Like it used to be, back when the war wasn’t the only thing killing us.
Hours pass. The medbay hums on autopilot. I check his vitals, adjust the feed lines, anything to keep my hands busy. Sleep’s not an option. Too many ghosts in the dark.
When I finally step back, I catch my reflection in the glass partition — hollow eyes, hair pulled tight, shadows under my skin. I look like someone who’s been living on borrowed time. Maybe I have.
A soft clatter breaks the quiet.
Vael’s fingers twitch again, mechanical servos whining.
I move quickly to the bedside. His eyelids flutter but don’t open.
He’s dreaming — bad ones, by the sound of it.
Low growls spill from his throat, words I can’t catch. I touch his shoulder, instinct more than reason. “Easy. You’re safe.”
The growling stops.
He goes still.
Then, barely audible, he breathes, “Rynn… don’t run.”
My chest aches.
By the time the next shift rolls around, I’ve locked every console file and purged all visitor logs. Drel doesn’t ask why; he knows better. The fewer questions, the longer we live.
Vael sleeps on. The machines do the work. The medbay smells of sterile air and something darker — ozone and memory. I stand there until the lights begin to dim for night cycle, thinking of the girl sleeping in our quarters across the colony, small and fierce and far too smart.
When Nessa wakes tomorrow, she’ll ask if I’m coming home early.
And I’ll lie, again.
Because I can’t tell her that her father’s lying two corridors away, rebuilt from steel and nightmares.
I pull the blanket higher over his chest and step back.
“You should’ve stayed dead,” I whisper.
The monitor answers with a steady, unbotheredbeep-beep-beep.
I kill the overhead light and leave him in the glow of the machines — half man, half ghost, all danger.
And outside, through the reinforced viewport, Corven-7’s twin moons hang low and red over the horizon.
They look like warning lights.
They always do.
…
The door hisses closed behind me with a sound like a sigh.
If only it were mine.
I lean against the cool frame for a beat, eyes shut, willing the weight of the day off my shoulders. It doesn’t move. It never does. Not sincehearrived. Not since that golden stare cracked open a box I’ve spent five years keeping buried.
I toe off my boots and pad barefoot into the tiny apartment, the floor chill and familiar beneath my soles. It’s barely three rooms strung together with recycled steel and patched wiring, but it’sours. The only place I’ve ever felt almost safe.
“Nessa?” My voice comes out hoarse.
