The roar struck like solid iron, slamming Ljeska against the slick glass perimeter of the biodome. Mist ran into her eyes, stinging them with fertilizer runoff and grease. Stribor blocked out the perimeter lights, his shoulders scraping ferns from the overhead gantry. His blue irises burned through the fog, locked on her throat, every tendon corded tight. In the muck behind him, the downed operatives twitched among blown capacitors, their rifles hissing thin gray smoke. None of them rose. The beast exhaled; the gust smelled of ozone, bile, and hot copper. His forelegs shifted forward, gouging trenches through peat and dead roots. A grinding rattle worked up his throat. The lullaby she used to tether him would shatter against that sound; there was no rhythm left in him to catch. Her fingers curled into empty air. Her knit-flesh gift closed punctures, not fractured psyches. Reaching into that surge would snap her nerves before she could align a single pulse. His skull dropped low, haunches bunching beneath gray hide. The soil under her boots vibrated with the load of his weight. Then she recalled the playback terminal in the lower lab. The video log. Kresnik's cruel, calm voice. *“Stribor, report.”* Not an inventory number. A name. “Stribor,” she said, pitching the syllables beneath the hiss of broken sprinklers. She dragged her boot forward an inch, keeping her chin level with his breastbone. The roar hitched in his throat. The rumble dropped an octave, scraping like stones dragged across river gravel, his massive forequarters trembling. “Stribor,” she repeated, clearer. She raised an empty palm, knuckles slick with mud. “Look at me. It’s Ljeska. They built this trap for both of us.” The electric blue in his pupils thinned. His snout lowered until the damp crest of his nose touched the skin of her wrist, hot and wet. His flank shuddered, ribs heaving as the static discharge around his neck died away. The glare died down to dull amber. Cartilage clicked and slid beneath his pelt as his spine shortened, shrinking three inches back toward his typical bulk. His claws rasped back into their sheaths, and he exhaled a long wheeze that flattened the ferns between them. He pressed his brow against her ribs, collapsing his front knees into the mire. Ljeska set both hands over the crest of his skull, fingers sinking into coarse fur. Beneath his sternum, the rhythmic pulse thudded deep and slow. Her earbud squealed with digital feedback, clipping sharp and loud. “Ljeska! Hear me?” Pipo wheezed over static. “Kresnik tripped the Sanctuary Protocol. Thermal coils in the deck plates are arming—we have ten minutes before this biodome bakes clean.”

His Unspoken Name