Chapter 21 #2
A wail that vibrates the air, a shockwave of sound so sharp the lightbulb overhead bursts, showering the floor with glass.
My daughter enters the world screaming like a storm given flesh.
I collapse backward, shaking. My hands fumble, trembling, reaching for her. She’s slick and warm, her skin flushed a deep, unnatural red that shifts and fades as she settles. When her eyes blink open, I swear the breath leaves my chest.
They glow faintly. A pulsing ember-red, like she’s lit from within.
“Oh my gods,” I whisper. “Oh… oh sweetheart.”
Even newly born, she looks strong—muscles taut, fingers tiny but clenched with surprising force. She lets out another cry, this one lower pitched, resonant. It rattles the pipes.
Outside, the storm roars back at her.
I pull her into my arms, cradling her against my chest. The warmth of her body bleeds into mine instantly, grounding me, anchoring me. My tears spill hot and uncontrolled down my cheeks.
“You’re perfect,” I choke. “You’re terrifying, and perfect, and mine.”
I stroke her cheek with the back of a shaking finger. Her skin is soft, but hot—Reaper body heat running higher than human norms. I can feel her heart hammering against my palm, fast and powerful, like she’s already outracing the world she was born into.
“What am I going to do with you?” I whisper, and the truth lands in my chest like a stone. “What am I going to do without him?”
My daughter opens her mouth in a smaller cry, softer now, but still edged with strength. I brush a tear off her cheek—a cheek that, in the wrong light, might flash with the faintest shimmer of Reaper dermal patterns.
She’s not safe.
Not like this.
Not in this galaxy.
I name her there on the cold undercity floor, with thunder challenging the walls and my heart still aching for a man who doesn’t know he’s a father.
“Pepper,” I murmur, pressing a kiss to her tiny forehead. “After the girl who saved the universe in that dumb game I used to play.”
I laugh, breathless, half hysterical. “She was small and strong and angry all the time. You’re already two of those things.”
The storm begins to ease. Just barely. Enough that I can think again. Enough that the brutality of what comes next settles over me like a wet, suffocating blanket.
I need to hide her.
I need to hide everything.
By dawn, I’m up, shaking, bleeding, weak, but moving. Pepper sleeps wrapped against my chest, her little fists curled in my shirt. She won’t stay little long. Reaper babies grow fast. I’ve already seen signs—her grip, her eyes, her heat.
I leave the squat apartment behind and navigate the undercity with a mother’s desperation boiling in my veins.
I find a smuggler I used to interview back when I was a journalist with actual access.
He squints at me, at my newborn wrapped in stained blankets, at the blood drying on my thighs, and mutters, “I don’t want trouble, Liora. ”
“Too late,” I say. “I need tech.”
He doesn’t ask what kind. He leads me down a narrow hall littered with junked augments and damaged biomech limbs. The air smells like burnt circuitry and old oil. He digs through crates, tossing parts aside until he finds a palm-sized disc with glowing nodes around the edges.
“Prototype image inducer,” he says. “Experimental. Unstable. Might fry her neural pathways if you use it wrong.”
“I don’t have options,” I answer. And it’s true.
I trade every credit I have. Every last one. I forge the documents myself, fingers shaking over the cracked interface of my hacked comp. It takes hours. It’s imperfect. Illegal. Dangerous.
But by the time I’m done, Pepper Blevins exists.
Human. Unremarkable. Ordinary.
Lie after lie after lie.
Night falls again by the time I return to our new hideout—smaller, darker, quieter. Pepper fusses, her Reaper glow fading beneath the inducer’s soft shimmer. I adjust the settings carefully, terrified of hurting her, terrified of not doing enough.
“You’re safe,” I whisper. “As long as no one ever knows.”
She quiets. Her breath evens. She nuzzles into the curve of my neck, all warmth and soft noises and tiny fingers gripping my collarbone.
The loneliness hits me then.
Hard.
No one is coming to help. No one knows she exists. No one will protect us but me.
The price of her safety is isolation. Total, suffocating isolation.
I pay it willingly.
I hold her tighter.
Because she’s all I have left.
Pepper’s sitting in the middle of the floor with a book she can’t possibly be reading—but she is.
Her tiny finger traces the words, lips moving, tongue catching slightly on multisyllabic ones.
“—and the gal-lax-y was saved by—by the smallest one of all,” she mumbles, then beams up at me like she just recited prophecy.
I blink from the kitchen counter where I’m reprogramming a payroll spreadsheet I don’t actually get paid for. “You’re not supposed to read yet.”
She shrugs. “I can.”
