Chapter 13
Ksara
The basket weighs almost nothing in my arms, but it might as well contain the entire future of this forsaken place.
Strawberries. Real, honest-to-stars strawberries, grown in actual soil under UV lamps that finally mimic something close to sunlight.
Their scent rises in a sweet cloud that seems almost obscene in the recycled air of the lower decks, where everything usually smells like rust and desperation and the particular staleness that comes from breathing the same oxygen too many times.
I insisted on this. On bringing the first harvest down myself, to the people who need it most. The children in the lower residential blocks, the miners coming off triple shifts with hollow eyes and vitamin deficiencies that make their bones ache.
Haid argued, of course. Told me to send Thanatos with an escort, to stay in the upper levels where it's safer, cleaner, more controlled.
I told him no.
His mouth had tightened, that muscle jumping in his jaw that I've learned means he's biting back about seventeen different arguments, cycling through them to find the one that might actually work.
In the end, he'd just nodded once, sharp and reluctant, and ordered two guards to shadow me at a distance.
I lost them three levels ago.
Not on purpose, not exactly. But when I saw the cluster of children playing in one of the cramped communal spaces, their game involving nothing but scavenged wire and imagination, I couldn't help myself.
Ducked in to give them strawberries warm from my own hands, to watch their faces transform from suspicion to wonder to pure, unguarded joy.
The guards were polite enough to wait in the corridor, and when I slipped out the back access panel the children showed me, their laughter still echoing in my ears like a benediction, the guards were nowhere to be seen.
I should feel guilty. I don't. This is what I'm here for.
Not to hide in the upper levels like some fragile ornament, but to walk among the people my powers are supposed to save.
To see their faces. To know exactly what I'm working for every time exhaustion makes me want to quit, every time using my abilities leaves me hollowed out and shaking.
The corridor I'm in now is narrow, dimly lit, the kind of place that probably wasn't meant for foot traffic at all.
Maintenance access, maybe, or a forgotten remnant from when the station was first built.
The walls press close on either side, and overhead, exposed pipes drip condensation in an irregular rhythm that echoes strangely in the confined space.
My footsteps sound too loud. The basket creaks. I'm suddenly, acutely aware that I'm alone in a way I haven't been since arriving on this station, since Haid's presence became a constant gravitational pull I couldn't escape even when he wasn't in the room.
The hair on the back of my neck prickles.
I slow. Stop. Listen to the silence that isn't quite silent, that hums with the ambient sounds of the station, the groan of metal and the hiss of ventilation and something else. Something that doesn't belong.
Breathing.
Not mine.
I turn slowly, carefully, keeping the basket between me and whoever is behind me like the ridiculous shield it isn't. My heart kicks into a rhythm that has nothing to do with exertion and everything to do with the prey-animal instinct that evolution hardwired into human DNA millennia ago.
A man steps into the corridor. He's dressed like a miner, all rough canvas and reinforced patches, face smudged with the kind of grime that comes from real work.
But something is wrong. The details are too perfect, the wear patterns on his clothes too uniform, and his hands are clean.
Too clean for someone who supposedly just came off shift.
His eyes are cold. Calculating. Utterly devoid of the exhaustion every real miner on this station carries like a second skin.
"Ksara of House Genesis." His voice is smooth, educated, completely at odds with his appearance. "Your mother sends her regards."
The basket slips from my numb fingers. Strawberries scatter across the grated floor, bright red against the dark metal, little drops of colour and hope crushed under the weight of what's happening.
Mother.
Of course. Of course she wouldn't just let me go, wouldn't accept Haid's theft of her most valuable asset without a plan to retrieve me.
I saw her smile on that monitor as The Cerberus pulled away from the station.
Saw the satisfaction in her eyes, the calculation, and I'd been too naive to understand what it meant.
She let Haid take me, allowed him to believe he'd won, that his audacious theft of her property had succeeded, but she always intended to take me back.
This was just another move in whatever game she's playing, another calculated step in a strategy I can't fully see.
Mother doesn't lose. She only pretends to, when it serves her purposes.
