I ship it.
Did she cook the meat or just melt under him?
I slam the power button and the wall goes black. My breath fogs in the silence.
I used to be invisible. A ghost in the archives. The woman no one remembered after meetings. The one who kept to herself, kept her opinions close, kept her rage even closer. But now?
Now I’m the face of the goddamn Alliance culinary revolution.
I pace the room, arms crossed, teeth grinding. My compad buzzes on the couch, then again, again, again. I don’t look. Iknowwhat’s waiting for me. Margo. My supervisor. Some stupid influencer trying to get me to collab on “bridging the galactic divide.”
This wasn’t supposed to mean anything. It was just a meal. A moment.
And it’s ruined everything.
The compad keeps buzzing.
“Fine,” I snap, snatching it up like it’s personally offended me. The screen lights up with a message from Margo.
MARGO: “Heads up. Trint wants to see you first thing. Not happy.”
No shit.
I type back,“Got it,”and toss the pad onto the couch. It bounces once and clatters to the floor.
My stomach knots. I haven’t eaten since... gods, I don’t even know. The scent of last night’s food still clings to my clothes—spice, char, citrus. It’s in my pores, in my hair, seared into memory. I hate how good it had tasted. I hate that I think about it at all.
I don’t sleep. I just sit in the dark, watching the city blink at me through the window like it’s in on the joke.
Morning comes like a slap.
The lights in the archive feel brighter than usual, like someone turned up the fluorescents just to see me flinch. The air is damp again, recycled too many times through filters no one’s replaced. It smells like ozone, dust, and burnt pride.
People are looking at me.
Not obviously. Not enough to call out. But I see the flicker of glances when I pass, the way conversation dips when I walk into a corridor. I hear the whispers. I hear my name.
I want to scream.
Instead, I walk straight to Trint’s office and knock once, sharp.
“Come,” he calls. His voice is smooth, but tight. Not a good sign.
The door hisses open. He’s already sitting behind his desk, elbows resting on the surface like he’s prepared for a siege.
“Close the door,” he says.
I do. It shuts behind me with a soft click that sounds too final.
“Sit.”
I don’t. “If this is a reprimand, you can email it.”
Trint sighs, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “It’s not a reprimand. Yet.”
“Then what is it?”
He gestures to the holo on his desk. It activates, showing a paused frame from the episode. Me and Kenron. Laughing. Close. Too close.
