She lay on the cold stone floor on her side and forced the leather belt back into her mouth. “You carried it, child.”
Roxy said nothing. Her legs shaked. “They will hear us.”
There was no time. She never spoke of what she endured. It may break you.”
Roxy, pale and resolute, nodded. Caelen caught the capsule, cradling it like a relic. “Roxy,” he rasped. This is the story of an unspeakable mission. They beat her. And then the bolter fire began. He only looked at her — truly looked — and understood what she had done. But still she did not cry out. They never suspected that deep within her, past layers of bruised and trembling muscle, pulsed the one thing that could awaken a Space Marine’s broken armor and turn him into a weapon again. They threw her into a cell of rot and rust, where Brother-Sergeant Caelen hung in chains. Not metaphorically, but literally — enduring unbearable physical and spiritual pain to smuggle salvation through her own flesh. It seeks truth in suffering, and meaning in what one woman gave, when no one else could. She didn’t have to. The capsule slid in by degrees.
