Chapter 11
MARA
Iwake up alone, even though he’s still in the room.
The bed is warm where I was curled against him, but the rest is cold now—cold in that way metal gets when the heat’s been drained from it too long.
My arm reaches across empty space and hits air, and that’s how I know: he got up without waking me.
Slipped away from the tangle of us and put all that armor back on.
I sit up slow, the sheet dragging across my skin like a question I don’t want to answer yet.
The taste of him is still in my mouth—sharp, metallic, like static before a storm.
My muscles ache, used in ways they haven’t been in too long.
My body remembers last night with the clarity of confession. My brain… hasn’t caught up.
He’s pacing.
Back and forth, in that deliberate way of his—like even his uncertainty needs to be efficient. He’s dressed again, every inch of him locked behind plating and protocol. Commander Tatek is back, and the man I let kiss me like I was the only war that ever mattered has disappeared behind his own skin.
“Tatek,” I say, voice scratchy.
He doesn’t stop. Doesn’t look. Just one more pass across the sterile floor.
“Hey,” I try again, firmer. “What’s going on?”
He finally halts. His eyes meet mine for half a second—long enough for me to see the fracture underneath.
“Get dressed,” he says. Clipped. Flat. Nothing soft.
I pull the sheet tighter around myself, a slow burn starting under my ribs. “That’s it? No good morning? No ‘sorry I went cold right after wrecking my entire soul against yours’?”
His jaw flexes. But he doesn’t rise to it.
“Get dressed, Mara.”
I get up anyway, dragging last night’s clothes from the floor and sliding into them like armor that doesn’t fit right anymore. The air stings my skin as I move, raw nerves exposed in every place he touched. I can still feel his breath against the inside of my thigh, and it makes his silence louder.
“What happened?” I ask once I’m decent. “You were here, with me. Then you weren’t.”
He exhales—sharp, almost silent. Not tired. Braced.
“They’ve initiated your reclassification protocols,” he says.
Everything goes still.
My pulse stutters. “What?”
He nods once. Barely a movement. “You’ve been flagged. Memory suspension. Behavioral audit. Full re-ident cycle.”
I sink back against the edge of the bed, legs buckling like someone cut the gravity out from under me. “You’re joking.”
“I’m not.”
“That’s—” My voice cracks. “That’s not something they do without a tribunal. A review board. You can’t just—Tatek, you can’t just wipe someone—”
“They can,” he says. Still too calm. “They are.”
I stand again. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I’m telling you now.”
“No,” I snap. “You knew before. I saw your face change last night—when the comm pinged. You already knew.”
His silence answers for him.
My breath comes faster now, shallow. Too fast. I cross my arms like I can hold myself together with elbows and pressure. “How long?”
He hesitates. That’s worse than an answer.
“Tatek.”
“They’ve begun behavioral flagging,” he says. “Tagging your logs. Subconscious stimuli embedded in your comm pad. Re-ident programming usually takes several cycles. You still have time.”
Still have time.
Like that’s supposed to help.
“So what,” I say, voice shaking, “was last night your version of a goodbye?”
“No.”
“Then what?”
He moves then—one step, then another, until he’s in front of me. His hands hover at his sides, not reaching, not retreating. He’s so still it makes me want to break something.
“You think I regret it?” he says, low.
“I think you’re acting like it didn’t happen.”
He doesn’t answer that.
I feel my throat close around the weight of all the things I don’t want to feel. I take a breath through my teeth and force it out slow.
“Did it mean anything to you?” I ask, almost a whisper. “Or was I just another anomaly to catalogue?”
He doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t even blink. But then—he moves. Just once. Reaches for me, fast and raw, pulling me into him with a suddenness that knocks the air from my lungs.
His arms wrap around me like a shield that’s shaking. His forehead presses to mine. His breath is uneven.
“It meant everything,” he says, voice breaking on the edges. “That’s the problem.”
I stand there, frozen, feeling his heartbeat race through the plates of his chestpiece. Mine tries to sync with it, but it keeps missing. Off-beat. Off-rhythm. Like us.
