Chapter 18 Lia
LIA
The ship doesn’t relax; it settles.
The moment the platform seals beneath our feet, the pressure in the chamber evens out—not easing, but redistributing. Like a weight shifted from my chest to my spine. The hum drops into a lower register, steady and patient—no longer testing us, but no longer waiting either.
I exhale slowly. Rakkh doesn’t move.
He stays planted in front of me, wings folded tight but ready, his body angled just enough to block the center of the chamber while still leaving me room to breathe.
I feel the tension coiled through him like a drawn bowstring, but it’s not panic—it’s control.
The kind that has to hurt to maintain, but he doesn’t let that show.
The light changes again.
Not the cold blue-white from before. This time it warms—violet deepening toward something softer, duskier. The grooves along the walls pulse once, then again—slower now, like a measured heartbeat instead of a warning. The ship isn’t deciding anymore. It already has.
A narrow band of light blooms along the floor at the edge of the platform. It doesn’t flare or flash. It simply appears, extending forward into the chamber ahead with quiet certainty. A path. My stomach tightens.
“This wasn’t here before,” Tomas whispers.
“No,” Travnyk agrees. “It was not.”
The hum shifts, barely perceptible, and I feel it before I understand why—my pulse stutters, then steadies, syncing with the vibration under my boots like my body has been slotted into a rhythm it recognizes.
I don’t like how natural it feels.
The band of light pulses once. Not in alarm or demand, more an expectation.
Rakkh glances back at me over his shoulder, eyes sharp, searching my face for signs I don’t know how to name. Fear, maybe. Or worse—agreement.
“Don’t move,” he says quietly.
“I know, you keep reminding me,” I whisper back.
But the truth is, I am already moving inside. Not physically, but… it’s hard to explain—the way the ship presses at the edges of my awareness without touching it directly. Like I’m standing in shallow water where the tide is lapping just close enough to make your skin prickle.
I take a careful step—not forward, just sideways, adjusting my stance.
The light responds immediately, shifting to stay aligned with me. Rakkh stiffens.
“I didn’t mean—” I start.
The hum deepens, then settles again. The light holds steady. Travnyk watches the exchange with narrowed eyes.
“It is no longer reacting to proximity,” he murmurs. “It is tracking priority.”
“That’s comforting,” Tomas mutters weakly.
“It is efficient,” Travnyk replies.
I swallow, trying to force the lump in my throat to ease.
The corridor ahead opens a fraction wider, the metal flowing back in a smooth, organic motion that makes my skin crawl. No grinding. No sound of force. Just matter yielding because the ship has decided it should.
The air beyond smells different—cooler, cleaner, faintly metallic, in a way that reminds me of sterile instruments and sealed labs rather than engines or weapons.
My palms itch. I curl my fingers into fists, grounding myself in the feel of my own skin.
“This isn’t a command center,” I say, surprising myself with the certainty of my voice. “It’s… transitional.”
Rakkh’s head turns sharply. “How do you know?”
I hesitate. Because the answer isn’t something I know so much as something I feel.
“It’s not trying to give me control,” I say slowly. “It’s… moving me through steps.”
The ship hums, almost approvingly. Rakkh bares his teeth—not at me, but at the walls.
“I don’t like anything that it is moving you without asking.”
Neither do I, but I can’t deny the truth sitting heavy in my chest. The ship isn’t forcing me forward. It’s assuming I’ll come.
The band of light extends another meter, stopping just short of Rakkh’s feet. He doesn’t step onto it. Instead, he widens his stance, planting himself squarely between me and the corridor like the concept of no given physical form. I feel a strange mix of relief and guilt twist low in my gut.
“Rakkh,” I say softly.
He doesn’t look at me. “If it wants you to go, it will have to go through me first.”
The hum wavers—not alarmed, but recalculating, as if it really does understand my words. The light bends, subtly rerouting around his position instead of confronting it directly. It doesn’t retreat; it adapts. And that sends a chill through me.
“It’s learning,” I whisper.
Travnyk nods. “Yes.”
“Learning what?” Tomas asks.
Travnyk’s gaze flicks to me. “What it can move. And what it must accommodate.”
The corridor ahead brightens again, as if patiently waiting. I take one step forward—slow, deliberate—and stop just behind Rakkh’s shoulder. Close enough that I can feel the cool that radiates from his scales.
