Chapter 38 Kage
KAGE
We’re too late.
The gate’s still warm, the residual charge making my skin crawl as we hover in its wake. But the skimmer’s long gone—used diplomatic clearance to slice through warpspace without triggering alarms.
I slam my fist into the console. The screen fractures, lines spiderwebbing outward, sparks spitting at my claws.
“Dammit!”
Bella doesn’t flinch.
She hasn’t said a word since they took Natalie.
She sits in the co-pilot seat, arms crossed tight over her stomach, jaw locked, eyes fixed on the seat behind us—the one Natalie always claimed as hers. The stuffed animal’s scraps still litter the floor. I should’ve thrown them out. I couldn’t.
She just keeps staring.
I want to say something. Anything.
But my throat’s too tight and my heart’s not working right and every breath feels like glass.
Instead, I check the tracker again.
Nothing but void.
So…We go underground.
Bella makes the call. Her voice is hoarse but steady as she leans into the encrypted comm system, speaking names I’ve only heard whispered. Old allies. Enemies turned favors. Smugglers. Black-market war medics. She cashes in everything. Doesn’t blink.
I do the same.
I reach out to the old resistance networks. Codewords. Back channels. Faces I’d sworn I’d never see again.
“Cyberoids,” I growl into the dark. “I want everything.”
We meet in sewers. In derelict cantinas. On dying moons. Names pass like poison between hands. Files. Records. Horrors.
The Collective isn’t hiding.
They’re recruiting.
Worse—they’re preaching.
The intel is worse than we imagined.
Natalie isn’t just a target. She’s a fucking prophecy.
“A hybrid messiah,” one of the contacts says, his voice shaking. “They call her the Interface. A bridge between flesh and machine. They think she can transcend the gap. Make the hive feel.”
Bella turns away.
My claws dig into the table until the metal screams.
“They don’t want to hurt her,” the man adds quickly. “They want to upload her. Fuse her consciousness to the Nexus. Let her guide their god.”
“They want to erase her,” I growl.
“No,” Bella whispers. “They want to worship her.”
That night, I find her curled up in the cargo hold. She’s got a bottle of something foul and strong half-drained beside her, and her shoulders shake like she’s trying to sob without making noise.
I sit down behind her.
Don’t speak.
Just pull her back against me.
“I was supposed to protect her,” she says. Her voice is cracked, like her throat’s sandpaper. “I was supposed to keep her safe.”
I tighten my arms around her. Feel her fists press against my ribs.
“She’s my whole damn world, Kage.”
“I know.”
“I thought if I kept her hidden, if I stayed quiet—” Her voice breaks. “But they still found her. Through me. Because of me.”
“You didn’t give her to them.”
“I might as well have.”
Silence stretches. The ship hums softly around us. Old. Familiar.
“I would tear down every star for her,” she whispers.
I press my forehead to hers.
“We’re going to get her back.”
By morning, we hijack a long-range stealth rig from an old smuggling contact of mine named Threx. The ship’s seen better days, but it’s got one hell of a cloak and deep-range capability.
Coordinates acquired.
Facility pinged.
An old refinery orbiting a dead moon.
Now converted.
Now holy.
The Cyberoids call it Sanctuary.
Looks more like a tomb.
Steel spires reach into space like skeletal fingers. Their signal pulses in binary hymns. We monitor the feed—hear them chanting in synthetic tongues. Prayers to the Machine Ascension. Offerings of silence. Worship through data.
And somewhere inside that hive of madness is our daughter.
I sit at the controls.
Bella straps in beside me, her jaw clenched.
Her eyes burn.
She’s back.
We jump.
And the hunt begins.