21. Nyra
NYRA
My hands are still shaking. I press them flat against my thighs and will the tremor to stop, but it continues—adrenaline is still searching for its exit.
I sit on the reactor housing, my legs dangling, watching the giant who just finished claiming me.
Draevik stands within the room, his back toward me, his massive frame silhouetted against the conduits.
His pale skin shows a map of violence, slicked with a mixture of his blood and the Weave serum that continues to hiss against his side.
Sliding off the metal ledge, my bare feet hit the floor with a soft slap.
Despite my heavy, trembling body, I grab the cold polymer trauma kit and pull my tunic back on—it's crumpled in the shadows where he threw it, smelling of sweat and him and the sharp tang of the Weave.
The fabric feels thin and inadequate after everything it's been through, but it's mine, and right now mine is all that matters.
"Locker," Draevik grunts, nodding toward the panel by the door. "Supplementary packs."
I move instantly, pulling out a handful of antiseptic wipes and a foil-wrapped, iridescent nutrient block. He takes the dense block and crunches through it in two bites, the metallic scent hitting the air as he swallows. I move into his shadow, tearing open the cleaning supplies.
"Stay still," I command.
He grunts, and it rattles through my own chest. He turns, his red eyes dimming from their predatory flare into a simmering, weary crimson.
He lets me push him back toward the metal bench.
He occupies the space with a quiet, terrifying grace, his secondary heart forcing a barely contained shiver through him.
The Sovereign Weave is already doing the heavy lifting.
The slug Korr fired is gone—pushed out by the sheer force of the nanites—but the tissue appears raw, a silver-blue mess of accelerated repair.
I use the wipes to clear the copper-smelling blood from the edges of the puncture.
The Weave works three times faster on him than it did on me.
It recognizes the veinwork of machine and flesh, the dense cellular structure of the Warlord, and treats the damage like a simple glitch in a program.
"It’s itching," he complains.
"That means you’re not dying." I wrap the words in a layer of artificial calm, though they feel brittle, as if the slightest breath might shatter the composure. I reach for the airtight canister to address the secondary grazes. "Most people would be ghosts. You’re just... knitting."
“I am built to last,” he rasps, a ragged edge moving through him as the violet flare in his veins begins to subside.
I move to his shoulder, tending to the smaller grazes from the pulse-rifles with the remaining gel.
I work in silence, my fingers brushing against the organic ridges that protect his spine.
Every touch feels different now. The mark continues, a warm shiver that guides my movements.
I feel his stability returning. I feel the moment his systems stop screaming and start calculating.
"Your knee," I observe, dropping to a crouch.
The joint seems to be a mess—the servo housing shows a crack where the shock-baton hit, leaking a thin thread of coolant that smells like burnt plastic.
I move my thumb against the casing and feel the mechanism grinding beneath.
"This isn't going to hold if you keep running on it. "
"It held long enough," he counters, but holds position as I start working the housing loose with my fingernails.
Finding the fracture line by feel—a hairline split running along the inner seal—I tear a strip from the hem of my tunic, winding it tight around the housing to keep the grit out, creating a makeshift gasket that will keep the debris out until the Weave can regenerate the casing.
"You are using your clothing as a medical supply," he observes, watching me knot the fabric.
"I'm using what I have. That's what scavengers do." I tug the knot tight and sit back on my heels. "Try it."
He bends the knee. The grinding is quieter. The coolant leak lingers to a seep. He looks down at me with an unfamiliar expression—something between surprise and a grudging respect that makes the mark warm.
"Adequate," he concedes.
"You're welcome," I snap back, but I'm grinning.`
He reaches for a small, integrated terminal on the wall. His large fingers move over the ancient Hegemony interface with a familiarity that makes my stomach flip. The screen flickers to life, displaying a skeletal wireframe representing Virex Prime.
Primary breach in Sector Six remains open, the ship’s voice crackles through the speakers, sounding like grinding gravel. Atmospheric venting contained to secondary corridors. Structural integrity at sixty-four percent. Intruders detected in the galley and the hydroponics bay.
