The smoke was still drifting low across the camp when Aram walked into the ruins, the Rathen Apex moving ahead of her between the bodies while her warriors held the perimeter.

  Her posture was perfect. Her hands were still.

  Reth. RETH. I want to find him and I want to…

  I want to take her apart. Slowly. Watch her face. Take my time.

  Focus.

  Her warriors moved to their positions without being told. Two of them had spaced themselves slightly wider apart than formation required. One of them had approached her earlier with a report and kept his gaze just below her face, not quite meeting her eyes, something that had never happened before.

  Even my own warriors. Even THEM. Looking at me like that.

  Good. They should.

  She walked to the first cluster of bodies.

  Six church soldiers in a collapsed formation. She crouched beside the nearest and read the wound, the angle of impact, the way the ribcage had caved on the left side.

  That shoulder. I built that. I MADE him and he brought what I built HERE for children who aren't his and for her and when I find them I'm going to…

  Read the bodies.

  She moved through the cluster. The same impact across all six, one had tried to turn and been caught from behind, and she read the spacing between the fallen and stood.

  He committed. He always committed when he decided something mattered.

  He'll commit to screaming too.

  She kept walking.

  The next group stopped her. Four bodies with different wounds, small and clean, one throat cut by a thrown blade, the chemical smell of poison still faint in the cloth around two of the others.

  Little knives. His strays.

  And the church. Sitting on their secrets and their little power games while I…

  I'm going to walk into everything they've built and leave nothing standing.

  She moved on.

  At the northern edge of the camp, where the fire hadn't reached, she found the tracks pressed into dark soil. Two sets of adult prints heading into the trees. One heavy and wide. One lighter, shorter stride, running alongside the first.

  Together.

  After the oath. After Jonen. After everything I gave him and he RAN with her and I want to…

  Something stopped.

  Not the hunger. Something underneath it, brief and cold, looking up at the rest of her mind from a distance.

  What is happening to me.

  When did this start. Level ten, the bond, the life exchange... I have looked for the moment and it isn't there.

  I can't find where I end and this started.

  I can't stop it.

  I don't think I want to stop it.

  The hunger came back and she let it.

  A warrior appeared at her shoulder and lowered his head carefully. "My lady. The fire destroyed the forest interior. No trail to follow inside."

  "The children," she said.

  "Heading for the dome exit. We have them."

  She looked at the small prints near the camp's edge. Children moving fast with no adult beside them.

  Cowards, giving up and running.

  "Search the closest path to the dome," she said.

  Her warriors moved.

  She waited, her eyes on the tree line.

  When they returned the children came with them, eight of them with their hands bound and faces grey with soot and dried blood. Their eyes went to the Apex first, all of them at once, that instinctive pull that everyone had when they saw it for the first time, and the beast raised its head and looked at them with the disinterest of something that had nothing to fear.

  Then they looked at her.

  Two of the younger ones took a small step back the moment they saw her face, recognizing her, and one of them grabbed the arm of the child beside them without looking away from her. One of the older boys had gone very still, his mouth pressing closed like he was already trying to brace for what was coming.

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  Good. Be afraid.

  "Where is Reth."

  Nobody answered. Eyes dropped to the ground, to boots, to each other.

  "Answer."

  She let the ability into the word. Not loud. Just that quality underneath the sound that her level gave her voice when she chose to use it, the thing that had no name and needed none. She watched it move through the group. Several of them went rigid then slack. One of the youngest made a sound low in their throat and grabbed the arm of the child beside them.

  A boy spoke. Smaller than the others, dark hair, younger than most of them. Torin.

  "He fought them." His voice came out unsteady, surprised by itself. "The church soldiers. He fought them so we could get clear."

  "Then what."

  "He told us to leave." A swallow that took effort. "Then he left. With the Operator."

  Aram looked at him. "Why didn't she leave with you."

  Torin's voice tightened. "Because some of them told the church who she was. And before that..." He stopped, pushing against the words, and she let him feel that it didn't help. "We let her wear a uniform that might have had poison in it. We tested it on her without telling her. She found out. That's why she left us.”

  A smart woman.

  "I didn't do it," Torin said, and the words came out fast and raw. "I wanted to go with her. She wouldn’t…”

  Aram's hand moved before he finished the sentence. The slap snapped his head to the side and he caught himself, one knee hitting the ground.

  She looked down at him. "I didn't ask.

  "Who leads here."

  A boy raised his hand. Fifteen, sixteen, black hair, sharp eyes already flat with the fury of someone who knew they were going to speak and couldn't stop it. Jaren.

  "Tell me everything," she said. "From the moment you first encountered Reth and the woman. All of it."

  Jaren's mouth opened. The words came out anyway, and something in his face broke a little as they did, like he was listening to himself betray someone for the third time and couldn't stop it.

