Chapter 9
KELSEA
It sneaks up on me.
That feeling—like maybe I’m allowed to want something. Like maybe the floor won’t fall out the second I stop watching for it.
I wake up the next morning tangled in sheets that smell like fireproof mesh and him.
The scarf’s still looped around the bedpost, his scent clinging to it like a secret.
I don’t bury my face in it. Not at first. I just stare, fingers twitching at my side, stomach coiled like wire.
I know better than to get used to things.
But still, I wrap it around my shoulders before I leave.
My body moves without asking. I stretch longer in the prep room. I tweak my routines. Add more spins. More heat. I practice until my calves cramp and my wrists sting, ignoring the burn, chasing the rhythm like it might tell me something I’m too afraid to ask out loud.
Ceera watches me from the corner, her stim burning low and lazy.
“Alright, firefly,” she mutters, cocking a hip, “who the hell got under your skin?”
I snort and keep spinning. “Nobody.”
She raises an eyebrow. “Please. You’re moving like you’ve got a private audience. Somebody put stars in your veins?”
I glance down at my wrist, at the spot where the scarf brushes against bare skin. “Just working on control.”
She exhales smoke toward the ceiling. “That’s not control, babe. That’s fire trying not to burn the room down.”
I say nothing.
She shrugs and walks out. But I see it—the glance she throws over her shoulder. Like she’s curious. Like she cares more than she lets on. Ceera's not nosy. Not really. But she’s been around too many broken things not to recognize when one starts gluing itself back together.
Later, I catch sight of him across the street. Roja. Leaning against a vendor cart, arms crossed, watching the steam rise off grilled synth-meat like it owes him an answer. He doesn’t look at me. Not directly. But he doesn’t walk away either.
And gods help me, I’m glad.
That night, I don’t wait for him. I just leave the window unlatched. The scarf folded at the foot of the bed. A quiet invitation. No promises. No pressure.
He doesn’t come.
But I dream of him anyway. Of his weight. His breath. The sound of claws against old tile. I wake up hot and aching, my fingers curled tight in empty sheets.
The next time I see him, he brings food. Doesn’t say a word. Just hands me a sealed carton of street dumplings and a drink with my favorite blend—hibiscus tea and citrus. I blink, startled.
“How’d you know?” I ask.
He shrugs. “You looked like you needed something warm.”
We eat in silence. Not awkward. Just… easy. Like the edges of the world smooth out when we don’t try so hard.
When he leaves, I don’t ask him to stay.
But I think about it.
And that’s new.
At the club, I move like I’m carving space for myself.
The flames obey me faster. The scarf swirls like a comet tail around my body.
Even the crowd changes. Their whistles dull under the weight of something heavier.
I don’t know what they see. But it’s not the same girl who started here, hiding in fire because it made her feel less small.
I’m not dancing for escape anymore.
I’m dancing because someone sees me, and I want to be worth looking at.
Ceera corners me again backstage, twirling a spark stick between two fingers. “Alright. Spill.”
I raise an eyebrow. “Spill what?”
“Whoever he is. Big. Quiet. Trouble with a capital T and a jaw you could slice synth-steak on.”
I blink, heart kicking. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
She smirks. “Mhm. And I’m a Vakutan nun. You’ve been glowing, Kels. Either you found religion or you’ve been getting wrecked on the regular.”
“Ceera—”
“No judgment,” she cuts in, waving her stim like a pointer. “Just saying. If it’s that Grolgath who keeps not looking at you directly… girl, you better wear fireproof panties.”
I choke on air.
Ceera cackles and walks off like she just dropped a match in a powder room.
I sit down hard on the bench, staring at the scarf folded next to my kit.
And for the first time in a long time, I don’t feel like I’m waiting to fall.
I feel like maybe, just maybe—I’m ready to stand.
Of course, the universe doesn’t let me be happy for long. I hear it first from the kitchen girl with the crooked teeth and fast hands.
“There’s a new cleric assigned to the Jark sector,” she whispers, voice half-lost in the hiss of grease and the thrum of kitchen fans. “Coalition transfer. Straight from the core.”
She says it like we’re supposed to know what that means. And we do. We all do.
Core means closer to Ataxia. Closer to doctrine. Closer to iron-fisted rule and zero tolerance for illegal residents. My hands go still over the countertop, the makeup sponge smudging foundation over my collarbone like a bruise that doesn’t want to fade.
Ceera hears it too. She flicks a stim out of her pack, but doesn’t light it. Just rolls it between her fingers. Her gaze finds mine across the prep room—tight, quiet.
“You alright?” she mouths.
I nod. Lie.
The casino owner, Bresh, starts walking around like he’s got a tick chewing behind his ear.
Big man, red-eyed Kiphi, always draped in synthetic fur and overpriced cologne.
Normally he doesn’t notice us unless a performance goes sideways.
Now he’s pacing the back corridor muttering to himself, voice low and sharp like cut glass. He’s worried. That worries me more.
Word gets around fast. Random ID sweeps. No pattern. No rhythm. Just pop-ins and paper demands. No warning.
I start sleeping in shifts again. Bag half-packed. Credits tucked in my boot like the old days. I run the exit route three times in my head. Back stairwell. Side corridor. Sewer hatch. I haven’t touched that hatch since the first week I got here. Too many rats. Too much risk.
But if it’s run or be caught, I’ll chew my way through the walls if I have to.
Still… something in me resists the instinct.
I’ve run my whole damn life. Slipped through cities like breath through a keyhole. Never stayed. Never let anyone know me long enough to miss me.
But now—
Now there’s Roja.
