Chapter 8
KRAJ
She’s warm beside me.
Curled into the sheets like a secret the universe forgot to keep.
Her hair fans across the pillow in pale gold ribbons, catching the early rays filtering through the slats.
She’s breathing soft—steady—and for a heartbeat, for a blink in this fractured life of mine, I believe peace is something I might actually deserve.
I don’t move. Not at first.
I just look.
Her back is bare, the curve of her spine begging for my hand. There’s a scratch near her shoulder blade—I don’t know if it’s from me or something old—and the temptation to brush my fingers over it is like a song I can’t silence. Her skin smells like sleep and something I swear is home.
I want to stay.
I want to stay so godsdamn bad.
But I don’t.
Because I know better.
I dress in silence, every piece of armor and cloth feeling like a lie I wrap myself in. My boots scuff softly across her floor. Her apartment’s still dim, still quiet, but it’s already fading—the illusion that this could be a life. That we could just… be.
Before I leave, I find a slip of synthpaper near her kitchen nook and scrawl two lines with one of those cheap styluses that always smudge.
Didn’t want to wake you. I’ll see you tonight. —K.
I hesitate for half a breath, then tuck it under her battered little clay mug by the stove.
And then I’m gone.
The suns rise like twin knives over Wildwood, carving sharp lines through the dusty alleys I slip into. I keep to the side streets, the ones that stink of old oil and recycled air. Steam hisses from a vent beside a droid shop, briefly fogging my goggles. I swipe the lenses clean and keep walking.
The adrenaline’s still in my blood, but it’s not from the mission.
It’s her.
Her touch still lingers on my skin—phantom impressions of nails on my shoulders, breath on my neck, her body arching against mine like we were meant to fit.
And yet, guilt chews at me. Raw. Relentless.
Because I’m still sending reports.
Still keeping Targen in the loop.
Still playing the role I promised myself I’d shed.
I duck into my hideout near the old mag-rail station.
The walls are curved prefab, patched with smuggled panels and scavenged nodes.
The place smells like old coolant and singed wires, but it’s mine.
There’s a terminal in the corner—a clunky black thing with a cracked screen and a squeaky input coil. I power it up.
The encryption protocols are second nature. My fingers move faster than my thoughts.
I compose the report in short bursts.
Courier activity remains consistent. Fabrication site output shows no signs of Alliance collaboration. Surveillance sweeps ongoing.
I pause.
My jaw clenches.
Then I type the line I know Targen’s waiting for.
Asset Luna Desmond made contact. Observation continues.
I hover over the send command.
Then erase it.
Instead, I lock the terminal down. Encrypt the system so hard it’d take a top-rank slicer two cycles to crack it open.
Because screw the Coalition.
Screw Targen.
If I send that file, if I keep playing the part—they’ll use her. Again.
They’ll see her as leverage, not a person.
I can’t let that happen. Not again.
I head for the comms relay in the west quarter.
It’s quiet this time of morning. Dust drifts like ash across the road, and the distant whir of harvest drones is the only sound.
The building’s unguarded—Helios runs their ops lean out here—but the tower still pulses with energy, each status light blinking its own lazy rhythm.
I crouch behind a storage crate and watch.
It’s not just about Luna.
It’s not even just about Solie.
It’s about redemption.
Mine.
Because somewhere along the line, I forgot who I was. I became what they needed—a blade. A saboteur. A shadow.
And for a while, I liked it.
I liked the thrill. The clarity of orders. The simplicity of a target.
But last night changed everything.
Her breath in my ear.
Her whisper of my name like it still meant something.
I feel the phantom press of her lips against mine.
She gave me a piece of herself.
After everything.
After all the betrayal.
She let me back in.
A rustle to my right.
I tense, claws half-unsheathed, but it’s just a feral groundbird, feathers puffed and eyes gleaming with mistrust. It hops off into the brush. I exhale, slow, and let my claws retract.
I check my chrono.
Two hours until I’m supposed to meet her again.
Dinner.
She didn’t say it, but I could see it in her eyes. She wasn’t just letting me in for one night. She’s testing the waters. Seeing if the man who left her bleeding could possibly be the man she used to trust.
The man she used to love.
I don’t know if I can be that.
But I know I want to try.
Back at the hideout, I wash my hands in a cracked basin. The water’s tepid and stinks of rust, but it gets the blood out from under my nails—old blood, not fresh. From a courier who got too close last week. The Coalition wouldn’t care about his name. Only that he wasn’t one of theirs.
I dry off and toss the rag aside. My hands shake, just a little.
Because I keep seeing her in my bed.
Not naked.
Not flushed.
Just peaceful.
Like I never thought she could be again.
Like I never thought I’d see her be.
I pull out the little hand-drawn sketch I didn’t burn.
Not the one of her face—that one’s ash now. Gone, like too many things.
This one’s smaller. Simpler.
A tiny shape. A child. Barely more than lines and guesses.
I don’t know why I drew it.
I’ve seen her walking with the little girl. Heard her laugh. Seen her tug on Luna’s coat and babble about berries or bugs or whatever tiny humans obsess over.
She looks… normal.
Human.
But those eyes.
Golden.
Exactly like mine.
It’s probably coincidence.
Maybe Luna loved someone else after me. Maybe she found another man, tried to build something new.
I try to tell myself that.
But my gut whispers different.
