9. Nyra
NYRA
I’ve paced the length of this room forty times, and my boots are starting to wear a path into the black stone. No matter how fast I move, the silence in here remains absolute, swallowing every thought of escape. Every click of my heel reminds me exactly where I am: buried in Virex Prime’s guts.
Every click develops into a reminder of what I’m missing.
My kit, my suit, and K-Seven are still four decks up, locked behind a mag-shield in the Sector Seven suite.
The thought of my drone sitting alone in the dark, its personality chip probably looping in confusion, makes the walls of this new cage feel even tighter.
For two days, I’ve lived in this windowless vault, sensing the ship’s primary reactor thrum through the deck beneath.
Opulence fails to hide the cage holding me.
The walls are too thick, the ceiling too high, and the air too clean.
It smells like filtered oxygen and ozone, lacking the comforting scent of grease and recycled sweat that defines the Harrow.
I reach the heavy door and trace the seam with my fingernail, searching for a flaw, a gap, a microscopic dent that I might exploit.
There is nothing. No keypad, no biometric scanner, no visible wiring.
Just a smooth expanse of dark alloy that responds only to the giant who claims to own me.
"You can't keep me here," I mutter to the silence.
The ship releases a heavy, oscillating note.
It feels like an apology, or perhaps a warning.
Over the last forty-eight hours, Draevik tries to manage me like a faulty piece of hardware.
He treats me like a component to be calibrated.
After the first day staring at four walls, I made it clear the tasteless nutrient blocks were beneath me.
No screaming—just sarcasm sharp enough to leave a mark.
He processed the complaint with cold, mechanical detachment.
Instead of the blocks, he started bringing me actual food—thick, synthetic stews that taste vaguely of reconstituted root vegetables.
It takes a moment to wrap my head around the fact that I am eating a meal produced by a ship that has been dead to the galaxy for a millennium.
But Virex Prime doesn't keep a traditional larder.
Its nutrient vats are locked within hyper-advanced, stasis fields, preserving the base organic materials in perfect, timeless suspension.
The second the ship's grid came back online, those fields dropped, ready to synthesize hot, rich proteins on demand without a single molecule degrading.
It's incredibly bland, but I force myself to eat every bite simply to stockpile calories for an escape.
His actions stem from his combat matrix, which demands his 'marker' operate at maximum biological output, rather than any genuine kindness.
He also left a stack of ancient, heavy-bound Hegemony tactical logs and planetary surveys near the sleeping dais.
He drowns me in raw data to keep my hands busy and to keep me off his walls.
I see only tools—books heavy enough to break a hinge.
Since the first night in the Sanctum, he has gone without armor.
Deep in the ship, Virex Prime’s own pulse hangs thick through the space, and the armor likely interferes with the way the marker on his chest synchronizes with the vessel’s primary systems. In here, he needs no shell; he is the heart of the ship itself.
Seeing him without those obsidian plates was a shock I’m still navigating.
He spends most of his time at the massive central console, his back away from me, his broad shoulders hunching over data streams. Without the armor, he’s wearing a simple, dark tunic made of a fabric that looks like liquid slate.
It’s tight across his back, showing the ripple of muscle every time he moves his arms.
His skin displays a map of brilliant veins, far too real and far too close.
When he isn't working, he sits on the rim of his own dais and watches me with those eyes—deep amber with that banked, restless red heat swirling beneath the surface. He treats me like a guest he’s afraid will break the furniture, but the lack of a viewport tells the real story.
He thinks providing for me will make me forget that I’m a prisoner.
He’s wrong. I am a scavenger. I survive in the cracks of the universe, and I am going to tear this vault open.
I glance toward the far end of the room. Empty. Draevik left twenty minutes ago, his heavy footsteps fading toward the bridge. This is the window I’ve been waiting for. I move to the sleeping dais and reach under the heavy, charcoal silks, my fingers brushing against the cold stone beneath.
Pulling out my stash reveals my inner magpie; over the last two days, I've stolen everything not bolted down.
Among the treasures: a heavy-duty grooming blade from the refresher, a loose copper filament from a discarded light housing, and a magnetized calibration tool Draevik absentmindedly left on a side table.