  He spoke for a long time, and she listened without interrupting as the whole story came out. Reth's fight, the alliance that followed, the church camp, Harren, the prince. And then Jaren reached the part about the mechanical spider, and she stopped him.

  "Repeat that."

  Jaren repeated it. A mechanical spider, small and fast, with blades that cut through anything they touched.

  She knew those cuts. She had spent an hour on her knees beside Jonen's Apex tracing them, and she had seen them again on Tarn's body, and now a boy with his hands bound was telling her exactly what had made them.

  "The spider," she said. "Who controls it."

  "The Operator," Jaren said, the words coming out against his will. "The Engineer. That's what the system calls her."

  The Engineer.

  She has the thing that killed Jonen's Apex, that killed Tarn, she's been carrying it this whole time and Reth KNEW. He stood beside it and said nothing and then walked away with her instead of taking her apart for what that machine did to my son and to Tarn.

  He didn't avenge Jonen. He chose her over Jonen. Over everything.

  I want to find them both and I want to…

  "Continue," she said.

  "The church already had access to a dungeon," Jaren said. "The prince had documentation for the same location but he stepped back, he didn't want the conflict. And then Harren took our historical documents during the attack. Our maps. Our instructions. Everything we had."

  The disgusting church. Sitting on two dungeons and cutting everyone else out. When I get into their territory I'm going to…

  A Vaekk warrior returned and lowered his head. "My lady. We searched the entire camp. No documents. Nothing anywhere."

  "Continue," she said.

  He told her about the final fight inside the camp, what the youngest of them had witnessed before he was told to run, and how the rest of them had been caught on the path to the dome not long after.

  "The Operator. She finished what she went in to do with Harren, and she walked out of that forest." She held his eyes. "There is a probability the documents were on him and she took them."

  Torin's mouth was pressing closed and opening again, fighting against the compulsion. Aram looked at him.

  "Speak," she said.

  "She wouldn't do that," he said.

  Aram looked at him. "After you tried to kill her twice, you possibly turned her into exactly that kind of woman."

  She let that sit.

  "But I'm not certain. Which means we don't rely on it."

  She turned to face her warriors.

  "Two objectives," she said, and her voice carried flat across the camp. "We cannot stay in the open waiting for fights that give us nothing. Every warrior left in this zone is weak and we are wasting time." She looked across their faces. "The Vorminia camp has the prince's dungeon documentation. We go there and we take it. And if the church tries to stop us, we deal with them too."

  She opened her HUD.

  RETH — TANK: LEVEL 7

  OPERATOR — ENGINEER: LEVEL 6

  Level seven and level six, all this time in this zone.

  Pathetic, both of them.

  I need more levels. I need to keep evolving, I can't stop, I don't want to stop and I—

  What is happening to me?

  The crack again. Brief and cold.

  Is this the Apex. Is his mind in mine through the bond. Is that what this is?

  She closed the HUD.

  "Brix. Maret."

  Two warriors stepped forward and lowered their heads.

  "The tracks heading north. Follow them." She looked at both, and something came into her voice that hadn't been there before. "It's Reth. And the Engineer with him."

  She held their eyes a moment too long.

  "If they're carrying a map or dungeon instructions, kill them and come back fast." A pause, something shifting behind her eyes. "I wanted them alive. I still do. But a dungeon makes this group stronger and that's what I promised them. That comes first."

  She held their eyes. "You're both level nine. They're not. That still got Tarn killed."

  Both lowered their heads and moved without a word, disappearing into the tree line.

  "Everyone else. Prepare to move to the Vorminian camp."

  Her warriors began organizing and she watched them for a moment, and noticed three of them exchange glances when they thought she wasn't looking.

  My Vaekk. Looking at each other like that. Like I'm something that needs to be handled.

  I should make one of them bleed.

  She turned back to the children, and crouched down to their level.

  Several of them pulled back. She watched them do it and felt nothing warm about it, only that hunger again, that particular satisfaction of something being afraid that should be afraid.

  "I am not a sentimental person," she said. Her voice was even. "My son died in this zone. Your lives mean nothing to me."

  Behind her, the sound of two warriors going very still.

  "You should have died the first time I captured you,” she continued. "Reth kept you alive. Reth decided you were worth something to him." She looked at their faces one by one. "Reth is not here."

  She let the silence stretch.

  "What should I do with you?"

  None of them answered. The youngest one had tears running silently down their face and wasn't making a sound about it. Several of the others had that particular quality of people who have decided they are not going to show her anything and are discovering that deciding is easier than doing.

  Behind her she heard it again. That careful, quiet shift of weight between her warriors. The small sound of people who had served her for years standing in her burned camp wondering what had happened to her.

  She didn't turn around.

  She waited for one of the children to answer.