Chapter 9
KRISTI
The screen cuts to black.
The holonet replay stutters for a second, buffering maybe, or maybe it's just the cheap projector built into my wall shorting out from overuse.
Either way, the silence that follows is worse than the music they picked for the credits—some syrupy jingle that tried to make a cultural moment out of what was just a rainstorm, a kitchen, and one very stupid choice.
My reflection hovers in the blank screen—messy hair, tired eyes, a pale smear of a woman in a dark apartment.
My compad’s backlight glows cold in my periphery.
I haven’t touched it in an hour, but I know it’s full of messages.
Half the galaxy suddenly has an opinion on my face, my laugh, my choice of soup. Or worse—my proximity to him.
Kenron.
Gods.
I can’t get the image out of my head—his hands tossing firefruit like they weighed nothing, that damn smirk, the way our shoulders kept brushing because there wasn’t enough room in that cramped kitchen for the distance I suddenly needed.
The camera caught it all. My flushed cheeks.
The stupid flutter in my laugh when he nudged me with his elbow.
The way he looked at me like I was something worth paying attention to.
Thousands of people saw that. Thousands. Holonet numbers don’t lie. I’m trending. #VakutanVibes. #KitchenChemistry. #HumanSpice.
It’s disgusting.
No—it’s terrifying.
I stand up too fast and my knee clips the edge of the table. Pain shoots through my leg, grounding me. I want to scream. I want to hurl something, but the only fragile thing in here is me, and I already feel like I’m cracking.
The projection restarts automatically—loop mode—and there I am again. Laughing. Twirling a wooden spoon like a baton. Kenron winks at me, and the audience eats it up. The comments scroll by so fast they blur, but I catch enough to feel sick.
She’s not like other humans.
Intergalactic couple goals!
If Earth First sees this, she’s toast.
I ship it.
Did she cook the meat or just melt under him?
I slam the power button and the wall goes black. My breath fogs in the silence.
I used to be invisible. A ghost in the archives. The woman no one remembered after meetings. The one who kept to herself, kept her opinions close, kept her rage even closer. But now?
Now I’m the face of the goddamn Alliance culinary revolution.
I pace the room, arms crossed, teeth grinding. My compad buzzes on the couch, then again, again, again. I don’t look. I know what’s waiting for me. Margo. My supervisor. Some stupid influencer trying to get me to collab on “bridging the galactic divide.”
This wasn’t supposed to mean anything. It was just a meal. A moment.
And it’s ruined everything.
The compad keeps buzzing.
“Fine,” I snap, snatching it up like it’s personally offended me. The screen lights up with a message from Margo.
MARGO: “Heads up. Trint wants to see you first thing. Not happy.”
No shit.
I type back, “Got it,” and toss the pad onto the couch. It bounces once and clatters to the floor.
My stomach knots. I haven’t eaten since... gods, I don’t even know. The scent of last night’s food still clings to my clothes—spice, char, citrus. It’s in my pores, in my hair, seared into memory. I hate how good it had tasted. I hate that I think about it at all.
I don’t sleep. I just sit in the dark, watching the city blink at me through the window like it’s in on the joke.
Morning comes like a slap.
The lights in the archive feel brighter than usual, like someone turned up the fluorescents just to see me flinch. The air is damp again, recycled too many times through filters no one’s replaced. It smells like ozone, dust, and burnt pride.
People are looking at me.
Not obviously. Not enough to call out. But I see the flicker of glances when I pass, the way conversation dips when I walk into a corridor. I hear the whispers. I hear my name.
I want to scream.
Instead, I walk straight to Trint’s office and knock once, sharp.
“Come,” he calls. His voice is smooth, but tight. Not a good sign.
The door hisses open. He’s already sitting behind his desk, elbows resting on the surface like he’s prepared for a siege.
“Close the door,” he says.
I do. It shuts behind me with a soft click that sounds too final.
“Sit.”
I don’t. “If this is a reprimand, you can email it.”
Trint sighs, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “It’s not a reprimand. Yet.”
“Then what is it?”
He gestures to the holo on his desk. It activates, showing a paused frame from the episode. Me and Kenron. Laughing. Close. Too close.
“Explain,” Trint says.
I laugh—short, sharp, humorless. “You think this was some kind of political stunt?”
“Was it?” he asks, too quickly.
My fists clench. “I walked into a restaurant during a storm. They were filming. I didn’t know. I got pulled into the kitchen because Dood Radman thought it’d be cute. That’s all.”
He watches me. I hate his eyes. They’re always calculating, like he’s running equations under his breath.
“I’m not here to judge your choices, Kristi,” he says carefully. “But your position here—your name—comes with visibility. Especially now.”
“What, because of my uncle?” I bite. “Because he bankrolls half this district’s political structure?”
“Because you’re on the Holonet, cooking with a Vakutan,” he says bluntly. “Laughing. Smiling. Getting cozy. And the comments, Kristi...”
He doesn’t finish. He doesn’t need to.
“I didn’t say anything. I didn’t endorse anything. I stirred a damn stew.”
“And in doing so,” Trint says, tapping the console, “you became a symbol.”
My blood runs cold.
He shifts forward, folds his hands like a man trying to seem kind. “We’re not suspending you. Not yet. But you need to be aware—optics matter. Your uncle called this morning.”
I freeze. “He what?”
“He wants a meeting. With you. Privately.”
Of course he does.
Trint turns off the screen. “Go home for today. Take the time. Figure out what you want this to mean. Because right now, it’s not just about a cooking show.”
