Chapter 1
Astra
I sheathe the knife.
The blade slides home with a sound like a promise kept—metal finding the throat of leather, precision honed through years of doing this exact motion until muscle memory makes it sacred. Blue blood streaks my palm. I don't wipe it off. Let the guards see. Let Dexter see what six years bought him.
Control.
The ability to hold a blade to his throat and choose not to finish what his abandonment started.
"Security Chief Venn." Zane's voice cuts through the bay's industrial hum, professional and careful in the way people get when they're pretending not to notice blood. "Thank you for receiving my brother."
Receiving. Like he's cargo. Like I didn't just draw blood from family.
Maybe that's exactly what he is.
"Sir." I don't look at Zane. Keep my eyes on Dexter, on the way his marks are still pulsing along his temples even though his face shows nothing. He's reading me. Tasting the copper-ice frequency I've spent six years perfecting into something that cuts.
Good. Let him feel it. Let him know exactly what he's walking into.
"Dexter will be taking over military operations," Zane continues, and there's something under his words—a question he's not asking, an awareness that the air in this bay is wrong. "You'll need to coordinate on the Vex situation."
Coordinate.
The word sits in my chest like shrapnel.
Dexter's mouth quirks. Not quite a smile. Just the ghost of one, the kind of expression a man makes when he knows the joke is on him and finds it almost funny. "Of course."
His voice. That resonance. The echo living in his chest that all Empri carry, but his sounds different,sharper, harder. The voice that said unable to retrieve while I bled on a station floor and learned what it meant to be a number in someone's equation.
"Miss Venn has built an exceptional security apparatus," Zane says, diplomatic and smooth. "I'm sure you'll find her protocols comprehensive."
I finally look at Zane. Pale ice-blue eyes meet mine, and there's knowledge there. Sympathy I don't want. He knows. Not the details, but enough. His brother and his security chief have history that ended in blood and silence.
He's not going to interfere.
Professional courtesy or strategic calculation, I can't tell. With Torrences, it's always both.
"We'll manage," I say. Flat. The voice I use when I'm done negotiating.
Zane nods. Turns. Walks away toward the bay exit, his dark jacket perfect against the blue-tinted light that makes this station feel like drowning in slow motion.
I'm alone with Dexter.
No. Not alone. His guards are still there, two humans in tactical gear who look at me like they're not sure if I'm a threat or an officer. Both, I want to tell them. Always both.
"Dismissed," Dexter says without looking at them.
They hesitate. Glance at each other.
"Now."
They go.
The bay doors cycle shut behind them, and it's just us in the blue-lit space, standing three meters apart like the distance means anything when he can feel everything I'm feeling if he reaches.
He doesn't reach.
Six years, and he still remembers that about me. What I told him the first time his abilities brushed mine during a combat drill: Don't. Not ever. I'll know if you try.
The restraint should mean nothing. It means everything. It's the only reason he's still breathing.
"Astra." My name in his mouth. He says it like he's tasting it, testing if it still fits. "You're faster than you used to be."
I touch my knife handle. The blade I just sheathed. His blood is drying on my palm, sticky and warm. "I've had time to practice."
"On anyone I know?"
"Three of them."
That lands. His marks flicker, the tell of surprise, of emotion breaking through whatever tactical filter he runs on. "Three."
"Same height as you. Same walk." I step closer. One meter between us now. Close enough to smell him, gun oil and the antiseptic ghost of violence, exactly like I remember. "Wrong face. But close enough."
His jaw tightens. The only visible reaction.
But his marks pulse brighter, just for a second, and I know what he's feeling even without his abilities telling me. Shock. Guilt. Something that might be grief.
Good.
"Did it help?" His voice is quieter now. The question genuine.
"No."
"I didn't think it would."
"Then why ask?"
He meets my eyes. Electric blue to my green. "Because I needed to know what I did to you. What you became because of what I did."
The honesty is a knife I wasn't expecting.
I want to cut him again. Want to see more blue blood. Want to hear him explain in that clipped tactical voice exactly what equation spat out leave her as the optimal solution.
Instead, I turn. Walk toward the bay exit. "We have a briefing in thirty minutes. Don't be late."
