My breath catches. “What?”
He stands fully, the loose shirt forgotten, the tension in his frame crackling like lightning under skin. “You said it yourself—he’s watching everything. Your logs. My reports. Surveillance footprints. We don’t need to fight him. We just need to vanish right in front of him.”
“You’re talking about going off-grid.”
“I’m talking about survival.”
I don’t answer right away. The air in the room feels thinner now. Heavier.
He turns toward me slowly, voice gentler now. “But before we do anything…”
I look up.
He’s close. Too close.
“I want a day.”
My pulse stutters.
“A day?” I echo.
“One day,” he says, his voice softer than I’ve ever heard it. “With her. No lies. No tech interference. No pretending I’m just some patient in your log.”
I can’t breathe.
“She deserves to know,” he says. “And I need to know her.”
I swallow hard. “Vael, if she sees you, really sees you, and then we vanish again?—”
“I won’t let her be hurt.”
“And what ifyouget hurt?”
His smile is bitter. “That ship sailed five years ago.”
The silence that falls is thick. Oppressive.
“I’m not saying yes,” I whisper.
“But you’re not saying no,” he replies, eyes burning.
I hate him for that. For the way he always sees through me.
That night,I don’t sleep.
I sit in the dark of my living quarters, watching Nessa’s little body curled up under her lunar-patterned blanket, her favorite claw-toy tucked under her arm. Her breath whistles softly. Innocent. Oblivious.
And me?
I’m anything but.
I pick up the compad again.
Vael’s face glows in the feed request.
I almost don’t open it.
But I do.
