Page 175 of Destined For Her Alien Daddy

“Do I look stationary by choice?”

Another Choir charge slams into the upper arch. This one is stronger. The blast does not simply break stone; it disrupts the spatial fold anchoring the chamber. The ceiling becomes visible in three directions at once. One terrace duplicates itself in pale afterimage, then collapses through its own reflection. The archive rings wobble around the central hollow, shedding sparks of white data that burn holes in the air before evaporating.

A slab the size of a shuttle wing shears loose above Anita.

I move before thought.

The falling geometry does not fall straight. It descends, pauses, rotates through a direction that has no name, then appears directly over her and Sira. Anita looks up too late. Sira’s shield flares, but she is bound to the interface and cannot redirect enough force.

I throw myself into them.

My shoulder strikes Anita first, driving her out of the slab’s path. My other arm catches Sira around the waist, and I hurl her toward Brakk’s lower cable line. The slab hits my back before I can clear it.

Pain detonates through me.

Armor collapses against my spine. My knees strike the floor hard enough to crack stone. For a breath, there is no chamber, no archive, no battle, only a crushing weight and the taste of blood flooding my mouth. The slab should flatten me. It would kill a human instantly. It would kill many species instantly. Vakutan bone and muscle hold longer than most, but not forever.

The slab shifts, grinding against my armor as reality distortion doubles its pressure.

Anita screams my name.

I hate the sound.

I brace both hands against the floor and push. Muscles tear across my shoulders. My vision whites out at the edges. The stone above me groans, not because I can lift it cleanly, but because the chamber’s warped gravity is stuttering between directions. I use that fraction of mercy. I drive upward with everything I have, not noble strength, not sacred purpose, only animal refusal.

“Ghar!” Anita reaches me, hands on my arm. “Move, move, please move.”

“Get back.”

“No.”

“Anita.”

“No, you giant, impossible idiot, I am not leaving you under a decorative paradox boulder!”

Brakk’s cable hook clanks against the slab. “I can rig a pull if the floor stops trying to become a wall!”

Sira’s voice trembles. “The field is turning inward. You have seconds.”

The slab’s edge presses deeper. Something in my ribs breaks with a dull internal pop. Breath leaves me in a wet snarl.

Anita hears it.

Her face changes.

Not fear now. Something worse. A terrible clarity sweeps across her, stripping away the argument, the archive, the politics, the desperate academic hunger that has driven her through every forbidden door beneath Nareth-Kul. She looks from the shard in her hand to me, and I see the choice before she speaks it.

“No,” I say.

She does not listen.

She rips her hand free from the active interface.

The archive recoils. The preservation field falters, full origin layers flashing dangerously through the chamber, but Anita drops to her knees beside me and digs both hands under the slab’s cracked edge.

“Anita, the shard,” Sira cries.

“I don’t care!”