Chapter 1 #2
Our eyes meet again — fury against fear. Then something shifts. His grip slackens, confusion bleeding through the rage. “You’re not supposed to be here,” he whispers, words slurred as the sedative starts to bite. “You were mine…”
My throat closes. I push the plunger.
He exhales once, a sound that might have been my name, and collapses back against the table.
The room goes very quiet.
Drel lets out a slow breath. “Remind me never to get on your patient roster.”
I drop the syringe into the disposal unit and rub my face. “Remind me to switch careers.”
We stabilize him, again. His breathing evens, heartbeat steadies. The monitors settle into a rhythm that’s almost peaceful. Almost.
The kind of peace that feels like standing on a minefield waiting for the click.
Later, after Drel leaves to file the transport log, I linger.
The medbay is half-dark now. The low light makes him look younger, less weapon and more man. The plating along his arm catches the glow like polished obsidian.
He was always too big for the narrow bunks, too loud for quiet rooms. Now he lies still, tethered by wires and tubes, the strongest man I’ve ever known reduced to fragile machinery.
I should hate him.
I tell myself that — over and over — like a mantra.
He’s the reason I lost everything.
He’s the reason Nessa will never know what a normal life looks like.
He’s the reason I’ve spent five years hiding under a false name on a forgotten rock.
And yet…
The sight of him breathing, alive, hits me like a pulse through the chest.
I lean closer, fingers brushing the edge of the table. His skin looks too pale against the matte black of the prosthetic. I remember that hand — warm, rough, strong enough to lift me clear off the ground and gentle enough to trace the back of my neck when he thought I was asleep.
“Why did you have to come back?” I whisper.
He doesn’t answer, of course. But some muscle under his jaw twitches, and that’s enough to send a shiver down my spine.
Footsteps echo in the corridor. I straighten fast, heart in my throat.
It’s Drel again, holding a datapad.
“Command wants updates every four hours,” he says. “And a full neuro-map once he stabilizes. Guess who gets to babysit?”
“Lucky me.”
He studies me a moment. “You okay? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“I have,” I say quietly.
He hesitates, then nods and slips out again.
I watch the door slide shut. The sound feels final — like a seal.
I’m alone with Vael.
The silence between us is thick, filled with memories I can’t afford to replay. His breathing deepens, steady now, the low rumble of it vibrating through the metal table.
It’s stupid, but I find myself syncing to the rhythm. In, out.
Like it used to be, back when the war wasn’t the only thing killing us.
Hours pass. The medbay hums on autopilot. I check his vitals, adjust the feed lines, anything to keep my hands busy. Sleep’s not an option. Too many ghosts in the dark.
When I finally step back, I catch my reflection in the glass partition — hollow eyes, hair pulled tight, shadows under my skin. I look like someone who’s been living on borrowed time. Maybe I have.
A soft clatter breaks the quiet.
Vael’s fingers twitch again, mechanical servos whining.
I move quickly to the bedside. His eyelids flutter but don’t open.
He’s dreaming — bad ones, by the sound of it.
Low growls spill from his throat, words I can’t catch. I touch his shoulder, instinct more than reason. “Easy. You’re safe.”
The growling stops.
He goes still.
Then, barely audible, he breathes, “Rynn… don’t run.”
My chest aches.
By the time the next shift rolls around, I’ve locked every console file and purged all visitor logs. Drel doesn’t ask why; he knows better. The fewer questions, the longer we live.
Vael sleeps on. The machines do the work. The medbay smells of sterile air and something darker — ozone and memory. I stand there until the lights begin to dim for night cycle, thinking of the girl sleeping in our quarters across the colony, small and fierce and far too smart.
When Nessa wakes tomorrow, she’ll ask if I’m coming home early.
And I’ll lie, again.
Because I can’t tell her that her father’s lying two corridors away, rebuilt from steel and nightmares.
I pull the blanket higher over his chest and step back.
“You should’ve stayed dead,” I whisper.
The monitor answers with a steady, unbothered beep-beep-beep.
I kill the overhead light and leave him in the glow of the machines — half man, half ghost, all danger.
And outside, through the reinforced viewport, Corven-7’s twin moons hang low and red over the horizon.
They look like warning lights.
They always do.
…
The door hisses closed behind me with a sound like a sigh.
If only it were mine.
I lean against the cool frame for a beat, eyes shut, willing the weight of the day off my shoulders. It doesn’t move. It never does. Not since he arrived. Not since that golden stare cracked open a box I’ve spent five years keeping buried.
I toe off my boots and pad barefoot into the tiny apartment, the floor chill and familiar beneath my soles. It’s barely three rooms strung together with recycled steel and patched wiring, but it’s ours. The only place I’ve ever felt almost safe.
“Nessa?” My voice comes out hoarse.
Silence — then a patter of fast little feet on plastitile. “Mama!”
She barrels around the corner at full speed, bare feet skidding, curls bouncing like wildfire.
And I melt.
“Whoa, slow down—” I laugh as she collides into my legs. Her arms wrap tight, claws snagging just slightly on my coat. She’s getting stronger. Again.
“I drew you something,” she declares, already dragging me toward the main room. “It’s got ships and plasma claws and a big explosion!”
“Plasma claws?” I echo, eyebrows up. “Sounds intense.”
