Chapter 18
KRAJ
The exec dies without a sound.
His lips twitch once, a faint grimace, and then his body slumps back into the leather chair, eyes staring at nothing.
The half-empty crystal glass still rests between his fingers, the deep red of the port wine gleaming under the dining room lights.
My claws twitch as I reach forward and pluck it from his hand before it falls.
The scent of the wine lingers—sweet, spiced with cinnamon and clove, faint metallic notes clinging to the rim where the nanites swarmed in silence. No flash. No noise. Just death, quiet and efficient.
I set the glass down on the polished table, my reflection rippling across its surface. My heart doesn’t pound. My hands don’t shake. I am too practiced at this.
Too practiced, and too damned tired.
The servers won’t find him until morning, when the door fails to open at his voice. By then, the nanites will have eaten enough of his tissues to mimic an Alliance biotech signature. His own people will bury him with honors while cursing the Alliance for his death.
The perfect frame.
And I hate myself for how easily I made it happen.
By the time I’m back in Wildwood, the taste of ash coats my tongue, though I haven’t smoked in weeks.
The outpost is quiet, shadows long across the road as night bleeds into early morning.
I can still feel the weight of the vial in my hand, the tiny writhing swarm I uncorked into his glass, the moment I chose once again to be what they made me.
Targen’s voice crackles in over the secure line in my ear, thick with smug triumph.
“We’ll push the Combine into choosing sides. This will turn the tide in the sector. You did good, Kraj.”
My jaw aches with the force of my silence.
Good.
If good means snuffing out a man’s life like he was never more than a pawn. If good means laying another lie across Luna’s shoulders. If good means burying myself deeper in the same filth I swore I’d leave behind.
I cut the transmission without a word. The comm clicks off, leaving me alone with the sound of my own breathing.
I walk. Past the shuttered cantina, past the darkened shops, past the checkpoint where two sleepy guards nod without bothering to question me. My boots crunch against gravel as I head toward the cliffs at the edge of Wildwood.
The wind bites sharp tonight, carrying the scent of iron from the canyon walls. I step to the edge and look down into the yawning dark. Shadows stretch for miles, broken by the faint glimmer of water catching moonlight far below.
I spread my hands, flexing my claws until they ache. My chest tightens, heavy as if Arkosh’s whole gravity has decided to press me into the earth.
I tell myself it was for Luna. For Solie. For the fragile life I want to build with them. That this one last kill was the price of freedom, the last stain before I can walk away.
But even as the thought forms, I feel the hollowness inside it.
I’m lying.
To her. To myself.
The truth is simpler. I killed him because Targen told me to. Because after all these years, I still dance on his strings. Because no matter how many promises I make, no matter how many nights I spend whispering in Luna’s hair, I haven’t changed.
The wind whips at my coat, stinging my eyes with grit. I stand there, staring into the abyss, wishing it would take me. Wishing I could fall far enough that everything—the Coalition, the war, the lies—would just scatter to dust.
But I can’t get it off my mind.
Luna’s smile when she thought I wasn’t looking. Solie’s laughter, bright as starlight, when she called me a superhero for the claws I’ve always hidden in shame.
And the weight on my chest shifts. It doesn’t lighten. But it sharpens into something else.
Resolve.
If the past won’t let me go, I’ll carve a future with my own hands. For them. For the fragile, impossible chance of something real.
But stars help me—when she finds out what I’ve done, when she looks at me with those blue eyes filled with disappointment and fire—will there be anything left of me worth saving?
I doubt it.
The door hisses shut behind me, and for half a heartbeat, I let myself pretend I’m walking into peace. The air smells faintly of fried root and lavender oil, the kind she dabs on her wrists at night. Home, or something that could’ve been.
But it’s off. I can feel it immediately—like stepping into a room where the argument still hangs in the air, even if the shouting’s long done.
Luna doesn’t look at me. She’s at the counter, hands moving too fast as she sorts through a stack of cargo slips. Papers slap hard against the surface, sharp enough to make Solie flinch where she sits on the stool beside her.
Solie turns at the sound of the door, her face lighting up—until she sees her mother’s. Her little smile falters.
“Hey, firefly,” I say, pitching my voice soft.
She hesitates, then climbs down from the stool. Her small feet patter across the floor before she launches at me, arms around my neck. I lift her easily, breathing her in—sugar and soap and the faintest hint of dust. For a moment, everything in me loosens.
But over her shoulder, Luna keeps her eyes fixed on the slips.
“You’re late,” she says, her tone clipped.
“I had business,” I answer, forcing steady calm into my voice.
“Business.” She lets out a brittle laugh, still not turning. “Of course you did.”
The words sting. Not because they’re sharp, but because they’re true.
I shift Solie against me. “Luna, look at me.”