There’s no smugness in it. No showing off. Just fact. That’s the thing about Pepper—she doesn’t know she’s different. Not yet. But the galaxy will. They always do.
Three months old and she holds her head up like a toddler. Talks like one, too. Walked last week. Climbed onto the table this morning while I was in the fresher and tried to hotwire the vacuum droid because, and I quote, “It disrespected me.”
I laugh at that now, quietly, and rake my fingers through my hair. My reflection in the old reflective panel above the stove looks like shit. Bags under my eyes. Skin pale. I lost weight I didn’t have to lose. My body’s never really recovered from the birth. It never had the chance.
Because Reaper biology doesn’t slow down. Doesn’t rest. Doesn’t stop.
And neither can I.
I step into the living space and crouch beside Pepper. “You hungry, bug?”
She nods emphatically. “Bacon and jam.”
I make a face. “Still with the jam?”
“Bacon is salty. Jam makes balance.” She says it like she’s lecturing a student. I let it go.
The kitchen’s stocked on fumes and goodwill.
I’ve made peace with scavenged groceries, knockoff supplements, and weird undercity mushrooms that somehow pass regulation.
But the bigger problem isn’t food. It’s the power cell blinking on her image inducer.
The warning flashes at me every time I adjust the settings: LOW CHARGE. STABILITY AT RISK.
We’ve got a few days, max.
After that?
People will start asking why my beautiful, talkative baby’s eyes flicker red when she cries. Why her skin runs hot and her strength borders on weapon-grade. Why she gets angry and the air changes, and light bulbs burst from proximity.
I move fast through our makeshift breakfast. She eats like she’s been starved a week—shoving bacon and toast and fruit cubes into her mouth with both hands, humming while she chews.
Every time I look at her, I ache with love and panic in equal measure.
I’d do anything for her. Burn the world. Sell it, if I have to.
Which is probably why I don’t slam the door in the exec’s face when he shows up three hours later.
He looks completely out of place—shiny boots, tailored jacket, augmented smile.
I can smell the cologne from behind the security chain.
“Miss Rin,” he says, already leaning into charm mode.
“First of all, thrilled you’re alive. The studio’s been trying to find you for months. I’m Dalt Vens. Planetary Pictures.”
I narrow my eyes. “No thank you.”
“I haven’t said anything yet.”
“You’re going to offer me something I don’t want.”
He grins. “A chance to tell your story. Control the narrative. HoloNet rumors are already painting wild versions of what happened in the Maze—cult infiltration, off-world espionage, even psychic warfare.”
I snort. “Not psychic warfare.”
“But wouldn’t it be great if it was?” he says with a wink.
I start to close the door.
“Wait—wait. Just listen. One holo-film. You write it, star in it, tell it the way you lived it. We’ll keep you in creative control. Think of it as reclaiming the truth.”
“I’m not an actress,” I snap. “I’m not a writer. I’m a—”
And that’s where my voice catches. Because I don’t know what I am anymore.
Behind me, Pepper toddles into view, blinking up at the stranger with half her bacon still in one hand. The sight of her sends a spike of anxiety straight through my chest. Her eyes are dull brown under the inducer—but her posture, her focus, her stillness? All Reaper.
Dalt glances at her. “Cute kid.”
“Not for sale.”
He lifts his hands. “Gods, no. I’m not here for a family drama. I just want you. The Maze. The truth. It’s good holo. Powerful. Marketable.”
I close the door slowly.
Lock it.
Then press my forehead to the steel and let my breath shudder out.
I turn around.
My eyes land on the counter, where the bills are stacked like judgment. Past due notices. Power usage red-flagged. IHC inquiries about the forged ID work I’ve done to keep Pepper’s health records legal.
I shuffle to the couch and sit. Pepper climbs up next to me and tucks herself against my side like she can feel how heavy the moment is.
“I know you don’t understand yet,” I murmur into her hair, “but I can’t keep hiding you like this forever. The world’s gonna want answers. They’re gonna want blood.”
She makes a tiny noise and curls into me tighter.
The blinking red on her image inducer pulses in the corner of my eye.
And just like that, the decision’s made. Not because I want to. But because I have to.
I reach for my comm and call the number Dalt left on the flier he tried to pass through the crack in the door.
He picks up immediately. “Miss Rin—”
“I’ll do it,” I say.
A beat of silence.
“Fantastic. You won’t regret this.”
“I better not,” I whisper, mostly to myself.
Because I’m not doing it for fame. Not for money. Not even for revenge.
I’m doing it because my daughter has a future I’m going to drag into existence with my bare goddamn hands if I have to.
And if I’ve got to sell the truth of my pain to buy her safety?
So be it.