Chapter 3
ARIA
Iyank the neural band off my forehead hard enough to snap the leads. Sparks jump across my peripheral vision like angry stars. My skin itches from the static, from him. I can still feel his mind brushing against mine—wild, pulsing, untamed—like a jungle storm with no horizon.
“Dammit,” I mutter, flexing my fingers to get the residual tingle out.
Naull, lounging in his harness like this is some kind of spa day, raises one brow ridge. “That bad, huh?”
“Worse,” I bite, dragging air into my lungs like it might burn out whatever's still buzzing through me. “It’s like trying to sync with a collapsing sun.”
He snorts. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“Don’t.”
The chamber stinks of recycled air and warm metal, that fake sterile-clean smell overlaying the copper bite of old electronics.
The Meld interface pulses weakly between us—soft blue glimmers like a heartbeat stuttering in real-time.
I hate it. Hate how close we have to sit.
Hate the way my knees bump against his because the engineers who designed this monstrosity apparently thought “professional” meant “practically straddling your partner.”
My palms are damp. My brain's still fizzing from the crash of his thoughts into mine. He thinks in color and heat and blunt-force instincts. There’s no edges, no structure, no logic. It’s... maddening.
It’s intoxicating.
“Can we take this seriously, please?” I snap.
Naull sits up slightly, that lazy posture slipping into something just shy of focused. “You think I’m not?”
“You joke. You posture. You act like this is a game—”
“I act like I’ve survived, Aria. That’s different.”
His tone isn’t sharp, but it lands like a gut punch. I look away, jaw tight.
He’s not wrong.
He’s just... him. And that’s the problem.
I wipe sweat from my upper lip and reattach the neural band. The metal is cold. It stings against my skin.
“I need quiet,” I murmur. “Your thoughts—”
“Too loud, yeah. I heard.”
“No, not just loud. Saturated. You don’t just think, you feel everything. Like a damn emotional monsoon.”
His chuckle rumbles low. “Poetic.”
“Distracting,” I correct.
He watches me, golden eyes too steady. “You ever tried letting go?”
I blink. “Excuse me?”
“Just—what if, instead of trying to control every single synapse, you just... didn’t.”
“Is that how you operate your brain?” I ask, dry as Rhavadaz sand. “Just let it run around screaming and breaking things?”
“Exactly,” he grins. “Look how far it’s gotten me.”
“Two warnings, a near demotion, and a personalized ‘Do Not Touch’ sign on the reactor core,” I deadpan.
He shrugs. “Still breathing.”
I shake my head and look back at the interface. I should be focusing. The simulation clock is running. We’ve got under forty-eight hours before the recon run into Kaiju Nine and we still can’t get past the first Meld threshold.
I need to be better.
Smarter.
Colder.
“I’m initializing again,” I say, fingers steady on the haptic controls. “Try not to think about punching anything.”
“No promises.”
The system pulses to life. I close my eyes and brace.
It starts as a whisper—always does. Neural static. The AI reaches out, linking our bio-signatures, calibrating for compatibility.
Then it surges.
Naull slams into my consciousness like a tidal wave made of fire and laughing adrenaline. His emotions don’t filter. There’s no barrier. I feel the burn of his impatience, the kinetic buzz of his boredom, the sharp pang of something like... admiration?
I try to breathe through it. Try to anchor.
Focus.
Structure.
But then something shifts.
A memory.
Not mine. His.
A desert ridge. Sky the color of bruises. Blood on his claws. Someone’s voice—female, Vakutan—screaming his name across static. A mech half-buried in sand. A death he couldn't stop.
I jerk back again.
Pain stabs through my temple like ice.
The sync breaks. Harsh. Violent.
I rip the band off, gasping. “What the hell—?”
Naull’s staring at me, his chest heaving.
“You saw that?” he asks, low.
I nod, heart hammering.
He doesn’t speak for a long moment. Then: “She was my sister.”
My breath catches. “I didn’t— I’m sorry.”
“First Meld attempt. She and I were paired back home. Thought we had it down. But we weren’t... compatible.”
I look at him then, really look. The grin’s gone. The bravado’s stripped down to something raw and vulnerable.
“She died in the cockpit,” he says. “Burned before they could pull her out. We were still connected.”
“Oh my god.”
He shrugs, but the motion’s stiff. “It’s why I don’t like slowing down. Thinking too much. That’s when things go wrong.”
My voice is barely above a whisper. “And yet you agreed to do this again?”
“With you?” he says, giving me a crooked smile. “Worth the risk.”
There it is again. That pull. The thing I keep pretending isn’t there.
I swallow hard. “You shouldn’t say things like that.”
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t know what to do with it.”
He leans in, not close enough to touch, but enough that I feel the heat rolling off him. “You don’t have to do anything. Just... let me in.”
“I’m trying.”
“I know. That’s why it’s working.”
I blink at him.