I pull back just enough to look at him. “Then don’t shut me out. Not now.”
His hand lifts like he’s going to cup my cheek, but it hovers instead, fingers curling against nothing. “If I hold you too long, I’ll keep you. And if I keep you, they’ll take you from me faster.”
I stare at him, stunned.
And then I’m angry.
“You don’t get to make that decision for me.”
His jaw tightens.
“You don’t get to decide what I’m worth protecting if you’re not going to fight for me,” I hiss.
“Mara—”
“No. You don’t get to say my name like it’s sacred right after telling me I’m already halfway to erasure.”
He takes a half-step back, and it feels like a door slamming.
“I’m trying to keep you alive.”
“Then act like it.”
The silence between us now is jagged. Bloody. Something sharp under the skin.
He turns away.
“Tatek.”
“We’ll find a way out,” he says, facing the wall now. “But you need to be prepared. From this moment forward, every move is watched. Every word recorded. Any deviation from behavioral norms increases the algorithm’s certainty.”
“You mean if I stop acting like myself, I disappear faster.”
“Yes.”
I let out a breath that’s more curse than exhale. “That’s ironic.”
His head bows slightly, like the weight of this isn’t just mine to carry. “You can’t let them see panic.”
“You want me to act normal while I wait for my mind to be dissected?”
“I want you to trust me.”
The quiet that follows that sentence is the most dangerous one yet.
“Then don’t lie to me again,” I say, and my voice is steel now. “Don’t pull away and pretend it’s tactical when really, you’re just afraid of what this means.”
His hands curl into fists.
I watch him war with himself—see the lines of conflict drag across the broad planes of his back. He breathes once. Twice.
“Every instinct I have tells me to run,” he says quietly. “But I won’t. Not without you.”
There it is.
My heart aches at the honesty of it. The fragility. The raw.
I reach out and take his hand—because even now, even when the air feels poisoned with fear, I need him to know he’s not alone in this choice.
His fingers tighten around mine, just once.
We don’t say anything else.
But the silence is the wrong shape.
It used to hum—tense, loaded, meaningful in a way that felt like maybe we were both just circling some truth we couldn’t name yet.
Now it’s brittle. Sharp. I can hear the drag of his breath, the faint click of his jaw tightening.
Even the recycled air feels louder, like the station itself knows we crossed a line we can’t uncross.
He doesn’t move when I step away. Doesn’t try to stop me or follow. He just stands there, spine straight like someone pinned him to the moment and told him not to flinch.
I go to the console. Pull up the map. The interface is sluggish, deliberate—probably throttled to monitor response times, scan patterns, biometric stress. Every tap of my fingers on the surface leaves a little ghost of warmth, like the station’s trying to remember me before it rewrites me.
“You said we have time,” I say without looking at him.
“Yes.”
“How much?”
“Less than we need. More than they think we’ll use.”
I nod once. Not at the answer. At the way he says it. That clipped calm that sounds like he’s already built five different contingencies in his head while I was still brushing my teeth.
I point to the auxiliary wings. “There’s a decommissioned launch bay here. Access tunnels from the lower maintenance decks—if we can get in, we might be able to reroute through the drone shuttle system. They won’t expect a civilian egress through industrial vectors.”
He’s at my side now, silent as shadow. He leans in close, studying the map.
“I’ve seen this schematic,” he murmurs. “But the access hatches were sealed six rotations ago.”
“Sure,” I say, “but they were sealed with Coalition-grade welds. I can burn those out in less than two minutes with a resonance cutter and a little bad attitude.”
His mouth twitches. Almost a smile. Almost.
“We’ll need gear,” he says. “Unregistered. And fast.”
“I know a guy.”
“Of course you do.”
“Hey,” I snap, “just because I’m a data analyst doesn’t mean I don’t have a life.”
He looks at me, head tilting. “I didn’t say anything.”
“You thought it really loud.”
