And I don’t know how the hell to tell her.
We move through the remains of the ship together. Like wolves stalking a dead forest—quiet, alert, always aware the ground could vanish beneath our feet. The closer we drift toward the singularity’s edge, the more space starts to comeapart.
Physics doesn’t make sense here.
The stars outside the half-shattered viewports twist into spirals and halos, bending light around invisible curves. Ella calls them “gravitational lensing effects.” I just call them wrong. The universe shouldn'tlooklike this. There’s a sound to it too—something just at the edge of hearing, like a thousand voices whispering across broken time.
“You ever see something like this before?” she asks, breath fogging in the chilled air as we crawl through a half-collapsed corridor.
“No,” I admit. “This is... unnatural. The singularity is growing. We’re trapped in the drag.”
She nods grimly. “Best case? Week. Maybe. If we keep patching oxygen and stay away from breached hull sections.”
“And worst case?”
She gives me a hollow smile. “Take a guess.”
We try to extend our range. Reconnect surviving life support cells. She maps out a plan using a torn-up medsheet and a stylus jammed between her fingers. I follow her without question—her brain runs faster than a command server on overdrive.
But in the fifth corridor, things go wrong.
A power cell we thought was dead? Not dead.
And worse—it’s plugged into a still-active security node.
We hear it a second too late. The shriek of servos. The thud of armored feet. The red-eye glow of an autonomous security bot lurching out of the smoke like some metal god of retribution.
“MOVE!” I bellow, throwing myself between it and Ella as the thing swings a blade-arm at chest height.
Steel meets scale. I absorb the hit, wrench the thing’s shoulder joint apart with a roar—but it’s fast, and I’m already bleeding. The bot spins, targeting Ella.
She’s quick.
But not quick enough.
The blade arcs down, and she screams—sharp and human and tooreal—as the weapon slices across her thigh.
Rage detonates inside me.
I slam the bot into the bulkhead hard enough to shatter its optical casing. It claws at me—sparks fly—and I crush its core with both hands. The shriek cuts off. The bot crumples.
Silence.
Ella’s down.
I’m at her side before the sparks finish falling, hands bloody, heart hammering.
“Don’t touch it!” she gasps, breath shallow, fingers clutching at the torn edge of her leg. Blood’s pouring from the gash.
“You need pressure on the wound,” I say, scooping her into my arms.
She winces, trying to push me away. “I can walk?—”
“No you can’t,” I growl. “Shut up and let me carry you.”
She glares at me, eyes glassy with pain. But she doesn’t fight.
Her hands clutch my armor as I run.
