Chapter 19 #2
“It doesn’t matter how they found it. What matters is what we do now.”
“You have to hide.” She turned to him, her eyes wild with fear—but not fear for herself, he realized. Fear for him. “Rhyx, you can’t be seen. If they find you—”
“I’m not leaving you.”
“Rhyx—”
“No.” The word came out hard, absolute, with an edge of command that surprised them both.
“I am a warrior, Alina. In the before-times, my kind protected what was precious to us with our lives. That instinct lives in me still—in my blood, in my bones, in every fiber of my being. I will not hide like prey while you face danger alone.”
“This isn’t about hiding. It’s about survival.
” She grabbed his arm, her grip surprisingly strong.
“If GenCon captures you, they won’t just study you—they’ll take you apart.
Literally. They’ll dissect you, analyze you, try to replicate whatever made you.
You’ll become a weapon or a lab specimen or both, and there won’t be anything I can do to stop them. ”
“Then I will not allow myself to be captured.”
“You don’t understand what you’re dealing with. Their technology—”
“Their technology.” Rhyx allowed a small, cold smile to cross his face.
“I have watched your people, Alina. I have listened to Jeb’s stories about the wars he fought, the enemies he faced.
Your humans and their machines are impressive, I will grant you that.
But advanced technology is not enough to hide weakness. ”
She stared at him. “What do you mean?”
“I mean that they rely on their devices, their scanners, their weapons. They trust their machines to do the work of their senses, the work of their minds. But machines can be fooled. Machines have blind spots. And the people who depend on them have forgotten how to truly see.”
Rhyx moved past her, approaching the cavern wall where the rockfall had partially blocked the passage she’d used to enter. He pressed his palm against the stone, feeling the texture, the temperature, the subtle vibrations that told him secrets the humans’ radar could never detect.
“There are other tunnels,” he said. “Deeper passages, older ones, that connect to systems far beneath the surface. The radar sees shapes, but it doesn’t understand them. It shows voids but not pathways. If we go down instead of up, we become invisible.”
“You want to go deeper underground? Away from any possible escape route?”
“I want to go somewhere they cannot follow.” He turned back to her, extending his hand.
“Trust me, Alina. I know these tunnels. Not from memory—from something older, something instinctive. The same way I knew how to speak your language before I truly learned it, the same way I knew you were my mate the moment I touched your hand. This planet is waking, and some part of me is waking with it.”
She hesitated, her scientific mind clearly warring with the desperate reality of their situation.
“If we get trapped down there…”
“Then we find another way out. Mars is riddled with tunnel systems—you told me that yourself. Lava tubes, collapsed chambers, underground rivers that dried up millions of years ago. They’re all connected, if you know how to look.”
The vibration was growing stronger now. Closer. He could differentiate individual vehicles—at least five, maybe more—and the heavier thrum of some kind of mobile equipment. A command vehicle, perhaps, or a scanner array.
They were running out of time.
“Alina.” He kept his hand extended, kept his voice steady despite the urgency pounding through his veins.
“I will protect you. Whatever comes, whatever we face in the darkness below, I will not let any harm touch you. This I swear on the memory of my people and the blood that flows through both our veins.”
Something shifted in her expression. The fear was still there, but beneath it he could see something else emerging—the same fierce determination he’d witnessed when she stood up to Martin, when she’d decided to defy GenCon, when she’d chosen to protect him even at the cost of everything she’d built.
She reached out and took his hand.
“All right. Show me.”
Relief flooded through him, followed immediately by a surge of focused purpose.
“Your samples—”
“I have what I need.” She tightened the straps on her pack, settling it firmly against her back. “The most important specimens are already secured. We can collect more later, if…” She trailed off, unwilling to voice the possibility that there might not be a later.
He squeezed her hand.
“There will be time. I promise you.”
He led her away from the main cavern, moving with quiet efficiency towards a section of wall that looked solid but felt, to his enhanced senses, subtly different from the surrounding stone.
A seam, nearly invisible, where two geological formations met and left a gap barely wide enough for a body to pass through.
“Through here.”
She peered at the crack, her brow furrowing.
“I don’t see—”
“Trust me.”
He went first, turning sideways to squeeze through the narrow opening.
The rock pressed against his chest and back, rough and cold even through his borrowed clothes, but he’d known tighter passages in the fragmented dreams of his before-life.
This was nothing compared to the tunnels his people had carved through dying mountains, desperate to find any source of heat or water that might sustain them a little longer.
On the other side, the passage opened into a corridor—not wide, but tall enough that he could stand upright, stretching away into darkness in both directions.
“Give me your hand.”
Alina’s fingers found his in the blackness, her grip tight with barely controlled fear.
“I can’t see anything.”
“I can.” His eyes adjusted to the darkness with ease, picking out details that would be invisible to human vision—the texture of the walls, the slope of the floor, the faint luminescence of mineral deposits that glowed with their own cold light. “Stay close. Don’t let go of my hand.”
“Not planning on it.”
They moved through the tunnel system, deeper and deeper into the mountain’s heart.
Rhyx navigated by instinct and vibration, choosing pathways that led downward, away from the surface and the approaching threat.
The sounds of the vehicles faded as they descended, replaced by the profound silence of geological time—the weight of millions of years pressing in around them like a physical presence.
Alina stumbled once, her foot catching on an unseen obstacle. He caught her before she could fall, pulling her against his side.
“Sorry. I can’t see anything down here.”
“You’re doing well.” He kept his arm around her, supporting her weight as they continued forward. “The darkness is a friend, not an enemy. It hides us, protects us. Your eyes will adjust eventually, and in the meantime, I will be your sight.”
