Chapter 14
The corridor to the medical bay was a blur of gray metal and white lights, passing too fast and yet not fast enough. Harper moved because Kirr's hand was on her back, propelling her forward, a solid, warm weight that grounded her while her mind spun out into the void.
They had taken everything.
In the span of an hour, the universe had stripped her bare. No Kirr. No Delilah. No home. Just a one-way ticket to some place in space with a stranger, while her cousin waited to be shipped off God knew where.
And now Delilah was waking up.
She stumbled as the doors to the medical bay slid open with a hiss. The air inside was cool, smelling of ozone and something antiseptic that stung the back of her nose.
Kirr didn't stop. He steered her toward the bay Delilah was in, his jaw set so hard a muscle twitched beneath his skin. But halfway there, his wrist computer chimed again.
He swore as he looked down at it, a harsh, guttural sound. "That… draanthic."
His attention switched to her, his golden eyes fierce and intense. "Go to her. I need to deal with this before Kaarigan locks down my command codes."
"Kirr, I—"
"Go," he urged, giving her a gentle push toward the bay where Kellat stood. "I am not letting them take you. I am fighting this, Harper. Every step. Just stay with Kellat." He tightened his grip on her shoulder. "Do not leave with anyone but me."
He turned, stalking down the corridor out of the healer’s bay, already talking to someone, gesticulating animatedly.
Dully, she watched him go, then turned away to walk into Delilah's ‘room’.
It was peaceful here. Too peaceful.
Delilah lay on the huge, alien medical bed, small and pale against the dark sheets. For a moment, Harper was back there, in the wreckage of the flyer, with smoke choking the air. She focused on the lights blinking rhythmically on the panel above her cousin’s head.
Kellat looked up as Harper entered. The Healer usually had a calm, unshakeable demeanor, but today his brow was furrowed, his braided hair pulled back severely. He didn't look like a man who was about to deliver good news.
"How is she?" she asked, her voice sounding thin to her own ears. "You said she was waking up."
Kellat hesitated. He tapped a command on the holographic display, dismissing a stream of complex data. "That was the plan. Her vitals had stabilized, and the neural activity suggested she was ready to emerge from the restorative coma."
"Suggested?" She moved to the bedside, her hand hovering over Delilah's but afraid to touch. "What does that mean? Is she okay?"
"There has been... a change." The big healer skirted around the bed, his movements precise but heavy. He didn't look away from the screen results. "In the last twenty minutes, her brain wave patterns shifted. They don't match any baseline I recognize—human or Latharian."
The floor seemed to drop out from under her. "A change… what do you mean? Oh God. Is she… gone?"
"No," Kellat said quickly, holding up a hand without taking his eyes off the readings.
"It’s more like her brain is… overactive.
But if I pull her out of stasis now, without understanding the nature of this new activity …
" He paused, jaw tight as he looked up to meet Harper’s eyes. "The neural backlash could kill her."
Her grip tightened on the bed rail until it bit into her skin. "So you can't wake her."
"Not yet." He drew a slow breath through his nose, then keyed the display to a different set of metrics. He glanced down at Delilah with an expression that looked strangely like longing.
"I need more time." He gestured at the readouts. "The crash triggered something I don't understand yet. Until I solve it, I’m going to have to keep her in stasis."
He couldn't wake her.
Harper’s knuckles turned white on the rail.
She had thought this was the one mercy. The one thing that would go right. Delilah would wake up, they'd face the separation together, and at the worst, they'd at least have a moment to say goodbye before the LMP tore their lives apart.
But no.
Of course not.
The logic locked into place.
First, her parents. Dead in a crash she’d survived.
Then her guardians. Dead while she kept living.
Then Kirr. His career was about to be incinerated because he was trying to save her from a match she didn't want.
And now Delilah. Trapped in a coma, because Harper hadn't stopped her from taking that money.
Because Harper had let her get in that flyer.
I am the common denominator.
The thought wasn't new. It was an old companion she'd carried since she was twelve years old. But now it had weight enough to crush her.
Everything she touched broke. Every person she loved paid the price for her survival.
If she stayed, Kirr would ruin himself trying to save her from a match she didn’t want. If she stayed, Delilah might never wake up.
