Page 76 of Claimed By the Condemned Alien

She did not turn every conversation into evidence.

But she remembered.

Near midday, an older human male sat down across from her with a split knuckle and a look that said the knuckle was not why he had come.

His hair had gone mostly gray, though his posture still suggested someone accustomed to physical labor. Kesta had seen him around the camp twice without learning his name.

He gave it now.

“Daren Pell.”

“Kesta Frank.” She cleaned the cut and examined the swelling across his hand. “How did you do this?”

“Wall.”

Kesta looked at him.

Pell stared back.

“The wall attacked you?”

“I disagreed with it.”

“Did the wall survive?”

“Unfortunately.”

She hid a smile and began wrapping his knuckle.

Pell waited until Sera moved into the rear room before lowering his voice. “Have you found any records with the designation H-PRIME?”

Kesta’s hands stopped.

For half a second, Major Senn’s ward returned around her: green casualty bars, living bodies declared dead, Helix files hidden beneath medical codes.

She resumed the bandage more carefully.

“Where did you hear that?”

Pell’s gaze shifted toward the opposite wall. His lined face had lost its humor. “Transport guards. Years ago.”

“Your transport?”

“Yes.”

Kesta loosened the wrap and started the final turn around his hand. “Were they talking about you?”

“No.” He hesitated, and she saw the effort it cost him to drag the memory closer. “A woman was loaded three cells ahead of me. Human. They kept her sedated most of the time. There was no sentence mark on her door and no name on the transport manifest.”

The strip of bandage tightened beneath Kesta’s fingers before she realized what she was doing.

She loosened it.

“Did you see where they sent her?”

“No. My pod launched before hers.”

“What did she look like?”