Chapter 30
MAUG
She won’t let go.
Her arms wrap around me like she’s afraid I’ll vanish if she blinks too long. Her breath is shaky against my shoulder, her heartbeat a wild little thing fluttering in her chest. But she stays. Even now. After everything.
The burn along my back still screams. Deep, bone-deep—worse than a sting-tail’s venom, worse than blade wounds. Solar sear. The kind that keeps cooking even after the fire’s gone. I’ve had it once before. I’d rather take a dozen clean kills than that again.
But her presence dulls it.
Her fingers ghost over the worst of it, dabbing clean water—gathered from my reserve pool in the cave’s rear—onto my skin. The water hisses when it touches open meat. I grunt. She flinches.
“Sorry,” she murmurs.
“No. Again.”
She dips the cloth again, presses gently. She bites her lip with each touch, like she can feel the hurt with me.
“You’re healing,” she says softly, “but not fast enough.”
“I’ll live.”
“I’m not sure I will if you do something like that again.”
I glance down. Her eyes are wet again—but not from fear. She’s angry with me.
Good.
Anger is life. Anger is hers. The fungus hasn’t touched it.
She kisses my shoulder. I flinch, not from pain, but from the shock of how warm, how deliberate, it is. Her lips brush a spot where the new skin’s still raw, and I swear something inside me jerks back to life.
“You should sleep,” she says.
“So should you.”
“I will. After.”
She curls beside me, blankets bunched beneath her hips, head tucked into the crook of my neck. I close my eyes. The pain is still there, but duller now. Managed.
Her hand stays on my chest.
The last thing I remember is her whispering something soft, something I can’t quite catch. But it wraps around me like warmth. Like home.
I wake before her.
Her body is curled like a comma against mine. One leg slung over my hip, one hand still splayed across my chest. Her hair’s a tangled mess, streaked with soot and dried salt from her tears. And still—she’s beautiful.
She doesn’t sleep like the others. Doesn’t hum. Doesn’t twitch. Just breathes, slow and steady.
And for a moment, I forget.
Forget the fungus. The camp. The war before this one. All I know is the woman beside me and the way my chest rises to match hers.
She stirs, blinking awake.
“Mmmph,” she groans, stretching.
Her eyes land on mine.
She smiles.
No hesitation. No awkwardness. Just… that smile. Like waking up beside a half-scorched monster is normal.
She leans up and presses a kiss to my collarbone.
“I still have soot on my face, don’t I?”
I nod.
“Great.” She wipes it off with the heel of her hand, then shrugs. “Doesn’t matter. You look like hell too.”
I chuckle. My ribs protest, but I don’t stop.
“Did you mean what you said?” she asks suddenly. “That I shouldn’t have come back?”
I nod again. “Because I didn’t want to watch you die.”
She swallows hard. “I came close.”
I take her hand.
Her fingers thread through mine without hesitation.
“You didn’t,” I say. “You’re here.”
We sit like that a while. Then she shifts, eyes going sharper.
“I have to tell you what I found.”
I listen.
She lays it all out. The water. The minerals.
The missing protective compound. The way the others hum now, whisper when they think no one hears.
How Darwin watches her too closely. How Ciampa erased her data logs and swapped out her compad.
How she suspects the fungus has gone beyond infection—it’s directing behavior now. Rewriting them.
“It’s not just parasitic,” she says. “It’s social. It wants order. Obedience. A choir, not a crowd.”
“Do you still hear the song?”
She shakes her head. “Not like they do. Not yet. I think whatever was protecting me—maybe it was something you gave me in the cave, I don’t know. But I’m immune. For now.”
I nod once.
Then I say the words I’ve been turning over all night.
“I can get you off-world.”
Her mouth parts. Her breath stutters.
“Wait—what?”
I rise slowly, pain stiff in my shoulders, but manageable. I motion for her to follow. She pulls on her jacket, slinging her pack over one shoulder.
I lead her deeper into the cave.
Past the living area. Past the carved shelves and fire pit. Past the small underground stream I use for clean water. Through a narrow crevice, we crawl—her first, me close behind—until we reach the chamber.
She gasps.
The chamber is massive—natural dome, thirty feet high. The walls are streaked with silver ore and glinting quartz. But it’s not the stone she stares at.
It’s what’s buried beneath it.
An old starfighter. Scarred. Scorched. Still intact.
It rests under a canvas tarp I reinforced with plasma-sealant long ago. The dust around it is thick, undisturbed for years. But the shape is unmistakable.
Angular. Sleek.
Lethal.
Jillian steps forward, reverent.
“Maug… what is this?”
“My exile.”
I walk to the nose of the craft, press my palm to the hull. The outer layer shimmers beneath my touch. “I was supposed to leave this world after the war. Disappear. This was the vessel they gave me. I never used it.”
“Why not?”
“Because I hated myself. And exile felt too easy.”
She walks around it, fingertips brushing over the stabilizers, the wing flaps. “Does it work?”
“Needs charging. Maybe parts. But yes.”
She stops in front of me. Her eyes shine.
And then she does something I don’t expect.
She kisses me.
Not fast. Not desperate.
Sure.
Like this is what she wants.
Not escape. Not safety.
Me.
When she pulls back, she breathes, “We’re not just running, are we?”
“No.”
“We’re fighting.”
I nod.
She grins. “Good. Because I have more data. And I think I know where the hive node is.”
She’s quiet for a long time.
Then she steps into me, close enough our foreheads touch.
My eyes close.
Her words crash through me.
Soft. Shattering.
A punishment—for everything I’ve done.
And a salvation—for everything I still could be.
No more waiting.