Chapter 23 Venom
Venom
Two cycles later
The station smelled sterile. Not clean, not new. Sterile. Scrubbed of identity. Every surface was white, metallic, neutral. No sign of the cruelty it had once harboured. No blood. No bodies. Just silence.
A false kind of peace.
I stood at Clare’s side, our fingers lightly touching. She hadn’t let go of me since we’d stepped off the Bloodstar’s shuttle. Her heart beat steadily through our bond – a soft thrum of nerves, grief, and something stronger.
Resolve.
She didn’t flinch at the sight of the cryopods. She didn’t falter when the first woman was woken. She just spoke to her in the gentlest voice I’d ever heard, told her where she was, what had happened, and that she was safe now.
Safe.
The IA had worked fast. With the help of two more battle cruisers, they’d dismantled the command structure, locked down the game makers and their lackeys, freed the contestants from their cells, and started cataloguing the monsters and contestants still on the planet’s surface.
Most of the perpetrators were in custody.
A few had tried to flee or fight. They hadn’t succeeded.
Justice, at last. Or the beginning of it.
Clare moved to the next pod while Pria and Penny supported a trembling woman behind her.
Fay and Qong were comforting a small group by the wall, helping them sip water, making quiet conversation.
Silus had disappeared into the tech wing with a gleam in his eyes – likely trying to hijack the station’s entertainment system to broadcast his favourite satyr music.
I exhaled.
The Bloodstar crew didn’t just survive. They healed. And now, they were helping others do the same.
“You look like a commander,” a low voice said behind me.
I turned. Vruhag stood with his arms crossed, his stance easy but his gaze watchful.
“I’ve never commanded anyone,” I replied. “Only codes.”
“Same thing, sometimes,” he said. “But you helped win a revolution, Venom. Maybe not with weapons. But with truth.”
I dipped my head in acknowledgement. “It’s not over yet. Not everyone is safe yet. And the game makers need to face justice. They need to pay for what they did.”
“Yes,” he agreed. “But we’ve taken their power. And we’re not giving it back.”
He handed me a datapad. “Commander Lhu wants us to stay.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Stay?”
“Take over management of the station. Convert it into a sanctuary. Somewhere survivors can stay until they’re ready to decide what’s next.
Somewhere we can monitor the region. They’re offering back pay, resources, autonomy.
The game makers’ assets have been liquidated.
The IA is giving us some of those credits to turn this place from one of fear into one of hope. ”
“And the Bloodstar crew?”
“They already voted. Unanimously. They want to stay. Help. Build something better. Now only you and your mate have to decide.”
I looked at Clare across the room, gently holding a newly awakened woman’s hand. Empathy and confidence streamed from her, as bright as a star. She lit up this place. And my hearts.
“I will talk to Clare. It is up to her, but I am willing to stay. At some point, I want to show her my planet, my home, but for now, there is much to do here. I know this station better than any of you. I want to help.”
Vruhag clapped my shoulder, hard enough to nearly stagger me. “Good. Talk to her. And Venom… Get some rest. You deserve it.”
It took me a while to persuade Clare that she deserved a break. Only the promise of showing her my old cabin got her to leave the Peritan females and accompany me away from this part of the station.
We took a lift down three levels. It smelled just as sterile as everything else.
The corridors were quieter here. Most of the rescued women were being kept in the medical wing or the recovery lounge. This wing – the old staff quarters – still smelled of menace and secrets.
“I used to live here,” I said as we passed the locked doors. “During the early rotations of my infiltration.”
Clare followed close, her hand brushing mine. “This is where you worked?”
I nodded. “And where I pretended to be someone I wasn’t. I played my role so well that I got promoted pretty quickly.”
We stopped in front of a black panelled door. I entered the code, surprised that it still worked. They had blocked my access codes for most of the systems, but nobody had expected me to return to my old room.
The lights flickered on.
My quarters were exactly as I’d left them: minimalist, cold, sleek.
The bed was a firm cot against one wall, the desk a sprawl of cables and encrypted terminals.
Data chips were scattered like shrapnel.
The walls were bare, save for a single screen showing security feeds from the station’s lower decks – a relic of paranoia I’d never disabled.
A few weights lay discarded on the floor.
There were no personal effects. No pictures of my family, nothing soft or gentle.
Clare stepped inside and let out a low breath. “It’s… efficient.”
“It’s empty,” I said. “Because I was empty. I built this persona – the cold hacker naga who didn’t care who got hurt, as long as the credits came in. That’s what they needed. That’s who they feared. And so, that’s who I became.”
She walked over to the desk, picked up a small chip between her fingers. “Did it work?”
“Yes,” I said quietly. “But I lost pieces of myself in the process. Or I thought I did. Until I met you.”
She looked at me and her expression softened. “You never were this person with me. You can let go of him now. Those days are over.”
“I don’t want this place to be what it was,” I told her.
“I want to transform it. With you. Turn these corridors into homes. These surveillance rooms into gardens. Make it a place of healing. The IA have offered us to take control of the station. Turn it into a sanctuary for everyone hurt by the Trials.”
Her voice was soft. “You think we can?”
“I think,” I said, stepping toward her, “that we have already started. One room at a time.”
Clare looked around again – the sterile corners, the blinking consoles, the dusty silence.
Then she smiled.
“Let’s do it. Let’s make this place ours.”