“That’s very poetic for a situation that’s also terrifying.”
He smiled in the darkness, appreciating the thread of humor she was maintaining despite her obvious fear.
“My people valued words. Poetry, stories, the speaking of truths in beautiful forms. It was said that a warrior who could not compose a proper death-chant was no warrior at all.”
“A death-chant? That’s… morbid.”
“Perhaps. But also honest. We knew that death came for everyone eventually, even those who seemed invincible. Better to face it with beauty than with silence.”
They walked for what felt like hours, though Rhyx suspected the true passage of time was much shorter.
The tunnels branched and merged, rose and fell, twisted in ways that would have been impossible to navigate without his instinctive sense of the mountain’s structure.
Several times he paused, pressing his palm against the wall to read the vibrations that traveled through the stone.
The vehicles had reached the cavern. He could feel them above—heavy machines, many footsteps, the high-pitched whine of scanning equipment trying to penetrate the rock.
But they weren’t following. They couldn’t. The passage he’d led Alina through was too narrow for human bodies in their bulky suits, and too irregular for any scanner to identify as a viable tunnel.
They were safe. For now.
“We can rest here.”
Rhyx guided her into a small chamber, barely larger than the habitat room where they’d spent the night at Jeb and Mattie’s claim. The floor was relatively smooth, the walls curved in a way that suggested this had once been a bubble in cooling lava rather than a carved passage.
Alina sank down against one wall, her breathing ragged from exertion and fading adrenaline.
“Are they gone?”
“No. They’re searching the main cavern.” He settled beside her, close enough that their shoulders touched. “But they won’t find the passage we used. It’s invisible to their equipment, and they don’t know to look for it.”
“How can you be sure?”
“Because I can feel them. Their confusion, their frustration. They expected to find something obvious—an entrance, a camp, evidence of habitation. What they found instead is a garden with no gardener.”
Alina was quiet for a moment.
“They’ll take samples. Study the plants. Eventually they’ll figure out what they’re capable of.”
“Perhaps. But they won’t find me. And they won’t find you.” He reached out in the darkness, found her hand, and laced his fingers through hers. “That is what matters most.”
“This can’t last forever, Rhyx. We can’t spend the rest of our lives hiding in tunnels.”
“No. But we don’t need forever. We only need enough time for your friends to help us escape this planet.
” He paused, remembering something she’d said about Jeb’s contacts in the cyborg network, about ships that moved without attracting attention.
“You said there were people who could help us disappear. Is that still true?”
“I think so. Zach was working on arrangements before I came to find you. But leaving Mars…” Her voice caught. “This is my home now, Rhyx. My work, my research, everything I’ve built—it’s all here.”
“Home is not a place.” He spoke softly, but with absolute certainty. “Home is the people you choose to share your life with. The bonds you build, the love you protect. Wherever we go, as long as we are together, that will be home.”
In the darkness, he heard her breath catch. Felt the slight tremble that ran through her body.
“You really believe that?”
“I know it.” He turned towards her, cupping her face in his hands even though neither of them could see clearly.
“When I awoke in that cavern, I had nothing. No memory of who I was, no understanding of the world I’d awakened into.
Everything I knew had been taken from me—my people, my planet, my very identity.
I should have been lost. Broken. Driven mad by the weight of all that loss. ”
“But you weren’t.”
“No. Because you were there.” He pressed his forehead against hers, breathing in her scent. “You gave me a reason to exist, Alina. A purpose beyond mere survival. You taught me that even after everything has been stripped away, it is still possible to build something new. Something beautiful.”
“Rhyx…”
“We will find a way,” he promised. “Together. Whatever challenges await us, whatever enemies pursue us—we will face them as one. This I swear to you.”
In the absolute darkness of the tunnel, far beneath the surface of a dying planet, Alina kissed him.
It was different from the kisses they’d shared before—less passionate, more tender, carrying a weight of emotion that went beyond simple desire. A promise, he realized. An answer to his oath.
Yes, the kiss seemed to say. Together. Whatever comes.
When they finally pulled apart, Rhyx could hear her heartbeat—steady now, the fear replaced by something calmer and more resolute.
“All right,” she said. “What’s our next move?”
“We wait. Let them finish their search above, let them conclude that whatever they were looking for isn’t here anymore. Then we find another way to the surface—somewhere far from the main cavern, somewhere they won’t be watching.”
“And after that?”
“After that, we go to your friends. We make plans.” He smiled in the darkness, though she couldn’t see it. “And we start our new life. Together.”
Alina leaned against him, her head resting on his shoulder, her body gradually relaxing as the tension of their flight drained away.
Above them, he could still feel the vibrations of GenCon’s search teams—tramping through his cavern, contaminating the sacred space with their machines and their greed.
Part of him burned with rage at the violation, wanted to rise up through the stone and show them what happened to those who desecrated the last remnant of his world.
But a larger part—the part that held Alina close, that breathed her scent and felt her warmth and knew with absolute certainty that she was more important than any vengeance—that part remained still.
Let them search, he thought. Let them take their samples and run their scans and congratulate themselves on their discovery.
They will never find what truly matters.
She is safe. She is mine. And I will burn down worlds before I let anyone take her from me.
The thought should have alarmed him—its ferocity, its possessiveness, the implicit violence lurking beneath the surface. But it didn’t. It felt right. Natural. As fundamental as the stone beneath his palm and the air in his lungs.
He was a warrior. A protector. A mate.
And whatever came next, he would face it with golden scales and blue fire.