“It was! In my brain!” She beams up at me, cheeks flushed. Her little canines flash when she grins. They’re too sharp for a full-human child. I file that worry into the usual drawer — the one marked Things I Can’t Fix.
She pulls me down to the floor beside her makeshift art station — just a cracked table and a pile of synthpaper, but to her it’s the whole damn universe.
She shoves a drawing into my lap. It’s chaos — jagged lines, smudged colors, fire and stars and a figure that’s unmistakably Vakutan: broad shoulders, glowing eyes, claws bared. Beside him, a smaller figure with wild curls and fangs and a tail she doesn’t have — not yet.
I stare at it a long time.
“You gave yourself a tail,” I say.
“Yeah! For balance.” She shrugs like it’s obvious. “You said I’ll probably get one.”
“I said maybe.” My throat’s tight.
She points to the big figure. “That’s the protector. He guards her.”
“Is she in danger?”
“Always.” Her voice is matter-of-fact.
My heart seizes.
Nessa doesn’t know. Not really. She’s only five.
She doesn’t understand bloodlines or bounty codes or why her skin itches when she’s upset.
She doesn’t know that her claws are growing faster now, or that I have to shave back the tiny nubs at the base of her skull every few weeks so no one sees the plates coming in.
But she feels it. She feels it in her bones.
“Do you… do you dream about him?” I ask gently.
She nods. “Sometimes. He’s got light in his hands and fire on his back. He roars like a mountain.”
I close my eyes. Vael never had fire on his back — but he was a mountain.
I smooth a hand over her hair, warm and soft and just a little too wild. “That’s a powerful protector.”
“Yeah.” She nestles into my side. “You smell like hospital stuff. Did you see sick people?”
“Mmhmm.”
She frowns. “Anyone scary?”
I hesitate.
Lie, or protect?
“Just a soldier,” I say. “He got hurt. He’s healing now.”
Her head tilts. She has my eyes, but Vael’s brow — that furrow of focus that says she’s about to ask something too sharp for her age.
“Did you know him?”
I freeze.
I feel her watching me — a five-year-old with claws and questions.
“No,” I lie. “He’s just a patient.”
She doesn’t push.
But she doesn’t believe me either.
Later, after she’s eaten and done her nightly stomp-stomp-growl routine through our bedtime story (this week’s pick: The Silver Claw Saves the Moon), she finally collapses into bed.
I tuck her in beneath the weighted blanket we stitched together from spare medbay material and old cargo cloth.
It’s ugly as sin, but she loves it. Says it smells like safety.
I sit on the edge of her cot, smoothing the blanket over her curled-up form. She’s smaller in sleep. Softer. But I can still see the faint shimmer of scales along her hairline, the iridescent edge catching the room light.
Her mutation’s accelerating.
I don’t know if it’s the environment, the age, or just time.
I don’t know if I’ll be able to hide it much longer.
She stirs. “Mama?”
I brush her hair back. “Yeah, love?”
“Promise you’ll stay?”
That one hits me sideways.
Hard.
“I’m not going anywhere,” I whisper.
She nods, eyes drifting closed.
I sit there long after she’s out, listening to her breath even out.
It’s the only sound I trust in the whole damn universe.
In the kitchen nook, I pour myself the dregs of recycled caf and stare out the porthole into the rust-orange night. Corven-7’s sky never really gets dark. The industrial haze keeps a constant dim glow, like the planet itself refuses to sleep.
I don’t sleep either.
How can I?
Vael’s presence is a black hole — pulling everything back in.
I can’t stop seeing him on that table — broken, bandaged, eyes burning straight into me like no time had passed at all.
And gods, I can’t stop feeling.
That twist in my chest when he said my name. The pain in his voice. The question buried in every breath.
I lied to him. Again.
Told him this was a coincidence. That he’s just another patient. That his being here doesn’t mean a damn thing.
He’ll see through it.
He always saw through me.
And if he finds out…
If he sees Nessa—
No.
I won’t let that happen.
She’s mine.
I raised her. Fed her. Bathed her through night fevers and calmed her when her claws wouldn’t retract. I held her when her first rage came — a wild shriek that shattered every light panel in the flat — and I didn’t flinch.
I made her.
And I will not lose her.
Not to the Alliance. Not to the bounty hunters still whispering about the Vakutan-human projects.
Not even to him.
Even if it means running again. Even if it means disappearing off the grid, burning every trace of our lives behind us. Again.
Because that’s what mothers do.
And I’d rather be alone in the dark forever than watch that man’s arrival blow my daughter’s life to ash.
Back at the sink, I scrub out Nessa’s dinner dish by hand, because the sonic cycle rattles too loud and wakes her.
My hands shake.
I stare down at the foam and ceramic, at the warped reflection of my own eyes, and say it out loud — to the quiet, to the ghosts, to the void:
“If he remembers everything… I’ll lie.”
I turn off the water.
The kitchen light flickers.
Outside, the clouds shift, revealing a sliver of stars.
And I pray — not to gods, because they’ve never listened.
I pray to the memory of who I used to be.
The woman who knew how to survive.
Because tomorrow, I have to walk into that medbay again and pretend I’m not breaking.
Pretend my world didn’t come back from the dead with steel in his spine and questions in his eyes.
And gods help me…
I don’t know how many lies I have left.