Chapter 15
ARIA
Iwake to white lights. Not the storms of Rhavadaz. Not the thunder of battle. Just sterile, humming white.
My body is heavy in a way that doesn’t make sense.
Limbs like they’re glued to the mattress, monitors beeping slow and steady, as though I’m a ship stuck in dock, torn and waiting.
I try to move—just a finger. But my arm won’t respond fast enough. The IV line beneath my skin tugs at my wrist. I pull at it reflexively. The tube rips. The alarm blares. I blink, hard, and the world tilts.
Voices rush in.
Soft. Scolding. Concerned.
Someone presses a mask over my mouth. Fear swells inside me—separate from pain.
Pain I know. This fear is unfamiliar. Hollow.
And then I remember.
The explosion.
The Titan.
The scream.
Naull.
Whiplash.
And me… alone.
“Aria Sanchez, you are sedated. Please remain calm.”
But I’m anything but calm.
They found me hours later—lost in the dunes, burned, bleeding, whispering his name. Replayed it in my mind until it tasted like ashes, until I feared the letters would crack and fall away.
“He flatlined,” someone told me.
“…on arrival.”
“…code green delayed extraction.”
The words fell like stones in a pit of light.
Naull’s vitals had flatlined. The base counted casualties, but I counted hope.
And where others found defeat, I found something else—something dark, and quiet, and unbelievably alive.
I heard his voice. More than the wreck. More than the alarm. Inside the Meld-space we shared, I felt him. Felt him pulled into something bigger, deeper.
I felt us break and then… not break.
And in that frustration, he lived.
Weeks pass.
I’m sedated, wracked with pain, stitched.
The medics probe. The specialists speak in hollow tones I refuse to swallow.
“Brain dead.”
“Non-responsive.”
“Life support.”
“The miracle is survival.”
The body is a husk they keep alive because of paperwork or hope or fate—they won’t tell which.
But I know.
I feel.
My fingers twitch, reaching for air he should be breathing. My dreams—when I dare sleep—are full of violet lightning, acid wind, his name echoing. I wake soaked in sweat, heart pounding at the memory of his voice whispering Aria… inside that meltdown.
One morning, when the white lights hurt less, I’m wheeled into a small room. A monitor hovers above him. His chest rises with the machine. Skin pale. Bruised. The scar on his chest, near his collarbone, still visible.
I sit beside him. Take his hand in mine. I don’t whisper first. I let the beeping fill the space between us. It’s a surrender to the moment I never thought I’d face: him, quiet. Still. Between worlds.
“You were real,” I whisper. “Even if you never wake up.”
The words tremble out of me. Not because I doubt them. Because they’re too big. Too final.
He doesn’t respond.
Cannot.
But the warmth of his hand against mine is enough for now.
A tremor goes through the monitor leads. I blink. Hope flares then dims.
Maybe I imagined it.
My orders arrive.
Reassignment. Return to Earth.
New posting.
Not here.
Not with this bed, this body, this broken silence.
I pack in quiet. No arguments. No tears.
They expect tears. I give them only the hollow ache of goodbye.
Before I leave, I return to his side. The room is dim, night lights now instead of blaze. I sit in a chair so familiar it feels like I’ve been sleeping in it for days.
He looks smaller now—or maybe I look bigger because I’m full of memories. The helmet he left on the table. The moccasin boots scuffed at the toes. His tools, laid out like he hopped away for coffee.
I lean forward. I press my lips to his temple.
I leave the chair. I leave the room.
The corridor smells of antiseptic and stale air.
The world is moving on. The base is moving on.
I walk out into the corridor, helmet under arm, boots echoing on the metal floor.
And I carry the storm with me.
The desert. The creature. The explosion.
The way his voice sounded inside the Meld—my name—with reverence.
I don’t know if I’ll ever see him awake again.
I don’t know if this is the end of us.
But this?
This is real.