“Youcan.”
“Iwon’t.”
I let go of her wrist. Step back.
The air between us feels like a vacuum.
“I remember what it felt like to trust you,” I murmur.
She flinches like I struck her.
Then she turns and walks away, heels tapping down the corridor, head held too high.
But her shoulders are shaking.
CHAPTER 13
RYNN
The compad screen blinks back at me with a blank white prompt.
Delete all logs? Confirm?
My finger hovers over the confirmation glyph, trembling.
This is the last of it. The final layer. I’ve already wiped my personal messages, erased my alternate routing paths, even scrapped the shell account I kept in case I ever needed to vanish again.
I’ve done this before. I know the steps.
But this time, it feels like carving my own name off a gravestone.
Earlier, Nessa screamed.
Not loud. Not even long. But it was enough to hollow me out.
She was trying to lift her storage box, the one shaped like a holo-dino. It has her favorite toys inside, and she’s been getting strong enough lately to move it herself.
But this time… something snapped.
The lid cracked under her grip. Not the hinge. The actualcomposite polymer. And when it gave, her wrist slammed against the floor at an angle that made my stomach turn.
I was across the room in a blink, catching her just as she crumpled, face twisted in silent pain.
“Mommy, it hurts—” she whispered, tears tracking down her cheeks.
I scanned it. Minor fracture. Already starting to regenerate. Too fast.
Vakutan tissue repair.
Not completely, but enough to make the bone density visible if anyone looked too close.
I bandaged her wrist anyway. Kissed it. Held her against my chest, rocking her back and forth while her body hiccuped sobs.
“It’s okay,” I whispered. “It’s okay, baby, shh…”
She pressed her face into my collar and mumbled something I could barely hear.
“What was that?”
