6. CHAPTER SIX #3
“You can say no,” she said softly. “Truly. I will be… quietly heartbroken, but I will survive. I will admit, I do not know what happens when you do not end up with your mate, but you do not owe me anything.”
“The quiet heartbreak is worse than the loud kind,” I muttered. “The loud kind at least lets you yell back.”
She smiled, quick and crooked.
“I am famously bad at yelling.”
The thing was, two weeks would pass whether I went with her or not. Back on Earth, my life would stay exactly the same.
The difference was that here, I’d be scared out of my mind and wildly, stupidly alive. And would her energy fade faster if I left?
“Okay,” I heard myself say.
Her eyes widened.
“Okay?”
“Yeah, let’s do it. I’ll come,” I said before I could wriggle out of it.
Panic fizzed through me. I grabbed it with both hands and wrestled it into something like resolve.
“On two conditions.”
She sat up straight and rested her hands in her lap.
“Okay. Go ahead. Tell me.”
“First, I’m not your pet human,” I said. “I’m not doing tricks for cameras or being rolled out as your Relatable Earth Girl. If I’m there, it’s as a… person.”
Her eyes widened.
“Agreed. No tricks. You are not content.”
“Second, if it gets too much, I get to leave without feeling awful.”
“If you want to leave, you leave,” she said immediately. “I will walk you to the nearest shuttle myself. I will even bribe Sira to find you one that serves acceptable coffee.”
Her gaze softened.
“I already like the anxious spreadsheet goblin,” she said. “She told me no when I was being too much.”
I let out a small huff, a smile tugged at the corner of my lip.
“Then yeah,” I said quietly. “Let’s do my mum’s worst nightmare.”
She threw her head back and laughed, loud and delighted.
“You signed the deal.”
The door chimed and echoed through the room.
“Enter,” Zhari shouted.
Sira stepped in, holding her tablet in one hand and a stylus in the other. Her gaze flicked from our bowls on the rug to our bare feet and then to the massive bed behind us.
“So,” Sira said. “You said yes.”
“You have really good hearing from out there. But yes, I said yes,” I confirmed.
“Of course you did,” Sira muttered under her breath.
She walked over to me and handed me the tablet.
“This is the Cultural Guest Contract. Lumara sector to Orin to Tessara. Standard liability waiver, medical consent, confidentiality, all the fun stuff.”
The screen lit up with my name already filled in, along with my date of birth and Earth address. My emergency contact line blinked empty, waiting.
“Security already did their homework, I see.”
She held out the stylus for me to take. I filled in my mum and dad’s details.
“Please note,” Sira said, watching me, “this makes you crew-adjacent. You’ll have a badge, access to certain decks, and basic safety protocols. You are not a staff member and cannot be asked to perform in an official capacity without an addendum contract. Understood?”
“Yes,” I said, even though half the words were blurring together.
I signed. My name looked small and absurd next to the tour logo.
Sira’s tablet chimed.
“Done.” She exhaled, some of the fight leaving her shoulders. “The shuttle leaves Vela shortly. Make sure you have everything you need.”
Her gaze softened a fraction.
“You still have time to back out.”
“I just used my full legal signature,” I said faintly. “It feels like the universe would be offended.”
“Fair point.” One corner of Sira’s mouth twitched. “Welcome to the mess, Vada.”
She turned the screen around one more time, her thumb flicking across it.
“And in case you were wondering if this is still containable…”
She tapped the screen.
A holo-projection bloomed in the air: a grainy still from last night’s crowd, zoomed in on the back of my head, tilted up toward the stage. The caption Who is Zhari's Human? was already trending at the bottom.
My stomach dropped.
“That was fast,” I gulped.
“This is light-speed PR,” Sira replied. “We’re already putting out a ‘cultural guest’ line, but the feeds will chew on this for days.”
Zhari’s jaw clenched.
“Turn it off.”
Sira dismissed the holo.
“Then get her on the ship before they find the hotel.”
After she left, the suite became quieter.
I stared at the spot where my blown-up, badly lit face had floated in the air.
“So I’m not just some private bad decision,” I said. “I’m also a headline. That is great for me.”
“You are not a bad decision,” Zhari said. “You are…”
She searched for the word.
“An inconvenient miracle.”
“That is worse,” I groaned. “Miracles come with fine print.”
“Then we will read the fine print together,” she said.
Security collected me an hour later. Back in the elevator, I pulled up my messages and hovered over my mother’s contact.
If I told her the truth, she would try to commandeer a shuttle with her bare hands. If I told her nothing, she’d worry herself into a migraine.
In the end, I came up with a small white lie to hold her off.
ME: I will be off-grid for a bit. Huge work opportunity with training. I’m safe, though. Call soon. Love you.
I hit send before I could think too hard about it. A second later, the read receipt flashed.
Three dots appeared. Disappeared. Reappeared.
MOM: I miss you.
MOM: Hope work is good. Remember to eat! Your father is making us grilled cheese.
My chest compressed. I locked the screen.
“You should just text her. She is going to worry,” Zhari said softly beside me, watching me fidget with my wrist comm.
“She always worries,” I said. “It’s overbearing. I’m almost thirty. I need to think and do things for myself.”
Zhari gave me a soft smile and shrugged.
“You will have to sooner rather than later, Vada.”
I hated to admit it, but I knew she was right.
The elevator doors opened onto the private dock where the loading bay for the tour ship was.
I stopped just inside the doorway and stared.
“Oh my database,” I whispered. I looked at Zhari and pointed at the ship. “This—this is what we’ll be living in for the next two weeks?” I gasped.
Zhari laughed and grabbed my hand.
“You are so funny, my little noodle. Wait until you see inside.” She flashed a wink and started walking across the ramp.
It looked like a regular tour bus from the movies, but it was covered in a glittery holographic shimmer that shifted between purple and pink in the light. A giant photo of Zhari’s face and logo stretched across one side like a moving banner.
Panels glistened beneath the dock lights, almost too shiny, throwing little rainbow streaks onto the ground. The crew and bots moved along the ramp, loading cases, shouting, and laughing. Somewhere, someone’s drumsticks rattled out a quick, impatient rhythm.
Sira stood at the base of the ramp, her wristband projecting a muted stream of headlines only she could fully see. As we approached, a thumbnail flared larger: a grainy zoom of me and Zhari on the loading dock, her head tipped onto my shoulder and my hand in her hair.
Underneath, the caption read, you guessed it, Who is Zhari's Human?
My stomach dropped.
“When did they even take that? Where were they?”
“Paparazzi are everywhere,” Sira said, not looking up. Another notification flickered in the corner of the holo. “Trending across three systems. The clock’s ticking.”
She tapped her wrist comm and motioned for us to cross the ramp.
“This is so crazy,” I whispered, half to myself.
“Crazy can be fun,” Zhari said quietly.
She held out her hand.
“Everything will be fine. This is going to be fun.”
I looked at the ship, at her, and at my shaky reflection in the polished hull. My life back on Earth felt like a file I’d minimized instead of closed.
Slowly, I put my hand in hers.
Her grip tightened, steady as gravity.
Together, with my mother’s unanswered nagging messages burning in my pocket and the new circulating headline echoing in the back of my skull, we stepped onto the ramp and into whatever came next.