Chapter 19 Lia
LIA
The ship doesn’t push us forward. It’s the first thing I notice.
After everything—after the tests, the pressure, and the impossible sense of being weighed and measured—it simply…
waits. The light along the floor holds steady, neither dimming nor brightening.
The walls remain smooth and closed—no new paths unfolding, only the one we’re on.
Most importantly, no silent insistence tugging in my head.
It feels deliberate. Like a pause inserted into a process that knows exactly where it’s going.
Rakkh stays half a step in front of me, wings folded tight but ready.
He hasn’t relaxed. I don’t think he could, not as long as we’re in the ship.
His presence is a constant pressure of its own at my side.
Solid, unmoving, a reminder that at least one thing in this place answers to instinct instead of some cold, half-understood logic.
Travnyk stops and lowers himself near the edge of the hall, one knee bent, one hand resting against the floor. His attention is divided in a way I don’t like—half on the hall, half on us—as if he’s listening to more than one conversation at once.
Rakkh and I stop, waiting for Travnyk, while Tomas paces.
At first, I think it’s just nerves. Tomas has been holding himself together by sheer momentum since we crossed the threshold.
Now that the ship isn’t actively doing anything, that momentum has nowhere to go.
He rubs his hands together, then wipes them on his pants.
He takes a breath, then another, both too shallow.
“You ever notice,” he says finally, his voice trying for light and missing by a mile, “how places like this always feel… stale?”
I glance at him. “Stale how?”
He shrugs. “I don’t know. Like the air’s been sitting too long.” He frowns, rubbing at his temple. “Smells… wrong.”
I draw a slow breath through my nose. The air doesn’t smell wrong to me. If anything, it’s cleaner than the corridors nearer the hull. Cooler. Filtered. There’s a faint metallic tang beneath it, but it’s subtle—easy to miss, easier to dismiss. I’ve smelled worse just walking through camp.
“You’re probably dehydrated,” I say, even as unease curls low in my gut. “You haven’t stopped moving since we got inside.”
“Yeah.” He nods too fast. “Yeah, probably.”
He takes another step—and stumbles.
It’s small. Barely noticeable. His boot scrapes the floor, catching where it shouldn’t, and he has to throw out a hand to steady himself against the wall. Rakkh turns instantly.
“Enough,” he growls. “Sit down.”
Tomas opens his mouth, probably to argue, then thinks better of it. He sinks against the curved wall, breathing harder than he should for someone who hasn’t done anything strenuous in the last few minutes. Travnyk’s gaze sharpens as he focuses on Tomas.
“Your equilibrium is compromised,” he says mildly.
“That’s a fancy way of saying I’m dizzy,” Tomas mutters. He presses his palm flat to his chest. “My heart’s racing too. Anyone else feel that?”
I don’t. Neither does Rakkh, if the steady rise and fall of his chest are any indication. Travnyk gives a slow shake of his head.
“No,” Travnyk says. “But you are flushed.”
Tomas snorts weakly. “Great. I’m dying and you’re color-coding it.”
“You are not dying,” Travnyk replies. “But you are reacting.”
The word is cold, clinical, and very accurate. Reacting. Not panicking, not afraid, not injured.
I shift my weight, suddenly hyperaware of my own body. My pulse is steady. My head is clear. My lungs feel full when I breathe. Whatever is affecting Tomas isn’t touching me.
That should be reassuring, but it isn’t. Not in the slightest. It only means that if it’s environmental, it’s hitting him first—not that I’m immune. And all the while the ship remains quiet.
Not inactive, but settled into a low, constant presence that hums just beneath the edge of my hearing.
I feel it most in my feet, a faint vibration through the soles of my boots, like standing near heavy machinery that’s running smoothly somewhere far below.
Rakkh crouches in front of Tomas, close enough to loom without meaning it.
“Describe it,” he orders.
Tomas swallows. “Pressure. Behind my eyes. And my mouth tastes… weird. Like metal.”
