10-11-2355 | 12:02
Ridgeline, North Peaks — Near Forest Containment Zone.
—
Ryn is airborne before Lina fires again. He rides a ribbon of compressed air and vapor he lays under his feet, a narrow highway through the pines. The Rendling behind him spits a black torrent that smokes where it hits needles and bark. The first blast grazes Ryn's forearm. Salt and resin sting his skin. He tastes metal and the faint, sour aftertaste of whatever the code has learned to make.
He does not run. He weaves. He turns the canopy into a corridor, a funnel aimed at the crescent anchored below. Each motion is a calculation of wind and wood and the animal in front of him. He snaps a filament of water into a blade and throws it like a question. The goo slaps the water and fizzes, spraying steam and a fine rain. Ryn answers with a pulse of air that knocks the Rendling off balance. She corrects, fires a wider arc, and the corrosive thins the bark on a trunk until it weeps black.
Ryn calls into the channel. His voice is tight. "Routing her to the crescent. She has adapted. Corrosive payloads. Close left spine now."
Static eats half the words. He hears heavy impacts through the line and Bishop cursing under his breath. The hard-light crescent waits ahead, a strip of pale that bites the air where the team has planted anchors. Scientists huddle behind a low barricade with instruments wired to the spine. Enforcers ready exo poles and coils. Lights blink as if the field itself checks its pulse.
Lina lunges, a black wave aimed for his lift. Ryn drops into a dive and plants a whip of condensed vapor across her flank. The goo peels off in threads and hisses on the air. For a moment he rides her momentum, shoulder to shoulder in the canopy, and he hears not only the animal noise but a broken cadence of words, the old human rhythm under the mutation.
"Hold the left," he says. "She is coming fast."
Below, Bishop slams the anchor into the earth. The crescent flares and takes a hit that lights the air up and throws sparks across the rim. Lina hits the field with the sound of a collapsing thing. The mesh dents and screams but clamps around her weight. The scientists shout and the enforcers slam secondary spines into place. The cage shutters with a wet, bright sound and the corrosive smoke fumes away.
Ryn drops down onto a heavy branch beside the cage. He feels the tremor through his boots. His palms are slick. Lina thrashes against the light and then, as the field holds, her movements slow. For a second that looks like a human face, she looks at him through the mesh, eyes wide and raw.
"You breathe," Ryn tells her, voice small and stern. "You stay. We make you human again."
Around him the team exhales and the forest begins to forget the shape of panic. The crescent pulses and holds. Dax is not on the channel yet. Ryn keeps his hand on the mesh and waits for the sound of boots that mean the rest of the work is about to start.
10-11-2355 | 12:09
Ridgeline, North Peaks — Cave Opening.
—
The cave mouth tastes of hot stone and blood. Two animal Rendlings lie down the slope like broken tools. Kaito crouches at a ruined relay, fingers flying over a cracked slate to route the evac. He is exposed and human and breathing too loud.
Something moves behind him, darker than shadow. The third Rendling breaks free of the underbrush like a thing that has been taught ruthlessness. It is scorched and slick from the corrosive it carries. It is all teeth and intent and it locks onto the nearest soft life.
Dax shoves Kaito over his shoulder. "Get down!" he screams. The tech slams to the ground and rolls away, too stunned to be clever.
Dax does not brace. He turns into the hit and takes the animal full in the shoulder and the side of his helmet. Metal and bone scream together. His exo joint gives with a shriek. The helmet cracks. Warm iron blooms down his collar before the world has decided which way is up.
Bishop throws himself at the creature with the grav maul, but the Rendling is a blur. A jagged claw snaps into Bishop's ribs and throws him against a boulder. He gasps and clutches at his side.
Dax kills the comms with a thumb so nothing in the world can tell him what to do but what is inside his chest. He forces his eyes between the raw animal and the place the animal is wearing, because where the beast breathes his brain gives him an impossible mercy. The snout resolves into a face he has carried like a stone.
Tamsin stands there in the creature's space. Her skin is puckered with old burns. Her hair is ash. Her eyes are white with cataract and accusation. When she speaks, the words are small and cold up close.
"You left us," she says. "You left me."