Her smile was infectious. With her, I could do this. I didn’t want to live in this cabin ever again, but I could imagine making a home somewhere else on the station. Somewhere with a bigger bed.
Clare wandered to the far side of the room and brushed her fingers over one of the dark panels. “Did you ever think you’d come back here? That you’d survive?”
“No,” I admitted. “There were many cycles when I didn’t expect to make it to the next. But I always had something to hold on to.”
She turned to me, curiosity flickering in her eyes. “Your mission?”
“Not just that.” I hesitated. Then crossed to the desk and reached for a small, recessed panel near the base of the terminal.
A flick of my tail tip revealed a hidden port. My tail was the key to it. Nobody else could access it. The screen hummed to life with a soft blue glow.
Clare stepped beside me as lines of code scrolled across the screen, then dissolved, revealing an image I hadn’t looked at in far too long.
It was a photograph: grainy, natural light, taken in the lush valleys of Serpenthyra.
My family.
My father coiled proudly at the centre, scales a deep obsidian blue.
My mother beside him, her hood flared in laughter, silver-green patterns swirling across her skin.
Behind them, my twin brothers – taller than me, broader, competitive as hell – and my sister, youngest of us all, her tail looped protectively around a nest of glowing moss.
Clare leaned in. “They’re beautiful.”
“They’re my clan,” I said softly. “My family. And now… you are too.”
She looked at me, her expression unreadable for a beat. Then she smiled – small, fierce, and utterly sincere.
“Thank you for showing me,” she said. “I want to know everything about them. About you. About the naga you were before this mission.”
I rested my forehead lightly against hers, breathing her in.
“I will tell you everything,” I whispered. “And one day, once we have erased all the sadness of Kalumbu and replaced it with something better, I will take you to Serpenthyra to meet them.”
Our communicator bands flashed and vibrated at the same time.
>>Meet in the command centre. V.<<
“He needs to start writing his full name,” Clare laughed. “Vruhag and Venom, it’s going to get confusing.”
I grinned at her. “I was here first. And I am the only V for you.”
We headed towards the command centre which was right next to the room I had worked in before I’d been discovered. Full circle.
The command centre hadn’t changed since I’d last stood here while reporting to my superiors – not in structure, at least. But the atmosphere was different. The cold weight of secrets and repression had been replaced by something warmer.
Purpose. Hope. Love.
The entire crew was assembled. Vruhag at the helm, arms crossed, eyes scanning the screens with a kind of calm he hadn’t worn on Kalumbu.
Fay stood at his side, fingers interlaced with his.
Silus lounged at a console, for once not hacking anything – having Pria on his lap would have made that difficult.
Penny and Qong sat close together, their shoulders brushing, golden textured skin and dark hair glowing beneath the artificial lights.
Clare and I stepped in, hand in hand.
Vruhag gave us a nod. “Good timing. The IA just sent final confirmation.”
He tapped the central console, and a crisp, authoritative voice filtered through the speakers – Commander Lhu.
“By decision of the Intergalactic Authority Oversight Council, stewardship of Kalumbu and its orbiting facility is hereby granted to the independent vessel Bloodstar and her crew.
The facility will be registered as a protected sanctuary.
Resources, guards, and quarterly credits will be dispatched effective immediately.
All claims to the planet are suspended under IA law until further reassessment.
“You have done what many thought impossible. You have made Kalumbu more than a battleground. You’ve made it a future.
Let us hope that there will be no second Kalumbu.
We have shown the criminal underworld that their time is numbered.
And while the IA will pursue justice in the courts and undercover, the Bloodstar crew has the authority to help the victims here on the former Kalumbu Station.
One of our strategists has suggested a new name for it.
Beacon. A light in the darkness to guide those who need it to their new home. ”
The message ended with a soft chime.
We all stood in silence.
Then Penny exhaled. “Well… I guess this is home now.”
Clare stepped closer to the viewport, her gaze fixed on the pastel marble of Kalumbu far below. “There’s still so much pain down there. So many ghosts. But maybe… this is how it starts. With people who care.”
“We do care,” I said, curling my tail lightly around her legs. “And we’re not alone anymore.”
Qong spoke up, his voice slow and deliberate. “Maybe Kalumbu isn’t just where we were broken. Maybe it’s where we begin again.”
Vruhag grunted. “Then let’s begin. Together.”
The screen dimmed as the station adjusted orbit, the view of Kalumbu slowly tilting beneath us – glowing with clouds, alive with the promise of change.
Clare leaned against me, warm and solid and full of light. I wrapped her in my arms and rested my chin on her head, before whispering so softly that only she could hear.
“I love you. Now and forever. I never thought I’d have a mate. Didn’t think I deserved one. But then I found you. You were my beacon. The star that guided me back into the light.”
She turned to look up at me, her eyes shining with the same love I felt in my hearts.
“You didn’t need me to guide you. You were already in the light. You are a good person, Venom. You just forgot that for a while.”
Together, we looked down on Kalumbu. The planet that had brought us together. It had given us fear and pain but also hope and joy. A planet wasn’t evil. It was the people who ruled over it.
“Home,” Clare whispered. “This is our home.”
“Yes. And even when we leave here, I will always be home. My home is with you, Clare. You are my mate, now and always.”
“You’re so cheesy,” she laughed, but then she wrapped her hands around my hood and pulled me close. Our lips hovered a breath apart when she whispered what I’d craved her to say.
“But you’re also mine. My mate. Venom.”