That sends a chill through me, sharp enough to raise goosebumps along my arms. I glance at the walls, at the faint etching beneath the surface. Nothing changes. No light responds. No warning flares. The ship doesn’t care. Or worse—it doesn’t notice.
“May I?” Travnyk asks, shifting closer to Tomas and extending one finger to hover just short of his wrist.
Tomas nods. Travnyk presses two fingers lightly to his pulse. Waits. Frowns.
“Elevated,” he murmurs. “But not irregular.”
“That’s good, right?” Tomas asks.
“It is… neutral.”
Rakkh bares his teeth. “Speak plainly.”
Travnyk straightens. “This is not fear response. Nor is it injury. Something external is influencing his physiology.”
“External how?” I ask, hugging my arms around myself, suddenly cold despite the steady temperature.
Travnyk’s gaze flicks—not to the walls, not to the ceiling—but to the floor.
“It is proximity,” he says.
The word echoes uncomfortably in my head. The ship still doesn’t react. Tomas drags a hand down his face.
“Okay. Cool. So the alien murder ship is making me sick now.”
“No,” I say quickly, even though I don’t know why I’m so certain. “If it were trying to hurt you, it wouldn’t be this… sloppy.”
Rakkh looks at me sharply. “Explain.”
I hesitate, searching for the right words.
“Everything it’s done so far has been precise. Controlled. This—” I gesture at Tomas “—feels incidental.”
Like standing too close to a generator. Or… a leak.
The moment the word leaves my mouth, something tightens behind my eyes, and suspicion comes fast. Suspicion comes fast, along with the flicker of a memory that isn’t quite memory.
Heat. Containment. Systems never meant to run at full capacity for this long.
I suck in a breath, steadying myself.
“You feel something,” Travnyk says, watching me closely.
“Not exactly,” I say slowly. “It’s more like… a bad feeling. The kind you get when you realize something important is running, and no one’s been watching it.”
Tomas groans softly and leans his head back against the wall. “I vote we leave.”
The words hang in the air, heavy, tempting. Rakkh doesn’t respond. His gaze is fixed on the corridor ahead, the faint line of light still waiting there with endless patience. Leaving is an option—for now.
I look down at my hands, flexing my fingers. No tremor. No dizziness. Whatever this place is doing, it’s selective. That scares me more than if it were hurting all of us. Because it means the ship isn’t broken. It’s working.
And Tomas is just… standing in the wrong place at the wrong time. The ship hums on, indifferent. Waiting for us to decide whether the cost is acceptable.
And for the first time since we stepped inside, I realize with a sinking certainty that whatever this vessel was built to do—it was never designed to be gentle with anyone who wasn’t part of its original plan.
The four of us exchange looks, but none of us argues about moving. That, more than anything else, tells me how bad it’s getting.
Rakkh doesn’t bark orders. Travnyk doesn’t debate probabilities. Tomas doesn’t crack a joke. We simply shift. It’s decided. Quietly and instinctively. The three of us still standing move to where the light is weakest and the air feels marginally cooler.
Marginally.
Tomas pushes himself up with a soft grunt, favoring one leg. He tries to hide it. Fails.
“You good?” I ask.
“Define good,” he mutters. His pupils are a little too wide. His skin has taken on a faint sheen that isn’t sweat so much as… strain. Like his body is working overtime to compensate for something it doesn’t understand.
Rakkh places himself at Tomas’s side without comment, close enough that Tomas could lean if he needed. He doesn’t—but the option matters.
Travnyk trails his fingers along the wall as we move, careful not to linger too long in any one place. His expression has shifted from curiosity to calculation.
“This influence,” he says quietly, “is not uniform.”
“No,” I agree. “But it is growing stronger.”
The thought settles heavy in my stomach. Whatever the ship is doing—whatever system it’s running—it’s more concentrated the deeper into the ship we go. Tomas was fine until we stopped at the platform. Until we stopped to wait.
Waiting is the problem.
