Chapter 21
LIORA
Iwake to dust in my mouth and a ringing in my ears that feels like it’s drilling straight into my skull.
For a second—one fragile, foolish second—I think I’m still in the Maze.
The air tastes like metal and smoke, and my fingers reach instinctively for Gyon’s arm, for the impossible strength of him braced above me, shielding me from falling debris.
But my hand closes on nothing.
Just cold floor. Empty air. Silence.
“Gyon?” My voice cracks on the second syllable. I try again. Louder. “Gyon!”
Nothing answers me except a distant drip of water and the groan of settling wreckage.
The Maze lies in ruins around me—walls split open, lighting strips flickering in weak spasms. The last thing I remember is his arms around me, his body curling over mine like a living shield.
The smell of scorched circuitry. His breath in my ear. Run when I say run.
But I never got the chance. His body went rigid, the world exploded in white, and darkness swallowed us whole.
My ribs scream when I push myself upright. Something inside me pulls sharply—a cramping, tearing sensation that makes me gasp and steady myself on a broken beam. The air is cold against my skin, but my forehead is slick with sweat. My vision wavers.
Not from injury.
From fear.
Because deep inside my belly, something shifts. Not painfully. Just… undeniably.
“No. No, no, no—please, not now.” My hand presses against my abdomen, trembling. It’s swollen. Not just from impact. Even beneath the grime and dust, I can tell. Too round. Too firm. Too fast.
Reaper biology.
My breath hitches. I close my eyes, and flashes of the last week burn behind them—his hands on my hips, the way he said my name, the way I let myself believe we’d get more time. That maybe the universe wasn’t as cruel as I knew it to be.
Stupid. I was so stupid.
A wave of panic rolls through me so hard I double over. “Gyon,” I whisper, but the fear in my voice makes it sound like a question. Like a prayer.
I force myself onto shaky legs. Everything hurts.
My joints feel soft, unreliable, like they’ve forgotten how to hold me up.
The Maze’s remains slope downward into a fractured passage that leads to an emergency hatch.
It’s half open, warped, but still functional.
I stumble through and emerge into harsh daylight that blinds me instantly.
Novaria’s upper levels burn bright—towering spires of chrome and glass slicing the horizon, hover lanes congested with morning traffic. But I don’t belong up there anymore. I can’t risk being seen. I tug my hood up, ignoring the way my hands shake, and take the maintenance stairwell downward.
Each step sends a jolt through my abdomen. Not painful—just... present. Like the life inside me is reminding me it exists. As if I could possibly forget.
I reach the sublevels, where neon signs flicker and holographic billboards sputter static. Steam vents hiss from ruptured pipes, filling the air with the scent of rust and engine coolant. This place is loud, chaotic, alive in all the ways I am not. I duck my head and keep moving.
No one looks at me twice. Down here, everyone’s running from something.
In a narrow alley behind an abandoned market, I collapse onto a crate and press both hands to my stomach. “I can’t do this,” I whisper. The words fog in the cold air. “I can’t do this alone.”
I wait for the universe to answer. For some sign he survived. For some whisper of his presence. But all I hear is the distant rumble of an exhaust vent and the shuffle of a scavenger bot rooting through trash.
“I should feel him,” I mutter. My hands curl into fists. “I should know.”
Reapers imprint in ways humans can’t understand. When he touched me—when he claimed me—I felt it like gravity. Like fate stitching itself into the marrow of my bones. There should be some thread still connecting us. Some whisper of certainty in the back of my mind telling me he’s alive.
But there’s nothing.
Just emptiness.
The panic rises again, thick and suffocating. I stand abruptly, driven by instinct rather than logic. I pull my comm tablet from my pocket and flick it on. Notifications explode across the cracked screen—news alerts, messages, missed calls, interview requests.
My face is everywhere. Headlines rage in red letters:
HOLONET STAR LIORA Bevins– MISSING AFTER MAZE COLLAPSE!
REAPER COMPANION STILL UNACCOUNTED FOR – BODY NOT FOUND.
SABOTAGE SUSPECTED – INVESTIGATION UNDERWAY.
I swallow hard. My throat burns.
Then another alert flashes:
UNIDENTIFIED ENERGY SIGNATURE DETECTED IN COLLAPSED MAZE. SEARCH SUSPENDED.
Suspended. That word lands like a blow.
They’re not looking for him anymore.
My fingers tighten around the tablet until the casing creaks. I shut it off and tuck it away. If I’m going to stay safe—if my child is going to stay safe—I need to disappear. Completely.
