Chapter 21
JAELA
The uplink flickers like it’s about to die again.
Gone.
Sent.
My knees buckle.
I slump to the floor of the makeshift lab, back against the bulkhead, the containment pod still warm against my thigh. My hands are shaking. My whole body’s trembling, actually. Not from fear this time—but something worse. Relief.
I did it.
Kel’s got a shot.
The stem cells are viable. The scan confirmed it. No degradation, no mutation. My sister’ll get them in time—she has the med team lined up, the regen chamber prepped. All we needed was the source.
Kyldak.
Gods. Kyldak.
I press my forehead against my knees and exhale through clenched teeth. He didn’t ask. Didn’t flinch. Just rolled up his sleeve and gave me what I needed. The one thing no one else in the universe could give.
And I still couldn’t tell him the truth.
The guilt eats me alive.
He should know. He deserves to know. But how the hell do I drop that kind of bomb in the middle of a rust-metal warcamp full of psychos who think hugs are a sign of weakness?
“Hey, babe,” I imagine saying. “So, surprise—you’ve got a son. He’s part you, part me, and he’s dying. But hey, thanks for the marrow!”
Yeah. That’ll go great.
I press my fists to my temples and groan. I can’t stay here. Not long. I need a way off Jurtik. Need to get back to Kel. Back to Earth.
But every exit route’s blown. Literally.
Except…
The ruins.
I dig into my satchel and pull out the cracked tablet I’ve been hiding. The coordinates are still there, pulsing faintly like a second heartbeat. Buried out in the Black Glass Desert. A spot no one dares tread. Precursor zone. Unmapped. Supposed to be cursed.
Or filled with tech so ancient it might as well be magic.
One theory—barely a whisper, deep in the black-market message boards—says they were building a wormhole generator before extinction hit. Portable.
One step through, and boom. Instant transport across any vector synced to the frequency. A galaxy jump. The kind that hasn’t existed since the early wars.
It’s a long shot.
Hell, it’s probably a hallucination wrapped in a myth wrapped in a death sentence.
But it’s all I’ve got.
I find Kyldak near the fire pit, hammering armor plating onto one of the long-range crawlers. Sweat slicks his golden-scaled back. His cybernetic eye tracks me as I approach, sharp and unreadable.
I don’t waste time.
“I need to get to the Black Glass.”
He freezes.
Turns.
“You want what?”
I toss the tablet onto the crate beside him. “Coordinates. Ruins. Precursor site.”
He stares. “You’ve lost your mind.”
“Probably. Still going.”
“That’s a no-go zone.”
“I’m aware.”
“They say the sand there melts armor. That the ground sings and people go mad.”
“I’m not people,” I snap.
His jaw tics.
“You’re serious,” he says finally.
“Deadly.”
He lifts the tablet, thumb brushing the edge. “You believe there’s tech out there?”
“I know it. And I think it might be a wormhole gate. Functional. Maybe enough to punch me off this rock.”
His eyes narrow. “So that’s it. You want off. You got what you needed and now you’re running.”
I flinch. “It’s not like that.”
He tosses the tablet back. “Feels like it.”
“It’s not.”
“Then why are you really here, Jaela?”
My breath catches.
“Let me worry about that.”
“No.” He steps closer. “You drag me back from the edge. Take from me. Lie to me. Again. And now you’re asking me to walk into death sands for what—a hunch?”
My spine stiffens. “I didn’t lie.”
He laughs—cold and sharp. “Everything about you is a lie right now.”
I grit my teeth. “You don’t have to come.”
He grabs my wrist, not rough, but firm. “Yeah. I do. Because if you walk into that desert alone, you die. And if that’s how this ends, I want to see it with my own damn eyes.”
I yank free. “Then suit up, warlord. We ride at dawn.”
He stares at me for a long time.
He nods. One sharp jerk of the chin.
“Let’s go find your fantasy machine,” he growls. “And maybe I’ll find the truth you keep burying.”
The wind’s already rising by the time we start assembling the team.