My gut tells me I’ve already failed that little girl too.
And I haven’t even had the chance to know her.
I don’t want to screw this up. Not again. So tonight, I’ll show up.
I’ll talk.
I’ll listen.
And I’ll figure out who the hell I’m supposed to be now that the war’s not the only thing consuming me. Because it’s not the mission that’s keeping me awake anymore. It’s Luna. And maybe…Just maybe…That kid.
The report I send is cleaner than it has any right to be.
Surgical. Just facts about the Alliance courier's movements—nothing about Luna, nothing about the girl, nothing about the fabrication center.
It reads like the dry intel briefs we used to roll our eyes at in the field—precise, bloodless, forgettable.
The kind of thing that slides through layers of bureaucracy without a ripple.
Targen doesn’t ping back. Yet.
I stare at the encrypted delivery confirmation on my compad, then toss the device onto the cluttered table like it burns. It rattles next to an old field knife and the remains of a half-eaten ration bar that tastes like chalk and engine oil. My gut knots anyway—not from hunger.
I know what I’m doing. I’m lying. Again.
Only this time it’s not to Luna. It’s to the Coalition. To Targen. To everything I’ve bled for in the last decade. And the worst part? It doesn’t even feel like betrayal. It feels like mercy. Like I’m finally doing something that matters.
I lean back in the creaking synthframe chair and press the heels of my hands into my eyes until the world becomes nothing but pulsing red.
My thoughts are a snarl of memory and scent—Luna’s breath on my neck last night, the curve of her back against my chest, the way her voice broke when she whispered my name in the dark.
I never deserved that kind of softness. Still don’t.
But it’s not just her. It’s the kid, too.
Solie.
I didn’t know her name until I heard it in the plaza—Luna saying it with that mother’s lilt, gentle but firm, as the girl veered too close to a robotic fruit vendor. Solie. A human name. Simple. Sweet.
I stood in the shadow of a defunct power terminal and watched them—watched the way Luna knelt to adjust the collar of the kid’s jacket, the way Solie giggled and squirmed, curling fingers around her mother’s braid.
Then she turned and saw me.
Golden eyes. Big, curious, and wide. My heart stuttered, a misfire in my chest.
And she smiled.
Not one of those nervous kid-smiles either. No, this was warm. Confident. Like she knew me. Like I was someone safe. Someone solid.
I shouldn’t have been that someone. I’m a shadow, a saboteur, a soldier with too many deaths on my claws. Kids don’t look at me like that. Not unless they’ve never been taught fear.
But she looked. And she smiled. And for one terrifying second, I smiled back.
It messed me up worse than any shrapnel.
I told myself it was coincidence. A flicker of expression with no meaning. I’ve seen a thousand smiles in my time—most of them lies.
But that one? That one stuck. Lodged behind my sternum like a lodged shell casing.
“She’s not mine,” I mutter, pacing the room now, voice low and raw. “She can’t be.”
But even as I say it, I remember how her eyes match mine.
Not exactly, no. Hers are more amber, more fluid with light. But close enough to freeze the blood in my veins.
I pace faster. Each step is a drumbeat of denial.
Luna would’ve told me. Right?
No. Not if she thought I was dead. Not if she thought I’d abandoned her. Stars, I gave her every reason to hate me. I’d hate me too.
My claws scrape against the edge of the old table as I brace my weight against it, eyes locked on nothing. The air smells like scorched metal and the faint spice of desert sand carried in through the cracks. I can still taste her skin on my lips. Sweet. Salted. Real.
I shake my head and snarl.
“You’re not that man anymore,” I growl at my reflection in the smeared window. “You don’t get to want this.”
But wanting doesn’t care about rules. It doesn’t care about blood or orders or encrypted files.
It just is.
And what I want… stars help me, what I want is to stay. To step into that life like it’s waiting for me. Like it hasn’t already moved on.
I slump into the chair and pull the worn logbook from the satchel by my feet.
My fingers flip to the last page. A crude sketch stares back at me—Luna’s profile, all fierce lines and soft edges.
I started it the first week I arrived on Arkosh.
Kept adding to it in the quiet hours between recon sweeps and surveillance scrapes.
It’s not art. It’s obsession.
I tear the page out, slow and deliberate, and watch it flutter to the floor.
Then I light a match.
The flame eats the drawing in seconds, curling black along the paper’s edges, and I drop it into the recycler chute before the smoke can trigger the alarms. The scent of burnt ink curls around my nostrils, bitter and sharp.
It doesn’t feel like closure. It feels like cowardice.
I close the logbook and shove it back in the bag. Then I grab my coat and head out into the wind, boots crunching against the gravel and sun-scorched refuse that lines the alley outside my safehouse.
I walk with no destination in mind. Just movement. Just the need to feel the planet under my feet and not the weight in my chest.
Wildwood isn’t much after dark—just flickering lanterns and murmuring voices behind shuttered windows. I pass the café where we had coffee. The synthbean smell is gone now, replaced by fried root vegetables and the distant hum of power relays.
And there, at the edge of the plaza, I see her.
Luna. Standing alone, arms crossed, eyes scanning the horizon like she’s waiting for something.
Or someone.
My pulse trips. I step back, half-hidden by a mural of the Helios Combine’s logo. I don’t call out. Don’t move.
I just watch.
Because for now, watching is all I deserve.