Chapter 1 #2
I sit up fast.
Someone’s at my window.
But I’m fifty floors up.
I crawl to the window, careful not to cast a shadow. Look down.
Nothing.
But on the window ledge—placed precisely at the edge—sits a small silver hex key.
My breath catches.
It doesn’t belong to me.
I check the locks.
The seals.
Everything looks intact.
But I know what a planted calling card looks like.
That’s the moment I realize I’m not imagining it.
I’m being watched.
Followed.
Targeted.
And that dossier didn’t just crawl into the system.
It was delivered.
The hiss is too soft for the AI to register. It doesn’t trigger the alarm. Doesn’t ping the security grid. But my body knows.
That hiss—pressurized seals breaking open.
Balcony door.
Fifty floors up.
Nobody should be out there.
My hand closes around the stun baton before my brain catches up. I don’t breathe. I just roll off the couch, silent, soft as shadow, and crouch low behind the kitchen island. The baton hums faintly in my grip, charged and ready.
Another sound now—just a whisper of footfall, but it thuds like a war drum in my chest. Not boots. Not shoes. Something heavier. Denser. Clawed.
My skin prickles.
I lean just far enough to glimpse the figure easing through the open balcony door.
And my brain short-circuits.
Red scales. Broad shoulders. Armor-black ops gear molded over an impossibly massive frame. The man—no, the creature—moves like a trained predator. Steady. Purposeful. Silent as death.
I suck in a breath, just a small one.
He stops.
His head tilts slightly. Gold eyes scan the room, glowing faintly in the low light.
I freeze.
And then he says it. His voice isn’t loud—it’s gravel and heat and something else I feel in my spine.
“I’m here to keep you alive.”
My body reacts before I can think. I rise fast, baton raised.
“Back off or I fry you where you stand!”
His eyes lock onto me. There’s no surprise in them. No fear. Just... recognition.
“Rhea.”
My name, from his mouth, hits like a bullet dipped in memories.
No. It can’t be.
My grip tightens. “Who the hell are you?”
He steps forward slowly, palms up.
“You already know.”
He’s taller than the doorway, broader than any human I’ve ever seen.
His black ops gear looks Alliance-issued, but modified—too advanced, too tailored.
Tactical panels, dampening mesh, low-profile stealth tech.
And his skin—or scales—is the color of deep, wet rubies.
Under the collar, I see the faint pulse of bioarmor fused with organic flesh.
Vakutan.
Not just any.
Only one ever called me by name like that, with that tone.
“Valtron?” My voice cracks like a broken synth key.
He nods once.
My knees nearly give out. I press the baton tighter against my palm to keep myself upright.
“You’re supposed to be dead.”
His gaze doesn’t waver. “I get that a lot.”
I laugh, sharp and brittle. “You broke into my home. You’re dressed like a bounty hunter. And you're tossing out cliches like we’re in a soap opera. What the actual hell is going on?”
He doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t blink. Just moves toward the wall by my entertainment hub and slaps a black hexagonal disk against it. It emits a pulse—like a low-frequency thump—and the lights dim for half a second.
“What the hell was that?”
“Signal scrambler. Ten-meter suppression radius. No surveillance, no transmissions, no tracking.”
“Are you kidding me?”
“No.”
I point the baton at him again. “Then start talking. And keep your claws where I can see ’em.”
He glances at the weapon. “That thing won’t work on me.”
“Try me.”
For the first time, something twitches at the corner of his mouth. Not a smile. More like... appreciation.
“I’m not here to fight, Rhea. I’m here because the file you intercepted painted a target on your back the size of a space freighter.”
My stomach sinks. “That thing scrambled my compad. It hijacked my archive. And then it summoned you?”
“No. I was already tracking the signal. When the whistleblower sent the package, he encoded a trace key. Only a few agents could follow it.”
“You’re still Alliance?” I ask, my voice sharper now. “You’re working for them?”
“Not exactly.” He steps back from the wall, now fully in the center of my living room. “I’m working for someone inside the Alliance. One of the last people I trust.”
“You trust someone?”
“Don’t start.”
I lower the baton an inch.
He exhales. “The man who sent that file—Argus—he wasn’t just a mid-level analyst. He was embedded. Deep. He tried to leak data on Helios Combine operations a year ago. Got shut down. Blacklisted. Transferred. Then executed.”
“I saw the images.”
Valtron’s voice drops, raw. “You shouldn’t have.”
“Well, maybe don’t let your space-spook network beam death files into my morning show segment next time.”
He growls low in his throat, not at me—but at the whole situation. The sound vibrates the air.
“They weren’t supposed to route it through broadcast nodes. Something must’ve gone wrong. The original receiver was—” he pauses, and there’s a flicker in his eyes “—terminated before the packet arrived. You were next on the trace hop.”
“So I got ghost mail from a dead man.”
He nods. “And now you’re on Helios’s watchlist.”
I feel the blood drain from my face.
“Jesus.”
“Not quite.”
My hands are shaking. “They’ve been in my system. My mirrors. My cams. I saw someone downstairs. I—” I shake my head. “I thought I was losing it.”
“You weren’t.”
“Good. Great. Because I really didn’t need a full-blown government conspiracy today.”
Valtron steps closer, and despite everything, my breath catches.
He still smells the same.
Warm metal. Charcoal. That faint ozone scent from his skin that used to cling to my sheets.
I blink hard.
“You... you disappeared.”
“I had to.”
“You left.”
“I had to.”
The words fall between us like broken glass.
“I thought you were dead,” I whisper. “I mourned you.”
“I didn’t ask you to.”
I raise the baton again. “Say that again, I dare you.”
His jaw tenses, but he doesn’t move.
Silence swells between us. Dense. Buzzing with everything we haven’t said in three years.
Then he looks away, the motion surprisingly human.
“Look,” he says. “I’m not here to rehash the past. Right now, you’re in danger. You’re marked. Helios doesn’t hire amateurs. They’re bringing in bounty killers—licensed and black-market.”
I swallow hard. “And you think I’m supposed to just trust you? Let you… what? Move in? Babysit me until the heat dies down?”
He meets my eyes, and there’s a fire in them that hasn’t dimmed in all this time.
“I’m not here to babysit you. I’m here to keep you breathing.”
My heart pounds against my ribs.
I want to scream. I want to cry. I want to throw something and demand to know why he vanished like a ghost. But right now, I want answers more.
“Fine,” I snap. “Talk.”
He steps forward again, and this time, I don’t back away.