Chapter 16
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“We can’t stay here.”
The words left Jaz’s mouth before she’d fully processed the thought, but the moment she said them, she knew they were right.
She’d been thinking about her plan as they started searching for traces of his presence, and she finally realized it was driven more by her desire to remain on her claim than by realistic expectations.
Adjar turned towards her and tilted his head questioningly.
“Hiding you in the caves isn’t going to work.
” She sighed. “Not if they really want you. I was treating this as if they were trying to steal mineral rights, or even some piece of technology. If they were simply trying to acquire my claim, it might have been enough. But after the explosion, they know something happened here. They might not know exactly what happened, but they know enough to believe that there is something valuable here, which means they’ll dig in.
They’ll bring in more equipment and more personnel, and keep searching until they find what they’re looking for. ”
“Then what do you propose?”
She started pacing, her boots thudding against the metal floor. “I think we need to go to the rangers. They have a station about two hundred kilometers southwest. It’s remote, but it’s not close to any GenCon locations.
“The rangers?”
“They’re cyborgs who were originally sent to terraform Mars.
Once the settlers started colonizing the planet, they transitioned into what passes as law enforcement.
They handle disputes in the outlands and protect independent operators from corporate overreach.
” She stopped pacing and turned to face him.
“And most importantly, they’re not bought and paid for by GenCon. If anyone can help us, it’s them.”
His expression was unreadable. “You trust these… modified humans?”
“Yes.” She ran a hand through her tangled hair, already mentally cataloguing what they’d need.
“They may not be overly friendly, but I trust them to be fair and honest. I can’t guarantee they can help us, but at a minimum, they can provide sanctuary while we figure out our next move.
GenCon can’t just storm a ranger station without serious political consequences. ”
“And if the rangers decide I am also a threat?”
“Then we deal with that.” She met his gaze steadily.
“But I don’t believe they will. They know firsthand what it’s like to be treated as less than human simply because you are different.
And the alternative is waiting here for GenCon to show up with God knows what kind of equipment, God knows how many personnel, and hoping we can somehow hide the fact that an actual dragon emerged from the ice.
That’s not a gamble I’m willing to take. ”
Silence stretched between them, and then he moved towards her, his movements fluid and predatory. When he stopped, he was close enough that she could feel the warmth radiating from his scaled skin.
“You would leave your home for me.”
It wasn’t a question, but she answered anyway. “This place is just metal and ice. It’s not—” She caught herself, surprised by the emotion rising in her throat. “It’s not worth your life. Nothing is worth your life.”
His hand came up to cup her face, his fingers impossibly gentle against her cheek. “Then we will gather what we can and leave. But first, we must ensure nothing remains for them to find.”
The wind had died to a whisper, but the cold remained brutal—the kind of cold that seeped through thermal layers and settled into bones. She pulled her face covering tighter and squinted against the pale light reflecting off endless white.
They started with the crater.
The hole he had punched through the ice was massive, a ragged wound in the landscape that screamed something happened here. Even from a distance, the darkness of the exposed depths was visible against the pristine surface.
“Can you collapse it?” she asked, her breath misting in the frigid air.
He studied the formation, his head tilted as if listening to something she couldn’t hear.
“The ice structure is unstable. The explosion weakened the surrounding layers.” He moved towards the crater’s edge, his clawed feet easily finding purchase on the slick surface. “I can accelerate the natural process.”
“How?”
Instead of answering, he knelt and pressed both palms flat against the ice. For a long moment, nothing happened. Then she felt a vibration beneath her feet, building like a distant earthquake. The sound started low, a groaning, creaking protest from deep within the frozen ground.
The crater walls began to shift.
It happened slowly at first, chunks of ice calving from the edges like a glacier giving birth to icebergs. Then faster, larger pieces tumbling into the darkness below. He remained motionless, his eyes closed, his wings half-spread for balance as the ground shook beneath them.
With a final, thunderous crack, the crater collapsed in on itself. When the ice dust settled, there was nothing left but a rough depression in the surface—the kind of thing that could be explained by natural subsidence, the ordinary settling of ancient ice over buried voids.
