A faint humming pulses around me—machines syncing to a rhythm that isn’t mine. The darkness is thick, but not total. There’s a green glow low to the left, a thin vertical strip of data scrolling. I can’t tell if it’s a dream, a hallucination, or some afterlife I don’t deserve.
I try to move. My arms don’t obey. My legs might as well belong to someone else. Straps? No, not straps—just dead weight. My body has forgotten how to be mine.
A door hisses. Soft light spills in, pale blue against the darkness. Footsteps approach—light, careful. The scent of hospital soap mixes with a whiff of synthetic floral perfume. A woman’s voice, crisp but gentle: “Vitals stabilizing. He’s awake.”
Another voice, lower, male, “About damn time.”
The footsteps retreat. A click. Then a soft glow blooms overhead, like starlight caught in a bowl. My pupils contract. I blink against it, the edges of everything sharpening.
I’m in a room built from angles and glass, its corners softened by privacy screens. Medical panels hum quietly. Tubes snake from my arms to drips and monitors. My armor is gone. My claws dulled, sheathed in soft medical coverings.
A nurse stands at the foot of the bed, tablet in hand. She looks up, startled to see my eyes open. “Sergeant Darun?” she asks, voice uncertain.
I swallow. My throat burns. “Where…?”
“You’re in a military recovery wing,” she says, stepping closer. “Alliance Central. Earth orbit. You were evacuated from Ataxian space after the incident.”
My brain stumbles. “Incident?”
Her face flickers—sympathy mixed with protocol. “It’s classified. You were in a coma. Three years.”
The words fall like lead.
I breathe, slow and shallow. The memory of fire and ash rushes back in jagged flashes—Kanapa’s eyes blazing, Amy’s recorder raised, the explosion ripping sky from ground. I taste blood, smoke, her name.
Amy.
The nurse fiddles with her tablet. “You need to stay calm—your vitals?—”
“Amy,” I rasp.
Her head snaps up. “What?”
“Amy Matthews. She—” My voice breaks. “She was there.”
She hesitates, then taps the tablet. “You know her?”
I nod, each movement a labor. “She’s why I lived.”
The nurse’s expression softens. “Hold on,” she says, and with a few flicks she pulls up a Holonet feed on the room’s display wall.
The screen flickers from static into crisp daylight.
There she is.
Amy. Three years older. Hair swept into a sleek anchor’s knot, makeup flawless under studio lights, a cool steel poise in her eyes. She’s reading headlines with that same fierce calm, voice steady, unflinching. Nothing in her face betrays the woman who crawled through ash beside me. But I know. I know.
Her image fills the room. The air feels thinner.
My throat aches. I whisper her name. “Amy…”
The nurse looks at me like she’s seeing a ghost.
“She made it,” I whisper again, more to myself than anyone else. “She’s alive.”
“You need to rest,” the nurse says, though her tone has shifted—less command, more awe.
I drag my gaze from the screen to her. “Rehab,” I say, the word a growl. “Schedule.”
