Chapter 17
VROK
The gang’s footsteps echo away into the tangle of dock traffic — not like relief, but like a wave receding too fast, leaving a strange silence in its wake. I don’t even realize my jaw’s unclenching until it actually does, slowly, like a trapdoor unlatching itself.
My boots aren’t touching anything solid for a moment before I realize I’m still standing. The crowd settles around us like dust in soft wind — murmurs rising, falling, colliding like they’re trying to make sense of what just happened.
I watch them leave.
Not because I feel victorious — I don’t — but because I’m stunned at how fast it resolved. One moment there’s steel and anger and voices rough with menace; the next it’s just empty space where threat used to live.
I’ve been in too many fights to ever be this naive, but I’ll give her this — Roxy’s move wasn’t just bold. It was effective.
I close my eyes for one slow second and listen.
Word is already spreading.
“They say she is the Butcher.”
“You heard that right? The Butcher’s back?”
“She just stood there and told them off like she was born for it.”
The whispers curl around my spine and refuse to let go. There’s no exaggeration yet — not true mythmaking, just rumor bubbling up spontaneously — but it’s started. Like a small fire in dry grass.
I watch the faces in the crowd, heads turning toward us, curiosity peaking, fear flickering in eyes that don’t want to admit it.
That’s when I notice the fixer.
He approaches cautiously, like a man walking into a cave with two missing walls and hoping the roof still holds.
His suit’s too expensive for this part of the hub — silk blend with custom stitching and a flashy wrist comp — but the way he moves, careful and calculating, tells me he isn’t here for a friendly chat.
He stops a respectful distance away, hands open and empty.
“You… walk with her,” he says. “The one they’re calling the Butcher?”
My brow ridge twitches — a slow, measured reflex. I don’t look at Roxy first. I watch this would-be connector. Because if he’s come this close with a smile, he’s already committed.
“Yes,” I reply, voice low, clipped, like a blade testing a hanger. “I’m with her.”
His eyes brighten — not eager exactly, but alert. Like he’s just discovered a feeding path he didn’t know existed.
“That reputation — would you say it’s accurate? Perhaps looking for new contracts? Important work?”
I let that hang in the air like a warning flare.
He doesn’t move away. He just smiles.
“I represent opportunities,” he says. “High tier. Discreet. Impactful.”
I don’t laugh. Not even close. But I do tilt my head, coldly evaluating.
“My business is mine,” I say. “Not up for auction.”
He holds my gaze for a moment longer, nervous but undeterred, like he’s betting everything on a poker hand he hasn’t fully seen.
Then he steps back.
“Consider this open,” he says, “if you change your mind.”
And just like that, he melts into the crowd again — part of the ripple, not the cause of it.
I turn.
My eyes find Roxy, who’s standing a few paces away, jaw tight, gaze flitting between me and the departing fixer.
Her breathing’s shallow. Not fear exactly — more like awareness spun up too fast, like a nervous engine revving with no brakes in sight.
She’s not running. That’s something.
But she’s watching.
Calculating.
Still dangerous.
I pull my jacket tighter around me and exhale slow, quiet enough that the crowd doesn’t hear it, but my body sure does.
I shift my weight, adjusting to the moment, measuring fallout like a man trained to read aftershocks.
“We move?” I ask.
She nods.
We walk, and the whispers follow us — heat seeping into the dock’s noisy background like a scent that won’t wash off.
“Did you plan that?” I ask once we’re far enough from the gang debris that tension stops hovering at my shoulders.
She pauses. Not flinch. Not shrink.
Just pauses, like she’s weighing the truth against instinct.
“No,” she says finally. “But I heard things. Rumors about terror runs, shadow ops… I figured if I sounded like I belonged, they wouldn’t test it.”
I watch her mouth as she speaks — tight lines, eyes steady, tone unvarnished by performance or fear. She’s not hiding in her own lie. She’s inhabiting it with complete commitment.
“You put them down,” I say, voice low.
“Doesn’t mean I am one.”
I nod, thinking about that.
We keep walking.
The market traffic thickens around us — vendors hawking low-grade weaponry, illegal cybermods, stolen starship parts clanging on crates like metallic bees swarming a hive.
I take in every smell: oiled metal, sweat, synth-food fryers, and the faint copper tinge of nervous blood.
Then I notice something subtle: people aren’t just watching us.
They’re giving us space.
Like a predator with a reputation is moving through the room and gravity itself is warning them to back off.
Her bluff isn’t just surviving — it’s growing legs.
And that’s dangerous.
For everyone.
I keep walking until we reach a quieter corridor lined with shipping containers and stacked salvage crates. The hum of the main docks fades here. It’s quieter. More raw. More real.
She stops.
“Why don’t you just kill them?” she asks, voice curious, not afraid.
I glance at her. Not impressed. Just observing.
“Hurt my position,” I say. “Especially here. There’s too much heat, too many eyes, and don’t think for a second some of these gangs don’t have friends with long-range rifles.”
She exhales, slow and thoughtful. “So it’s damage control.”
“Damage management,” I correct.
“Semantics.”
“Survival,” I say.
We stand in silence for a second that’s too long.
Then she looks up at me.
“Do you trust me?”
I don’t answer at first.
Because trust isn’t a word I hand out like currency. It’s a tactic. A gamble. A risk assessment.
And right now she’s both a liability and an asset.
“Right now,” I say finally, “you’re useful.”
She frowns — not offended, just recognizing the difference between usefulness and affinity.
“I’ll take that,” she says.
We move again — the air too loud, the hummed vibration of the hub like a second heartbeat in my ears.
Behind us, somewhere near the docking bay, I hear another whisper — half rumor, half fear.
“They say the Butcher walks with him.”
I don’t slow.
But I do register it.
Because half-formed reputations have a way of becoming legend if you stand still long enough in the right place.
And I haven’t stood still in decades.
Not since I learned how to survive.
Not since I learned how to make other people fear me before they hurt me.
And not now — not here, not beside a woman who is becoming something I still don’t fully understand.
Maybe it’s survival.
Maybe it’s chaos.
Maybe it’s just the beginning.
But whatever it is?
I’m going to watch it unfold.