Chapter 17 #2
I can’t stay here idle. I need a plan. I need to test him—get a DNA sample without him knowing. Everything I do must balance danger and subterfuge.
He strides past me, laughing with Raxl, telling some bawdy joke about surviving a sand blight. I stiffen. My fingers itch. The sight of him laughing—alive—is like salt in an open wound. I swallow hard.
Later, the sun is a cruel eye overhead, grilling flesh and metal alike.
They organize a skirmish drill: mock ambush, reaction timing, suppression tactics.
A perfect cover. I volunteer. My heart pounds as I step into the sparring ground, sand kicking underfoot, the heat pushing sweat down my spine.
I’m watching him—watching how he moves, how he drinks from his canteen, how he sweats, how he breathes.
During a break, he drops his metal cup—one he’s used earlier, the one I saw him drink from after the pit fight.
The rim glints in the afternoon light. No one’s looking.
I slip behind two crates, heart sputtering.
I slide the cup sideways until I can scoop inside with the thin tip of a sterilized bone shard I hid in my boot.
I brush the shard along the inner lip, catching micro-residue—saliva, skin cell, whatever I can harvest. My pulse slams. Sweat drips down my temples.
I lift the shard, tuck it into my sleeve, wipe my hands clean.
Kyldak steps toward me. I nearly drop the shard. I force my face calm. He says, “You good?” meaning literally—“did you overextend?” I nod. “Don’t push too hard.” His voice is soft, concern flickering in his red eye.
I swallow. “Just feeling the heat.”
He laughs. And that laugh—the sound of him still alive—makes my heart tear. I walk away, hiding the shard in a fold of my sleeve.
Every time he passes near me, my nerve frays. His scent—metal, sweat, burning coal—floods me. I steady myself.
By night, I retreat to my quarters. I press the shard onto a tiny field isolation chamber I rigged earlier from parts scavenged at the comms rig. The amber glow inside hums. I watch molecules separate, analyze gene patterns. I pretend not to feel sick with yearning.
And when the display shows a partial match—enough to confirm he’s the only possible donor—I have to look away. Because if he turned from myth into flesh, if he is the one connection that saves Kel—or damns him—then I can’t hide this anymore.
I lie there, heart hammering, waiting to hear him enter the room, or call out, or do anything that would tear this night open.
But I don’t say it. I don’t tell him I’m doing this for Kel. I don’t tell him I’ve already risked everything for a child he can’t even guess exists.
I curl into myself, the lie thick and alive in my veins. I ache for him— ache for what I lost, what I might lose again, and what might yet be saved.
I tell myself it’s just another day in hell. Just another hustle. Just another mission with a gun to my heart.
But then I see his face in the flickering light of the stim panel—Kyldak’s—and I remember exactly how deep I’ve sunk.
I spent the last four hours hunched over a stack of scrap tech, stolen dermal gel packs, and a disassembled IV injector that smells like fried copper and bad decisions. My hands ache. My spine's a question mark. My patience is molecular dust.
I’m building a med rig from literal trash. And it has to look like something you'd use to slap a cooling patch on a heat-stroked merc—not test gene markers from a warlord’s spit.
The casing crackles as I wire the final circuit. A violet arc zaps my thumb, and I curse loud enough to rattle the engine walls. The device flickers to life—barely. The screen glows a sickly green.
Footsteps outside. Heavy. Confident.
I yank a tarp over the rig just as Kyldak walks in, one brow lifted like he can already smell the guilt on me.
“What are you doing?”
I clear my throat. “Triage upgrade. Your camp’s medical setup is garbage. I’m fixing it.”
He glances at the wires, the scavenged biogauze, the haphazard blood filters. “That looks like a hacking station.”
“It’s not.”
He doesn’t move. Doesn’t blink. Just watches me for a long second that stretches so tight it might snap.
Then he shrugs.
“Good. We could use better medical.” He turns to leave. Pauses. “But if you're building anything that could leave this camp? I expect to know.”
“I’m not.”
He nods. Doesn’t smile. “Be careful with voltage regulators. The last medic fried their own heart.”
“Noted.”
He leaves.
I exhale so hard I almost collapse.
Midday, I volunteer for patrol. Get out, move, breathe air that isn’t recycled through doubt and diesel.
We pass through the canyon narrows—razor spires rising around us like giant teeth.
Sand howls through the chasm like it's angry we’re still alive.
I keep my eyes peeled, my head down, my fingers toying with the pulse patch in my pocket.
I’m not thinking about Kyldak. I’m thinking about Kel. Always Kel.
Behind me, one of the lieutenants—Brannik, the one with the silver nose spike and no subtlety—falls into step way too close.
“You’re not like the others,” he says.
“Sharp observation,” I mutter.
“Kyldak trusts you.”
“Guess I’m charming.”
He doesn’t laugh.
“You disappear into the med tent a lot. Alone. You work when nobody’s watching. But you don’t talk to the crew. Not really.”
I stop walking. Turn. “You spying on me?”
“I’m watching out for Red Eye.”
A threat. Wrapped in loyalty. The deadliest kind.
I smile sweetly. “You think I’m Alliance?”
“I think you’ve got secrets.”
“Doesn’t everybody?”
His hand drifts to his blade.
I act fast.
Yank the voltage stim patch from my pocket, slam it into his chestplate, and trigger the pulse. His whole rig spasms, shorting out—lights flicker, heat coils spike, and his auto-holster jams. His mouth opens in a snarl, but he’s locked up for two seconds too long.
I slap a cooling patch over his left bicep and lean in. “Next time you wanna flirt, just say so.”
The heat-surge fades. The rest of the patrol stares, jaws slack. Brannik coughs. Wipes his mouth. Grins like a man who just lost a bet.
“Damn,” someone mutters. “She’s got tech hands.”
I wink. “I’m useful.”
That night, I stay back in Kyldak’s quarters, pretending to rest. I’m not resting.
I’ve rerouted the makeshift med rig to an uplink boost tower—one Kyldak thought was beyond salvage. It’s not perfect, but it caught a signal. Just one.
A vid.
From Earth.
I hit play.
Kel fills the tiny screen—hair sticking up in six different directions, his eyes sleepy, his voice slurred with baby logic. “Mommy... I made a rocket with my legos. It broke... but I fixed it! And I drank the blue juice. Not the green one. The green one is yucky. Love you.”
Then he laughs.
The sound is so pure it knocks the air out of me. He’s articulate for his age.
I curl around the screen like I can climb into it. My fingers press over the edge like I could reach through. Just one more second. Just one more smile.
“What is that?”
Kyldak’s voice cuts through me like a blade.
I turn too fast. The rig sparks as I shove the screen off.
“It’s—just a training tape. A medical archive. Pediatric subject. Nothing important.”
He steps closer. “Didn’t sound like nothing.”
I shrug. “Old case. Family let me keep the feed for emotional regrowth analysis.”
He doesn’t say anything for a long time.
“Cute kid.”
My throat closes.
I nod. “Yeah.”
He doesn’t press.
But he watches me with new eyes after that. Every move I make, every breath I take—it’s measured. Calculated. Not out of suspicion. But something... deeper.
Like he’s hunting a truth that’s already living under his skin.