Chapter 38
MAUG
The IHC arrives like a storm that forgot how to thunder.
No explosions. No sirens.
Just silence—and then the sound of boots.
Heavy, sharp, rehearsed.
They spill into the station days after the song dies, too late to save anyone, too early to know what they’re walking into. The emergency response team wears full armor, visors down, weapons humming. They come with scans and suspicion, fingers twitching near triggers the moment they see me.
They don’t speak at first.
They just aim.
A dozen red dots bloom on my chest.
I raise my hands, slow and wide.
Jillian steps between us. “Don’t.”
One of them shouts, “Step away from the creature!”
She doesn’t.
Her spine is straight as a blade. “He’s not the danger here.”
“Ma’am, we will use force—”
“Then you’ll answer to High Command for killing the only reason any of us are still alive.”
That gives them pause.
Weapons don’t lower yet. But they hesitate—the first crack in their certainty.
I feel her fingers brush mine behind her back. Just a whisper of contact. Enough to tether me. To remind me I don’t have to tear the station apart to survive anymore.
They scan the station logs. They speak with the survivors. They test the fungus still smeared across Ciampa’s lab walls and crystallized in storage.
And then… the questions change.
Not “what are you?”
But “what happened?”
Jillian speaks for us.
Clear. Calm. Commanding.
She tells them the truth—every twisted bit of it. The spores. The song. The infection that turned their science mission into a cult hive. She doesn’t spare Ciampa. Doesn’t flinch from describing how far gone he was.
And she tells them about me.
Not the war. Not the charges.
Not the bones I left behind on half-dead moons.
But what I did here.
What I chose.
They listen. Some frown. Some shake their heads. Some look at me like they’re still trying to decide if I’m savior or weapon.
That’s fine.
So am I.
Three days later, I’m in a chair built for someone smaller, sharper, more easily contained.
The tribunal is smaller than I expected. Just four officers, their uniforms still creased from fresh fabricators. Behind them, holo-screens glow with footage from the last week—Ciampa’s madness, the infected collapse, the battle in the crystal chamber.
And Jillian.
Over and over.
Holding the line.
Saving lives.
And holding my hand beneath the table.
The highest-ranking among them, an admiral with snow-white hair and sandpaper eyes, leans forward.
“You could’ve left,” he says. “You had an escape route. A functional starfighter. No legal obligation to intervene. Why didn’t you run?”
I meet his gaze. “Because she didn’t.”
He exhales like he doesn’t want to smile—but does anyway.
“You saved more lives than some of our own ever did,” he says at last. “That’s a hard thing to ignore.”
My claws curl slightly against the chair arm.
Punishment I was ready for.
This?
I don’t know what to do with this.
“You’ll be offered asylum,” he continues. “Formal status. Review board will argue, of course—but the logs, the samples, the survivors… it’s a damn good case.”
I glance sideways.
Jillian squeezes my hand harder.
Not comfort.
Not pity.
Anchoring.
“You don’t have to keep running,” she whispers.
And something inside me cracks.
Not from pain.
From possibility.
I nod.
Once.
I don’t take asylum because I want to hide.
I take it because it means I will be with Jillian. Forever.