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“I am setting conditions based on the danger I actually see.”

She studied his face. He noticed.

“Do not look so surprised.”

“I am adjusting to your flexibility.”

“It is exhausting me.”

Kesta almost laughed. They left the road. The receiver led them across a shallow field of cracked black glass, where every footstep produced a faint musical vibration beneath Kesta’s boots. Dreven walked more cautiously here, testing certain patches with the butt of his knife before allowing her to cross. Five minutes beyond the marker, Kesta found the first debris.

A strip of torn restraint webbing protruded beneath a shelf of red stone. She crouched and brushed dust from the metal clasp. Her pulse quickened.

“That came from my transport system.”

Dreven knelt beside her without touching the evidence. “Certain?”

“The manufacturing code is the same series.”

Farther ahead, the receiver emitted another pulse. Kesta stood. The next piece lay thirty meters away: a fragment of white pod shell scorched almost black along one edge. Most of the identifying marks had been destroyed, but beneath the burn line Kesta could still make out part of the blue emblem used by the so-called humanitarian relocation program. Dreven’s expression hardened when he saw it.

“Someone survived here.”

“Maybe.”

Kesta moved around the debris. A shallow depression remained in the ground, much older than her own impact site. Wind and salt had softened its edges, but several pieces of fused glass still radiated outward from the center. Near the far side, the earth had been disturbed differently. Dreven saw it before she did.

“Drag marks.”

Kesta crouched again. Old. Very old. But unmistakable. One set of footprints showed the broad heel and narrow forefoot of a human boot. Around them were deeper three-toed impressions that did not match rift stalkers.

“They took someone alive,” she said.

Dreven’s jaw tightened. The receiver sounded continuously now. Kesta followed it toward a patch of loose red sand near the base of another rock shelf. She dug with both hands until her fingers struck metal. A medical identity wafer emerged beneath the dirt. Her breath caught.

Dreven crouched beside her as she wiped the surface clean against her sleeve. The damaged display flickered once.

NARA SETH.

Kesta stared. Pell had remembered correctly.

“She was real.”

Dreven's silver gaze moved from the wafer to Kesta’s face. “And alive when she reached the surface.”

A second line struggled onto the damaged display.

NO SENTENCE CODE.

Then a final classification appeared.

H-PRIME.

The screen died. Kesta tried to reactivate it. Nothing.

“H-Prime,” Dreven said quietly.

“The same designation Pell heard.”