"I'm not going anywhere with you." My voice comes out steadier than I feel, and I'm grateful for that small mercy. I've had enough of being weak, of being the pawn everyone else moves around the board. "Tell Demeter she can rot in her sterile gardens."
His smile doesn't reach his eyes. "I wasn't asking."
He moves fast. Faster than someone his size should be able to move, and I realize with a cold wash of terror that he's enhanced. Cybernetic augments or genetic modification or both, the kind of edge that money can buy when you have as much of it as my mother does.
A stun-baton appears in his hand, crackling with blue-white energy that throws harsh shadows across his face. He swings it in a practiced arc meant to incapacitate, to drop me twitching and helpless at his feet so he can haul me back to the life I escaped.
Instinct takes over. My hand plunges into my jacket pocket, fingers closing around the small pouch of seeds I always carry. Sunflower, mostly. Some vine varietals. Things that grow fast and strong when I pour my power into them.
I throw them on the ground between us and push.
The seeds explode into life with a violence that would terrify me if I had time to think about it.
Vines erupt from between the grating, thick as cables, thorned and hungry and utterly wrong for any natural growth pattern.
They whip toward him like striking serpents, one of them wrapping around his wrist with enough force that bones creak.
He howls. Drops the stun-baton. It clatters across the floor, still sparking, throwing erratic light across the corridor.
I grab one of the vines bare-handed, shape it with touch and will into something more, something sharper. The thorns lengthen, harden, becoming more weapon than plant. A whip made of living wood and my own desperate fury.
"I said no."
I crack it at him. He dodges, fast and fluid, but not fast enough.
The vine-whip catches him across the shoulder, tears through his jacket, draws blood that looks black in the stuttering light.
His face twists with pain and rage and something else.
Respect, maybe. Or surprise that the soft little flower-girl has teeth after all.
He reaches behind his back. When his hand comes forward again, it's holding a gun.
Not a stun weapon. Not something meant to incapacitate and retrieve. A real gun, compact and lethal and pointed directly at my chest with the kind of steady aim that says he knows how to use it.
My vines falter. The whip goes slack in my hands.
"Your mother would prefer you alive." His voice is cold, professional, the voice of a man just doing a job. "But dead still has value. The genetic samples alone would be worth the trip."
He thumbs off the safety. The click echoes like a death knell in the narrow space.
I'm going to die here. In this forgotten corridor, surrounded by scattered strawberries and the desperate growth I called into being.
Haid will find my body and blame himself, and the people on this station will lose their Spring Queen, and my mother will harvest whatever pieces of me still have value and move on to the next weapon in her arsenal.
The thought fills me with rage so pure it burns away the fear.
I won't. I won't let it end like this, won't let her win, won't let all the people counting on me starve because some corporate spy put a bullet in me on her orders.
My power surges. Wild. Uncontrolled. The vines around us thicken, multiply, begin crawling up the walls with a speed that defies physics.
Flowers bloom and die in seconds, their pollen filling the air with a golden haze.
The metal floor buckles under the pressure of roots that have no business being strong enough to move steel.
The spy's eyes widen. His gun hand wavers slightly, tracking my movement as I stumble backward, trying to put distance between us even as my own power threatens to tear the corridor apart.
He steadies himself with the practiced ease of someone who's done this before, too many times to count.
Takes a breath. Holds it. Adjusts his stance with minute precision, centering his weight, squaring his shoulders.
The gun stops wavering. His aim becomes absolute, the barrel aligned perfectly with my chest, with my heart, with the exact spot that will end everything I am in a single instant.
His finger begins its slow, inexorable journey against the trigger. The pressure builds, the mechanism responding, the fraction of a second that separates me from oblivion shrinking with each passing heartbeat.
The shadows pooled behind him, formless, meaningless, just the natural darkness of the poorly-lit corridor, suddenly move.
Not drift. Not shift with some trick of the light or play of perspective.
Move.
Not like something stepping into frame. Like the shadows themselves gain substance, weight, intention. They flow like liquid darkness, condensing into a shape that towers over the spy, broad and lethal and utterly silent.