“Are you really going to leave like this, Nixxy?”
Kira froze.
Her mind screamed at her to keep going, to not turn around. Both orders her body refused to obey.
Somehow Kira found herself facing Bayside.
He stood on the rocky path behind her, hands in his pocket in that same casual stance that used to make her laugh.
“You don’t have to go.” There was a half-smile on his face as he looked at her with warm eyes. “You can stay.”
Kira looked beyond him to find the others waiting for her in the launch bay of the Vega. Walker and Bates stood shoulder to shoulder with Ranger and Park.
“I want to,” Kira said.
The dream they were offering her was a beautiful one. It would be so easy to allow herself to let go of her pain and suffering.
To forget.
“But you’re not you.” Kira took a step backward. “And this isn’t real.”
Much as she might want it to be. Bayside and the rest wouldn’t wish her to live a lie. They’d want her to move forward—even if that meant leaving them behind.
The hardest thing Kira had ever done was turning her back toward them and continuing her voyage. Every step hammered a nail into her heart. Agony threatened to sunder her.
Kira drew strength from the pain, allowing it to bolster her as she reached the edge of the water maze.
“I’m proud of you, Nixxy,” Bayside whispered. “It was an honor to serve at your side. Sorry I didn’t get to see it to the end, but I know you did everything you could.”
A sob ripped from Kira’s throat as she kept going, walking right into the maw of the cavern. The darkness that closed around her was a soothing balm to the wounds on her soul that felt as raw as the first day she received them.
Despite that, Kira felt a release. Almost as if a wound had been lanced and the poison and pus that had been infecting her for so long could finally drain free.
Maybe not today but some day not too far in the future, Kira thought she’d finally be able to lay him and the others to rest.
Before she could dwell, light flickered to illuminate the space.
The wanderer looked as shocked as Kira when he looked up to find her standing there.
“Wait,” Kira yelled.
The wanderer turned and fled into the tunnel behind him.
Kira chased after him, abandoning the hope of taking him by surprise.
Between one step and the next, he disappeared from in front of her. Kira slowed at finding herself alone. No sign of the person she’d been pursuing.
She turned in a circle, unable to make sense of it.
There was only one direction in this tunnel and that was forward.
She wasn’t so slow as to have fallen behind. Nor had she passed him.
So where had he gone?
Kira considered her options. There were really only two. Continue forward and hope he was still ahead of her—or backtrack to search the tunnel she’d already traveled.
A pulse of warmth and welcome decided her. The summons from earlier repeated, this time a little stronger and more insistent.