“Don’t,” she snaps, the word cracking like a whip. Her hand slams the last slip down hard enough that the stack slides crooked across the counter. Solie flinches, pressing her face into my shoulder.
“Hey, little one,” I murmur, kissing the top of her hair. “It’s alright. Mama’s just tired.”
But Solie knows. Kids always know. Her small arms clutch tighter, and her voice is muffled when she whispers, “Are you mad, Mama?”
That gets Luna to turn. Her smile is thin, strained, a knife’s edge barely holding. “No, baby. Not mad. Just… busy.” Her eyes flick to me for the briefest second, and what I see there hollows me out. Not anger. Not even hate. Something worse. Distance.
I set Solie down gently. “Why don’t you get your toy, firefly? Show me how far you can make it fly.”
She brightens a little, scampering off to her room. The moment her footsteps fade, the silence slams down.
“Talk to me,” I say, low, controlled.
Luna crosses her arms. “About what? Another one of your business trips? Another thing you ‘can’t tell me about’?” Her voice rises on the last words, cracking like glass.
I step closer, my chest tight. “Luna, I—”
“Don’t you dare,” she cuts me off. “Don’t you dare stand there and act like you didn’t know. I saw your face this morning. When the report came in about the Combine exec—you didn’t even flinch. Everyone else in Wildwood panicked, but not you. You just watched.”
I swallow hard. “It’s not that simple.”
Her laugh is sharp, ugly. “Isn’t it? Man dies in an explosion. Colony turns upside down. And the only one who doesn’t look surprised is you.”
“I didn’t say I wasn’t surprised—”
“You didn’t have to!” she shouts, then stops herself, breathing hard, eyes flicking toward Solie’s room. She lowers her voice, but it shakes. “You knew. Don’t lie to me, Kraj. Not again.”
The weight in my chest crushes. I want to reach for her, but the fury in her eyes warns me off.
“I can’t explain,” I rasp. “Not yet.”
Her lips press tight, her jaw trembling. “Then don’t. Just… don’t.” She turns her back on me, shoulders stiff.
I stand there like a fool, the silence louder than any argument we’ve ever had.
That night, we lie in the same bed, but it feels like a grave between us. She lies stiff on her side, facing the wall. I can hear her breathing—too even, too deliberate to be real sleep. I don’t touch her. I don’t even try.
When her breath finally slows, I slip out of bed. The floor creaks beneath my weight as I move into the living room. My datapad waits in its pocket of the field kit, exactly where I left it.
Or… not exactly.
I know this kit like I know my own body. The weight, the balance. And this—this isn’t how I left it.
A cold knot forms in my gut. I sit down at the table, flick the pad on, and pull up the logs. My claws tap impatient rhythms against the edge while the encryption history scrolls.
And there it is.
Unauthorized access. Someone breached the first shell and scraped the surface of the Coalition files.
The bile rises in my throat. I don’t need to guess who.
“Luna,” I whisper, the name breaking against my teeth.
I shut the pad with a snap, my claws trembling as they dent the casing. My vision blurs at the edges.
She knows.
She saw the dossiers. Maybe the exec’s face. Maybe worse.
And I hadn’t even tried to hide them well enough. Maybe some part of me had wanted her to find them, to force the truth into the open. Or maybe I’m just that careless, that desperate to pretend I can live in two worlds at once.
I grip the table until the metal groans, my breath harsh. “It was never going to last,” I mutter to the empty room. “Was it?”
Morning light seeps pale and cold through the window. I wake stiff in the chair, my claws still dug into the table’s edge. The apartment is too quiet.
Too empty.
I lurch to my feet, panic clawing at my ribs. The bedroom—her side of the bed, bare. The closet—her clothes, gone.
I stumble into Solie’s room. The shelves where her toys sat are stripped, the blanket folded neatly at the foot of the bed.
“No.” The word scrapes out raw.
I stagger back into the kitchen, my chest pounding so hard it hurts. And then I see it.
On the table.
A small, silver pin.
I pick it up with hands that won’t stop shaking. An IHC tracking badge. Old, worn, the kind she used to wear when she was still someone official, before I burned her life down. She must’ve kept it hidden all these years.
I turn it over in my palm, the metal cold, biting into my skin. No note. No explanation. Just this. A message clear enough to gut me.
I stare at it for a long, long time, the silence pressing in until I can’t breathe.
Then the roar rips out of me, wild and furious. My voice shakes the walls, rattles the windows. Solie’s empty room throws it back at me like an echo of loss.
I slam my fist into the table. Metal warps under the blow, the badge skittering across the floor with a harsh metallic clink.
The sound fades, leaving only the hollow silence of an apartment stripped of everything that mattered.
And the silence is worse than the roar.