She was poison. Utter poison.
Kellat bent closer to the nutrient feed line for Delilah’s bed, muttering to himself. "I need to check the enzyme levels. Perhaps there’s something there she’s reacting to."
Harper stepped back from the bed, pulse rabbit-fast against her ribs.
They’re all better off without me.
The thought was clear, sharp, and absolute.
If she was gone, Kirr wouldn't have to fight the LMP. He wouldn’t risk his rank or standing, and he could find a mate who wasn't broken, someone the matching system actually picked for him. Someone safe.
If she was gone, maybe the universe would stop punishing Delilah. Maybe without Harper's bad luck hanging over her, she'd wake up.
Which meant that she had to go.
She had to leave. Now. Before she took them all down with her.
She turned toward the door, movements were jerky and mechanical. Like she was watching someone else from a distance, she slipped out of Delilah's room and into the main corridor.
Kirr was there, his back to her as he argued with someone on the comm. He thought she was safe. He thought she was with Kellat and her cousin. Tears filled her eyes, but she brushed them away. He trusted her to stay put, and she was about to break that trust.
A healer moved past without seeing her, a dataflex in his hand and a harassed expression on his face. He was checking inventory, lips moving as he muttered about supplies and requisition forms.
Hanging from his pocket, clipped to a retractable cord, was a keycard, the same as the LMP staff used.
She didn’t pause. She didn’t think. Instead, she just brushed past him and feigned a stumble, her shoulder bumping his arm.
"Sorry," she mumbled, dipping her head, her hair falling forward like a curtain. "Sorry."
The healer didn't even slow down, just shrugged his shoulder out of her path. "Watch it."
He didn't notice the weight missing from his pocket.
Her fingers curled tight around the plastic card. It was warm from his body heat, sharp edges digging into her palm.
She glanced back over her shoulder. Kirr was still arguing, his broad shoulders tense, his orange hair bright under the harsh lights. He looked magnificent. He looked like a hero.
He deserved better than her.
Tears burned the backs of her eyes, hot and stinging, but she didn't let them fall. Crying wouldn't fix this.
Leaving would.
So she turned her back on him… on Delilah…
On everything she’d ever known or wanted.
To save them.
Harper didn't look back. If she looked back, she would see Kirr and the medical bay doors sliding shut with Delilah on the other side. If she looked back, she would stop, and if she stopped, she would destroy him.
So she walked.
She kept her head down and her pace steady, forcing her legs to move with a rhythm that screamed I belong here.
Not running. She knew better than that. Running drew eyes.
Running looked like guilt. She had to look like she was as bored as fuck.
Like she was just another station occupant hustling between sectors on a Tuesday afternoon.
Her hand sweated around the stolen keycard in her pocket. The corner dug into her palm, a grounding point of pain in a world that had gone fuzzy and gray.
Right. Left. Down the service ramp.
The layout was burned into her brain from the emergency schematics she'd studied during the crisis. The irony wasn't lost on her. The same skills she'd used to save the station were now helping her escape it.
A security checkpoint came into view. Two guards in black uniforms stood by a blast door, scanning IDs. A week ago, she would have frozen. Two days ago she'd have looked for Kirr to handle it. Now she just tightened her grip on the stolen ID and walked straight toward them.
Panic burned up her throat, hot and acidic. This was a crime. A real, deportable, prison-time crime. Stealing credentials, accessing restricted areas, unauthorized flight. If they caught her, she wouldn't just be sent home; she'd be sent to a penal colony.
Good, a dark voice whispered in the back of her mind. Then she really couldn't hurt anyone else.
She reached the scanner. One of the guards shifted, his helmet tilting toward her. He was huge, though not as big as Kirr. No one was as big as Kirr.
"Sector access?" the guard grunted.
She didn't speak. She didn’t dare to. Her voice would shake, and that would end it. Instead, she pulled the stolen ID from her pocket and slapped it against the panel with a weary carelessness she didn't feel.
Please let the healer have high clearance. Please let him be important.
The panel chirped. A green light flashed.
She didn't exhale. She didn't flinch. Just shoved the card back into her pocket and stepped through the opening doors as if she owned the place.
The corridor beyond was cooler, the air cycling with a hiss from somewhere above her head. She hurried along, her steps faster now.