The walk home feels longer than usual. The tram smells like old metal and recycled sweat. Every time a compad buzzes near me, I flinch, convinced someone’s sharing the clip again. By the time I reach my building, I feel flayed open.
I don’t even make it to the shower before my compad buzzes.
The message from Dennis comes through before I even kick off my boots.
“Rooftop café. 20 minutes.”
Not a question. Not a request. No pleasantries. Just coordinates and a countdown. I don’t bother replying. He already knows I’ll show.
I swap my shirt for something less rumpled, pin my hair back, and step into the night like I’m headed to an execution.
Dennis always knows how to own a space. The man could turn a moldy back alley into a press conference just by sitting still.
When I get to the rooftop café, he’s already there—legs crossed, cup of something steaming balanced elegantly in one hand.
His coat hangs over the back of his chair like it’s part of the décor, and a projection hovers lazily in front of him.
Of course it’s that image. Me and Kenron. Caught mid-laugh. My face red from the kitchen heat, or the proximity, or both. Kenron’s gaze turned toward me, not the camera. Like I’m the only thing he sees.
“Lovely shot,” Dennis says as I approach, not looking up. “You’ve always photographed well.”
I sit across from him, spine like a damn iron rod, and say nothing.
He finally lifts his eyes to mine. Calm. Cold. Calculating.
“Good optics,” he murmurs, and takes a sip of his tea. “But dangerous ones.”
I don't blink. “It was nothing.”
“You think I don’t know that?”
I cross my arms. “Then why the theatrics?”
He gestures to the projection, letting it rotate slowly between angles.
“Because it’s not about what you think it was.
It’s about what everyone else saw. A Montana woman, laughing in the arms of a lizard.
That’s how they’ll frame it. Agree with the bureaucracy, it will benefit them more, I'm telling you.
That alien you're seeing will be happy to see you support the cause.”
I flinch. He sees it. He loves that he sees it.
“I don't believe a word you say,” I snap.
His eyebrows rise just slightly. “You’re defending him, their kind?”
“No. I’m defending myself. From this,” I wave at the air, “from your smug, manipulative bullshit.”
Dennis sighs like I’m a child who’s misbehaving at dinner. “Kristi. I’m not your enemy.”
“You sure about that?”
He leans forward, folding his fingers beneath his chin. “Is it serious?”
That question lands like a brick to the gut.
“No,” I say.
Too fast. Too defensive. Too obvious.
Dennis smiles like a man who’s already counted the bullets in the next war.
“Then keep it that way.”
I stare at him.
“That’s it?” I ask. “You summon me like some corporate minion, slap my face on a propaganda wheel, imply I’m compromising my career, my safety, my—my legacy—and that’s all you have to say? ‘Keep it that way’?”
“What else is there to say?” His tone is silk pulled tight over steel. “You already made the mistake. I’m giving you the out. Take it.”
I push back from the table, hard enough that my chair scrapes across the polished stone like a scream.
He doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t blink. Just sips his tea again.
“It’s not always about control, Dennis,” I say, voice trembling with something I don’t want to name. “Some of us are just trying to breathe.”
He glances away, watching the lights of the city blink alive below us.
“You’ve got two choices,” he says. “Play the game. Or get played.”
“I’m done playing.”
“Then get ready to lose. You're gonna agree to this, whether you like it or not.”
“Damn you.”
I literally don't have a choice. And it's making me sick.
I don’t remember getting home. The walk back is a blur of too-bright streetlights and damp concrete and the taste of ash on the back of my tongue. By the time I reach my building, I feel like my skin doesn’t fit right anymore.
I don’t go inside.
Not yet.
Instead, I keep walking. Past my door. Past the stairwell. I don’t even bother checking the compad, though it buzzes in my pocket like a wasp ready to sting. I know where I’m going before I admit it to myself.
Kenron’s place isn’t far.
Too close, actually.
The neighborhood hums with evening life—open storefronts, street vendors hawking hot bowls of something smoky and fragrant. A couple of teenagers zip past on hoverboards, laughing like nothing in the world can touch them.
I round the corner and there it is. His family’s eatery.
The lights are on. The windows fogged with heat and spice.
Inside, I can see him—moving like he always does, with that strange grace that looks like violence held on a tight leash.
He’s stirring something. Laughing at something one of the other cooks says.
The sound doesn’t reach me, but I see it in the shape of his mouth, the way his shoulders move.
He looks... good.
Gods.
I’m frozen across the street, hidden in the shadow of a noodle cart that smells like seaweed and vinegar. I don’t move. I don’t breathe.
I could go in.
He’d see me. He’d probably smile. Say something flirty. Pretend nothing’s wrong. Or maybe he’d see through me. See the hollow place Dennis carved into my chest. See the doubt. The fear. The mess.
Maybe he’d hate me.
I don’t know which scares me more.
The warmth spilling from the windows should feel comforting. Instead, it feels like a boundary I’m not allowed to cross.
Not yet.
A woman laughs inside. Not him—someone else. One of the servers maybe. He grins, says something I can’t hear.
My stomach twists.
I stand there for five minutes. Maybe ten. The compad buzzes again, a sharp vibration against my thigh.
I turn away.
Walk home in silence.
The apartment feels colder than usual when I finally get inside. I strip off my coat and drop it in the chair by the door. My hands are shaking again. I don’t know if it’s from the wind or the emotions I keep trying to shove down like broken glass.
I pour myself a drink. Not tea. Something stronger. Cheap brandy from a human market stall, sweet and sharp, burning all the way down. I pour another. And then a third.
My reflection stares back at me from the dark screen again. The same woman. The same flushed face. The same lie.
It’s not serious.
The hell it isn’t.