wry twist of lips.
“But then you didn’t kill me. You protected me. From one of those sting tail bastards. You didn’t have to. So now I’m stuck with this—this question.”
I reach down and toy with the edge of the pelt, my fingers curling into the soft fur.
“Why?”
No answer. Not even a shift in the wind.
“I’ve got more questions,” I admit. “I always do. It’s what I do—I dig, I poke, I prod. Ask the things no one else wants to say out loud.”
My voice lowers.
“What are you?”
That one hangs heavier.
“Not what like some scientist in a lab coat. I mean…” I bite my lip. “You fight like a warrior. You hide like a ghost. You leave gifts like…”
I stop myself before I can say like you care.
“I just wanna understand. That’s all. I swear.”
Still nothing.
That night, I dream again.
But it’s not like before.
This time, I’m standing in the canyon, but the sky’s burning—violet and gold, streaked with green like veins in quartz. The wind howls, and everything smells of scorched earth and blood.
He’s there. Standing at the edge of the cliff, his back to me.
I call out—but my voice is swallowed.
He turns anyway.
And his eyes…
They burn straight through me--
I wake up gasping, heart slamming against my ribs.
It’s still dark.
The camp is quiet, the hum of the perimeter fence low and steady.
And then—I hear something.
A whisper of movement. A breath that isn’t mine.
I sit up slowly, eyes searching the dark beyond the tent flap. But there’s nothing. No shadow. No form. No glowing eyes.
Still… I feel it.
Like being watched. But not in a threatening way.
Like being seen.
And then I smile, pressing my fingers to the pocket where the fang still rests.
They say knowledge will set you free. Yet, the opposite seems to be true here.
The more I read, the less I sleep.
Carson's files are a damn black hole—every new document dragging me further into a nightmare I can’t wake up from.
What started as a handful of encrypted logs has turned into a sprawling mess of deceit.
Ciampa’s fraud goes beyond budget lies and misplaced supplies.
He’s been covering up everything. Diverting food.
Falsifying death reports. Misrepresenting risk assessments so severely that earlier expeditions walked into traps blind.
Some of those reports list “accidental” deaths.
I know better now.
My fingers tremble as I scroll through the files, the soft blue glow of the compad screen illuminating the shadows of my bunk.
I’m curled under the thin blanket, knees pressed to my chest like that’ll somehow make me smaller, less exposed.
But the truth is like acid in my gut. There’s nowhere to hide from it.
Carson knew. He tried to stop it. And Ciampa had him silenced.
I’m sure of it now. I feel like I’m drowning in proof, and no one to throw me a rope.
Darwin won’t help. Not anymore. I see the fear in his eyes when I ask too many questions. He changes the subject, deflects, pretends he’s busy. He knows something. Maybe he’s part of it. Or maybe he’s just scared, like me.
The marines? They’re jumpy, irritable, more focused on weapons drills than actual science. Grady snapped at me yesterday for walking too close to the outer fence. I told him I was gathering mineral samples. He didn’t care.
No one cares.
Except maybe... him.
I haven’t said it out loud. Not even to myself. But I feel it. That presence. Watching, listening. Following me like a ghost with warm breath and golden eyes.
I’ve started walking again. Not far, just out past the edge of the perimeter where the cliff drops off in a sheer line and the wind howls like it remembers better days. I take a thermos and a pack, pretend I’m doing observational geology, but I know it’s a lie.
I go to see if he’s there.
I sit near the ledge, where the pelt still lies nestled between two stones. The wind plays with the edges of it like it’s alive, tugging at the fur. It’s been cleaned. Smoothed. Cared for. He meant it as comfort, and even now, days later, it still is.
I close my eyes and listen—to the hum of the fence behind me, the distant clicks of insectoid wings, the groaning churn of distant vents. But mostly, I listen for him.
Tonight, the stars are out. Unfiltered, unbothered. Violet streaks slash across the sky, remnants of Purgonis’s atmosphere catching solar debris. It should be beautiful. It is. But it feels... wrong, somehow. Like the beauty is just another mask this planet wears while it devours you whole.
I hug my knees and lean into the dark.
“I don’t know your name,” I whisper.
It feels silly, like tossing words into a void. But I keep going. My voice is soft, almost lost in the wind.
“But I think you saved me again.”
There’s a long stretch of silence.
I don’t expect an answer. I’ve never expected one. But lately, it feels less like I’m talking to nothing and more like... something is listening.
Something that breathes.
I run my fingers along the rim of my thermos, the metal cool against my skin, grounding me. I wonder what he thinks when he hears me. If he hears me. If he understands. I want to believe he does.
Back in camp, everything feels like it’s about to come apart.
Ciampa has gone full ghost—locking himself in his lab, sending reports through encrypted channels no one else can access.
Grady’s locking down the perimeter more each day.
Even the scientists are pulling back, keeping to their own cliques, speaking in hushed tones when I walk by.
They think I’m fragile.
They think I broke when Carson died.
Let them.
Let them underestimate me.
I sip from the thermos and glance toward the tree line.
The darkness feels heavier tonight, like it’s pressing against the edge of the camp, testing its weight.
I imagine him out there, crouched low, watching.
The memory of his face flashes through me—not clearly, just impressions. Height. Hair. Eyes like fire.
And not a monster.
I still don’t know what he is. Odex, maybe. A mutation. Something else. But I know he didn’t come to hurt me.
He had the chance. And he didn’t take it.
I reach into my coat pocket and pull out the sting tail fang. I’ve taken to carrying it everywhere now, even slipping it under my pillow when I sleep. It feels stupidly sentimental, but it helps. It’s proof. Not just of him—but of me. Of the moment everything changed.
I run my thumb over the polished edge.
“I don’t know why you’re helping me,” I say to the air. “But I’m not gonna stop talking to you.”
The pelt flutters again, as if catching a breeze that isn’t there.
I don’t look up.
Not yet.
Instead, I sit there until the stars blur and the air grows too cold to stay. And even then, I wait a little longer. Just in case.
Just in case tonight’s the night he answers.