Her brows lift. “You just woke up. You’re severely deconditioned. Muscle mass down by sixty percent. You can’t?—”
“Whatever it takes.” My fingers flex weakly against the bedrails. “I’m going back.”
She stares. “Back where?”
I turn back to the screen. Amy’s eyes flicker as she glances at her notes, lips shaping words the network scripted, but I hear something else beneath it. Truth. Defiance. Her voice slips through the speakers like a current, tugging at something deep in my chest.
“To her,” I say.
The nurse hesitates, then lowers her tablet. “I’ll alert the doctors. But it’s months of therapy. Years, maybe.”
“I don’t care.”
Her gaze lingers on me, then on the screen. She exhales. “I’ll set it up.”
As she leaves, the room dims again, but the screen stays on. Amy keeps talking, delivering the world’s news like she’s its last honest vein. My heart hammers slow and heavy in my chest, waking muscle by muscle from its long sleep.
I can feel my claws itching against the restraints. Not with violence. With purpose.
Three years.
She thinks I’m dead.
I’m not.
And I’m coming back.
CHAPTER 23
AMY
The camera lights feel warm tonight—too warm. The heat seeps into the studio like guilt, settling heavy on my skin. My reflection in the monitor is sharp, too sharp: polished cheekbones, steady gaze, the anchor voice pressed into a mask.Steel Amy,they whisper in the corridors. Tonight I get a rare prime-time segment. They say I’ve earned it, but Rex leans close before I go live and murmurs a caveat:Don't get any big ideas.
I brighten my face. I nod. But I read between those words like a cipher.Keep your mouth shut about Kanapa.Rex’s lips angle tight when he says it. I carry that weight into the teleprompter, swallowing the script they feed me so I can live to speak another day.
When the cameras roll, I sound composed. I’m steady. I convey facts, context, voices from the field—everything except the ones they tried to erase. The audience sees a confident anchor. My daughter, Libra, watches from home, right when I say my name on screen. “That’s mommy!” she squeals. My heart surges in my chest. I force a smile and wave just slightly. The facade shows. The confidence fractures. But I keep talking—because if I stop, everything inside me will leak out.
After the broadcast, the hall outside is quiet. The interns crowd around, their eyes shining. “You were amazing.” “You killed it tonight.” “Mommy Ame—” I catch one kid trying to call me that. I laugh it off, hug his elbow politely. Inside, I feel fracture lines spreading. The wound in my chest pulses again, open and raw.
I slip back to my apartment late. Fuel-lit streetlights dance through the windows. Libra is asleep in her crib. I watch her breathe. Her little chest rising and falling, her lashes shuttered against dreams. I wonder whether she knows. Whether she ever will. I close all the windows and turn off all the lights but one lamp, soft and warm, sitting in the corner.
I move to my old workstation. The hidden drive hums under my desk. My fingers hover over the keys as though they carry too much gravity. I tell myself this is research. Journalism. It’s professional. It's a necessity.
I pull up archival footage first: war reports. Kanapa giving speeches. Soldiers marching. Planets being burned, civilians fleeing. Then deeper slices: rebel skirmishes. The mutiny. Snippets of the broadcast that disappeared from public servers. Bits of interviews I stashed, logs I copied under threat. They’re fuzzy. Glitched with static. But I piece them. Every frame is a bruise on memory.
I click past to saved voice messages. I didn’t expect much. But there’s one with a name and a date: Darun — two days before the explosion. My breath catches. My fingers tremble. The clip is short, damaged by data rot, but I hit play.
His voice is rough, gravelly, thin with fatigue:“Amy… if this goes dark, know I loved you. Protect her. I can’t—just know I tried.”
The edges of the recording crackle. He coughs. A gasp. Then static.
I can’t hold it in any longer. Sobs tear out of me—sharp, impossibly loud in the silence. The recording falls from my grasp, it clatters to the keyboard. The lamp shakes under my hand. I drop to my knees, bury my face in my arms, let the shame and grief and memory flood me raw. I thought I was strong. This is a weakness I can’t hide.
I stay there for hours. Time stretches. The moon drifts. The city hum bleeds through my walls. The night grows cold. The wound splits open again, fresh.
Morning slinks in gray and unforgiving. My face is puffy. My hair is a mess. But I walk into the studio anyway. The anchor desk waits. The teleprompter hums on. The viewers are out there—expecting calm, certainty.
I take a steadying breath. I deliver the news like nothing’s wrong. My voice is confident. The script is polished. I speak of policy, diplomacy, strategic shifts. But behind the words, in every glance I flash to camera edges, there’s a tremor. A memory. A loss.
