Chapter 12
ROXY
He’s watching me. Not in the casual, curious way he did before—this is different. Subtle, but sharper. He stands closer now. Not enough for most people to notice, but I do. I feel it like pressure behind the ribs. Like gravity’s playing favorites and his orbit has decided mine is worth pulling.
When I move, so does his gaze. When I speak, he listens longer. When I offer one of my vague, deflective answers, he doesn’t nod and move on anymore—he asks a follow-up. A second pass, like he’s testing for cracks.
“Tell me something,” he says this time, voice low but steady. “What’s your preferred method?”
I blink. “Method?”
“For takedowns. Clean, fast, messy, noisy—what’s your usual go-to?”
I laugh, but it’s shallow. “I don’t really do… usual.”
He waits.
“I improvise,” I say finally. “Standard methods get you standard results.”
He doesn’t respond. Not with words. Just gives this quiet, skeptical grunt and moves past me like the conversation’s over. But I know better. That sound wasn’t dismissal—it was interest.
We don’t talk again until we hit the main corridor. I’m trailing half a step behind, trying to figure out if he’s still suspicious or just normally intense. Then he stops short and turns on me.
“Maintenance run,” he says.
“…Maintenance?”
“You want to be part of the crew? Crew works. We’re due for a shielding recalibration and a conduit pass-through. You’re helping.”
He says it like it’s not up for debate.
It’s not.
“Okay,” I say.
He leads us to the lower deck—tight quarters, metal walls close enough to breathe on. The lighting down here hums with static and old stress, flickering once like it’s debating how much power we deserve. He opens a hatch with a hiss of pressurized air and ducks inside.
I follow.
And immediately regret it.
The access tunnel is barely wide enough for one Vrok, let alone me and all the tension currently wedged between us. He crouches near the conduit housing and pulls a panel open with practiced efficiency.
“Get that junction box,” he says, nodding to a metal case half-exposed behind a wall of tangled wiring.
I crawl in. My shoulder brushes his. I pretend not to feel it. My knee hits his thigh. I pretend I didn’t mean to.
The air in here is warmer, heavier. It smells like heat and ionized metal, with a faint overlay of something earthy—him. It’s distracting in a way that should scare me more than it does.
I pass him the box.
He takes it, his fingers grazing mine—deliberate or not, I don’t know. But it lands like a jolt through my chest.
Focus, Roxy. You’re lying to a killing machine. Get it together.
We start working—him guiding, me following. I watch how his hands move. Deliberate. Confident. Like someone who’s rebuilt this system a hundred times, and each one was life-or-death. He doesn’t second-guess. Doesn’t hesitate. He knows what everything does.
I pretend I do, too.
“Hand me the torque wand.”
I look down at the toolkit. About twelve items, none of which are labeled. I pick one and hold it up like a student bluffing a vocab quiz.
He raises a brow ridge.
“That’s a pulse driver.”
“Right,” I say, swapping tools with a quickness that doesn’t help. “Just testing you.”
“Mmhmm.”
He doesn’t call me on it. But his eyes linger a fraction longer than they should. Another mental tally, I’m sure.
The tunnel forces us closer as we shift angles. At one point, we’re pressed shoulder to shoulder, his arm braced over mine to reach a panel. I freeze, breath catching in my throat like it’s trying to hide.
“You alright?” he asks.
“Fine,” I say. “Just not used to small spaces.”
He grunts. Not quite sympathy. Not quite mockery. Somewhere in between.
We work in silence after that. Tools clicking. Systems humming. Our breaths the only real sound besides the occasional buzz of recalibration. My heart’s beating faster than it should. It feels like I’m performing surgery with a live audience and no anesthesia.
He pauses to adjust something and shifts again. His leg presses against mine. It’s nothing. It’s everything. I can feel the heat of him through my pants, like his body runs hotter than it should, like even stillness is effort for him.
And then, somehow, we both stop at the same time.
He looks at me.
I look at him.
For a second, there’s no job. No pretense. No weapons or missions or legends.
Just this stupid, quiet moment where my mouth wants to say something it absolutely shouldn’t.
The truth.
I almost do it. I feel the words trying to claw their way out. I’m not who you think I am. I’m just a girl with anxiety and a borrowed dress and a face too proud to flinch.
But before I can decide if dying is worth confessing, he shifts back toward the conduit and says, “Junction’s stable. Route the secondary and seal it.”
I move. Fast. Grateful. Embarrassed.
We finish the job in another fifteen minutes. My hands don’t shake. I don’t drop anything. I even reconnect the shielding array without needing to guess which cable is live.
When he seals the hatch and straightens to his full height, he looks at me for a long second.
“Not bad,” he says.
I nod, trying not to look like I’m collapsing inside from sheer relief. “Thanks.”
He doesn’t say more. Just walks away.
I watch him go, my nerves a livewire mess of triumph and terror.
I survived.
Again.
But every minute I stay, the lie gets bigger.
And I get better at pretending it’s the truth.