Chapter 9
CHAPTER NINE
I don’t see Mekkra for the rest of the day.
Starcroft brings my meals like I’m some quarantined specimen—quiet, efficient, gone before the steam even finishes curling off the tray. The door seals. The room hums.
That’s it. No conversation. No updates. Just the low mechanical humming of the station and me, lying on the bed pretending I’m not listening for footsteps that never come.
I don’t even attempt to leave my room.
I tell myself the move is strategic. That I’m not about to wander the corridors of a warlord’s ship like I belong there.
But that’s not the whole truth. The truth is, I don’t want to intrude on whatever the hell cracked open in him this morning.
I don’t want him to have to put the mask back on because I’m standing there watching. So, I leave him to his grief.
I hate that I even care.
I almost wish I could shake myself, to scream he’s not some stray dog on the side of the road that needs rescuing.
Is it Stockholm syndrome? Trauma bonding?
Or is Mekkra just the first person in years who hasn’t looked at me as if I was disposable—and my stupid kindness-starved brain is twisting things all around?
But I don’t get to spiral.
The dim red lights of my room flicker once before they start strobing hard enough to make my vision pulse—and the entire station jerks violently to the right.
I don’t brace in time.
I’m thrown off the bed and slam shoulder-first into the floor. The impact knocks the air out of me in a broken gasp. Before I can even suck in another breath, the ship whips the other direction and I scramble, grabbing for anything solid.
My hand catches a metal seam in the wall just as the station bucks again and hurls me forward.
My mouth smashes into steel.
There’s a sharp crack of pain and then warmth—thick and coppery—floods my tongue.
An alarm wails in the corridor, and I snap my head toward the sound.
The door to my room has jumped its track. It hangs crooked, dangling from the top rail like it’s barely holding on. I drop to my hands and knees and crawl toward it because standing feels like a gamble I’m not winning.
The hallway beyond is chaos—red lights flash, sparks snap from a wall panel, smoke threads through the air. The whole station sways in this sick, off-balance rhythm that makes it impossible to find center.
I have no fucking idea what’s happening.
But I know it’s bad.
“Mekkra?” I yell, pushing my head through the gap. My lip is already swelling, and the words comes out wrong. “What’th happening?”
Great. Now I sound ridiculous.
The alarm keeps screaming. Underneath it, I hear grunts, the unmistakable hiss-pop of blaster fire, and something heavy slamming into a wall hard enough that I feel it through my spine.
I should hide.
I should crawl back into my room and wedge myself under the bed and let warlords deal with warlord problems.
Instead, my chest is tight with one awful, singular thought:
What if he’s hurt?
I hate that my brain goes there. I hate that I care.
But I fucking do.
I drag myself upright, one hand glued to the doorframe, then flatten against the hallway wall. My legs are shaking too hard to trust, so I sidle, inch by inch, toward the sound of the fight.
“Mekkra? What’th happening?” I shout again, louder this time, closer.
There’s a roar ahead—low and furious and absolutely his.
Then a body hits something. Hard.
I’m almost to the atrium—the big open space where I first arrived—when something flashes in my peripheral vision.
Silver.
Too fast.
A metal arm shoots out of the smoke and clamps around my throat.
Cold. Unyielding. Mechanical fingers dig into the sides of my neck and lift me clean off the ground. My toes scrape uselessly against the floor as I claw at polished alloy that doesn’t give an inch.
A featureless chrome face swings into view, optic sensors glowing an icy blue.
“Target acquired, alert Lord Quldo,” it says in a clipped synthetic voice.
Its grip tightens as smoke plumes behind him.
And somewhere beyond the smoke, I hear that same roar.
"Unhand my mate!"
Mekkra’s clawed hand plunges from the smoke and beheads the bot currently choking the shit out of me.
The metal hand doesn’t release right away, like there’s some buffering delay between his body and recently removed head. When it does, my knees hit the floor right as a swarm of robots crawl up Mekkra’s back.
A flurry of silver hands stab at his sides with lethal-looking blades. I cover my head with my hands as the bright laser trail of a blast clips his forearm. My nostrils fill with the scent of burning hair.
Mekkra bellows again, grabbing each of the mechanical soldiers and flinging them against the wall. They smash into pieces as if they were made of porcelain.
His eyes almost glow with red rage as he decimates each and every one of his attackers, the last of which he holds between his two humongous hands as he drags it apart.
The bot glitches and makes a noise so close to a scream that I’m not sure it isn’t as the last of his circuits and wires snap apart, sparks flying.
I can hear Mekkra's ragged breaths even over the noise of the station’s alarm. With a clatter, he drops the bot to the floor. His wild eyes find me, and for a moment they soften. He reaches out to my face, thumb brushing my damaged lip, before he crumples into himself, collapsing to the floor.
“No, no, no…” I crawl over to him, using all my strength to turn him to his side. “Wake up!” I scream, slapping his cheek. “You can’t leave me here alone!” I thump my fist to his chest. “What do I do?”
I look around, not even knowing if more of Quldo’s bots are readying to strike.
There’s the sound of scraping from the smoke-filled atrium in front of me.
I can make out sparks and then hear a sharp click, then a rising in pitch until it locks into a steady tone.
The air fills with a tight, vibrating vvvvvvvv that doesn’t fade—something’s powered back on.
It's shadow looms through the haze, and hold my breath as I throw myself over Mekkra’s barely breathing chest.
“Mae?” Starcroft's confused digital voice asks as he materializes from the smoke.
“Starcroft!” My fear turns to joy. “How do we save him?”