That earns me the faintest huff of breath. Could almost be a laugh, if it weren’t soaked in tension.
“I thought you said no splitting up,” I add, trying to keep the edge out of my voice.
“I didn’t say I was going.”
That lands hard.
I spin to face him fully. “What the hell does that mean?”
“You said you know a contact. It’s safer if you make the approach alone.”
“Safer for who? Me? Or your precious operational integrity?”
He doesn’t answer. That hesitation—that tiny break—is answer enough.
I step closer. My fingers brush his arm. He flinches.
It’s not violent. It’s not even big. But I feel it like a slap.
I drop my hand.
“So that’s how it is now?” I ask, heat rising under my skin. “We strip each other down to nothing, and now you won’t even let me touch you?”
He doesn’t look at me. “That’s not—”
“Don’t lie.”
He breathes in deep, nostrils flaring. “It’s not about what happened. It’s about what’s coming.”
“You think I don’t know that?”
My voice cracks on the last word, and I hate it. I bite down on the rest, hard enough to hurt.
“I don’t regret it,” I say, quieter now. “Whatever last night was—however much you want to shove it in a box and pretend it didn’t break something open—I don’t regret it.”
His shoulders stiffen.
“But I’m scared,” I add. “Not of you. Of this. Of what it’s doing to us. Because whatever rhythm we had before—it’s gone. And I don’t know if that’s your fault, or mine, or just… the cost.”
He finally turns.
And gods, his face. The angles of it are brutal in this light, all shadow and restraint, but there’s something wounded at the edges. A tightness I’ve never seen before.
“It wasn’t a distraction,” he says.
I swallow. “Then what was it?”
He’s quiet so long I think he won’t answer.
Then: “Proof.”
“Of what?”
“That I’m already compromised.”
I want to scream. Throw something. Shake him until his armor cracks and the man underneath actually says what he means.
But I don’t.
Instead, I walk back to the console and pull up another layer of the station map. “Fine,” I say flatly. “Then let’s plan like two professionals who haven’t seen each other naked.”
He doesn’t take the bait. Just stands there, unreadable.
I jab the screen. “Here. Service lift near Medbay Nine. I can route through the internal sanitation schedules—jump into the maintenance ducts while no one's watching. Get to the contact, get the gear, get back before the next surveillance cycle resets.”
He nods. “You’ll need a scrambler.”
“I’ve got one.”
“You’ll need a weapon.”
“I’ve got that too.”
His brow lifts slightly. “Since when?”
I don’t answer. Just unzip the inner seam of my boot and pull out a tiny, compact slugthrower. Primitive. Loud. Ugly.
He studies it. “That’s not regulation.”
“Neither is this entire conversation.”
He blinks. Once. “You keep surprising me.”
“Good,” I mutter. “Maybe I’ll live long enough to do it again.”
The moment stretches between us. Not tense. Not soft either. Just something waiting to be named.
“I still think we should go together,” I say.
“And I still think that increases risk.”
I fold my arms. “I’m not going to argue with you about this.”
“Then don’t.”
I stare at him. “We leave together. Or not at all.”
This time, he doesn’t argue.
Just meets my gaze with that burning steadiness that used to feel like danger and now feels like a vow.
“Understood.”
I nod once.
We both glance up at the same time—reflex more than intention—as the overhead lights stutter.
Just a flicker.
Then another.
And then the quiet, unmistakable whine of internal lockdown codes initiating.
Tatek goes still. His eyes narrow. “They’re starting early.”
I feel it before I see it. That subtle shift in air pressure, the hum in the walls deepening as security overrides begin cascading through the lower decks. The station is preparing to lock us in place like insects in amber.
I step closer to him.
“We still have time,” I whisper.
“Not much.”
The lights flicker again, slower this time.
Outside our room, the corridor shifts to red-light standby. Soft. Pulsing. Like a countdown heartbeat we’re not invited to hear.
We both look out through the thin wall panel window.
He doesn’t speak.
Neither do I.
But we’re already moving.