Judy filled the last vial with the same clinical precision she’d used to scrape the slag off the ground an hour ago labeled it, set it in the rack with the others, and only then turned to face him.
Ivo sat on the examination cot breathing air that tasted like antiseptic laid over the iron tang he’d learned to associate with his own blood work.
He let her work.
His throat still hurt.
The tremor in his hands had smoothed out to something he could almost hide if he kept them flat on his knees.
“Okay,” she said.
“Talk.”
The tent was empty.
Everyone else was at the fire or asleep or on watch.
Judy had made sure of that before she’d brought him here.
Ivo watched her.
The fury and the steadiness and the exhaustion sat layered in her shoulders, held rigid the way she held a scalpel deliberate, too controlled for the shaking underneath.
She’d stayed.
He’d known this was coming.
Had felt it since the moment her flashlight found the slag.
But sitting here, about to say it out loud, made his chest tight in a way the Dross never had.
“I can sense metal,” he said.
Judy waited.
“Feel it. Read it. I know what it’s made of, how pure it is, how much mass. I don’t need to touch it. If it’s close enough, I just know.”
Her expression didn’t shift.
She’d already guessed this part.
“And I can move it,” he continued.
“Small things. Or lock a piece steady if I need to. That’s what you saw today. At the coupling.”
“And the mast,” Judy said.
“Yeah.”
“You didn’t just brace it. You pulled it. Forty kilos of titanium alloy, and you moved it without touching it.”
He didn’t deny it.
Judy crossed her arms.
“How?”
“I don’t know how. I just can.” He paused.
“It costs me. Every time I do it. The cold you saw that’s part of it. The bigger the pull, the worse it gets.”
“And the eating,” she said.
Ivo’s hands tightened on his knees.
“Yeah.”
“Explain,” Judy said, and didn’t sit down, the way she never sat down for the parts of an exam that scared her.
He took a breath.
Let it out slow.
“I need metal. To do any of it to sense, to move, to hold. I have to eat it first. Digest it. Turn it into something I can use.” He gestured vaguely at his chest.
“Fuel.”
Judy’s voice went flat, the way it did right before a bad diagnosis.
“And the poison?”
“If I eat too much, or too fast, or if the metal’s contaminated it builds up. Toxicity. What you saw tonight. The slag is how I survive it. If I don’t purge, it kills me.”
She was quiet for a long moment.
He could see her fitting the pieces together.
The fevers.
The blood work.
The weight he never gained.
The fact that he was never hungry at meals.
“The fuel line,” she said finally.
“You ate part of the mast to save it.”
“Yeah.”
“How much?”
“Fifteen kilos. Maybe twenty. I didn’t stop to measure.”
“Jesus, Ivo.”
He didn’t say anything.
Judy turned.
Paced three steps, stopped, turned back.
“You’ve been doing this the whole time. Since the Resolute.”
“Yeah.”
“Every time you fixed something. Every time you made yourself useful. You were eating the scrap.”
“Some of it.”
He met her eyes.
“I didn’t have a choice.”
“There’s always a choice,” Judy snapped.
Then she stopped.
Took a breath.
When she spoke again, her voice was quieter.
“You could have told someone. You could have told me.”
“And then what?” Ivo said.
“You keep me alive so your mother can decide I’m a liability and throw me off the camp?”
“My mother wouldn’t”
“Your mother counts margins,” he said.
Flat.
“Everyone does. I’m useful as long as I’m fixing things. The second I’m just a kid who eats the life support and vomits metal in the dark, I’m mass they can’t afford.”
Judy stared at him.
He couldn’t read her face.
“You don’t know that,” she said finally.
“I can’t risk finding out.”
The tent was silent except for the distant murmur of the camp and the faint hum of Judy’s portable scanner charging on the table.
She sat down on the cot beside him.
Not touching.
Close enough that he could feel the warmth of her.
“The Dross,” she said.
“That’s what you’re calling the toxicity?”
“Yeah.”
“And you have a way to measure it.”
It wasn’t a question.
She’d seen him tracking numbers in his head, back at the fuel line.
