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He flicked his fingers at the jungle ahead. ‘What I’m not convinced of is mumbo-jumbo voodoo magic.’

Issa made a soft sound between amusement and exasperation in the back of her throat. ‘Magic,’ she said, rolling the word over her tongue like she was testing its weight. ‘You think what I do is sorcery?’

He didn’t answer immediately.

She lifted a brow. ‘I don’t believe that Ki’Remi Sable, the famed surgeon, the walking embodiment of science and logic, is that obtuse. That you doubt in anything beyond what you can see, past what your precious instruments can measure.’

His jaw ticked. The conversation was pressing into places he didn’t like.

‘What’s wrong with needing proof?’ he countered, voice edged with steel.

‘Nothing,’ she admitted. ‘Unless you use it as an excuse to ignore what’s right in front of you.’

His scowl deepened. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

Issa stepped before him, blocking his path, her luminous eyes searching his face with unsettling accuracy. ‘It means you’re fighting something inside you, an actuality you don’t even want to acknowledge.’

He folded his arms across his chest, his metanoid tattoos shifting with residual energy, a testament to his unease. ‘I deal in reality, Issa. Not faith. Not superstition. I fix what’s broken with my hands and mind, not chants and rituals.’

She studied him, tilting her head.

Her voice dropped, her husky tone penetrating. ‘Because emotion and sentiment have let you down in the past? When caring turned into the utmost betrayal, intended or unintended?’

His throat tightened as a storm of memories slammed into him with brutal force.

The firestorms of Earth, the Great Apocalypse that shattered nations, and the desperate screams of people caught in the crossfire of collapsing governments and warring factions.

He had been a mere child, too juvenile when his family was swallowed by the inferno that consumed their home.

Too naive to understand that his world was crumbling before his eyes.

The following wars stripped away all guilelessness, honing him into a weapon and forging him into a cold, precise fighter.

He became a young soldier battling for survival, a warrior who bled out his innocence in conflicts that ultimately meant nothing.

Then came the crats and their torture.

He recalled the icy metal of their restraints biting into his wrists, the scent of gore and blood teeming in the air.

The agony of experimentation, the purgatory of abuse, of being beaten, lashed, and experimented on alongside his fellow Riders, their suffering no less than his.

Emotion had done nothing for him then.

Sentiment had been a liability.

So, he abandoned it.

He built his world on logic, on what was measurable and defined.

After the Riders escaped the Technocracy, he turned to medicine and science to fix what could be restored. By healing others, he justified the wreckage inside himself.

Ki’Remi clenched his teeth, forcing his person back into the present.

Issa was still gazing up at him.

Not with pity but with understanding. With knowing.

His entire soul lurched.