Page 19 of Sixth
“Significant.” He said it like weather. “Manageable.”
“Liar,” she said, but didn’t push meds. He knew his limits cruelly well. She’d have to watch him, not his words.
“Listen,” he said again.
She did. The motes outside had formed a loose ring. The gap in the hull framed them, the wreckage making a rough amphitheater. The air tasted wet and mineral, like rain about to happen though she couldn’t see clouds through the torn canopy of leaves overhead. The hum slid lower again and something brushed against her thoughts. Not a word. Ashape. Acurve.
Apex’s hand curled around her wrist where the mark burned. “They’re not fire,” he said quietly. “They’re energy—traces of something running through the surface. Maybe the planet’s own current. We’ve disturbed it, and it’s reacting.”
Her heart sped. “You think the whole planet is… one thing?”
“Affirmative.” He looked at her. “You are not afraid?”
“I am,” she said. “Just not of that.”
“Voss,” he said.
“And losing you,” she said, voice steady despite the admission.
His throat worked. His gaze dropped to her mouth and rose again. The hunger in it was a clean, beautiful blade. “You will not.”
She hoped the planet was still listening when she kissed the corner of his jaw. Just that. Just skin to skin in a place that was claiming without demanding. The mark flared. The motes brightened as if she’d struck a match in theirair.
Apex’s breath went rough. “Emmeline.”
“I know.” She pulled back before he had to. Her body punished her for it with a wave of hot, stupid wanting. “Later.”
“Later.”
They worked.
She set up an air scrubber using one good filter and two bad ones, plus a piece of insulation she shaved to fit with a blade that was too dull. Apex directed, not because he wanted to be in charge—well, yes, because he always wanted to be in charge—but because his mind was the sharpest weapon they had and he wielded it from a seated position like a general with a broken leg. He made her re-route power through a secondary junction she would’ve missed, and when the lantern tried to die entirely, he had her cannibalize the drone jammer’s power cell and feed it into thebase.
They scavenged water from a burst line and boiled it in a field pot with a heating coil she had to hold at a specific angle because the casing had split and tried to burn her thumb off. Apex showed her how to rig a signal band to throw a narrow-beam pulse through the opening in thehull.
“Even if no one’s listening?” she asked.
“We’re still here,” he said. “If no one else answers, we’ll hear our own signal—and know we survived.”
The ache in her ribs sharpened. She nodded and held the coil at the right angle and thought about a future that might actually be possible again.
When she got careless—twice, both times when he said her name in that tone—she judged herself for it and then let it go. Perfection didn’t survive impact. She wasn’t aiming for perfect. She was aiming for alive.
Midway through what might have been morning, the ship gave another long, sinking creak. Emmy froze with an armful of thermal blankets. Apex’s gaze snapped to the cracked bulkhead behindher.
“Move,” he ordered tightly.
She didn’t argue. She dumped the blankets in a tangle and jumped back just as the bulkhead seam split another half-inch and a thin bright thread of outside bled through.
The motes streamed into the gap. Emmy stared, breathless. They didn’t pour in. They stepped. That was the only way her mind could frame it. They came forward as if each one held a mind that could decide. Asingle mote drifted in and hovered over the back of her hand. Her skin prickled. Not heat. Aknowing.
“Hi,” she whispered, as ridiculous as she’d been earlier. “We’re still okay.”
Apex held very still. “Do not move too quickly,” he said. “Do not show your teeth. Hands open.”
She huffed a tiny laugh. “They’re not wolves.”
“They are not not wolves,” hesaid.
