Chapter 37 Bella
BELLA
Natalie’s breathing is shallow but steady, a fragile rise and fall against the crisp white sheets. Her lashes tremble; every so often her eyes flicker silver under her lids like a bad signal on an old screen.
She’s here. She’s alive.
But she’s not here.
Her skin’s too cool under my palm. Her tiny fingers twitch but don’t hold back. It’s like hugging a hologram, like my daughter’s already halfway gone.
The room smells like antiseptic and copper. The med-bay lights are too bright, a clinical glare that makes everything feel like a nightmare inside a snow globe. I want to smash it all just to see if the sound brings me back to myself.
“Vitals nominal,” the doctor drones. His voice is slick and smug in that bored-specialist way. “All tests normal. Only anomaly is a small nanite concentration in the thoracic cavity. It’s not active.”
“Not active?” My voice cracks. “Dormant doesn’t fucking twitch in its sleep.”
He blinks at me like I’ve spoken a dead language. “Mrs. Corvain, your stress is understandable—”
“It’s not Mrs. anything. And you’re telling me the thing living in my kid is a non-issue?”
He spreads his hands like a bad conjurer. “We’ve done what we can. If it’s nanite residue, it’s inert.”
My metal fist slams the table before I even know I’m moving. The whole surface jumps. “Get out.”
He leaves, muttering something about patient hostility.
The door clicks shut.
I lean over Natalie, pressing my forehead to hers. She’s warm enough now. Her breath smells faintly sweet, like the syrup Kage bribed her with at breakfast. Tears sting my eyes.
Kage stands in the corner, huge and silent, his claws flexing rhythmically like he’s counting seconds he wants to kill. His expression is carved from stone, but I can see the edges where it’s cracking.
“What are you doing?” I whisper.
“Calling in debts,” he says without looking at me. His voice is low, guttural. “Researching containment protocols. Rogue-code entities. Anything.”
“Anything,” I echo. My throat’s dry as ash. “You think it’s really… Nulegion?”
He finally looks at me. “I don’t think. I know.”
The world tilts.
The name feels like a knife. Nulegion. The ghost of the war. The thing that burned our lives down and left us breathing anyway.
“It didn’t die,” he says flatly. “It moved. It’s been hiding. Watching. Waiting. Growing.”
I press a trembling hand over my mouth, my other arm holding Natalie closer. “Inside her,” I murmur. “All this time.”
He nods once.
I want to scream. Rip the walls apart. Punch through the window until my knuckles bleed. Instead, I stroke her hair, humming a lullaby under my breath—the same one my mother used to sing when the storms rolled in over the plains of Orsith.
Her eyelids flutter at the sound, just for a second. Silver gleam. Then still.
My voice breaks halfway through the second verse.
Night again.
The med-bay’s gone dark except for the monitors. Kage hasn’t moved from his post by the door, massive and still, like a statue built for war. I sit in the chair, Natalie curled in my lap, her head against my shoulder.
“Do you ever sleep?” I whisper.
“Can’t,” he says. His voice sounds like gravel.
I’m about to say something else when the window shatters.
It’s not a crack. It’s an explosion.
Glass rains across the floor in glittering knives. The room fills with a scream of wind and the shriek of tiny engines.
Drones.
Sleek and silver, edges humming, each bearing the insignia of the Cyberoid Ascension Collective—one of the last splinter cults from the war.
“Oh my God—”
Kage is already moving. He’s a blur of claws and muscle, his roar shaking the walls. He grabs the first drone mid-flight and tears it apart like paper, shards sparking in his hands.
Another one dives at me. I yank my pistol from the holster at my thigh and fire. The recoil slams into my metal arm, steadying my aim. Sparks burst as the drone spirals down, hissing.
“Natalie!” I yell, clutching her to my chest.
More drones swarm in, coordinated, sliding through the air like fish. They’re professional. Calculated. Not a smash-and-grab.
One shoots a cable at Kage’s arm. He snarls, rips it free, slams the drone into the floor until it stops moving.
I fire again. And again. My ears ring. The room smells like ozone and burning oil.
Then one of them slips past.
I spin, too slow.
It’s already at us.
A thin needle juts from its belly. A glowing chip at the end.
“No!”
It stabs downward, quick as a snake, jabbing the chip into Natalie’s chest just below her collarbone. She jerks in my arms, mouth open but no sound coming out.
“Get away from her!” I scream, firing point-blank. The drone explodes in a shower of shrapnel, but its cable whips around her waist, locking tight.
“Kage!”
He lunges, claws extended, but the drone yanks her through the broken window with inhuman speed.
I reach. My fingers catch only air.
She’s gone.
Kage crashes into the frame, his claws sparking against the metal edge as he grabs for nothing. His bellow rattles my teeth.
I’m already firing out the window at the cloaked skimmer hovering beyond. My rounds spark against its hull, punching holes that seal instantly. It hums once, like a mocking laugh, then vanishes into the night with a sonic ripple.
The wind roars through the shattered window.
I stand there, pistol shaking in my hand, the cold biting through my clothes.
Natalie is gone.
My knees give out. I collapse against the floor, shards of glass cutting my palms.
Kage turns back to me, his face a mask of pure, animal fury and something worse—fear.
“She’s gone,” I whisper. “They took her.”
His claws scrape the wall, leaving deep gouges. “We’ll get her back.”
“How?” My voice cracks like broken glass. “They have her—”
He crouches in front of me, his huge hands gripping my shoulders. His eyes burn like molten metal.
“We will get her back,” he says again, each word a vow. “Even if I have to tear the stars down.”
I press my forehead to his chest, shaking. The night smells like blood and smoke and salt.
Somewhere out there, my daughter is awake. Or asleep. Or—no, don’t think it.
I whisper her name.
Kage’s arms wrap around me like steel.
And in the darkness, I feel the last of my hope crack—then harden into something sharper.
Vengeance.
Because they didn’t just take my daughter.
They took the only reason I’d learned to breathe again.
And I will burn the galaxy to get her back.