I force myself to stand straighter. Breathe deeper. Make a plan.
One step at a time.
First: get off the grid. No more HoloNet. No more bank traces. No more public anything.
Second: hide the pregnancy. My coat hangs loose, but it won’t for long. I’ll need anonymity. Shadows. Sublevels no one maps anymore.
Third… survive. Somehow.
The undercity is a labyrinth—pipes hissing overhead, broken maglines buzzing with erratic sparks, the ground trembling with the pulse of distant reactors.
I move through it silently, avoiding the eyes of scavengers and syndicate lookouts.
Eventually, I reach a derelict housing unit wedged between two old transport lifts.
The keypad is busted. Perfect. I pry it open and slip inside.
The air is stale. Dust dances in the thin shafts of light piercing the cracked windows. But the walls are intact, the door locks manually, and the utilities hum faintly beneath the floor.
Good enough.
I sink onto the bare mattress left behind by whoever last squatted here and curl on my side, muscles trembling from exhaustion. My hand drifts to my abdomen again.
And then—I freeze.
A flutter. Light. Strange. Like fingers brushing from the inside.
It steals my breath.
“Oh.” My voice breaks into a laugh that sounds more like a sob. “There you are.”
The movement comes again, stronger this time. Not painful. Just real.
I close my eyes. For the first time since waking, the panic recedes enough to let something else through.
Resolve. Fierce. Burning.
“I’ll keep you safe,” I whisper. “Even if I have to hide forever. Even if he never finds us.”
My fingers tighten protectively.
“And if he’s gone… then I’ll do this alone.”
The lights flicker. The pipes thrum. The undercity settles around me like a cocoon.
I curl into myself, one arm under my head, the other circling the small, growing life within me, and let exhaustion drag me under—not into peace, but into a trembling, determined sleep.
Time passes. The life growing inside of me seems impatient, Like if she doesn’t hurry out of me neither of us will survive. I already know it’s a girl, or suspect it, at least.
Just like I have this weird suspicion that Gyon is somehow alive. I tuck that notion far away inside of myself. I can’t bring myself to fully extinguish the thought. Everyone should have at least one vain hope to keep them going.
The storm starts just after sundown—one of those undercity tempests where the vents overload and the old power conduits short out, turning the air into a crackling soup of electricity and humidity.
I feel the pressure shift before I hear the first boom.
It rolls through the pipes beneath the floor, a deep metallic rumble that makes the mattress vibrate under my spine.
And then the contraction hits.
Not a warning. Not a build-up.
A full-body, bone-deep stab of pain that drives the air out of my lungs.
“Not now,” I gasp, gripping the edge of the mattress. “Please—just a few more days—”
But the universe doesn’t negotiate with me tonight.
Another contraction tears through my abdomen, sharp and fast, like someone reaching inside and twisting. My breath stutters. The sweat on my forehead goes cold instantly.
I stagger upright, bracing myself on the wall as the lights flicker violently overhead. A static charge dances across my skin, raising every hair on my arms.
“I’m not ready,” I whisper to nobody. To the walls. To fate. “I’m not—”
My knees buckle. A groan is ripped out of me, raw and hoarse.
Okay. Fine. Ready or not.
I drag myself toward the bathroom—more for privacy than practicality—but my body has its own agenda. I get halfway across the room before another contraction slams me sideways. I clutch my belly and feel the baby shift hard beneath my hand, impossibly strong.
“Hey—hey, sweetheart—easy,” I pant, though I know she can’t hear me. Or maybe she can. Who the hell knows with Reaper biology?
A burst of thunder cracks outside, so loud the window trembles. Rain pours down in sheets, drumming on the metal awning like fists demanding entry.
My water breaks in a sudden hot flood down my legs.
“Shit.” I double over, pain rolling through me like a tidal wave. “Okay. Okay. We’re doing this. Here. Now.”
The next minutes—maybe hours—blur. I spread a blanket on the floor because the mattress is too soft, too hard to brace against. The air tastes like ozone and rust, thick and electric.
My whole world narrows to the tearing, blistering stretch of my body opening too fast, too soon. Reaper speed. Reaper ferocity.
I can’t think of him. I can’t let myself think of him. Not now.
Thunder shakes the entire building. My breath comes in ragged gasps.
“Come on, baby. Come on—help me out—I can’t—”
A shrieking contraction rips through me. I scream, low and furious, my vision flashing to white around the edges. I push because my body gives me no choice. The pressure builds, unbearable, like the world is splintering open beneath my ribs.
And then—
A sound.
Not a cry.