Chapter 21 Lyra
lyra
Whispers in the Circuits
Can a bladder actually burst? If so, mine is about to, which will almost certainly give away my hiding place in the grossest, most visceral way I can possibly think of.
I haven’t stretched my legs in two stars-damned days.
My knees are wrecked—my back’s worse. I’m thirsty, and hungry, and filthier than I think I’ve ever been thanks to the layers of sweat mixing with Ooneryx’s desert sand that gets everywhere.
But the worst part is the silence—the kind that isn't empty, but waiting. Listening.
I’ve got to get out of this air duct so I can pee. Pressing my ear to the vent slats, I hear two pairs of footsteps tapping through the corridor below. A conversation filters through—muffled at first, but rising. I freeze, breath held and bladder throbbing.
“He’s still puking his guts out, but is adamant the auction goes ahead.
He’s confident Phoenix is still here in the compound and it’s only a matter of time before she’s found,” one voice says.
It’s not a Void Stalker, by the lack of guttural clip to the tone, but I can tell it’s another male guard.
Tension leeches out between the tight words and bitten out responses.
There’s a pregnant pause, followed by the other guard’s reply.
“Ah. I thought he’d cancel, the state he’s in.”
“He’s furious—absolutely livid. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him so angry. He said whoever finds the hybrid gets a million credits. And for those of us who don’t find her, he’ll kill one out of every ten.”
My stomach knots. That would certainly motivate me, if I were a nefarious henchman or evil-leaning mercenary. The carrot? A million credits. The stick? Likely disembowelment, decapitation, or defenestration. Damn, so many disturbing ‘d’ words.
I press both hands to my mouth to stifle my panting breaths. My heart's beating so loud I'm sure they'll hear it. My vellia and the alcohol worked well enough to give me a head start, but even though Brill is weak, sick, and probably hallucinating, he’s not down for the count—not by a long shot.
Stupid, stubborn, hard-to-kill asshole!
The duct metal creaks under me. I go still. I’ve only slipped out twice—once to drink condensation from a cracked coolant pipe, which, disgusting, and again to snag half a nutrient bar off a janitor’s cart. I only move when I’m starving or about to burst. Everything else, I endure.
I know if I’m seen, I’m screwed. Or worse. All those ‘d’ words—definitely worse.
I wait until the guards’ voices fade. I count to two hundred.
Only then do I crawl back to the junction where the air duct hides a broken maintenance panel I pried open last night.
I shimmy out, legs numb, body trembling, radiating misery.
The walls down here are old, as if this entire section of the maintenance floors has been forgotten.
Blessedly, there’s a blocked off restroom at the end of the floor and I’m able to relieve myself before exploring a little more.
It’s the only reason I find the old server room—the one they used before the last renovation.
Most of the equipment is rust-eaten, choked with sand, or damaged by time’s inevitability.
There are dusty terminals, fractured holo-screens, even a few broken-down service droids.
Everything seems to be half-dead, but in the grim, dusty quiet of the space, a faint green light pulses from behind one of the consoles.
Ah ha! Not all the way dead.
I cross to the console and pull out a nearly ancient transceiver. Obsolete. Outdated. But not broken.
Hope hits me like a blade in the chest. It almost hurts worse than the hunger.
I drop to my knees and get to work.
After I splice open the old transceiver and scrape corrosion from the chip housing with the edge of a broken circuit board, I can barely hold the tools steady.
It’s not from fear, I don’t think. From hunger, maybe.
Or perhaps from the constant weight pressing into my chest because my chance of escape is shrinking by the hour.
But mostly because I keep thinking of Orion.
Of the way he looked in the landing bay of the Hephaestus, golden light bleeding over his broad shoulders and handsome face twisted in panic and despair.
Of the quiet comfort of his presence—how he'd sit across from me during our nights on the Aldrin-136, reading my old romance novels because I had little else to offer, while I perused my father’s journals.
Not asking, not judging—okay, maybe a little judging—but mostly just being there.
Of the way he reached for me in bed, not with hunger, but with gentleness, as if even my wreckage was something he wanted to hold.
I never wanted to pull him into this. He had a path, a purpose, something so noble I don’t think I’ll ever have the capacity to understand. I don’t know what he saw in me. I only know that being near him made me want to see it, too.
But I don’t get to have people like that. I don’t get to keep good things. The galaxy doesn’t hand those out to people like me. I destroy everything I hold too closely. It's what I was made for—damage, not devotion. Velusians are forbidden to love. Maybe my problem is that I’m only half Velusian.
