Chapter 26
AYLA
Frederick’s scream is barely human. It’s a bubbling, gargled cry, raw and ugly as it escapes from the burned ruin of his throat.
The flames have eaten through his uniform, melted part of his face into an unrecognizable patchwork of scorched flesh and exposed bone.
He twitches in the corner of the launch corridor, writhing against the grated metal floor, his handless arm flopping like a broken branch.
The stench of burning meat clings to the air like a second skin, and it makes my stomach churn.
He looks at me. With one eye—still intact, still blue like before—all wide and begging.
“Help… me,” he croaks, each syllable cracked like dry paper.
I stare. My hands are shaking. Not from fear. From the fire in my blood that he put there. From years of lies, of cages made from golden words and false smiles. From the bruises he never gave me directly but authorized anyway. From the daughter he stole.
“No.”
It’s not a scream. Not a shout. It’s just a word. Cold. Flat. Final.
He groans and tries to crawl toward me, dragging himself with one good arm, fingers scraping against the deck with a squeal like nails on glass.
“I… I didn’t… know,” he gasps, “what they… did…”
“You signed the orders,” I hiss, voice low and venomous. “Don’t you dare pretend innocence now.”
He coughs wetly. “Mercy… Ayla… quick. Please…”
I kneel beside him—not out of pity. I want him to see my eyes, to know the depth of what he’s earned.
“I want you to remember this pain,” I whisper. “This is the legacy of your purity crusade. Burn in your flames of righteousness, you bastard.”
I stand and turn away, letting him writhe in his self-made hell.
Behind me, the corridor pulses red as emergency lights flicker. The compound groans—structurally compromised, according to Kallus’s comm-link. That means time’s up.
I sprint back through the smoke and debris, boots pounding over the cracked floor. Kallus lies slumped where I left him, blood slicking the front of his armor. His breathing is ragged but stubborn, just like him.
“Hang on, love,” I whisper, crouching and hooking my arms beneath his shoulders. “I’ve got you.”
He groans, but there’s no protest. His body is heavy, solid as stone. Reapers don’t die easy, but even he has limits.
Chelsea waits at the end of the hallway, clutching the broken staff of a lab guard like a weapon. Her cheeks are streaked with soot, but her stance is sure, her eyes—those crimson Reaper eyes—glow with a fire that startles even me.
She doesn’t cry. She doesn’t flinch.
“I’m ready,” she says simply, and I feel my heart tear in two.
She’s a child.
But she’s also Kallus’s.
Ours.
“Let’s go,” I say, and she nods once.
The Black Fang reapers clear our flanks, silent shadows of war, efficient and brutal. One of them—Rhegar, I think—nods at me as he plants explosives along a structural beam.
“Five minutes till this whole place drops,” he growls. “Move fast.”
Chelsea leads the way. I carry Kallus, half-dragging, half-cradling his massive body as we duck into a maintenance shaft. The walls tremble as distant booms echo behind us.
“Did… she…” Kallus murmurs, blood bubbling at his lips.
“She’s here,” I whisper back. “She’s safe. She bit that bastard’s finger clean off.”
A low chuckle rumbles from him. “My girl.”
The shaft opens into the sub-deck hangar. Black Fang fighters hover like deadly insects, engines hot, weapons primed. Rhegar waves us over, and I practically collapse as I lower Kallus onto the landing ramp of our ship.
Chelsea climbs in after him, eyes still glowing, small chest heaving.
“They’re right behind us,” she says, not a trace of fear in her voice.
Another explosion rocks the base. Fire belches from a side tunnel. Alarms scream.
I turn to look one last time—through the smoke and flame, I can almost see the test subjects we freed. Reaper hybrids. Twisted, half-born things finally unshackled from their cages.
They move like shadows in the firelight.
Free at last.
“Close it!” I shout, and the hatch seals behind me.
Inside, the ship is a whirlwind of shouted commands and Reaper song. Chelsea leans against Kallus, cradling his arm. I wrap my arms around them both.
And behind us, the lab compound erupts in a blossom of white-hot fire, taking Frederick’s legacy of cruelty with it.
Let it burn.
Let the whole fucking thing burn.
We’re going home.
The medbay hums with a low, sterile rhythm, the kind that makes your teeth itch and your nerves feel like wires stretched too tight. I’ve been here for hours. Days, maybe. Time’s gone slippery, like oil between my fingers.
