“How long has it been in you?” Wilt Norcutt asked.

  Norcutt kept her voice even, but Lothar von Finsterherz noticed how her eyes tracked every breath he took, the way a medic watches a patient who might convulse and take everyone down with him.

  They stood in the repair hangar beside a small fire. Not for warmth. The place already held heat from the machinery. The female inquisitor tolerated the flame only because Minton insisted it was “for the nerves.” The fire was more ritual than comfort, a tight knot of light smoking against steel.

  Finsterherz stood five paces from it and still felt the heat like his face was over coals. His throat burned every time he swallowed.

  “After the meeting with Graff,” Lothar said, voice rough. “Graff sealed the dragon. It calls itself Lóng Tiānyán.”

  The inquisitor made a sound with no humor in it. “So you’ve spoken to it.”

  She turned toward the hangar window. Outside lay the colony’s night: floodlights, black slag hills, a few watchtower lamps pricking the dark. From here it looked peaceful, like nothing had happened.

  Lothar knew how much rot could hide under that kind of order.

  “It never shuts up,” Lothar said.

  He tried to keep his words steady. They came out scraped raw anyway.

  Norcutt nodded once, as if confirming something already filed away. “They rarely do. Meeting a creature like that is another matter.”

  Silence held for a moment. Lothar forced out what had been sitting on his tongue.

  “I know what the handbook says. I’m supposed to be burned, but…”

  She snapped her head toward him. “Burned? Don’t be ridiculous.”

  He blinked, waiting for procedure, for the cold edge of policy.

  She stepped closer and stopped across the fire. The flames threw hard shadows up her face and made the fatigue obvious. The anger hadn’t left. It had simply been pressed into something steadier.

  “Without that dragon, all of us die in that tunnel,” Wilt said. “You, me, Goodman, Tomos, Minton. That walking tank in armor would have finished the job. Giants were built by people on purpose, but they aren’t tools anymore. Be glad there aren’t many.”

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  Lothar lowered his gaze. The memory felt borrowed, like someone else had screamed through his throat.

  Wilt didn’t let him hide in it. “The moment it finds a stronger vessel, you die. Not maybe. It burns you out and tosses what’s left.”

  Finsterherz curled his fingers. Something under his ribs twitched, like chains pulling tight again.

  “If it ever finds a stronger vessel, I eliminate you,” Wilt said, flat. “Because if it gets out into a body that can hold it, it gets worse.”

  She paused, choosing the next part like it mattered.

  “Finding a vessel is hard for it,” she added. “It can’t just take anyone. It needs a body that survives the load. Until it finds that, you live as long as your own frame holds.”

  “So I stay alive because I’m useful,” Lothar said.

  Wilt let a thin corner of a smile show. “Because you’re useful, yes. And because you didn’t invite this thing in.”

  She leaned closer, just a fraction. “And because I don’t burn people who kept me alive, even when the rulebook would like me to.”

  A cough tore out of him, bitter on his tongue.

  The inquisitor produced a flask and held it out. “Drink. No heroics.”

  He took a swallow. The raw pain eased.

  “We’re going to use it,” Norcutt said before the next thought could form. “For our purposes. While we can.”

  Finsterherz went still.

  “What do you want from me?” Norcutt asked. “A breakdown? I’m not thrilled that I’m traveling with a kid who has a hungry dragon inside.”

  “No,” he managed, the word a rasp.

  “Good,” Wilt said. “You hold the chains. I hold you. Tomos keeps people from talking. Goodman keeps inspections and debts off our backs. Everybody does a job.”

  The fire cracked and sent a spark into the dark above the rafters.

  Lothar realized the dragon wasn’t what frightened him most.

  It was the calm inventory of roles. The certainty. The way she spoke like they were already a unit, and he was already a risk being managed.

  “You said while,” he said, rougher this time.

  Wilt nodded. “While. Later it changes.”

  He wanted to ask when. He didn’t. The answer didn’t belong to him.

  A door banged somewhere behind them. Footsteps crossed the corridor. Tomos’s voice carried in, familiar and rough.

  “Captain, you in there? Minton squared away? We lift tomorrow, right?”

  “Tomorrow,” Terry answered from somewhere out of sight.

  Norcutt looked back to Lothar. “We leave at first light. Out of this system. Tiamin-1. Chukur.”

  “Where the spy is,” he said.

  “Where Graff is,” the inquisitor corrected. “The spy is a thread. I want the hand holding the knife.”

  Finsterherz swallowed, throat burning. “It’ll hear.”

  A brief pause, then her answer. “Lóng Tiānyán listens when Graff comes to mind.”

  No surprise showed on her face at all. “Let it listen. Let it know we’re moving.”

  A laugh tried to escape and turned into coughing instead.

  “Sleep,” Norcutt ordered. “Tomorrow is travel, and I need you upright.”

  Lothar headed for the exit. At the threshold he looked back once.

  The fire kept smoking.

  The night beyond the window stayed quiet.

  Deep under his ribs, the chains shifted again, careful and soft.

  A voice, almost pleased, brushed the edge of his thoughts.

  Chukur.

  He kept walking and tried not to think.

  That was already too late.