9. Garokk
GAROKK
I don’t trust stillness. Not on this ship. Not after what it’s survived.
The arboretum hums with unnatural calm. Isolde’s breathing is soft behind me—slow, even. She sleeps like she belongs here, like the glowing fungus and whispering vines were made to cradle her. I stand at the edge of the clearing, blade gripped in one hand, watching the shadows for movement.
Then the floor beneath me shudders.
Not a tremor. Not the Hulk’s usual creaks. This is a jolt—sharp, seismic, calculated. I drop into a crouch instinctively, claws splayed wide for balance. The vines react—curling back, glowing brighter. Something in the Hulk is awake .
The ground bucks again, harder. Gravity yanks sideways. A groan echoes through the ship’s bones.
“Isolde!” I bark, turning.
She jerks upright just as the world lurches. The walls groan. A steel panel above us rips loose. I dive toward her as the gravity field twists again. I wrap her in both arms just as the metal sheet crashes down.
Sparks explode. She screams.
My body takes the brunt. Pain flares down my back, but I hold her tight—tighter than I’ve ever held anything.
Then the deck shifts a third time. Harder. Violent. The fungus cracks, tiles snap. She’s torn from my arms in the quake, sliding across the mossy floor with a cry. I lunge—but a collapsing strut blocks me.
“No!” I roar, slamming my shoulder into the wall. It doesn’t budge. My mate—my jalshagar —is beyond the wreckage.
“Garokk!” she calls. Her voice, muffled. Afraid.
“I’m coming!” I slam my shoulder again. The ship whines, resisting.
And then—quiet.
No more lurching. No more tremors.
I shove my way through the twisted arch. My vision is streaked with red. Not blood—rage. I step into the corridor?—
And she’s gone.
Only her voice lingers, like smoke. Fading.
I drop to all fours, sniff the air. I catch her scent. Still warm. Still close. But there’s another. Cold. Mechanical.
Lor.
The cyborg.
I snarl low in my throat. Of course it’s him. Precision. No waste. He would’ve taken her like a mission—efficient and brutal.
“Where?” I breathe. “Where did you take her?”
I stalk down the corridor. Feral. Ready to tear steel from bone.
Then something clatters behind me.
I whirl, blade raised—but it’s not a threat.
It’s Reflector.
The little drone sparks as it hovers unevenly. One of its arms is torn. A lens cracked. But it’s alive.
Barely.
“Help…” it buzzes. “She… she’s… they…”
It projects a stuttery hologram—grainy, but clear enough.
Isolde, limp in Lor’s grip. Her head turned toward the camera, lips parted in pain. A smear of blood on her temple.
Then the feed cuts to Bokis—arms raised in protest.
“Don’t—! That’s not what we?—!”
Snarl.
Gunfire.
Bokis drops.
The image warps. Ends.
Reflector’s voice fades. “She… needs…”
I catch the tiny machine before it falls. I hold it like I would a wounded comrade.
“You did well,” I tell it. “Now rest.”
I tuck it into my belt, close to my core where my body heat can keep its power cell alive.
And then I run.
Faster than I have in months. Years.
My claws tear the deck. The Hulk responds to me now—doors sliding open before I reach them. It knows me. It remembers. I slam past corridors, crushing fungi underfoot. I follow her scent, the faint residual heat of her presence.
I reach the corridor where the ambush began. The stench of plasma and scorched fur clings to the air. Bokis’s body lies crumpled, half-burned. One of his ridiculous bracelets still clinging to his wrist.
I pause.
“He tried to stop them,” I murmur. Not for him. For her.
Because she will want to know.
Then I rise and continue forward, blood pounding in my skull. There’s no logic now. No strategy. Only rage. Only the primal thrum of vengeance building in my gut.
You took her.
You will bleed.
You will beg.
And then you will die.
I can taste blood in the air.
Not hers—metallic, cold, wrong. The ship hums with it. The Hulk feels my rage and trembles with anticipation. I can hear the engines groan below the decks, their rhythm syncing with my pulse. My claws curl around the hilt of my blade until the leather creaks.
Lor took her.
He touched what was mine.
The thought alone makes the edges of my vision swim red. My hearing sharpens. The corridor hum fades until there’s only the sound of my breathing—deep, savage, animal.
I run.
Every muscle in me remembers war. The ground shakes with my steps. The Hulk answers, doors sliding open a split second before I reach them, lights flickering like heartbeats, guiding me forward. Metal sings under my claws as I drag them along the walls. Sparks leap in my wake.
The scent of machine oil grows thicker. Lor is close. I can smell the sterility of him—the false life in synthetic flesh, the burn of circuitry, the absence of soul.
I find the first barrier—a sealed bulkhead, coded to his signature. I don’t bother with subtlety. I slam my shoulder into it. Steel buckles. I hit it again, and again, until it screams apart.
The vibration runs through my bones. I like the sound.
