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When it shifts, irises outward in a spiral motion, she almost falls forward on her face.

“Asshole.You could have warned me!”

The corridor that’s opened up to her doesn’t light up the way the upper level did. It absorbs light, an absence so intense it hurts her eyes.

“Are you sure you want to know?” The words come low and pained out of the darkness, without echoes, as from a single throat.

“I want to see you.” But she doesn’t have to. She already knows him, even in the dark.

There’s no answer, just a long, ragged hiss like an in-drawn breath.

She takes a step forward into the darkness, lets it swallow her. “I told you I wanted honesty. Give me that, at least.”

In the absence of light, a strange, sweet scent,hisscent, suddenly fills her senses. Her trepidation drains away.

With her next step, her foot meets nothing but empty air, and she falls.

This is it,she thinks, still without a trace of fear.It’s clearly a trap. A classic honey pot. Now I’mdefinitelygoing to get eaten.

And then, something supple and rippling as corded muscle whips soundlessly out of the dark to wrap around her waist, stopping her fall.

It lowers her gently until her feet touch down on something solid. As it releases her, the darkness ebbs, and she can seehim.

Cassiel’s eyes meet hers, wide and wild, his pupils blown. His beautiful face twists with something close to agony. He’s seated on a chair of sorts—a throne?Thick cords bind his wrists and ankles, holding him in place, the same kind that bound her when she first awakened on this ship.

He’s also naked, fully erect, his cock jutting between his parted legs and swelling further under her gaze. “You shouldn’t have come,” he grates out, teeth bared. “It’s not safe.”

The chamber doesn’tlooksafe. More of the iridescent dark cords line the walls and snake across the floor. They move in waves and coils, with a strange, sinuous synchrony.

“I’m not afraid.”

His chin falls forward onto his bare chest, as if he can’t hold it high any longer. “You should be.”

“I can’t be. Not around you.” She steps carefully forward. The tentacle-like cords seem to make way for her, clearing themselves courteously to the sides. “What did they do to you?”

The chair he’s bound to has a curving, organic shape, but it’s part of something larger. The bindings pulse where they touch his skin, and bruise-purple veins stand out rigid and dark on his forearms.

There’s technology here, of a sort, and a tangible crackle of energy, an ultraviolet phosphorescence. She can see it if she doesn’t try to look right at it, like an alien magic eye puzzle.

“I told myself you couldn’t destroy me.” He doesn’t raise his head, his voice quiet enough she strains to hear him over the deep electric hum in the air, at the very edge of audible frequencies.

“I didn’t mean that,” she says, flushing. “I didn’t meanyou.”

“It doesn’t matter. You already have.”

“What?Why?”

“Your pleasure,” he says, voice tight. “Our power. We’re almost finished now.”

“Power…” She stares around her. “This is anengineroom, isn’t it?” A half-formed idea teases her mind.Unity. Resonance. Fusion.

Connectionlies at the core of this alien technology, potential energy released by the merging of wildly different elements. It answers a question she didn’t know to ask until she came here, saw this, knewhim. It blows her pet theorems out of the water, upends them in an instant. It changes everything.

Experimental physics comes with inherent risks. A good scientist must cultivate the will to understand the incomprehensible, to unmake the knowns of the universe to account for new data.

“I said I’d bring you home.” Cassiel writhes in the chair—a pilot’s chair?—as if he’s trying to escape his bonds, and he bites his lip like he’s in pain. “I made you a promise. Why won’t you let me keep it?”

You already did.“They plugged you in like a battery. They’reusingyou, Cassiel.”