13. Isolde
ISOLDE
T ime gets weird when you’re not trying to fill it.
There’s no schedule here. No feeds to stream. No interviews to prep. No high-speed connection syncing me to three billion people who all think they know me. Just soft-voiced doctors with padded shoes and tea I never drink.
They tell me it’s been weeks.
It feels like lifetimes.
I keep to the suite mostly. The staff learned pretty quick not to knock unless it’s life-or-death. Even Reflector keeps quiet unless I speak first. He hovers in the corner of the room like a tiny, damaged moon, pulsing faint blue, watching. Waiting.
At night, I sit by the window. Not because I believe I’ll see anything. But because I need to remember the shape of the sky.
Somewhere out there—past the satellites and static, past the broken bones of old battlecruisers—he died.
Garokk.
And I can’t stop thinking about the way he looked at me right before the door sealed. Like I was the only thing he’d ever regret.
I don’t cry anymore. Not really. I used to, back in the pod. Back when I thought if I screamed loud enough into that vacuum, he’d answer.
Now it’s quiet inside me. A deep, echoing quiet, like I got hollowed out and the universe forgot to fill me back in.
I ignore the holonet. Haven’t touched a stream in weeks. Not even a bootleg gossip reel. My inbox is a graveyard of unopened messages. Fans, contracts, family— my mother , mostly, with her clipped little calls and increasingly desperate voicemails.
“Isolde, you have obligations.”
“You can’t just disappear—this isn’t professional.”
“People are worried.”
I don’t answer. Because if I do, I’ll have to lie. And I’ve spent enough of my life doing that on camera.
So I ghost them all.
The sky is easier than people anyway.
I start noticing it about five days before it happens.
It’s nothing major at first. Just a haze in my head. A tiredness that clings to my skin like humidity, even though the suite keeps everything at a regulated twenty-two degrees.
Then the headaches come. Dull pulses behind my eyes, like someone’s knocking on the inside of my skull trying to get out. I chalk it up to dehydration. Grief. Too much time spent watching the static waterfall loop in my window like it’s a prophecy.
Then one morning, I get out of bed and my knees just?—
Give.
The fall is slow, almost dreamlike. My hip hits the floor. My shoulder catches the edge of the dresser. Pain blooms dull and immediate.
And then, black.
I wake up to soft beeping and the antiseptic tang of medgel.
My vision’s fuzzy. My lips taste like metal. I blink, and the ceiling’s wrong—brighter than usual, too sterile.
Medbay.
Not the one on Novaria’s main level. This one’s private. Emergency.
I groan. My throat’s dry.
“Hey,” I rasp.
Reflector floats into view. His lens is patched, one side flickering, but his voice is clear.
“You are awake. That is good.”
“Did I...?”
“You fainted,” he replies. “Unusual hormone levels were detected during post-collapse analysis. The medical AI initiated further testing.”
I blink. Sit up. “So I have the flu or something?”
He tilts slightly. “No.”
Pause.
Then—
“You are pregnant.”
Silence.
Not the poetic kind. Not the soft cinematic hush.
No.
This is the kind of silence that follows a scream so loud, it leaves your ears ringing for days.
I stare at him.
“You’re... joking.”
“I lack the protocol for humor.”
My breath stutters in my chest.
“No. No. That’s not— that’s not possible. ”
“The data was verified three times.”
“Impossible,” I snap. “I—I was on the Hulk for weeks . There were no supplies. No... no conditions . My body was—my stress levels?—”
Reflector doesn’t blink. Can’t. But I swear he’s looking at me differently now.
“The child is viable,” he says. “Healthy. Genetic sequencing reveals it is not fully human.”
My stomach drops.
Not fully human.
I press my hands to my midsection.
Nothing. Just soft skin. Slight swell. Maybe psychosomatic. Maybe real.
Garokk.
Oh stars.
Garokk.
My mouth opens, then closes.
“Are you absolutely sure?”
“Yes.”
I slide off the bed, legs trembling.
I barely make it to the mirror.
My reflection is a stranger. Hair dull, skin pale, eyes sunken and rimmed red. I touch my stomach again, this time more carefully.
He’s in there.
A piece of him.
A piece of us .
I sink to my knees.
Not because I’m afraid.
But because—for the first time since the pod launched—I feel something besides emptiness.