Draevik’s red eyes narrow. He looks at the schematic, his attention locking in as if he feels every deck and every bolt under his own skin. He sacrificed a piece of this ship—and himself—to get to that cage. He bypassed every tactical advantage to pull me out of the dark.
"Korr is still breathing," I mutter, my fingers lingering on a long scratch across his bicep.
"He is a ghost," Draevik drones, cold and final. "He flees into the shadows of his own cowardice. I will find him when the ship is secure."
He taps a command on the screen, rerouting power from the luxury suites to the internal defense turrets near the reactor. He moves with a lethal, practiced speed, a king reclaiming a ruined throne. I watch his muscles ripple under the healing skin as he coordinates with the ship’s dying systems.
A familiar, stuttering hum catches my attention.
High above us, a small ventilation grate pops loose, and K-Seven squeezes through the narrow duct, its multi-lens optics whirring.
The little drone bypasses the sealed bulkhead entirely, tracking my unique bio-signature through the ship's labyrinth to find its way back to my side.
"Your machine has followed you," Draevik observes, his eyes flicking to the sealed entrance.
“It does that.” A sudden, contained reaction moves through me.
K-Seven was in the shaft when Rovik's men pulled me out.
It watched them drag me away, and its programming kept it from intervening—too small, too outgunned, too literal in its understanding of survival.
But it followed. It followed through a warship full of armed killers because its primary directive, buried somewhere under all that bootleg code and fried circuitry, is me.
Draevik taps a command, and the door cycles open just wide enough for the drone to zip through.
K-Seven shoots across the bunker like a cork from a bottle, its lenses cycling frantically as it orbits my head.
K-Seven emits a low, exhausted trill, its hovering dropping into a sluggish bob before it lands with a metallic clack against the deck.
I start to reach for my portable battery pack, but before I can, the floor plating beneath the drone begins to hum softly.
A ring of violet light pulses under K-Seven’s chassis.
The drone lets out a contented, rhythmic chirp.
Virex Prime is feeding it—treating my little scavenger bot like one of its own integrated sub-routines and passively charging its drained cells.
"Nyra! Unit has been tracking your biosignature for forty-seven minutes! Unit's distress protocols were at maximum! Unit was forced to hide inside a ventilation duct while hostile personnel passed within two meters! Unit requests acknowledgement that this was extremely undignified!"
"I know, buddy." I catch it gently, pressing my forehead against its cool chassis. "I know. I'm sorry."
"Unit is not accepting apologies at this time.
Unit is conducting a full bioscan." A pause.
Its lenses narrow. "Your cortisol levels are elevated but stabilizing.
Your wrist abrasions are superficial. Unit detects...
residual endorphins inconsistent with combat activity.
" Another pause. "Unit is declining to investigate further. "
Draevik makes a sound that might, in another century, have been a laugh.`
"You went through a lot of boarders to reach me," I state, the realization finally settling into my bones. "You left your posts. You let them weld the doors."
"I followed the signal," he states simply, his eyes meeting mine. "Everything else was an obstacle."
I survey the wreckage of his armor on the floor and then back at the man who seems to be outgrowing the monster.
He may be a relic of a war that burned worlds, but in this light, he is simply the one who held on.
I lean my forehead against his uninjured shoulder, letting the scent of the Weave and the ship wash over me.
"You're a giant idiot," I huff into his skin.
“You mean storm,” he reminds me, his hand coming up to cup my head. “And you are the only thing worth saving in the debris.”
I step away from his shoulder but only far enough to look him in the face.
My hand stays anchored to his bicep, my fingers curling around the hard, obsidian-smooth muscle.
Usually, I search for an exit or a way to retreat, yet now I find myself leaning into his heat.
I want the contact. I want the reassurance of his massive frame shielding me from the lingering chill of the breach.
"The boarders have the galley, but they’re scattered," I note, pointing toward the flickering terminal. "Korr kept his crew on a short leash, but they’re greedy. They’ll be busy stripping the high-end tech from the luxury suites while their remaining commanders try to find a backdoor into the bridge. "
Draevik shifts his weight, his red eyes tracking the movement of my hand on his arm. He seems to be adjusting to the lack of resistance, his posture losing that sharp, defensive edge.