The next corridor is dim, lit only by emergency crimson. Alarms wail distant. The gravity field is unstable here; I feel it tugging unevenly, dragging dust and loose wiring toward the ceiling. Doesn’t matter.
What matters is the voice.
Hers.
Muffled. Weak. “Let me go!”
I move faster.
Another door—thicker. I don’t stop. My blade cleaves through the locking mechanism, sparks spitting like fireflies. I shove the molten halves apart.
There they are.
Lor has her pinned against a console. His hands—cold metal things that mock flesh—grip her arms. He’s saying something low and mechanical, no emotion, no hesitation.
“Comply,” he repeats. “Your capture benefits mission parameters.”
Her face is pale but defiant. Even now, she glares at him like she’s still got an audience watching. That defiance—it’s why I can’t stop moving.
“Release her,” I growl.
Lor’s head turns a fraction, gears whining. His eye—one human, one synthetic—focuses on me. “Garokk the Brutal,” he says in his flat tone. “You are expected.”
He lets her go. But not because he obeys. Because he thinks he can stop me.
I roar.
It shakes the room. The fungus lights quiver in their glass pods. The ship groans.
Lor moves first—always the tactician. His plasma blade flickers to life, pale and hungry. I catch the motion, the hum, the hiss as it arcs toward me.
I block with my own blade, the impact ringing like thunder. Sparks rain down. He pivots fast for a machine, trying to gut me, but I’m faster. Rage fuels precision. I grab his wrist with one clawed hand and twist. Metal shrieks. Wires snap.
He drives a knee into my ribs. I barely feel it.
“You cannot win,” he says, voice static. “You are obsolete. Outdated flesh.”
I grin—a feral thing. “Flesh kills better.”
I slam him into the wall. The sound of cracking alloy fills the chamber. He retaliates, head-butting me—metal to bone. My vision flashes white. I bite through the pain, catching his arm as he swings again.
I tear it off.
He doesn’t scream—no lungs for it—but the sound of the severed cables sparking is scream enough. He staggers, recalibrating. I don’t give him the chance.
I charge, slamming him back through the control station. Screens explode around us. Fragments rain.
He grabs for my throat with his remaining hand, claws digging in. I push through, ignoring the sting of cutting metal. My tail—(a reflex I thought long forgotten)—lashes out and knocks his weapon away.
“Garokk…” I hear Isolde whisper. Fear and disbelief and something else tangled in that voice.
It feeds me.
I drive my blade through Lor’s chest. The light from his cybernetic core spills out in waves of white and blue. He twitches. I twist.
“Obsolete,” I snarl, “still kills. ”
Then I rip upward, through his torso, through the flickering light, through the part of him that pretended to be alive.
The core erupts in a bloom of energy, briefly illuminating the room like the birth of a star. Then—darkness.
The sound of Lor’s body hitting the floor echoes for a long time.
I’m breathing hard. Steam rises from my skin. My arms are slick with coolant and oil that smells like death. My hands shake—but not from exhaustion. From restraint. Because every part of me still wants to destroy.
Then I hear her.
A soft, trembling inhale.
I turn.
Isolde stands a few feet away, still pressed against the wall. Her hair clings to her cheeks. The firelight from the ruined console paints her in gold and red.
She’s alive.
Unharmed.
And looking right at me.
“Garokk…” she says again, softer now. “You came for me.”
I take a step forward. My claws flex once. “Always.”
Her eyes shine—not from fear. From something else. Something I don’t know the name for.
She crosses the distance before I can. Her hands reach up, small and trembling, and she cups my face between them. Her palms are warm against my scales. It’s the first gentle touch I’ve felt in fifty years.
Her thumbs trace the scar on my cheek. “You’re bleeding,” she says.
I shake my head. “Not my blood.”
For a long moment, we just stand there—me, drenched in oil and fury; her, radiant in the ruin of everything.
Then she whispers, “Don’t scare me like that again.”
“I can’t promise.”
Her lips quirk, halfway to a smile, and she huffs out a shaky laugh. “Of course you can’t.”
The tension between us is electric—so strong it hums. She doesn’t move away. I can feel her heartbeat through her fingertips.
Slowly, carefully, I reach up and cover her hands with mine. My claws graze her wrists, light as breath. I could break her. I won’t.
“Isolde,” I say. Her name comes out rough, like I’ve been holding it in my throat too long. “You are?—”
“Don’t say it,” she interrupts, voice soft but firm. “Not now. Not like this.”
Her eyes flick down—to my chest, still streaked with blood and broken wire—and back up again.
“Not when I still don’t know you.”
I nod once. Barely.
But I don’t let go.
Neither does she.
For a moment, all the noise of the ship fades. The Hulk itself seems to hold its breath. The only sound is the rhythm of our breathing—his and hers, predator and survivor, two heartbeats finding the same pace.
The firelight flickers out.
We stand in the dark.
And though nothing is said, something unspoken takes root—something wild and alive.
The kind of thing fate doesn’t joke about.
The kind of thing that, once started, can’t be stopped.