"Astra—"
"Security Chief Venn." I don't stop walking. "On station, that's what you call me."
Behind me, silence. The kind that presses against your spine. The kind that says he's not done, that this conversation is paused, not finished.
I don't look back.
Looking back six years ago is what got me here.
My office is exactly how I left it this morning. Screens showing every corridor, every junction, every vulnerable point. The security hub hums with data streams and surveillance feeds, and it's mine. Every system, every protocol, every invisible wire holding this station safe.
I built this.
After Sigma-9. After the interrogation rooms and the surgeries and the moment I looked at my reflection and understood that the woman Dexter left had died in that station whether my body survived or not.
I became something else. Something useful. Something Zane Torrence hired three years ago when he was still just the heir, still trying to escape his father's shadow, still believing control meant safety.
We understand each other.
We both know what it is to be left. His mother. My team. Different circumstances, same wound, abandonment by people who should have chosen differently.
My console chimes.
Zane's message sits there, blinking priority red.
The Vex have a new operative in-system. Intelligence suggests connections to the Sigma-9 incident. You and Dexter will investigate. Together.
Together.
I read it three times. The words don't change.
Sigma-9. The mission that killed Holt and Vasquez and the woman I used to be. The ambush that came from inside, from someone who sold our coordinates for reasons I never learned.
Someone who might be back.
And I'm supposed to hunt them with the man who left me there.
I should refuse. Tell Zane to find someone else, that my history with Dexter compromises professional judgment, that putting us in the same room is a liability waiting to detonate.
I don't.
Because whoever sold Sigma-9 is mine. Has been mine for six years, every night I couldn't sleep, every time I checked a corridor three times because once wasn't enough, every moment I remembered Holt's last transmission and Vasquez going down covering our retreat.
I'm not delegating this.
Not to anyone. Not for anything.
The door chimes.
I know who it is before I check the camera. The timing is too perfect, the station cycle too predictable. Zane promised thirty minutes. Dexter's giving me ten.
Testing. Seeing how far the blade goes.
"Come in."
The door opens. He fills the frame, not as tall as his brother but broader, the build of someone who spent years in variable gravity warfare. Still in his arrival clothes, dark tactical jacket with the faint shimmer of woven armor catching the blue light.
The blood on his throat is a thin line now. Already healing. Empri physiology recovers faster than human. Another advantage they've got, another reason the galaxy fears them.
I wanted that cut to scar.
"You could have sent a message." I don't look up from my screens.
"I could have."
"But you're here."
"I'm here."
The silence stretches. I count it. Five seconds. Ten. Fifteen.
He breaks first.
"I read Zane's orders. Sigma-9." He moves into the room, and I track him on the peripheral feeds even though I'm not looking directly. Old habit. Always know where the threat is. "I didn't know. That the operative might be connected."
"You weren't supposed to know." I finally look at him. "That's classified intelligence. Above your clearance until about—" I check my terminal. "—eight minutes ago when Zane updated your access."
"He moves fast."
"He has to. The station's vulnerable. The Vex know it. Everyone knows it." My fingers move across the keyboard, pulling up the file I've been building since the first whisper hit my network. "Malachar's disappearance left holes. We're still patching them."
Dexter moves closer. Stops at the edge of my desk. Professional distance, barely.
"Show me."
I should make him wait. Make him ask properly, make him remember that he's not in command here, that this is my territory and he's the one who needs to prove he can be trusted on it.
I pull up the file instead.
Because I'm professional. Because the mission matters more than my feelings.
Because I learned that lesson from him, didn't I?
The screen fills with data. Surveillance captures. Movement patterns. The ghost of someone operating on the edges of our sensors, someone who knows Torrence protocols too well.
"Three sightings in two weeks," I say. Clinical. The voice I use when I'm briefing threats instead of facing them. "Always near secondary systems. Communications. Navigation logs. Life support backups."
"Sabotage targets."
"Or intelligence gathering." I zoom in on the last capture. Blurry. Partial. Just enough to confirm someone was there. "They're good. Better than good. Military training. Possibly ours."
His marks pulse brighter. I don't need abilities to know what that means. Recognition. Suspicion. The tactical part of his brain spinning up.
"You think it's someone from the unit."
Not a question.