It was better this way. She had to believe that.
She turned a corner, and the air changed. The sterile antiseptic smell of the station interior vanished, replaced by the heavy, oily scent of refined fuel and ozone. The vibrations through the floor increased, rattling her teeth.
The Transport Bay.
She emerged onto a mezzanine walkway, and the sheer scale of it hit her.
It was a cavern of steel and shadow, vast enough to swallow a city block.
Dozens of ships sat in various stages of docking and repair.
Loader drones buzzed through the air like angry wasps, carrying crates as steam vented from cooling pipes, obscuring the far wall in thick white haze.
The smell made her stomach twist. Burning. Hot metal. It smelled exactly like the underground bypass. It smelled like the wreckage where she'd woken up screaming, trapped in a seatbelt while Delilah bled out beside her.
Her breath caught as the memory tried to drag her under. No. She couldn’t afford this. She dug her fingernails into her palm until the skin broke. Not now.
She forced herself down the grated stairs, her boots clanging on the grating. She needed a transport to Earth. Or a colony transfer. She didn’t care which. Just anywhere that wasn't here.
A large, blocky vessel near Bay 4 was cycling its engines. The boarding gangway was down, and a line of crew members was moving crates onto the ship. Resupply Transport 7-Alpha, the holographic sign pulsed above the dock. Destination: Lunar Transfer Station.
Close enough. From the moon, she could get a shuttle to Earth. She could disappear into the sprawling mega-cities where no one knew her name and no handsome orange-haired War-Commanders would come looking.
She adjusted the silver bracelet on her wrist. She should take it off.
Leave it here. It was too beautiful for where she was going, too precious.
But she couldn't bring herself to undo the clasp. It was the only piece of him she could keep. Just this. Just the silver vines wrapped around her wrist in the memory of a promise she couldn’t have anymore.
She approached the boarding ramp. A harried-looking transport officer with a dataflex stood at the base, checking cargo manifests. He was a human, thankfully. Easier to bluff than a Latharian.
"Manifest is closed," the officer said without looking up, scrolling through his screen. "We launch in ten."
"Command override." She pitched her voice low and bored, covering the photo with her thumb. "Medical inventory exception—priority flag."
The officer sighed, the sound of a man who hated his job. He glanced at the card and waved a hand. "Make it quick. If you're not off in five, you're going to the moon."
"Understood."
She stepped onto the ramp, the metal vibrating under her feet.
Holy shit. She was doing it. She was actually leaving.
A tear slipped free, hot and humiliating, to track down her cheek. She swiped it away. She didn’t have time to cry. She just had to get inside, find a dark corner in the cargo hold, and wait for the engines to fire. Once they launched, it was over. Kirr would be safe.
She took another step up the incline. Then another.
But then the ambient noise of the bay—steam hissing, metal clanging—changed. It didn't stop, but the rhythm broke. The air pressure seemed to drop, sucking the breath out of the massive room.
Behind her, the transport officer made a choked, strangled sound.
"Sir—stop. You can't board—this area is restricted—"
BOOM.
The sound wasn't an explosion. It was the impact of a door being struck hard enough to warp the frame.
She froze. The hairs on the back of her neck rose as her heart slammed against her ribs.
Don't turn around. Just run. Get on the ship. Hide.
She scrambled forward, her boots slipping on the grating.
"Get out of my way," a voice roared. It wasn't a shout; it was a force of nature, deep and vibrating with a rage that shook the deck plates.
The transport officer scrambled back, dropping his dataflex.
She lunged for the airlock hatch. She was five feet away. Three feet.
A shadow fell over her, swallowing the bay lights, swallowing the world. Swallowing her.
She skidded to a halt, gasping, and looked up.
Kirr stood at the base of the ramp. He wasn't the calm, steady anchor who had held her through panic attacks.
He wasn't the gentle lover who had held her in his arms as she came apart.
He was a War-Commander in full combat aggression.
His chest heaved, his golden eyes sparking with fury.
He took up the entire world, blocking the exit.
He took a step closer, the metal groaning under his weight. His gaze locked onto hers, pinning her in place like a butterfly on a board.
"Where do you think you're going, kelarris?"