13. Cassia
CASSIA
The overhead freight bay lamps cast long shadows across the grease-stained workshop floor, their dull drone filling the silence like an insect stuck inside a wall.
For over a week I've lived inside this compound now, and the walls have started to feel less like a cage and more like a rib cage—protective and constricting, yet alive with the pulse of the people breathing inside them.
We returned from the military post over an hour ago, and the walk back still clings to my skin, miles of unspoken dread with Rhykor's palm against my spine.
I scrub the steel counter with a rag that smells like bleach and engine grease.
My shoulders burn. The repetitive motion does nothing to dislodge what happened at that briefing or the image of Rhykor's hand around Rexicon's throat, blisters darkening under superheated fingers while forty officers scrambled for distance.
A metallic clink breaks through the quiet.
The sliding door grinds open, and Elias limps through it with a salvaged data terminal under one arm, his makeshift crutches against his ribs.
He looks exhausted, dark circles ringing his eyes, but his mouth splits into an enormous grin the second he spots me.
"Cassia, you're back!" He hobbles to the main table, setting the terminal down with exaggerated care. “Everyone’s been asking about the briefing. Britt’s staying silent, and Dessik grunts and walks off every time.”
"Sounds about right." I manage a tired smile. "You should be resting that knee."
"Sitting counts, you know." He taps the side of the terminal, bouncing on his good leg.
"Listen, I cracked three regional communication slates masked under the primary shipping logs.
Old operational records and archived supply routes—some of this stuff goes back almost a decade.
" The observations tumble out faster and higher in a steady stream.
"I figured you could use it to track down buried emergency caches.
Medical supplies, field kits, stuff the military abandoned when they pulled back from the frontier. "
Squeezing his shoulder, I take the heavy slate. "This is incredible work. Thank you, Elias."
"Dessik shared his ration blocks with me," he adds, beaming. "Everyone here's been; I mean, it's unlike what I expected. From Kraaj." He catches himself, glancing toward the corridor. "Don't tell the Commander I said that."
"Go eat," I say, nudging him toward the door. "Dessik brought dried kanga-meat from the south market."
He scrambles off, grabbing his crutches, and disappears down the corridor with all the subtlety of a minor earthquake.
The silence returns. Leaning against the iron workbench, I look down at the illuminated display.
Elias organized the encrypted military files by geographic coordinate and operational timeline, rendering old Kraaj data readable through human translation software.
My initial search is simple enough, focusing just on blood coagulants for Ash Alley.
If old emergency caches still sit entombed under frontier ruins, these records should show me where to dig.
I scroll through occupation-era timelines, tracing heavy armor divisions across District Seventeen's outer borders. The screen flickers amber as I open a compressed folder labeled Sannar Reconstruction Project.
While I thought it would be reconstruction, the logistics documents detail a multi-phased suppression campaign across the frontier region during the years following the human rebellion.
Cold language fills the screen—civilian clearance metrics, population displacement percentages, resource denial operations.
Settlements were leveled. Agricultural sectors were poisoned beyond recovery.
Thousands of human families were removed.
They were never killed or displaced, but simply erased, as if entire communities were inventory items pulled from a shelf.
The documents outline three years of systematic destruction across frontier zones that housed the poorest human populations on Luvon. These communities were too far from the rebuilt cities to benefit from peace treaties. They were places like the one my parents lived in before I was born.
My throat tightens as I swipe to the bottom of the primary authorization ledger, expecting General Daxos's seal.
A different identifier stares back at me. It is a high-ranking tactical command signature, authenticated by the same biometric encryption Rhykor uses on the compound's perimeter security.
Commander Rhykor, The Dragon of District Seventeen.
The tablet slips through my fingers. Plastic cracks against iron, and the sound ricochets off the walls. I grab the workbench edge to keep standing.
Boots strike the upper walkway, heavy and unhurried, a cadence my body recognizes before my brain catches up. Picking up the tablet, I walk out of the workshop.
He’s descending the metal staircase when I reach the freight bay. His eyes find me immediately, and the hard angles of his jaw loosen, the tension in his brow easing into a startling openness.
That openness makes it worse.
"What is this?" The question is flat—the same tone I use when a patient bleeds out and panic becomes a luxury.
His nostrils flare, reading my fury as he reads any room he enters.
"Cassia."
I shove the tablet toward his chest. Catching it with claws clicking against the casing, his eyes drop to the screen. The openness vanishes as the muscles in his face lock down, pulling taut over bone and scale until he looks carved from volcanic rock.
"Your signature, Rhykor. Your biometric seal on an authorization that burned human settlements off the map."
A muscle flexes along the ridge of his throat. He sets the tablet on the nearest crate.
"I was twenty-two." The history is raw, like being dragged across gravel.
"Kraaj command identified frontier settlements as insurgent strongholds.
They assigned pacification operations to junior commanders with enough combat capability to guarantee compliance and enough ambition to guarantee silence.
" A muscle in his cheek spasms. "I was both. "
"Did you really say pacification?" It tastes like battery acid.
"What it was—what I did—was follow orders designed to crush resistance through terror.
" He swings around, and the armor of his expression fractures.
Features I never thought him capable of displaying break across his face.
A profound, inward-turning horror takes hold, making him look like a man watching himself commit an atrocity from a distance.
He stares directly at the ugliest thing he has ever done.
"I reviewed targeting data and approved deployment schedules.
People died because I put my name on documents exactly like that one. "
"They were never just people to you, but humans—families with children and gardens, holding names you never learned because the mission briefing reduced them to nothing more than coordinates."
"You're right, Cassia."
"I know I'm right!" The shout tears out of me, bouncing off concrete, and he absorbs each syllable like a blow he believes he deserves. "You were exactly what they raised you to be. Point the Dragon at a problem and watch it burn."
"They trained me to measure success by territory secured and resistance eliminated.
" His hands release the railing beside the staircase.
Molten grooves mark the metal where his palms rested.
"By following every order, I earned the markings on my chest. I chose to believe the violence was necessary, shielding myself from the reality of handing my conscience to men like Daxos and allowing them to use me as an instrument. "
"My father’s settlement was on the frontier.
" Despite all the control I command, the accusation slips through, jagged and raw.
"Your officers wrote that place off as expendable, stripping away emergency support the moment the Legion outbreak hit.
" I step closer. "Was that you too? Was my father one of your clearance metrics? "
His face collapses at once until what stares back at me is bare and wrecked, leaving him completely undefended.
I've watched his anger melt through droids and scorch officers who spoke my name wrong.
This presents an entirely different ruin, devastation raw and total, carving through any hard surface he's ever built around himself.
"The settlement designations from that period are in the archives. I can access the full records and confirm?—"
“Stop,” I say, holding up my hand. “I refuse an archive search telling me whether you personally destroyed my father’s home. You are exactly what they told us you were. The stories, warnings, and reasons my people hold against yours—you lived them. You commanded it.”
"Yes."
It is a single, devastating word, and it seems to collapse under the sheer weight of the documents he had signed and all the settlements that had burned.
Only that syllable hangs between us while the freight bay lights flicker, and I stand across a sliver of charged space from the man I let inside my clinic, my trust, and my body—and realize I have no idea who he is.
"You need to stay away from me." My resolve finally fractures. "I need space, and you have to actually give it to me."
The instincts I've learned to read in him, the territorial flare, and the possessive surge war visibly under his skin. His claws extend and retract in quick, agitated movements. For agonizing seconds, he fights a visible war with himself.
Snapping his wings to his back, his hands drop to his sides. And he steps back, careful and controlled, dismantling himself one decision at a time.
"Whatever you need," he rasps.