I feel hope .
Twisted, burning, raw hope.
Because maybe Garokk isn’t gone.
Not completely.
Maybe the universe didn’t take everything.
Not this time.
Not yet.
I don’t need a week to decide.
Hell, I don’t need a day.
The moment the truth lands—hard and hot and so impossibly real —I already know.
I’m keeping him.
Not because I’m brave. Not because I’ve suddenly turned maternal overnight or unlocked some hidden domestic fantasy I didn’t know I had.
No.
Because this isn’t just a baby.
He’s a tether.
A lifeline thrown across the endless black between me and the man I lost. A piece of him the universe didn’t manage to burn. The only thing that made it out of the Hulk besides me and a half-broken AI with a loyalty complex.
I sit on the floor of the mirror room for a long time after Reflector leaves, my back against the cold paneling, legs drawn up, hands pressed flat to my belly.
My skin feels no different. My breath still tastes like recycled air and half-swallowed grief.
But something underneath the surface shifts .
I feel it.
Tiny.
Distant.
But real .
Garokk would’ve lost his damn mind.
Would’ve snarled something about genetic fortitude and declared the child a conqueror before he could walk. Would’ve insisted on training drills by the age of three, and storytime filled with war legends and claw fights and ancient songs only the elders remember.
But he would’ve loved him.
Gods, he would’ve loved him like fire.
And now—he never gets to.
So I will.
I have to.
I press my forehead to my knees, not to cry, but to breathe . To ground myself in this moment before it runs off without me.
The future used to be a story I told the cameras.
Now it’s something I carry .
I name him that night.
No doctors. No ceremony. No blinking notifications asking for birth plan uploads or registered partners.
Just me.
And the stars.
And the echo of a voice I’ll never hear again.
“Pyramus,” I say into the dark, tasting the name like it’s sacred. “That’s who you’ll be.”
It’s an old story. A myth, really—tragic and poetic and way too dramatic for a kid who hasn’t even kicked yet. But it fits.
Pyramus. The boy who loved through walls.
The boy who was born from a story that never should’ve happened.
The boy who’ll live even when legends die.
I say it again, softer this time.
“Pyramus.”
My son.
The next morning, I request the full prenatal package.
Not because I want the fanfare, but because if I’m doing this, I’m doing it right . No hidden files. No back-alley treatments. No anonymous surrogacy solutions.
This is mine.
All of it.
The Novarian medical AI tries to refer me to a fertility specialist.
“Your genetic pairing is... nonstandard,” it says. “Reproductive anomalies are expected. The fetus?—”
“The baby ,” I snap.
The silence that follows is telling.
The AI corrects itself. “The baby shows unusual growth markers. Bone density exceeds baseline projections. There is also a mild temperature fluctuation.”
“Because he’s part Vakutan,” I say flatly. “You want a scan? Run one. But don’t treat him like a problem.”
The AI does as it’s told.
The results come in hours later. I already know what they’ll say.
Strong.
Alive.
Different.
Perfect.
I don’t tell my family.
Not yet.
Not because I’m ashamed. But because they’ll try to turn it into something it’s not.
A scandal.
A rebranding.
A comeback arc wrapped in tragedy and motherhood and holonet redemption.
They don’t get to have this.
He doesn’t get to be content fodder for the same people who told me to smile prettier after a bombing run.
He gets me .
The real me.
Or at least... whatever version of me is left after the wreckage.
The fear comes at night.
Not in dreams—those I can manage.
But in the quiet hours between midnight and morning, when the stars blur together and even Reflector’s pulse dims low.
I stare at the ceiling and think about what comes next.
About diapers and screams and sleepless nights.
About the first time he asks about his father.
About how I’ll have to look him in the eye and explain how the bravest, fiercest, stupidest man in the galaxy gave everything for someone he barely knew—and how she spent the rest of her life trying to be worthy of that choice.
I don’t know how to be a mother.
I don’t know how to raise a half-human, half-dragon-scaled legacy on a planet that barely tolerates difference when it’s fashionable.
But I know this:
I’m not giving up.
Not on him.
Not on me .
Garokk made his decision.
He chose death if it meant saving me.
Now I choose life.
Not because I’m ready.
Not because it’s easy.
But because this baby is the last piece of a story I didn’t get to finish.
And I’ll be damned if I let it end in silence.