“You feel nothing,” Rakkh says, his voice low, meant only for my ears.
It isn’t a question. I shake my head.
“Not like he does.”
“You feel something else,” he presses.
I hesitate. Then nod.
“Pressure. Like… static before a storm. But it isn’t hurting me.”
That seems to worry him more than if it were.
Travnyk stops near a recessed section of wall I hadn’t noticed before—not a door, not a panel—just a subtle dip in the metal where the light barely reaches. He inhales slowly, nostrils flaring.
“The air composition is stable,” he says. “But the particulate density is elevated.”
Tomas squints. “In Common?”
“Something is present,” Travnyk says, “in trace amounts. Not enough to trigger alarms—if such systems exist—but enough to affect a smaller, less resilient body.”
I swallow. “Like humans.”
“Yes.”
Rakkh’s jaw tightens. “Remove him.”
Tomas bristles. “Hey—”
Rakkh cuts him off with a look. “You are not built for this place.”
Travnyk tilts his head. “Nor, I suspect, was the place built to accommodate prolonged exposure at this level of activity.”
That lands wrong.
“Prolonged exposure to what?” I ask.
Travnyk doesn’t answer right away. He presses his palm flat against the wall, then lifts it again, studying his fingers as if expecting residue.
“The ship is awake,” he says slowly. “Systems that were dormant are no longer so. Power is flowing.”
“To where?” I ask.
Travnyk’s gaze shifts—brief, precise—toward the floor beneath our feet. “Everywhere.”
A chill skates down my spine. The ship isn’t attacking Tomas. It didn’t designate him a threat, so I don’t think it’s targeting him. If it’s not deliberate—if it’s unintentional—then it must be… leaking.
I rub my arms, suddenly hyperaware of the faint metallic taste at the back of my tongue. It’s barely there. Easy to ignore. Easy to ignore until it isn’t.
“We can’t stay here,” I say.
Rakkh nods once. Immediate. “Agreed.”
“But we also can’t rush,” I add, because the ship is still listening, even if it isn’t reacting. “If this is a transitional zone, then somewhere deeper is either worse… or safer.”
Tomas lets out a weak laugh. “Great. Fifty, fifty, love those odds.”
Travnyk considers the glowing path ahead. “Deeper,” he says, “is more controlled.”
“Controlled how?” Tomas asks.
Travnyk’s tusks catch the light as he turns.
“Whatever is affecting you is diffuse here. Residual. Deeper systems will either concentrate it further… or contain it properly,” Travnyk says.
“That’s not comforting,” Tomas says.
“No,” Travnyk agrees. “But it is logical.”
Rakkh looks down at me. “You are certain it will not harm you.”
I meet his gaze. “I’m certain it doesn’t want to.”
“That is not the same thing,” he says.
“I know.”
The light along the floor pulses once, as if in response to the decision already forming between us. It’s not urging or warning. It’s waiting. I take a careful breath. My lungs fill easily. Too easily.
“This place isn’t broken,” I say quietly. “It’s unfinished. Or interrupted.”
“By what?” Tomas asks.
I think of the flashes. The urgency. The sense of something launched too fast, too soon.
“By a deadline,” I say. “One it never got to finish preparing for.”
Rakkh’s hand closes briefly around my wrist, welcome in the way it steadies and grounds me.
“Then we move,” he says. “Before it decides preparation requires sacrifice.”
That sends a cold knot through my chest.
We start forward again, slow and deliberate, keeping to the edge of the corridor where the light is dimmer and the air feels marginally less dense. Tomas leans harder on Rakkh. He doesn’t argue when Rakkh adjusts his pace to match.
Behind us, the chamber remains quiet. Ahead, the path waits.
And with every step deeper, I can’t shake the growing certainty that whatever is seeping into the desert outside—whatever twisted the land around this buried ship—started right here.
Not as a weapon or an intentional attack, but as a consequence of something meant to last forever… suddenly forced out of orbit, or woken too soon.