Roja who brings dumplings without asking. Roja who doesn’t ask me to talk, just listens with that heavy silence that settles around him like armor. Roja who lets me breathe without watching me flinch.
And suddenly I’m thinking less about how to leave and more about what it would mean to stay.
I catch him after shift in the alley beside the noodle vendor where the steam fogs the windows and the air smells like soy and fire oil.
“ID sweeps,” I say without preamble.
His shoulders tighten, just a twitch. “Where?”
“Everywhere.” I lower my voice, tugging the hood of my coat tighter. “They brought in a new cleric from central. Bresh is sweating bullets. It’s not good.”
He nods, slow. “What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know yet.” My voice cracks a little. I hate that. “I don’t want to run.”
His eyes find mine. Steady. “Then don’t.”
“You make it sound simple.”
“It is.” He leans against the wall, the bulk of him shadowed by the flickering streetlamp. “You stay. I make sure you stay safe.”
“You don’t owe me that.”
“I know.”
Something unspoken passes between us. It sticks in my throat. I want to ask him if he’s ever run from anything. If he knows what it’s like to be hunted not because of what you did, but because of who you are.
But I don’t ask. Because I know the answer just looking at him.
He was built to fight. I was built to disappear.
And somehow, we met in the middle.
Later, in the dressing room, I go through my bag for the fifth time that day. My old ID’s still buried in the lining. Faked scan strip, expired registration number, name I don’t answer to anymore. I almost throw it out. Almost.
Instead, I tuck it back in and zip the bag shut.
Ceera walks in mid-motion. Sees the look on my face.
“You thinking about leaving?” she asks quietly.
“No.”
“Bullshit.”
I sit on the bench, fingers digging into my thighs. “I’m thinking about what happens if I don’t.”
Ceera doesn’t respond right away. Just pulls a fresh stim, lights it this time, and exhales slow.
“You got someone now,” she says. “That changes things.”
“Yeah. It does.”
We don’t say his name. We don’t have to.
And the strangeness keeps on coming. Roja’s acting funny, too. He doesn’t say anything, but I know.
Roja’s digging into something—deep, dark, dangerous.
I can feel it in the way he moves. Slower, heavier, like he's carrying something wrapped in iron behind his ribs.
He still shows up—silent, steady—but there's a shift. A tension in his jaw, a flicker behind his eyes like he’s tracking ghosts I can't see.
I don’t ask. Not yet.
But I notice things.
My comm unit starts glitching at odd hours.
I’ll wake up to strange pings, encrypted files blinking across the holoscreen like static ghosts.
Grolgath dialect, not one I recognize. Roja’s tongue, maybe.
But twisted. Coded. Half of it doesn’t translate at all—just fragments of names, long chain numbers, and coordinates that go nowhere.
The first time I find one, I almost throw the damn device across the room.
Instead, I pocket it and head to the burner kiosk on Fleet Row, slide in a few credits, and run a diagnostic.
The AI won’t say much—just shrugs in its artificial, bored tone.
“Backdoor trace. Coalition secure net origin. Masked well. Custom layer.”
Which is tech speak for: someone powerful is watching. Or someone dangerous is sending.
Either way, it stinks of things I’ve spent my life avoiding.
Roja doesn’t bring it up, so I don’t, either. But I feel it—between us, like a second shadow. He’s not just a welder. Not just a man who touches like he knows how fragile I am but doesn’t treat me like I’ll break.
He’s something else.
I think maybe he used to be something worse.
And it scares me.
But it doesn’t scare me enough to run.
Back at the flat, I scroll the encrypted message for the third time. It pings to life with a faint flicker—just numbers now. I try the decoder app. Nothing. I try feeding it through a translation net. No match.
The format looks military. Old but polished. Like something that was once scrubbed from the net and buried.
I toss the comm onto the couch and pace. Roja’s due any minute. My skin’s itching with the urge to say something, to confront him, to ask.
But when he walks in—coat soaked from the rain, jaw clenched, eyes hollow—I don’t.
I just hand him a towel and a plate of reheated dumplings.
He grunts in thanks, doesn’t eat right away. Sits on the edge of the bed and leans forward, elbows on his knees.
“I found another one,” I say finally.
He doesn’t look up. “Another what.”
“Message. Same encryption. Grolgath script. It’s in my comm again.”
A pause. His breath drags in like it hurts.
“Did you open it?”
“Would I be telling you if I hadn’t?”
Now he looks at me. Really looks. His eyes aren’t red now. They’re something deeper. Blood wine and stormlight.
“It’s not meant to hurt you.”
“That’s not exactly comforting.”
“It’s protection.” He stands, steps closer. “Precautions. Threads I’m pulling, things I need to keep away from you.”
I fold my arms. “Then why send them to me?”
“I didn’t,” he says. “Not directly. But anyone watching me will assume you’re the weak link.”
My throat tightens. “Am I?”
“No.”
And that’s the problem. Because I believe him.
He steps closer, his voice dropping. “You don’t have to know the details.”
“I do if it puts a target on my back.”
He doesn’t answer. Just rests a hand against my cheek. His thumb brushes under my eye, soft in a way that’s all wrong for someone with hands like his.
“There are people who want you gone,” he says. “People who don’t care about justice. Only power. They’ve bought leverage. They’ve buried records. They think they can make you disappear without a ripple.”
“And what are you doing about it?”
His jaw flexes. “The only thing I know how.”
I want to ask what that means. I want to demand answers.
But instead, I lean into his touch. Just for a second.
Because right now, I’m more afraid of the truth than the silence.