Chapter 7 #2
The inducer’s passive scan has already recorded biometric data from all three attackers—heat signatures, gait patterns, facial angles.
If any of them upload a single frame to their primitive data-hive—what they call the internet—I’ll intercept, scrub, and replace it with footage of someone else entirely.
A weather balloon, maybe. A raccoon in a trench coat.
Earthlings are alarmingly easy to distract when conspiracy is a possibility.
Back at 209 Prairie Lily Court, the porch creaks under my step.
The solar panel I jury-rigged over the garage still pulses with a faint green glow, drawing minimal suspicion thanks to a cleverly-placed wind chime and a hanging fern.
I swipe my hand across the fake wood panel, and the biometric seal disengages.
The garage door opens like a maw.
Inside, it’s a warzone of wires and salvage.
I’ve gutted the interior—shelving dismantled, drywall punctured for sensor grids, floor tiles peeled up to make room for power conduits.
A thin ripple of stealth shielding activates along the garage walls, just enough to suppress electromagnetic emissions.
Anyone running a scan will read it as an old washing machine and a stack of paint cans.
“Definitely not OSHA compliant,” I mutter, and it almost makes me grin.
I open the case containing my core toolkit—Vakutan make, dense and humming with stored kinetic charge.
I pause at the sight of the etching on the inside lid: the family crest, carved by my brother before his deployment.
My chest tightens with something that’s not quite grief.
I press a thumb to it briefly, just to feel the texture. Just to remember.
The door creaks behind me.
“Whatcha doing?”
Sammy. Again.
She stands in the open threshold like she owns the place, arms folded, eyes wide and glinting. There’s a dirt smudge on her cheek, and she’s holding a peanut butter sandwich like it’s a sidearm.
“I thought you said you were an accountant,” she says, stepping over wires like a trained infiltrator. “This looks way more secret lab than tax prep.”
“I am conducting preliminary infrastructure enhancement,” I reply.
She squints. “You mean you’re building a spaceship garage.”
“Incorrect,” I say. “There is no spaceship.”
“Right,” she deadpans. “No spaceship. No alien gadgets. Definitely no flip move I saw you use on a guy behind Garrison’s Hardware. Totally normal.”
I inhale through my nose. “You were watching?”
She shrugs. “You’re not exactly subtle, Richard.”
I want to correct her, remind her that on thirty-two worlds I was invisible when necessary. But here, on this warm, too-green planet, I can’t seem to disappear correctly.
“Teach me,” she says suddenly.
“Teach you what?”
“The flip thing. Where you yeeted that guy into a dumpster without even trying.”
“‘Yeeted’ is not a verb recognized by—”
“Teach me.”
I stare at her. She stares right back, eyes fierce, freckles bunched like constellations across her cheeks. She reminds me, uncomfortably, of cadets I trained years ago. Braver than they had any right to be. Smart enough to know when they were being lied to.
Reluctantly, I set down the plasma solder and clear a space on the floor.
“You will need to lower your center of gravity,” I instruct. “And stop thinking like a human.”
She beams. “So I should think like a Vakutan?”
I blink.
“Where did you hear that word?”
She grins wider, and I realize too late—I’ve been talking in my sleep again.
She mimics my stance as I show her the basics. It’s laughably crude, this dance of balance and force reduction, but she takes it seriously. She learns fast. Within minutes, she’s pivoting into the throw sequence—too slow, too clumsy, but determined.
“You’re actually kinda good at this,” I admit.
“I know,” she says, and throws a cushion at me. “Alien MacGyver.”
I catch it without looking.
For a moment, we’re both still.
The garage smells like ozone and old mulch. Dust swirls in the sunlight. Her laugh echoes, small and bright and sharp enough to cut something loose in my chest. I pretend it’s just an old scar twitching.
Later, after she runs home and I’m alone again, I work through the final adjustments on the lower stairwell.
The house has a basement—unfinished, but perfect for containment.
I install biometric locks on the substructure and haul in what’s left of my ship’s fusion relay.
Most of it is scrap, but the core integrity buffer is intact.
If I can repolarize it, I might stabilize the jump drive matrix long enough to send a beacon.
This is still a mission. Still survival.
I’m not here to grow roots.
Not here to connect.
I find a sticky note on my workbench.
It’s bright pink. Covered in glitter.
In blocky, ten-year-old handwriting: “To Richard, aka Secret Space Ninja. Don’t blow up our block, kthx. –Sammy.”
And just below it, she’s drawn two stick figures—one enormous, one tiny—standing beside what appears to be a rocket and a box labeled “snacks.”
I stare at it longer than I mean to.
I tell myself it’s nonsense.
Just paper. Just a child.
But the tightening in my chest refuses to ease.