Page 33 of Silver Slayer

I was off the crate before I'd made the decision to move.

"Hey." I put my hand on his forearm, just rested it there, palm against scales as smooth and soft as suede. "Vennox. You're alright."

He didn't wake. But some of the rigidity in his arm softened under my hand, and I took that as a good sign and kept talking.

"It's not real," I said quietly. "Whatever you're seeing, it's not there. You're having a nightmare. You're safe." I moved my thumb in a slow circle on his forearm, the scales cool and smooth beneath my touch. "I'm right here watching over you."

His breathing slowed. Not all the way back to the deep, even pull of before, but enough that the tight set of his jaw loosened, and his hands uncurled against the bunk surface.

"Uri," he hissed out a name.

"Uri isn't here," I told him. I didn't know who Uri was. Clearly, whoever it was had done something terrible to him. "There's nobody here but me."

He went still.

I stayed where I was, hand on his arm, listening to his breathing even out until the rebreather's rhythm and his own had found the same quiet tempo again. The tension left his face last, slowly, like a tide going out. When it was gone, he looked young again. He looked like someone who deserved to sleep without the terror that name carried with it.

My wrist comm buzzed, and I lifted it without moving my other hand from Vennox's arm.

"Go ahead," I said, keeping my voice low.

"Status." Vala's voice came through clipped and clean.

"We're alright," I said. "He had a rough patch a few minutes ago. Restless. He's settled now."

A beat of silence. "And you?"

"Still upright. Bio-analyzer's clean. Nothing's moved except the two of you." I paused. "How goes the search?"

"We found the conduit assembly." He said it without inflection, which meant there was a complication attached to it. "Intact. But the housing it's seated in took impact damage from the crash. The mounting brackets are fused to the casing. Removing it without destroying it is going to take longer than I anticipated."

I looked at Vennox's face, slack and still in the pale light. "How much longer?"

"I don't know yet. Tyrk is working on it."

"Take all the time you need," I said. "We're not going anywhere."

Another beat. Shorter this time. "Ping me if anything changes."

"You'll be the first to know."

The comm clicked off, and I lowered my wrist. The silence settled around me again as I resumed my seat on the crate. Vennox hadn't moved. His breathing was deep and slow and steady, the rebreather hissing its small, patient rhythm. The portable light on the shelf held its pale circle against the floor, steady and quiet.

My eyes grew heavy as time ticked by. Vennox's soft, even breaths lulled me in a way nothing had since I'd landed on this planet.

Now that my adrenaline had faded from our misadventure through Spore Valley, there was nothing underneath it but exhaustion. The kind that had been accumulating since waking up in a cage on an alien spacecraft.

The bunk where Vennox lay was a wide platform, built for larger proportions, which meant even with him on his side, there was space along the edge big enough for me.

Boots ditched, I lay down on the edge with my back to Vennox, pillowing my head on my arm.

Chapter Eleven

VENNOX

Sleep did not come for me gently. It came without warning, without mercy, seeping through every crack I had forgotten to seal. I had not slept well since Gorka. Could not. Each time exhaustion finally dragged me under, the dark was already there waiting, not at the edges where I might have fought it back, but at the center, thick and suffocating, coiling around my throat like smoke from a fire with nothing left to burn.

Somewhere within my subconscious, I knew I had finally lost the fight against my own exhaustion.