Chapter 12 Vael
VAEL
The medbay lights flicker as I slide the port connector into the diagnostics terminal.
Standard interface. Obsolete encryption. I crack it in under three minutes.
They’ve never had to protect anything from me before. That’s their first mistake.
The second is thinking a recovering patient can’t bypass a bio-secured sublayer. They should’ve taken my clearance off the grid completely. Instead, someone just demoted it. Forgot to burn the root access.
Or maybe they never meant to erase it at all.
Either way—I’m in.
Rynn’s personnel file pulls up like a ghost from the deep archive. I’ve already been through the surface-level data: degrees, placements, reassignment orders, a clean, tight career wrapped in Alliance protocol.
But now I see it—the redacted line I hadn’t been able to touch before.
Six months after my disappearance.
Medical emergency. Personal leave. Classified destination.
Followed by a blank.
No logs.
No reports.
No communications for nearly a cycle.
And when she resurfaces? She’s on Corven-7. Off-path. Low-threat sector. Assigned to sub-tier recovery ops.
It’s a burial. They buried her. Just like they buried me.
But she chose it.
She left the central systems. Walked away. Vanished into silence.
My throat tightens. My claws twitch. I slam the port closed, yank the line, and lock the panel with a crack of knuckle to console.
Rynn.
What did you run from?
It takes me less than an hour to find her.
She’s in the secondary supply corridor, checking calibrators from a requisition crate. Her hair’s loose, brushing against her neck, catching glimmers from the overhead strip light. She doesn’t hear me approach.
Good.
She doesn’t deserve a warning.
“You lied to me,” I say.
Her spine stiffens. She turns slowly, eyes guarded. “Vael—”
“Six months. You vanished from every system in the Core. Your medical leave was a smokescreen.”
She opens her mouth. Closes it. Breathes.
Then says, “I had personal reasons.”
“What reasons?”
“Ones that didn’t concern you.”
I stalk forward, gripping the edge of the crate between us. The plastic creaks beneath my fingers.
“Don’t do that,” I growl. “Don’t act like I was a stranger.”
“You were a stranger. You died. Or so I was told.”
“So you ran?”
She narrows her eyes. “I got reassigned.”
“Voluntarily.”
Silence.
“I dug it all up,” I say, voice low. “And you know what the timeline says? You vanish six months after my unit’s wiped off the map. You reappear with a dead stare and a fake smile. Transferred to this corner of the galaxy like you’re trying to disappear.”
“I needed time.”
“To heal?”
“To survive.”
I move around the crate. She takes a step back. I don’t touch her. Not yet. But my voice cuts between us like a blade.
“What are you protecting?”
She shakes her head.
“Who are you protecting?”
I see it.
That flicker in her expression.
A hesitation.
A tiny break in the mask.
I grab her wrist—gentle, but firm enough she feels I could hold her forever if I wanted to.
She doesn’t pull away.
Her pulse pounds under my fingertips.
“Rynn,” I whisper. “Tell me the truth.”
She stares up at me, jaw clenched, lips parted. Her breath is fast. Her eyes shine with something like fear—no, not fear.
Pain.
“I can’t,” she says.
“You can.”
“I won’t.”
I let go of her wrist. Step back.
The air between us feels like a vacuum.
“I remember what it felt like to trust you,” I murmur.
She flinches like I struck her.
Then she turns and walks away, heels tapping down the corridor, head held too high.
But her shoulders are shaking.