Kallus lies beneath the biotube’s pale-blue glow, his skin a patchwork of burns, plasma scorches, and fresh-knit dermal gel. The Reaper tech fused to his body pulses faintly, blinking red with each slow, shuddering heartbeat. But he breathes. Stars, he breathes.
Chelsea curls against me, her tiny body trembling beneath my arm. I rock her gently on the edge of the bench, our movements synched with the subtle thrum of the ship’s life support. Her fingers twist into the fabric of my shirt, clinging tight.
“Is Daddy okay?” she whispers, voice fragile, almost broken.
I run my fingers through her wild, dark hair—thicker now, threaded with silver strands too early for a child so young. “He’s strong, baby. He’s just resting.”
“But he was bleeding,” she sniffles, “A lot. And he didn’t move after the bang—”
“I know.” My throat tightens around the words. “But he came back to us. He fought the whole galaxy just to hold us again.”
Outside, beyond the reinforced port glass, Earth glows soft in the void—icy clouds swirling over the Greenland zone, the blue-and-white promise of home twisted now into something colder.
Below, the Earth First facility we left in flames smolders.
The blackened crater where the underground labs once squatted is visible even from orbit.
And still, Frederick’s voice rings in my ears—desperate, broken. Help me…
I smile bitterly, clutching Chelsea closer. “Let the bastard rot.”
The feeds spark to life on the central display. One of the Black Fang techs—Arix, I think—splices into Earth’s primary civilian datastream. “The darknets are lit, Ayla,” he says over comms. “Every channel. Someone leaked the footage. All of it.”
He doesn’t need to elaborate.
I see it on the feed: grainy security cam clips of children in glass tubes, of Frederick ranting about bloodlines and “purity,” of screaming test subjects shackled to tables. A reporter’s voice shakes as she translates a looped audio file: “Begin Phase Three. The child’s blood must be purged.”
Kallus’s daughter. My daughter.
Our daughter.
I hug Chelsea tighter, feeling the small rise and fall of her chest against mine. She’s so still now, watching the screens with wide, glowing eyes rimmed in soft red. She doesn’t ask what any of it means. She knows.
Chelsea reaches up and touches my cheek. “He’s not gone,” she says, her voice calm in a way that chills me. “He promised.”
I swallow hard. “Yes, baby. He did.”
She turns toward the biotube, laying her hand flat against the glass like she can pass her warmth through it. “Daddy’s fire is still in him. I can feel it. It talks to mine.”
And then she hums.
Low and soft, the way Kallus once did when I was bleeding and broken in his arms.
It’s a Reaper lullaby—unearthly in tone, sung in old Ishani dialect. I never taught it to her.
But she knows it.
Somewhere in the tube, Kallus stirs.
The medical sensors spike, one by one. Heart rate rising. Neural activity surging. The Reaper tech flares brighter, cradling his body like a second skin knitting itself into place.
I rise slowly, careful not to startle Chelsea. She follows me, her eyes never leaving him.
“Kallus?” I whisper.
No response.
Not yet.
But the song continues.
I glance at the screen again—newsfeeds piling up like corpses. Protests erupting. IHC ambassadors scrambling to issue statements of condemnation. A few brave senators demand war tribunals. Earth First operatives are fleeing. The media spins and spirals and shouts.
But all I care about is the man in the tube.
“I’m not going to let them have her again,” I say softly.
“No one’s taking me,” Chelsea adds, her tiny fists clenched.
“That’s right,” I say. “No one. You’re his daughter. You’re mine. And we’ve already bled for you.”
The comm crackles again. “Lady Ayla,” Arix says, softer now. “He’s stabilizing. Might be hours. Might be days. But he’s healing.”
I exhale the breath I didn’t realize I’d been holding. My knees weaken, and I sink back onto the bench, drawing Chelsea into my lap.
She leans her head against my chest and murmurs, “Sing with me?”
I do.
The lullaby is jagged, haunting—older than any Earth melody, born in the caves of Tyrannus and carried across starfire and void. My voice cracks, but I keep singing.
He needs to hear it.
Kallus doesn’t move, but I swear—I feel him listening.
Every beat of the ship’s hum syncs with the steady thump of his heart.
Every line of the melody flows through me like blood returning to frozen limbs.
And I know he’ll wake.
He has to.