The Undergrowth — VIP Quarters
The pampering had been making Najo's skin crawl for days.
Better food. Isolated quarters. Guards who watched him from the corners of their eyes when they thought he wasn't paying attention. The specific quality of attention that came not from respect but from asset management.
He knew this feeling. Dope and Gango had looked at him this way, right before Nyika.
He stood up from the plush chair abruptly. "I'm done with this," he said — his voice louder than he'd intended, still uncalibrated to the silence he lived in now. "I'm going back to the main camp."
The guards exchanged a look.
One of them moved fast.
The needle entered his neck before he could track the hand.
Najo's eyes went back. His legs gave out and he hit the bed on the way down, and the guard lowered him the rest of the way without urgency.
"What did you do?" the second guard hissed.
"He was about to leave." The first guard straightened. "We can't lose him." He looked at Najo's unconscious face. "If the heir won't cooperate willingly, Ginimbi will pay his ransom. Simple."
The Undergrowth — Central Cavern
Byron finished his transformation.
He stood massive — a towering gorilla, bright red fur covering his arms and shoulders, muscle layered thick. The cavern felt smaller. Every Sango native in it felt the same thing at the same time, their biology registering something it hadn't evolved past.
Apex predator.
The silence was total.
Byron's voice rolled through it like distant thunder.
"My people." He let the words land. "Thank you for holding the line. I can see you've grown in my absence."
Pride rippled under the lingering fear.
His gaze hardened.
"I know the news of the Rosary Squad has shaken some of you. It shouldn't. I have been preparing a place for us — the ruins, where everything began. We will not spend our lives hiding in the dark."
He filled the space.
"We will rise against Flora. We will take down the Queen."
The cavern erupted — rage and hope in the same breath, indistinguishable from each other.
Moto's head dipped. The thoughts he'd been suppressing since the prison came back — the doubt, the question of whether he was standing in the right place.
"You don't have to fight them," he said.
Barely audible. The cheers swallowed it whole.
Byron's head snapped toward him.
The silence that followed was the specific silence of a very large room realising it should stop making noise.
Lilly stepped forward. "Byron, he's just—"
"I want to hear him." Byron's voice was a low growl. "Speak up, kid."
Moto lifted his head. "You don't need a war. You could talk. Find a different way through."
"Talk." Byron's fur bristled. "You think we haven't tried talking?"
"He's a foreigner," Lilly said. "He doesn't understand—"
"Look at this place." Byron swept one massive arm across the cavern — the people, the fire lamps, the water channels, the entire civilisation built underground because there was nowhere else to go. "You think talking fed anyone down here? You think Flora nobles ever sat down to a table with people they'd already decided weren't people?"
"Where there's a will, there's a way," Moto said. Asher's words, surfacing without being called.
Byron leaned down until his face was level with Moto's.
"Will." The word came out like something being weighed and found insufficient. "You're telling us we just don't want it enough."
"I'm telling you to try before you bleed for it."
"Those who tried," Byron said, very quietly, "are dead."
Murmurs spread through the crowd. A voice from somewhere back: What does he know about us? Another: Send the surface-dweller back.
The mood turned with the speed that crowds turn. The hope that had been in the air a moment ago was still there, just pointed somewhere else now.
Lilly moved to intervene. Byron straightened.
"Anyone who speaks the enemy's position," he said, addressing the cavern, "is an enemy."
He pointed at Moto.
"Get him out of my camp."
Hands closed on Moto's arms. He didn't resist. His words had no purchase here — he knew it, and struggling wouldn't change that.
"Byron, please — he helped us, he's a good person—" Lilly's voice followed him into the tunnel.
The dark closed in. Then the tunnel, then the surface air, cold and wet.
They threw him into a rain-slicked alley in the Fauna district. He hit the pavement hard and lay there as the opening sealed above him.
Dust settled.
Rain fell.
He looked up at the city. A place that had already decided, in print, what he was.
One rebel hesitated at the mouth of the alley before following the others back down.
"Don't take it personally," the man said. "We were all where you are once." He looked at Moto for a moment. "But we're past it now. We're ready to fight back. And we won't be stopped."
He left.
The alley was quiet.
Moto lay still.
He thought of the first time he'd been alone in an alley in a city he didn't know. Nyika. Asher had just left him there. He'd been crying when Sheu came — approaching carefully, her father waiting at the end of the street, her voice gentle in a way that cost her nothing and gave him everything he needed to stand back up.
This time, no one was coming.
He lay there and let himself feel the full weight of it.
Then he got up.