He likely assumes a “primitive” human lacks the technical mind to use his own diagnostic gear against him.
My pulse comes out as a frantic drumbeat as I head toward the secondary maintenance panel I spotted yesterday.
It’s hidden behind a decorative pillar, a small seam in the stone that looks like part of the design.
If I can just bridge the primary lock and the internal sensor, I might be able to trick the door into thinking Draevik is standing right there.
"Focus, Nyx. You’ve hot-wired freighters held together by luck and spite. This is just a larger scale," I coach myself, my hands trembling as I pop the panel cover with the calibration tool.
The wiring inside is alien, bright with a soft, bioluminescent blue liquid instead of standard copper.
It’s beautiful and terrifying, a network of living veins that twitch in time with the ship’s engines.
I use the glass cutter to shave back the insulation on the main intake, my body held rigid with strain.
Straining my eyes in the dim violet light, I spend what feels like hours working, utilizing every detail I've cataloged over the last forty-eight hours, and memorizing the light patterns of the door every time he enters or leaves. I’ve mapped the sequence.
Blue-white for identification, amber for verification, and then the deep violet of the mag-lock releasing.
I jam the magnetized tool into the sensor array, forcing the lights to jump from blue to amber. The panel sparks, a sharp tang of ozone filling the air, making my eyes water.
Sweat drips down my neck, stinging my eyes. "Yes! Come on, you big beautiful beast, open up."
I bypass the final safety loop, my fingers flying as I connect the copper filament to the bypass lead.
I feel the shift in the air pressure, the subtle click of the heavy magnets preparing to disengage.
Freedom is only seconds away. I can almost taste the stale air of the corridors.
I have one hand on the filament and the other on the bypass lead. If I just?—
The room snaps to a blinding, angry crimson. The consoles around the room scream a high-pitched alarm that sets my teeth on edge.
"No, no! Shut up!" I shriek, frantically trying to pull the wires back, but the system has already locked me out.
The main entrance cycles open with a thunderclap, heavy alloy plates sliding back with a violence that shakes the floor.
Draevik storms in.
He still wears no armor. He’s in that dark tunic, his massive arms bare, flashing with a violent, restless intensity.
His skin’s light is no longer a consistent glow; it’s a flickering fire, casting long, terrifying shadows against the walls.
He looms over me, playing the apex predator confronting a thief in its den.
"What have you done?" he demands, the sheer volume of it quaking the air in my lungs and rattling the very panel I was trying to hack.
I stand my ground in front of the mangled panel, the stolen tools clutched in my hands like weapons. My hair sits on my head in a mess, my face smudged with soot from the sparks, and my body trembles with a mixture of fear and pure, unadulterated rage.
"I’m leaving, Draevik! I told you! I’m not staying in your vault!"
He’s across the room in a blur of motion. Before I can drop the glass cutter, he’s on me. He slams his hands onto the wall on either side of my head, pinning me against the pillar.
The heat coming off him is staggering. Without the barrier of his cold armor, his body’s sheer, overwhelming power washes over me.
He’s solid muscle and radiating warmth, his chest broad enough to block out the entire room.
He smells like iron and ozone and something deep and masculine that makes my head swim.
He leans down until our noses almost touch. "You risk the integrity of the ship for a futile escape?"
His eyes are swirling nebulae of deep crimson and amber, and I observe the shimmering patterns of the mark on his own chest radiating through the thin fabric of his tunic.
Without the armor, he’s even more terrifying, because he’s real.
He’s warm. He’s alive. I can see the texture of his skin, the slight roughness of his jaw, and the way his pupils are blown wide with fury.
"It’s only futile if I stop trying!" I refuse to let the proximity break me. I drop the tools, the clatter of metal against stone echoing in the tense silence. I put my hands flat against his chest, curling my fingers into the fabric of his shirt.
His skin is like heated velvet under the cloth. His hearts pound—two separate, commanding rhythms—trying to keep pace with my own racing pulse.
"Move, you giant oversized paperweight," I quip breathlessly. "You’re out of your mind if you think I’m a trophy or something you just collect and put on a shelf in your pretty black room. I have cabin fever, Draevik! I'm losing my mind in here!"