Chapter 10
KYLDAK
The hum of the prison ship is a low, constant vibration—like a heartbeat that doesn’t belong to me.
The air tastes recycled, metallic, sharp with disinfectant and grease.
My cybernetics are dead weight, disconnected at the neural links.
The limbs that once made me a weapon now just hang—cold, useless, heavier than guilt.
They’ve shackled me with metal cuffs. Actual metal. No energy tethers, no plasma restraints. It’s a humiliation tactic, I know it. Iron—something they reserve for relics, for beasts. The kind that clinks loud enough to remind you that you’re less than human.
I sit against the bulkhead, eyes half-closed, trying to ignore the eyes on me.
The other prisoners—human, mostly. Some Martian miners, a few lunar defectors, one pale Drenthi smuggler with too many teeth. They glance my way, whispering. One laughs—high, nervous, mocking.
“Big hero,” one sneers. “Alliance golden boy. Guess they ran out of medals.”
I don’t answer.
Another voice, rougher, slurred. “Vakutan, yeah? Heard you eat your enemies. Let’s see it.”
The laughter is jagged, sharp.
I don’t look up. I just breathe, slow, through the ache in my ribs.
I could break them. Even with half a body of deactivated tech, I could snap bones. I could rip through these chains like foil. But what’s the point? What’s left to prove?
So I sit. Silent.
The cuffs scrape my scales. The ship’s gravity stutters, tugging my stomach sideways. A hollow rattle follows with every tremor. The lighting is sterile blue; it turns the other inmates into ghosts.
And all I can think of is Jaela.
Her voice. The smell of her hair—ozone and skin and faint citrus. The way her fingers brushed my face that last time she didn’t even know she was touching me.
She didn’t come. Didn’t fight the verdict. Didn’t send a word.
I clench my jaw. The skin splits where metal meets flesh at my shoulder socket. Warmth trickles—slow, deliberate—down my chest. Blood. Dark red against gold.
“Bleeder!” someone calls from across the bay.
A guard strides over, boots ringing on the deck. His armor smells like oil and starch. “You.” He jabs his shockstaff toward me. “You leaking, soldier boy?”
I stare at the floor. “Just a scar reopening.”
He calls for a med-bot anyway. It hums out of its dock, small, spider-limbed, eyes glowing clinical white. It clacks over, spritzes disinfectant. The sting hits like fire.
I hiss. “Stop.”
“Noncompliance will result in tranquilization,” the bot chirps.
“Then tranquilize me.”
The guard snorts. “Still got that attitude, huh? Guess they didn’t strip that out with your limbs.”
He walks off. The med-bot finishes sealing the wound, applies a band patch, and scuttles away.
When the pain fades, the silence returns.
I try to sleep. Emphasis on try.
The hum of the ship blends with memory—the whir of lab machinery, Jaela’s voice, half laugh, half exasperation. “You’re impossible, Kyldak.”
I remember the curve of her mouth when she said it. The heat in her eyes. The way her pulse jumped under my fingers.
In the dream, she’s speaking again. I can’t see her face. Just the sound of her breathing. Close.
Then she’s crying. Calling my name.
I reach out—metal and flesh—toward the sound. But there’s nothing. Just static. Just the dark.
I wake with my throat raw. My heart pounding.
The hum hasn’t stopped. It never does.
My chains are cold, slick with condensation. My blood has dried under the patch. I drag my wrists up, testing the metal. It bites back.
One of the miners across the bay mutters, “Talking in your sleep, hero. Said someone’s name.”
I glare. “Say another word and you’ll lose your teeth.”
He laughs nervously, looks away.
I lean my head against the bulkhead. The vibration runs through my skull, through my teeth, through the silence that used to hold her laughter.
“Forget her,” I growl. The sound is low, rough. It fills the narrow cell. “Forget her.”
But the lie burns.
Because I know I won’t.
Not in exile. Not in hell. Not even on Jurtik.
Her name is carved somewhere under the skin they couldn’t take.
The hum of the prison ship changes.
