Lyn found her voice before the echo of the inscription had finished settling over the enclosure, and what came out of her was not a suggestion.
"No," she said. "Absolutely not. I don't care what the stone says, I don't care whose handwriting is in it, and I don't particularly care what it costs you to hear me say it plainly in front of Alita: you are not walking down to that shore alone at dusk to meet a man who has already proven, twice over today, that he knows things about you no living person should know. That isn't caution, Taisen. That's the plan of a man who has decided, quietly, that he doesn't especially mind dying today, and I would like very much for you to tell me I'm wrong about that before I let you take one more step toward the water."
Taisen was still crouched at the marker, his fingers resting on the last carved word, and he did not stand right away, which Alita understood, watching him, as its own kind of answer. When he finally rose, he did it slowly, the way a man rises from a task he isn't finished with rather than one he's abandoned, and turned to face them both with an expression that had gone, in the space of reading two lines of dead script, entirely unreadable in the particular way that frightened her more than anger ever had.
"You're not wrong to be afraid for me," he said. "You're wrong about what kind of man you're afraid for. I don't want to die on this shore, Colonel. I have never once, across two lifetimes, wanted less to die than I want it standing here, at the bottom of this hill, with the two of you looking at me like that. But I am going down there alone, because the inscription said alone, and because I have spent every hour since the Cell system trying to work out what kind of man Malkor believes he's dealing with, and I would very much like to know the answer myself before he decides it for me."
"That isn't a reason," Lyn said. "That's a justification wearing a reason's clothes, and you taught me to tell the difference between the two, whether you meant to or not."
"It's the only reason I have," Taisen said, "and I don't intend to manufacture a better one simply because it would make this conversation shorter."
Camaro's voice came through the comm bead before either of them could take the argument further, patched down from the ship where she'd clearly been listening on an open channel longer than either of them had realized. "For what it's worth, Commander, I ran the numbers on that inscription three separate ways while you were still reading it out loud, and every single one of them comes back the same. If Malkor wanted you dead, he had a hundred easier ways to manage it than carving an invitation into a wall and waiting weeks for you to find it. Whatever he wants from you tonight, it isn't your death. That doesn't make it safe. It just means the two of you arguing about whether he's going to kill you is probably arguing about the wrong risk."
"I'd rather argue about the wrong risk than not argue at all," Lyn said, sharper than she meant it, and then, quieter, almost apologetic in the particular way she rarely allowed herself to be: "I know you're right, Ensign. I know the math. I still don't like it, and I don't intend to pretend otherwise just because pretending would make the room more comfortable."
"Nobody's asking you to like it," Taisen said. "I'd think less of you if you did."
Alita, who had been quiet through most of it, watching the two of them with the careful attention of someone counting the seconds before an argument tipped from useful into merely loud, stepped in before Lyn could answer that. "What if we don't ask you to bring us," she said. "What if we ask you to let us come as far as the tree line instead, and no further, and give you our word, both of us, that we won't cross it unless you signal us to. That isn't the same as walking down with you. It's the difference between alone and unwatched, and I think, if you're honest with yourself, you'll admit those were never quite the same promise."
Taisen studied her for a long moment, and something in his face eased by a fraction, not relief exactly, but the particular loosening of a man who has just been handed an argument he can actually accept without feeling that he's surrendered anything by accepting it. "That," he said, "is a distinction I can live with."
"I can't," Lyn said, "but I've noticed, over the weeks, that being outvoted by the two of you has stopped costing me the will to keep arguing, which either means I've grown wiser or considerably more tired, and I haven't yet decided which." She exhaled, long and slow, and some of the fight went out of her shoulders, replaced by the flatter, more practical tone she used when she'd already lost an argument and moved on to managing its consequences instead. "Fine. The tree line, and not one step past it, and I want a rifle in my hands the entire time, and I want Camaro tracking every heat signature on that beach from the moment we're in position until the moment you're back aboard, and if I so much as see him raise a hand toward you in a way I don't like, Taisen, alone or not, signal or not, I am putting a round through whatever passes for his throat and asking questions about the wisdom of it afterward."
"I would expect nothing less of you," Taisen said, and for the first time since the memorial's second inscription had gone cold and colder in his hands, something almost like warmth moved across his face. "For what it's worth, Colonel, I hope very much you never have cause to test whether you could."