The ship doesn’t react. The light holds. I let myself breathe. Whatever comes next, it isn’t a trap sprung in panic. It’s a process. And the ship has apparently decided we are finally ready for the next stage.
I just don’t know what that stage will cost.
Air shifts in a slow pulse that brushes my skin like a sigh through sealed lungs. The glow beneath my boots stretches ahead in an even line, and the metal walls curve inward until the space feels more like a vein than a hallway.
Rakkh moves first, because of course he does.
His shoulders nearly graze both sides of the passage; every step lands silent but heavy, steadying the world through sheer presence. I stay so close behind him that his tail brushes my thigh. Travnyk and Tomas follow, quieter now, even Tomas being smart enough not to speak.
The hum changes pitch again—lower, thicker, the vibration rolling through the soles of my boots. My head aches with it. A pressure, right behind my eyes. The sound isn’t just sound anymore; it’s a pattern.
The air cools. The walls smooth to a darker shade, violet fading toward deep indigo, and fine lines of white etching appear under the surface like veins of light through stone. I stop, and Rakkh stops instantly—his wings twitch, half-furling, blocking the corridor.
“What?” His voice is gravel and breath. “What do you feel?”
I swallow hard. “Something’s… trying to start.”
He growls softly, low enough that only I hear it. “Then step back.”
“I can’t.” I press a hand against the wall before I can stop myself. “It’s not dangerous—it’s old.”
The metal under my palm warms. The ache behind my eyes sharpens. For an instant, I smell ozone. And then—the world folds.
Not all the way, and not violently. Just enough to make the air turn too thin, the light too bright, and the ground too still. My vision blurs. Not colors—images.
Flash.
A woman’s hands, pale against glowing metal, fingers flying across a panel made of light.
Flash.
An explosion outside a viewport—fire and debris.
Flash.
A voice, low and fierce, half drowned in static.
“Hold the line. Protect what comes next.”
The words burn straight through me, but I’m not hearing them—it’s more like I’m remembering. My knees buckle. I would fall except Rakkh’s arm closes around my waist.
“Lia!” His voice sounds far away. “Look at me.”
I can’t. The images keep flickering—too fast to catch, too coherent to ignore.
A sense of urgency coils inside my chest that isn’t mine. The woman in those flashes—whoever she was—built this thing. Created it and fed it purpose. And that purpose is still alive.
I drag a breath through my teeth, forcing my eyes open. The corridor is back. The glow. The hum. The weight of Rakkh’s arm steady around me, but the ship is still echoing in my head, like a song caught under my ribs.
Travnyk steps close, his voice measured. “What did it show you?”
I shake my head. My voice comes out hoarse. “It didn’t show, really—it’s more like… I remembered.”
“Remembered what?” Tomas asks, looking like he wants to crawl backward out of the ship.
I meet Rakkh’s eyes—sharp, molten, watching me too closely.
“Someone,” I whisper. “She was afraid. Angry. She said that line again—hold the line; protect what comes next.”
The ship hums, louder at the phrase, as if agreeing. Rakkh’s jaw tightens, and his wings rustle, sounding like leather rubbing against itself.
“Is that voice why it listens to you?” he asks.
“I think…” I pause, throat tight. “I think she built it. Or maybe it built itself around her orders. It’s not exactly showing me images, but it is running memories.”
Travnyk kneels, touching one palm to the wall.
“Residual logic echo. You are, somehow, recognized as being within its chain of authority.”
That sounds like an explanation, but it feels like a curse.
I step out of Rakkh’s hold slowly. The metal underfoot ripples faintly with each heartbeat.
Every pulse feels like recognition. Every breath feels borrowed.
“This isn’t a recording,” I whisper. “It’s a feeling. A living memory trying to finish what it started.”
The hum deepens again, responding to my voice. Rakkh’s wing sweeps slightly forward, a wall of living muscle between me and the dark ahead.
“Then we move carefully,” he says.
“Carefully,” I echo, though the word feels thin. Because deep down, I already know—
the ship isn’t just waking.
It’s remembering too. Remembering the one who built it. Its purpose.
The ship goes quiet—
Not silent—never silent—but the hum drops so low it becomes pressure instead of sound, a weight that settles behind my eyes and along my spine. The glow drains from the walls in a slow, deliberate withdrawal, leaving only thin lines of pale light etched into the metal like scars.
This is not calm; it’s focus.
