Chapter 4
RHEA
The bunker breathes like it’s got lungs full of ghosts.
The walls groan with old tension, faint and rhythmic, like they’re remembering every whispered mission briefing and final stand ever made inside these corroded panels.
I sit with my knees pulled to my chest on the edge of the cot, blanket draped over my shoulders, and watch Valtron in the half-light like I’m waiting for him to break the silence with something—anything.
He doesn’t.
He paces. Heavy-footed. Agitated. The sound of his boots scuffing the metal floor echoes too loud in this cramped space. His massive shoulders rise and fall with every breath, too sharp, too tight. He’s coiled, yeah—but not like a man about to sleep. Like a man about to snap.
“You don’t sleep much, do you?” I mutter.
His eyes flick toward me. Just a glance. Gold, unreadable.
“I do when I’m not hunted,” he growls. “Which isn’t often.”
“So this is just another Tuesday for you?”
He huffs through his nose, turning his back. He looks like he wants to punch something. Or scream. Or both.
I press. “You always bring civilians into your shitshows?”
“You’re not a civilian.”
“I’m not a soldier.”
He faces me, finally, arms folded across that ridiculously broad chest. “You were chosen. That file found you for a reason.”
“Yeah, dumb luck.”
“Instinct.”
“Bullshit.”
I toss the blanket off and stand. The cold of the floor bites at my bare feet, but I don’t care.
I’m so keyed up I could scream. “You think you can waltz back into my life with your haunted eyes and death glare and what, expect me to swoon? ‘Oh thank the stars, my war-crush is here to drag me into the underworld again’?!”
His jaw ticks.
“Didn’t think you’d swoon,” he says. “I thought you’d fight.”
I blink. “What?”
“You fight for truth. You fight for people who don’t know they need saving. You put your face on a screen and tell the galaxy what it’s too afraid to hear. You think I don’t remember that?”
I swallow hard. My throat feels tight.
“You ghosted me,” I whisper. “After that night. You didn’t even say goodbye.”
“I couldn’t.”
“Why?”
His fists clench. The air between us snaps taut. “Because if I did, I wouldn’t have left.”
The admission lands like a punch. I stagger back a step without meaning to.
He drops into a crouch by the far wall, claws raking lightly over the edge of a dusty console. He’s not looking at me now. He’s staring into shadows like he wants them to answer questions I haven’t asked yet.
“I was sent on a black op,” he says, voice low. “Deep zone. No extraction plan. No comms. Classified to hell and back. I left you because I had to.”
“Could’ve told me that.”
“You would’ve tried to follow.”
He’s not wrong.
My heart kicks, angry and aching all at once. “So what now, Valtron? We share war stories until morning? Pretend this is just nostalgia night in a bomb shelter?”
“No,” he says. “We survive.”
“And then?”
He looks at me. Really looks at me.
“I don’t know,” he admits.
That scares me more than any bounty hunter.
I sit again, slower this time. The blanket’s back around my shoulders. I huddle in it like it’s armor and glance at him through strands of hair that have fallen in my face.
“You ever get tired?” I ask quietly.
He leans back against the wall with a grunt. “Of what?”
“Being right all the time.”
A corner of his mouth tugs upward. “Never.”
I grab the pillow from the cot and chuck it at him. He catches it one-handed.
Silence again. But this time, it’s not sharp.
I curl onto the cot, turning away. I don’t hear him settle, but I feel it—the shift in the air, the subtle creak of the wall under his weight. He’s on the floor near the door, back to me, just like I’m facing away from him.
But I know he’s awake.
I am too.
My fingers curl into the edge of the blanket. My skin remembers his touch. My lips remember his taste.
The past presses in, thick and hot.
And in the dark, I hear his voice.
“If I’d had the choice…”
He stops.
I wait.
But that’s all he gives.
Still, it’s enough to burn.