The transceiver blinks—faint, fluttering, but alive.
A spark jumps from the board and kisses my knuckle, but I barely feel it. I press my ear close, adjusting the dial and rerouting through an old smuggler satband, then bouncing off a low-orbit relay that should've gone dead three cycles ago.
Please, please, please, please.
My fingers move on muscle memory and desperation, patching together a makeshift call into the unfeeling, lonely void of space.
“Hephaestus,” I whisper, lips brushing the receiver. “Come in, Hephaestus. Evie, please—tell me you’re still up. Tell me you’re receiving.”
For a moment, nothing but static. Then—like the voice of a dream cracking through lonely silence…
“Pinky Pie?”
My breath catches. Her voice hits me like a high-velocity re-entry, and tears well in my eyes before I can stop them. Get ahold of yourself, Lyra!
“Holy hell, you’re alive. You sound—stars, where are you?” Evie’s worried tone only makes me want to cry harder.
“Brill’s compound,” I croak, my voice raw from disuse. “Out on Ooneryx. I'm stuck. He’s planning to sell me.”
“Oh, Lyra…I can’t get to you,” she says, sharp regret lacing every word.
“When the Void Stalkers left our ship, they tagged the rest of our cruisers. I think Orion got out on the only one they missed. As soon as we try to make a jump and get you, they’d trace us straight to you.
We’re stuck out here about as useful as a screen door on a submarine.
But—wait—I can get you to someone. Hold on. ”
I hold on like I’m dangling over the edge of a cliff, and there are agonies of sharp rocks and toothy predators lurking below.
There’s a click. Then another, followed by silence. Then—
Identity confirmed, says the voice I thought I extinguished. My heart leaps up into my throat, choking me with emotion. Tears form so quickly, it makes my eyeballs ache.
“Ada?” I whisper, breathless.
Lyra. How can I assist you?
I squeeze my eyes shut, tears sliding down the bridge of my nose and falling soundless onto the console.
“I thought—after the Yanvin Protocol—I thought you were gone,” I blubber, trying to keep my voice down, but it comes out as an emotion-choked shrill hiss.
Orion uploaded me to Evie’s cruiser. He would have been unable to find his way to Epsilon-6 and Agent Vega without doing so. I suspected you wouldn’t consider this before enacting the Yanvin Protocol. Fortunately, he was able to preserve our data in time.
Orion.
I grip the receiver like it’s the only real thing left in the world. “He’s with you?”
Yes.
My lungs seize. A sob punches through my ribs like a piston.
“Put him on,” I say, voice trembling. “Please.”
There’s more static on the line. My pulse thuds against my jaw and through my temples, building upon the ache of stress, dehydration, and exhaustion. It all evaporates in an instant, though, as soon as I hear a familiar deep voice on the other end of the line.
“Lyra?”
It’s not just relief. It’s not even joy. It’s grief, raw and sudden and aching, because I hear him and realize how much I missed him, how much I need him, and how much I don’t think I deserve him.
I curl my filthy, sweat-soaked body around the transceiver like it might help put me back together.
“Orion,” I whisper. “I’m so sorry. I forgot to tell you about how to find Vega—I should’ve helped you out before I erased everything. I wasn’t thinking! I didn’t mean to—”
“I found him,” he says, and that’s all. No lecture. No anger. Just quiet truth, steady as his hands.
“You should be back on Xylothia,” I admonish, my voice watery beneath my tears.
“I couldn’t just leave, Lyra,” he says with a sigh that perfectly encapsulates how doomed and inevitable this was. “I won’t. Not until you tell me to go—and really mean it.”
My face crumples, and it feels like every nerve is raw and singing with pain.
“I drag ruin behind me, Orion. I’m like a parade leader steering supernovas of destruction in my wake! You don’t know what it’s like being me. I don’t know how to be anything else,” I sob, quietly breaking in this room of forgotten, useless things.
“I know exactly what you are,” he insists. “And I’m here. I’m still here.”
There’s silence on my end now, but it’s not empty. It's full of everything I can’t say: the comfort of his breath in my ear, the ache of memory, the way the stars never seemed worth reaching for until he was there beside me in the cockpit, his hand brushing mine in the dark.
“I don’t want to run anymore,” I whisper, the enormity of it sinking into me like a too-big bite of food I’m struggling to swallow.
“Then don’t.”
Ada chimes in, gentle, like a candle lit between us.