He points at the console. The Meld interface is still faintly pulsing—green. Not red. Not dead. Just weak. But stable.
A test sync. Partial. Enough to function in controlled sim.
“I didn’t shut you out,” I whisper.
He grins. “Told you. Worth the risk.”
I sit back, suddenly exhausted.
The chamber feels different now. Not warm, not cold—just charged. Like the air’s holding its breath.
“Aria,” he says, softer now. “I’ll keep trying if you do.”
Something knots up in my throat.
I nod.
The fourth Meld test ends with me yanking the interface cables off so fast they spark against the console. The lights above flicker, and I barely stop myself from slamming my fists into the bulkhead. I can taste ozone and the burn of frustration in the back of my throat.
“This is pointless,” I say, shoving back from the control harness.
Naull doesn't even flinch. He’s sitting there, sweaty and shirtless again—because of course he is—arms folded, golden eyes watching me like I’m a puzzle he’s half solved and doesn’t mind taking the rest of his life to figure out.
“I’ve had better syncs with a wet data cable,” I mutter.
“Give it a break, sparks,” he says, voice low and maddeningly calm. “You’re thinking too hard.”
“Gee,” I snap, “maybe that’s because I’m the only one thinking.”
He snorts. “That supposed to be an insult?”
I drag a hand through my hair and pace the narrow simulator chamber, boots thudding against the deck.
I can feel the sweat drying on the back of my neck, feel the way my nerves buzz like frayed wires.
It's not just fatigue. It's something deeper.
Something tangled in the base of my spine and the pit of my chest.
Naull shifts behind me, and I hear the creak of the pilot rig adjusting to his weight. “You keep acting like the Meld is a math problem. But it’s not. You don’t solve it. You feel it.”
I spin around. “I don’t feel it, Naull. That’s the problem.”
“Bullshit.”
“No—” I shove my palm against the console. “I can’t just shut my eyes and let someone rummage around in my head, okay? That’s not how I work.”
Naull stands. All seven feet and change of red-scaled heat and motion. He steps toward me, and I can smell the salt on his skin, the sharp metal tang of stress-sweat and burning circuits. He doesn’t crowd me, not quite, but he’s there. Fully. Inescapably.
“I’m not rummaging,” he says. “I’m knocking.”
“That’s not better.”
“It is if you’d open the damn door.”
Something raw rises in my chest. “You don’t get it.”
“Then help me get it,” he says, voice rising. “Explain it. Scream it. Hit me, I don’t care—but don’t shut down. Don’t just sit there behind your perfect little wall and pretend this doesn’t matter.”
I feel the words before I speak them, like a pressure behind my teeth.
“I don’t know how to trust people.”
The silence that follows swallows the room whole.
Naull’s expression shifts. It’s not pity. Not surprise. Just... something very still. Very quiet.
I go on, because I can’t stop now.
“I was thirteen when my dad left. Said he was off-planet for work. Never came back. My mom never talked about it. Just... shoved it under the rug like it was dust. My first partner in training sold my prototype to Nexxus to pay off gambling debts. My last relationship ended with him hacking into my personal logs to accuse me of cheating on him with a mentor AI.”
Naull blinks. “Wait, was it a sexy AI?”
“Naull—”
“Okay, sorry. Bad joke. I’m listening.”
I fold my arms tight. My voice is shaking, but I force the rest out.
“I stopped letting people in because every time I did, they turned into ghosts. Or knives. Or both.”
His jaw tightens. “Then why me?”
I hesitate. My throat goes tight.
“Because I can’t shut you out.”
He exhales slowly. Like the wind’s been knocked out of him, but he’s trying not to show it.
“That a compliment or a confession?” he asks.
“I don’t know,” I whisper.
We stand there, the two of us wrapped in this awful, buzzing stillness. The sim lights pulse low and steady. The AI hasn't reset yet. It’s just us. Just breath and heat and static.
“You keep saying you don’t feel it,” Naull says finally, softer now. “But I think you do. I think it scares the hell out of you, so you’re labeling it wrong. Repressing it. Making it manageable.”
I flinch. “I don’t repress.”
“Aria.” He steps in, closer this time. Close enough that I feel his presence like a magnetic field. “You hide behind logic like it’s armor. And it is—I get that. But the Meld isn’t something you fight into submission. It’s not a machine. It’s a dance.”
“A dance?”
His mouth quirks. “Yeah. Messy, unpredictable, hot as hell if you’re doing it right.”
I hate how much I want to smile.
I hate even more that I do.
“I don’t dance.”
“Then learn.”
I meet his eyes. The grin is there, sure, but underneath it... there's weight. History. That memory I felt yesterday—his sister, the fire, the guilt—it’s still there. Still real.
He’s letting me see it.
And maybe that’s the secret. The opening. He’s not asking me to be perfect. Just to try.
I close my eyes.
“Okay,” I say, voice barely audible.
He tilts his head. “Okay what?”
“One more try.”