Chapter 9
JAELA
The courthouse plaza is brutal in daylight.
Stone facades glare down, columns like judges.
The concrete smells sharp—hot stone, exhaust, and a hint of disillusion.
I stand alone near the entrance steps, a sealed envelope in my clenched fist. The paper crinkles under my fingers, the edges soft from handling.
Inside is my message to him—my plea, my truth—but they refused to deliver it.
Officials cited “security protocol.” I am no longer his doctor, no longer within his chain of contact, no longer even that essential.
My sister’s voice echoes in my memory from the drive over: “Let him go, Jae. He’s gone.” She urged me to move on like I have a choice. I tried. I really did that morning, in the garden, in the lab, in maps of code and circuits. But all of me feels wrong without him.
I edge toward the courthouse door. The guards barely glance at me.
I walk through the hallways. His old room—half-care, half prison—already reassigned.
The nameplate is gone. The slab of white wall stares back.
I almost falter. The antiseptic scent in the hallway stings my nostrils.
My throat constricts. Tears burn behind my eyes.
I grip the envelope tighter. My nails bite into my palm. I force my feet forward.
I exit out the back door into the courtyard. The sun plasters against my face. I close my eyes, swallow something sour in my mouth. The world feels hollow. The wind picks up, rustling leaves in cracked fountains.
I sprint away, not caring who sees me. I get back to my apartment like I’m fleeing a funeral.
The door slides open to that same faint jumble of compartments: my workshop bench, circuit boards, prototype limbs.
The apartment smells the same—metal, ozone, lingering nerve shocks. Maybe I like that smell. It’s honest.
I flick on my old calendar holo. The alert blinks: Missed trigger: Cycle Day 34. My breath ceases. The memory vault bangs open: dates, symptoms I tried to ignore. I do the math in my head. My heart is a drum in my ribcage. My fingers tremble as I remove a pregnancy test from the bathroom shelf.
The fluorescent bathroom light is harsh. My reflection zigzags in cracked mirror glass. My hands shake as I peel open the envelope. I use the test, drop it in the shallow dish of sink water so I don’t have to watch. The apartment falls into hush—that loud, suffocating hush of waiting.
Then I see it, two lines. Positive. Just like that.
“Oh stars,” I whisper. The word cracks alarms in me. I cup a hand over my mouth. My mind spins. “I’m pregnant. With a criminal war hero’s baby.”
My knees buckle. I fall to the tile. The cool floor presses against my skin. The scent of tile cleaner, the faint hum of HVAC, the residual ozone—it closes me in.
I hold the test. My fingers slick, pulse hammering. I stare at it like someone staring into a future that’s already burning. The envelope slips from my jacket pocket. I reach for it, press the sealed letter to my heart, then push it aside on the floor. My thoughts whirl. What now? How?
I breathe. A small, ragged intake. My body quivers. My mind fights itself. Tears slide—hot and silent. This changes everything. The baby. The secret. Him. Us.
I rise—wobbly. Slit eyes, trembling jaw. I walk to the window. I stare out: the city lights flicker, life going on. Somewhere he’s trapped, miles away, sentenced. Somewhere I carry a secret that might mean hope or destruction.
I whisper to the empty room, to the future, to the silence: Please be alive.
The drive to my mother’s house is numb. My mind is quiet with shock, like a circuit gone open. I grip the steering controls so hard my knuckles blanch. The city passes by—neon signs, traffic hum, advertisements flickering promise. Nothing means anything anymore.
When I arrive, the air is soft—the smell of baked bread, damp grass under dome gardens, jasmine bushes outside the entrance. My mother is waiting on the stoop, arms crossed, calm as a judge. She doesn’t run to me; she waits.
I step down. She opens her arms. I collapse into her. I don’t even feel the sob that shakes me. I just let my body drain out.
My sister Vira bursts out behind her, eyes red, trembling. She rushes forward, cries, hugs me until I can’t distinguish between her voice and my heart. “Oh, Jae,” she says. “What have they done?”
I press into them both. I can’t speak. I feel a cold emptiness where I used to feel hope.
My mother’s voice is level. “We will be okay,” she says. “This changes nothing of what matters. You matter. He matters. We will figure this.”
I nod. The words slip. I think: Your mother is made of stone and soft words.
Later, in my bedroom, I find my terminal.
I open the message logs—old ones, drafts I never sent.
His messages are sterile, clipped—“Recovery progressing,” “Status report,” “We will get through this.” None of them say I miss you.
None of them say I love you. I taste betrayal.
Not because he failed. Because I never gave him a chance to know.
I flip to the tribunal footage on loop. The moment they led him away—his face, golden skin shadowed; his eyes burning with defiance.
The cameras catch it all. The judges, the cuffs, the lift off ramp towering.
He never saw me standing behind the glass.
He never knew I was there. I never told him I was.
Days pass. I move through them in a haze—meals, patient schedules, data logs. My body is an automaton: calibrate this, reboot that, attend a hearing tomorrow. My mother gently cares for me; Vira hovers. But none of it breaks the fog.
On the final hearing day, I dress in my best suit—dark, tailored, the fabric stiff.
I carry the sealed envelope—my words, unspoken.
I arrive to a chamber more sterile than the tribunal before.
Glass walls. Cameras. Press. They seat me in the gallery.
My heart pounds. I stand when they call for character statements—and am told I may not speak.
Not allowed. My throat closes. I watch the judges glare, their gavel raised. My hands tremble.
Then through the glass wall I see it: the transport ship, ramp descending, engines humming, crew boarding. He stands on that ramp, framed by roaring exhaust. Everyone sees him being taken—broken man and war hero. I place one hand, trembling, on my belly. The touch is small but real.
“He’ll never even know you exist,” I whisper.
The words echo as the ship lifts. Steel doors hiss closed. Noise. Flash of engines. The earth he’s leaving slides out of sight.
I stumble back. I fall to the ground. The courtroom shouts. Someone reaches for me. I don’t care.
That night, my apartment is dark and silent. The only light is moon through window slats. I wrap myself in sheets. I am alone. The weight of every unspoken confession presses on me. In the hollows of my chest, the life inside me stirs—tiny kick. Flicker. Something alive, something real.
I let tears come because there is no more holding in. Because regret and fear crash over me like waves. I sob until I cannot hear the world. Until the apartment is nothing but salt and shadows and the heartbeat inside me.
And as I drift toward half-sleep, I feel that kick again. A little surge, delicate—but it floods me, floods me with silence and hope and the terror of what’s to come.