At first, it’s subtle—a low vibration underfoot that I can feel through the cuffs, through the dead circuits of my prosthetics. Then it deepens. The lights flicker. Gravity slips sideways.
A warning klaxon blares. The walls flash red. “Atmospheric entry: anomaly detected.”
The captain’s voice cuts through the comm, tight and panicked: “Brace for descent—repeat, brace for—”
Then the ship screams.
The sound is alive—metal shrieking like something dying. I’m thrown sideways. My restraints snap against my wrists, grinding scales into the edges. My shoulder flares with pain. The whole hull lurches, and the scent of burning ozone fills the air.
Someone yells. Someone else prays. One of the humans across from me vomits into the aisle, and it floats for a half-second before gravity slams back.
I slam against the wall, forehead cracking metal. The cuffs tear skin. My prosthetic leg jerks in its socket, useless.
“Stabilizers offline. We’re coming in hot—”
The lights die.
For a heartbeat, the only sound is wind tearing against the hull—then a sound like the world ending.
Impact.
The front end hits first, shoving everything forward. Bodies crash into bulkheads. The deck folds like paper. Sparks rain down, glowing embers in the dark. I hit the floor, hard, taste blood. The smell is copper and burnt plastic.
We skid for what feels like forever—grinding, slamming, metal screaming. Then silence.
The silence is worse.
I open my eyes. Everything is smoke. Black and red and orange. I’m still cuffed, half buried in what used to be a row of seats. The other prisoners are groaning, some not at all. A guard lies nearby—face down, neck at the wrong angle.
I grunt, rolling over, dragging my arms. My shoulder howls. I shove my knees under me and push.
My chains rattle, dragging through the ash. I grab the guard’s shock staff and use it for leverage. He doesn’t need it anymore.
The air tastes of fire and desert dust. My lungs burn when I breathe. Through the broken hull, I can see the sky—a jagged red, the color of infection.
Jurtik.
The wasteland world. The graveyard of the forgotten.
The sand outside looks like powdered rust. It moves in waves, whipped by wind that screams through the cracks in the hull.
Behind me, one of the prisoners stirs. The Drenthi smuggler. “We… Are we alive?” His voice is broken glass.
“Barely,” I rasp.
He laughs once, delirious. “Lucky.”
“Not for long.”
I yank at the cuffs. The chain creaks but doesn’t break. My cybernetics are still dead—no power, no feedback. I drag myself to the cargo hatch, where daylight cuts through the smoke. The heat hits me like a fist.
Outside, the ground glows. Sand and slag stretch to the horizon. In the distance, black silhouettes rise—towers? Machines? No. Bones of old ships, half-buried in dunes.
The Drenthi crawls after me, wheezing. “Where do we go?”
I look out across the wasteland, wind clawing my face, heat shimmering. I can feel it already—the pull of the planet. The weight of exile pressing against me.
“This isn’t a prison,” I say, voice low. “It’s a tomb.”
He laughs again, a broken sound. “You sound like you’ve been here before.”
I crack my neck. “No.” I look at the endless horizon. “But I know how to survive graves.”
I shove my heel against the cuffs, twist, pull until my wrist bones grind. The metal finally gives with a sharp clang. The skin beneath it is torn raw.
I tear off the chain. Toss it into the sand.
The wind catches my hair. My breath tastes of salt and smoke.
“Fine,” I mutter. The word barely audible. “Let’s see how long your monsters last with a real one among them.”
Behind me, the wreck still burns. Ahead, the dunes roll forever.
I take one step. Then another. Limping. Bleeding. Alive.
The sun climbs higher, a white eye glaring down. My reflection flashes in the shattered visor of a dead guard as I pass—scales dulled, eyes burning red.
I don’t look back.
I keep walking.
Because this isn’t exile.
This is rebirth.
And somewhere, in the back of my mind, I hear her voice again—Jaela, soft and defiant, whispering something only I can hear: Don’t die yet.
I smile. “Not planning to.”
Then I vanish into the sand.