Rakkh feels it too. His posture shifts, wings drawing in tighter, muscles coiling beneath his scales. He’s gone still in that way predators do when the world narrows to a single point.
“What now,” Tomas whispers, voice barely there.
Travnyk doesn’t answer. His head tilts, tusks fixed and gleaming as he studies the walls.
“I think it is… sorting,” he says after a pause.
That word hits me wrong in a way that I can’t name, but it feels like my brain is itching.
Suddenly, everything stops. It’s a brief moment, but the background hum is gone, leaving an empty silence that makes my breath catch.
The light along the walls settles into a neutral wash.
No escalation. No warning. No reaction at all.
Rakkh feels it too; I see it in his muscles that don’t relax—they lock.
“This is different,” he says quietly.
“Yes…,” Travnyk says, inclining his head and frowning. “It would seem that the system has suspended any immediate response.”
Suspended. My stomach drops.
“That’s… good, right?”
“No,” Travnyk says calmly, a half-smile pulling at the corners of his lips. “I don’t believe so. It is more dangerous.”
The ship isn’t testing or threatening. It’s proceeding. The question is, with what?
The wall opposite the platform changes—not opening, not peeling back, but reconfiguring. Lines in the metal shift position with surgical precision, resolving into a shallow recess that isn’t a doorway or a container; it’s something else.
“That’s not a passage,” I say.
“No,” Travnyk agrees. He takes a small step closer, not testing the ship, but getting a better view. He frowns for a long moment, bending and turning his head to look from different angles. “It appears to be an operational node.”
The moment he says it, something presses gently behind my eyes—not pain, not an invasion like before. This is more like a file opening all at once without my even knowing to ask.
I see stars, cold and distant. And pathways… that I somehow understand are routes between planets. The paths are layered over one another, and they’re color-coded. The colors indicate alliances reduced to three stark categories: aligned, compromised, hostile.
And then—threading through the three categories—a new color that I know, instinctively, represents the Zmaj. The Zmaj thread has multiple colors, and that’s confusing. Is it dividing by Surface and Cavern?
No… the Cavern Zmaj weren’t involved in the war that led to the Devastation. They were deep beneath the surface, having retreated long before… I close my eyes, focusing. Then I get it. One of the colors is for the Order.
I haven’t thought about them since the Bunker, though I think some of them are still around. Most of them were lost in the fight with the new Invaders.
New Invaders. There’s a title. But it’s becoming clear now that the nebulous event the Zmaj call the Devastation was, in some ways, similar to what we did to stop the Invaders. A massive bomb that left Tajss a wasteland.
But it’s not only Order colors in the Zmaj thread.
There are three categories in that one thread.
Order seems to be one, but there are two others represented.
The sensation snaps into focus, sharp and clinical.
The ship system is trying to figure out what category to place Rakkh in.
That’s why it vacillates in whether or not he is a threat.
The Order are combat-capable, but their status is unresolved.
I look over at Rakkh, and I understand that his risk classification is deferred.
I exhale sharply, unsure how to proceed or what to do with what I think I understand.
Especially because I could still be wrong.
What if I’m making all this up in my own head?
What if I’m leading us further and further into danger?
“It hasn’t decided,” I whisper.
Rakkh inhales slowly through his teeth.
“It’s… postponed a decision on you. Don’t do anything rash, okay? Let’s not provoke it.”
The recess shifts again, and symbols lock into place. Tomas swallows audibly.
“So… it doesn’t think he’s the enemy?” Tomas asks.
“It thinks,” I say carefully, “that he might become one.”
“It believes I could interfere,” Rakkh says, turning toward me.
“Yes,” Travnyk replies. “Eventually.”
One thing is clear, though—the ship isn’t reacting to Rakkh’s anger as much as it’s reacting to me.
The recess dims, withdrawing. In its place, a narrow line of light forms along the floor—clean, deliberate—stretching deeper into the ship than any path we’ve seen so far. It’s an authorization. My pulse kicks hard, and the light brightens in response.
“It’s moving us forward,” I say. “Even without deciding.”
“Because it believes you will,” Rakkh says.
That truth hits harder than any threat. The ship isn’t asking whether I trust it. It’s asking whether I will stop it. And buried beneath the calm logic of its systems, I understand something that makes my hands curl into fists.
This vessel does not need Rakkh removed. It only needs him to not interfere. And if the day comes when my choice and his diverge… the ship has already decided what it will do next.