The first tremor snaps me out of half-sleep like a slap. The cot groans beneath me as I bolt upright, heart jackhammering in my chest. My ears are ringing—not from an explosion this time, but from adrenaline, from that bone-deep instinct that something’s about to go sideways.
Before I can get a word out, Valtron’s already moving.
He’s all motion—silent, lethal grace for a man built like a dreadnought.
His weapon’s in hand, his scanner out, and those golden eyes glow like predator fire in the low light.
He doesn’t speak until the walls shake again, this time with more authority.
Dust rains from the ceiling. My nerves fray further.
“Seismic activity,” he says, scanning. “Localized. Not natural.”
I throw the blanket off, scrambling to pull on my boots. “Another hunter?”
He shakes his head once. “Crawler. Industrial-grade. It’s drilling. Surface-level. Directly above us.”
My breath sticks. “They’re building here? In this graveyard?”
“Not by chance. Someone sold access.”
I freeze. The walls here aren’t thick. If one of those construction crawlers digs too deep or drops a seismic stake… this place becomes a tomb.
Valtron moves fast, sweeping gear into his pack, stashing the rest behind a locked bulkhead. “We go subterranean.”
“Wait, you mean deeper than this?”
He looks at me like I’ve grown a second head. “You want to wait for daylight and play hide-and-seek with a terraformer?”
Good point.
I shove the last boot on, grab my compad, and follow him into the narrow rear corridor that leads deeper into the facility. The hatch groans like it resents being used, then hisses shut behind us.
The tunnels are ancient. Utility shafts that used to feed power and data through the entire block. Now they smell like damp rust and old oil. I step carefully, flashlight bobbing in my hand, casting flickers over graffiti and bullet pocks no one ever cleaned up.
Valtron moves ahead, every step measured. His bulk takes up most of the tunnel, but he glides like he was built for spaces like this. I’m still shaking a little—less from fear, more from the whiplash of always being a heartbeat from death.
We don’t speak for a while.
The silence starts to ache.
I break it. “The file wasn’t meant for me.”
Valtron doesn’t turn. “I know.”
“I mean, a guy died to send it. He probably thought it would go to a real journalist. Not a morning-show blonde with good cheekbones.”
Now he looks back.
“You dug into it anyway. That counts.”
I huff. “You’re hard to impress.”
“You’re not easy to forget.”
The heat that floods my chest is not helpful.
I press on. “The sender… his name was Callen Drax. Mid-tier systems analyst for Helios Combine. Listed dead two weeks before I got the file. Transport accident.”
Valtron snorts. “Classic.”
“Yeah. Only the ‘accident’ involved a cargo pod depressurizing mid-jump. Only cargo on board was him.”
He grunts. “That’s not just a hit. That’s a message.”
“To who?”
He stops. Faces me. “To anyone who knows what those implants really do.”
“What implants?”
His jaw tightens. “Alliance soldiers get tech. Everyone knows that. Neural syncs. Combat stims. Reflex enhancers.”
“Okay…”
“But lately? New contracts. Helios Combine tech. They call them compliance regulators. Harmless. Supposedly.”
I narrow my eyes. “Supposedly?”
“They override biofeedback. Keep soldiers calm. Docile. Even off-duty. Problem is, they interfere with synaptic response. Soldiers blank out. Freeze. Some die in sims.”
“Simulations?”
He nods. “One in every ten doesn’t wake up. It’s chalked up to faulty equipment. No one asks too many questions. Helios gets paid either way.”
My stomach turns. “That’s mass murder.”
“It’s collateral.”
I reach out. Touch his arm. Not out of sympathy—out of necessity. I need him to see I get it now. The scale. The stakes. His warmth pulses beneath my palm, hot through the fabric of his sleeve.
He doesn’t flinch.
He doesn’t pull away.
He just looks at me. Eyes heavy with weight I can’t name.
I say nothing.
Neither does he.
And for a second, there’s no file. No danger. No history.
Just this moment.
Then it’s gone.
But not really.