The Rendling lunges. Dax moves because there is no time to perform grief. He draws a knife and drives it into the flank the way you do a field fix. The beast roars and the sound is bone and bad weather. The claw rips across his right side, tearing the reinforced fabric and scoring flesh. Pain blooms white-hot. He tastes metal.
Still, he hears her voice as clearly as if she were leaning in to spit. "You looked at the door and you froze. You counted. You chose the rest over me. You are a hero who keeps score on other people's chests."
"You chose," Dax snaps back even as he twists, using exo torque to lever the animal's jaw open so he can pry a limb free. He is not shouting at a memory. He is arguing with a living accusation that is also trying to tear him apart. "You closed the door to save us. That was not on me."
Tamsin smiles without warmth. "You thanked me afterwards when they handed you medals. You told the press what a good team you had. You wrote the book. You kept walking. I made sure you would keep walking. That was my gift to you."
He places his knee on the creature's shoulder and forces the weight down. The beast struggles like a thing with a second spine. He pins a forelimb with a length of webbing torn from Bishop's kit and loops it tight. The animal thrashes and flames of panic sputter from its nose.
"You were a person," he says. "Not a ledger. Not a lesson. You were my friend."
"You never cried in front of me," she says. "You were the one who taught me to swallow the shaking. You told me to be a soldier. So I bought you the quiet that lets soldiers live. That was mercy."
Dax's hands shake. He is bleeding through his collar in a hot streak and the taste of that iron is everywhere. He can let the knife go deeper and end this. He can end the beast that wears Tamsin's face and close his account with fate. He will not.
"You are not her," he says. "You are the thing she became."
"You say that like it makes you clean," she answers. "Do you think naming something absolves you?"
He holds the animal under weight and breathes through the burn. Around him the team moves on his order because he gave it. Bishop scrambles to his feet and staggers back toward the evac line. Irie snaps a med strip into place and lifters Kaito faster than the damage can register. No wild heroics. They obey the call he gave. He sold them this moment with the only currency he has left. "Go," he orders. "Now. Move and keep your heads down."
They go because they have to. Because the cave is a place where orders mean survival. They throw Kaito over a shoulder and they run. The sound of boots receding is a slow burn at his ribs.
Tamsin steps closer until her face is two breaths away from his. The Rendling thrashes and tries to bite; Dax keeps its head turned free of the fight between them. He feels the animal's breath on the back of his neck, hot and smelling of ruin.
"You owe me," she says. "You owe me because you left me with cinder in my lungs and I still knew your voice. You think the medals will fill the hole?"
"Medals don't fix doors," Dax spits. "They don't fix screams. I know that. Every time I close my eyes, I hear you in the whine of a broken hinge. But killing you won't change that. Killing you will make me into what I hate."
She tilts her head, a small, sharp movement. "So you will make a different thing then. You will be the man who holds and refuses to finish. You will be the man who lets ghosts walk."
"I will let people live," he says. "I keep living so I can stop other doors from sticking. That is not cowardice. It is duty."
The Rendling twists and snaps, nails raking across Dax's back. He spits a curse and answers with a shove that pins the beast's shoulder to stone. He drives the knife into a gap and ties the limb tighter, a practical cruelty that keeps the beast breathing and unable to hurt anyone else. It thrashes and the sound is a wet, animal thing that tries to make him doubt.
Tamsin presses closer, voice a whisper that goes past argument into the marrow. "You did not save me. You saved the world's notion of you. You handed me a sacrifice. I am reminding you."
He breathes slow until the pain is manageable. "Then remember me differently," he says, not a plea but an order. "Remember that you were brave. Remember that you chose. Remember that I tried. Remember that I am trying. And leave them alone."
For a long, tense second the apparition studies him as if gauging whether this is a trick. A flicker comes through her face, something almost like regret. Then the vision fractures at the edges and the Rendling is simply creature again, panting and slick. The cave smells like burnt resin and old sorrow.
Dax sits on his heels, hands raw and bleeding, the knife between his fingers. He does not call the comms back on right away. He waits for Bishop's breath again, for Irie's muttered curses to settle into measurements of survivability. He waits to hear Kaito's voice, the living one, say we made it.
Somewhere down the tunnel a bootstep comes back. Dax breathes and it is just air, and not punishment, and he lets himself take the small mercy of being alive with the knowledge that survival does not equal absolution. He has to live into the fix. He has to make the next door open.
—