I watch the storm building over the Black Glass, a molten smear across the edge of the world. It pulses red and green, like it’s breathing. Like it’s waiting for us.
Kyldak doesn’t flinch. He never does.
He’s barking orders in Vakutan, his voice like gravel scraped through steel. Two lieutenants run off toward the crawler bays, and three others haul out crates of old weaponry and desert survival gear. He’s only bringing five.
The ones he trusts with his life. Which means none of them trust me.
That’s fine. I don’t need their loyalty. I just need their engines.
I move toward the central nav rig, the rusted-out transport hull we’ve been cannibalizing for weeks.
I wired my cracked tablet into the central feed, patched old map code through Kyldak’s pulse-tracker, and overclocked a satellite core I bartered from a black-market drifter with a cybernetic jaw. It’s not pretty.
But it’s working.
The coordinates glimmer steady now. That Precursor site’s locked in like a beacon. All we have to do is reach it alive.
Kyldak strides over to where I’m hunkered down next to the nav hub. His armor’s half-on, the scarred plating catching moonlight. His shoulder joint, though, is still exposed. Frayed wire. Burned servo.
I nod at it. “You want that thing locking up in the middle of a sandquake?”
He grunts. “I’ll survive.”
I dig through my pouch and pull out a splice kit. “Let me look.”
He kneels, silent.
The moment his body shifts beside me, the air changes. It’s like the gravity in the room tilts. His heat, the scent of sweat and iron and something wild fills my nose. I ignore the way my breath skips.
He says nothing as I peel the scorched panel off his shoulder and start cleaning the connection points.
We work in silence for a while. The camp thumps in the background—metal-on-metal, shouted orders, low rumbles of engines being prepped for chaos. The kind of noise that makes your ribs feel hollow.
And still, it’s quiet between us.
Too quiet.
I glance up at him. “You don’t have to do this.”
He snorts. “Thought I made myself clear.”
“I mean the whole death march into legend thing,” I say, more softly. “You could… not.”
He doesn’t look at me. Just stares at the firelight flickering in the sand beyond.
I adjust a wire. The connector sparks, and he winces slightly. Not much. Just a twitch.
“If this works,” I say slowly, twisting the coupling into place, “You could come with me.”
He freezes.
His jaw works. His eye ticks once.
And then… nothing.
No response.
Just stillness.
That answer is enough.
I sigh and press the panel back into place. “You’re really gonna stay behind, huh?”
Nothing again.
But his silence is thunderous.
I finish up, pack my tools, and sit there for a minute—knees drawn up, staring at the sand like it might spell out something useful. Like maybe the universe could throw me a bone for once.
He stands.
I look up.
Our eyes meet—and it hurts. The way he looks at me. Like I’m already gone. Like I was never his to keep.
“If I don’t make it through the portal,” I say, voice thin, “You get that data stick back to Earth. It’s encoded to transmit to my sister. You’ll know what to do.”
His jaw clenches. “I’m not delivering your corpse.”
“Then don’t let me die,” I snap.
His lips twitch. “Fair.”
We stare at each other a little longer.
He turns, disappears into the shadows of the prep tents.
I stand there, heart thudding like I’ve run ten miles.
That night, I sit alone on the edge of the crawler bay, legs dangling off the side, the wind tugging at my hair. The sandstorms have gathered in the distance—red-black clouds swirling like demons, lightning dancing in their bellies. It’s beautiful. And terrifying.
Like everything about this planet.
I think about Kel. About his laugh, the soft weight of him against my chest, the way his fingers always seek mine in the dark.
And I think about Kyldak. The way he fought for me. The way he bled. The way he held still and let me take what I needed without a single question.
He’s too much. And never enough.
I might never see him again after this.
I might not survive the crossing.
Hell, I might not even reach the ruins.
But the plan is locked. The engines are fueled. The course is set.
Tomorrow, I walk into the desert with a half-feral warlord and a pack of barely civilized killers, chasing a myth for a chance to save my son.
The real storm begins.