Back at the coupling.
Every time he used the power, she’d watched him do the math.
“Yeah,” he said.
“Show me.”
He hesitated.
Then he closed his eyes.
Felt for the Line.
The Assay opened across his vision like frost on glass.
DROSS: 51% (elevated; falling)
MELT: 4kg remain (low; ration carefully)
He opened his eyes.
“Fifty-one percent. Toxicity. It was seventy-four before I purged.”
Judy pulled a small LED penlight from her pocket.
Clicked it on.
“Look at me.”
He turned his head.
Let her check his pupils.
She was close enough now that he could see the faint shadows under her eyes, the tightness at the corners of her mouth.
She clicked the light off.
“Seventy-four percent of what?”
“I don’t know. A hundred, I guess. It’s never gone past seventy-five. I purge before it gets there.”
“What happens at a hundred?”
“I die,” Ivo said.
“Probably.”
Judy’s hands stilled.
“You don’t know.”
“I’ve never wanted to find out.”
She sat back.
He watched her process it the medic in her already cataloging symptoms and designing treatment protocols, running triage on a patient whose biology she’d never studied, while the person underneath all that training tried to decide whether she believed a word he was saying.
“The hydration helped,” she said finally.
“After the purge. Your levels stabilized faster than they should have.”
“So we can manage it. Fluids. Electrolytes. Maybe a chelator if I can find one that works.” She looked at him.
“But only if you tell me when it’s happening. No more purging in the dark and hoping I don’t notice.”
He nodded.
“And no more emergency saves that spike you to seizure threshold without telling me first.”
“I can’t promise that.”
“Ivo”
“If the fuel line ignites, people die. If the mast falls, someone gets crushed. I can’t wait for permission.”
Judy didn’t argue.
She looked at the vial rack instead and said nothing, which from her was the same as agreeing.
“Fine,” she said.
“But you tell me after. Every time. I don’t care if it’s the middle of the night. You find me, and you let me run the panel.”
“Okay.”
“And no more lying to me.”
He held her gaze.
Steel and care, wound tight in her jaw, in the set of her mouth.
She was still here.
Negotiating terms instead of walking away.
“Okay,” he said again.
Judy reached into her kit.
Pulled out a hydration pack and a small foil-wrapped bar.
Handed them both to him.
“Drink. Eat. Your glucose is too low.”
He took them.
Drank.
The bar tasted like chalk and fake berries, but he ate it anyway.
She watched him.
Making sure.
When he’d finished, she said, very quietly, “This stays between us. For now. Until we figure out how to tell my mother without her deciding you’re a threat.”
“You think she will.”
“I think she’ll run the math. Same as you.” Judy’s voice was steady.
“And I think we need a plan before she does.”
He let the word settle between them like a handshake binding, provisional, already inadequate.
She stood.
Started packing up the samples, the scanner, the used vials.
Her hands were steady.
Practiced.
“Judy.”
She stopped.
Looked back at him.
“Thank you,” he said.
She studied him.
For a long moment, she didn’t say anything.
Then: “You saved the fuel line. You’ve saved half a dozen people since we landed. You’re keeping yourself alive with something that’s killing you, and you’re doing it so you can keep fixing things for the rest of us.”
The kit zipped shut.
The strap went over her shoulder.
“I’ll keep your secret,” she said.
“And I’ll keep you alive. But the day I find out you’re still holding something back something that matters I’m done.”
Her eyes held his.
Warning and promise, neither one blinking first.
Part of her already knew.
“Okay,” Ivo said.
Judy turned and walked out of the tent.
He sat there in the silence.
Lighter.
Better-treated.
Tangled deeper than ever in a trust he hadn’t earned.
The part he’d kept back was the part that mattered most the part that would turn Judy’s face into Maureen’s the day she found it, weighing threat against utility, deciding which side of the line he fell on.
Someday she’d find it.
He rolled the empty foil wrapper from the bar she’d fed him into a tight ball and pocketed it instead of dropping it small habits, small debts.
He’d make himself too useful to lose long before she caught up to him.
That should have cost him more than it did.