“Holy shit,” she breathed.
He rose, shaking frost from his scales. “The ice remembers its shape. I simply reminded it.”
“You can talk to ice?”
“Not talk. Feel. Persuade.” He flexed his fingers, and she noticed they were trembling slightly. “It is… tiring. More tiring than I expected.”
She moved to his side immediately. “Are you okay? Do you need to rest?”
“I need to finish. We can rest when we are away from this place.”
The look in his eyes told her arguing would be pointless. Stubborn dragon.
They moved on to the drilling rig, or what was left of it. They couldn’t hide the actual explosion, but they didn’t need to—there were any number of reasons why it might have exploded and nothing that pointed directly to Adjar.
The explosion had scattered debris across a fifty-meter radius. Twisted metal, shattered components, pieces of equipment she had spent years acquiring and maintaining. Looking at the wreckage, she felt a pang of grief that surprised her with its intensity.
“I’m sorry,” he said quietly.
“It’s not your fault.”
“It is exactly my fault. I attacked it.”
“You were disoriented. You’d just woken up from a sleep that lasted longer than human civilization. Anyone would have been a little punchy.” She managed a weak smile. “Besides, I can rebuild. Equipment can be replaced.”
“Can it?”
She looked at him, at the genuine concern on his angular features, and felt something shift in her chest. “Yes, but there are other things that can’t be replaced. You’re what matters now.”
They worked in silence after that, gathering salvageable components and loading them onto the cargo sled.
By a small miracle, the portable fuel cells were intact.
The core sampling equipment was destroyed beyond repair, but she managed to recover several data storage units that might still be functional.
Every piece of surviving technology was something that would make the future easier. Assuming they had a future.
The hardest part was finding and disposing of anything that might indicate Adjar’s presence. His blood had stained the ice near the crater in several places. She used a thermal lance to melt the surface layers, turning the contaminated ice into vapor that dispersed into the thin atmosphere.
“Here,” he called from near the habitat. He’d found one of his scales, shed at some point during his emergence. It glittered silver-white against the snow, beautiful and utterly damning.
“Are there more?”
“I do not know. My kind do not shed often, but between the trauma of awakening and my injuries…” He shook his head. “I cannot be certain.”
They searched in expanding circles, the cold biting deeper with each passing hour. Her fingers grew clumsy inside her gloves, and her toes went numb despite the heating elements in her boots. But she kept searching because every scale they found was another piece of evidence that could doom them.
By the time the pale sun began its descent towards the horizon, they’d recovered seven scales and erased every bloodstain they could find. It wasn’t perfect—with sophisticated enough equipment, GenCon might still detect trace evidence—but it was the best they could do.
“Inside,” he ordered, his voice brooking no argument. “You are shaking.”
She hadn’t noticed, but he was right. Her whole body was trembling, the cold finally overwhelming her body’s ability to compensate. She let him guide her back to the habitat and seal the airlock behind them. The relief of heated air against her face was almost painful.
“You pushed too hard,” he muttered, helping her out of her outer layers.
“I had to. We needed to—”
“We needed nothing that required you to hurt yourself.” He wrapped her in a thermal blanket, rubbing her arms to restore circulation. “You are no good to either of us if you freeze.”
“I’m not going to freeze.”
“Because I will not allow it.”
She wanted to argue, but the warmth was seeping into her muscles, turning them soft and compliant. When he lifted her and carried her to the bunk, she didn’t protest.
“Rest,” he said, tucking the blanket around her. “I will prepare food.”
“You don’t know how to—”
“I have watched you. I learn quickly.” A ghost of a smile touched his hard features. “Rest, Jaz. You have earned it.”
She meant to stay awake and keep planning. Instead, her eyes closed without her permission, and she drifted into an exhausted half-sleep while the sounds of Adjar moving around the habitat washed over her like a lullaby.
She woke to the smell of something that might have been vegetable soup. He was sitting beside the bunk, watching her with those impossible eyes, a steaming container in his hands.
“You cooked.”
“I heated.” He offered her the container. “Cooking implies skill. This required only the ability to follow instructions.”