Just to say I’m alive.
I collapse into the corner of the old bunker, cold seeping into my bones, pain chewing at my nerves.
I think of Nessa.
Of her laugh.
Of her calling me Da.
And I promise myself—if they want to find us, they better bring more than ghosts from my past.
Because I am not going down again.
_________________________________________________________________________
The darkness coalesces around me. Thick, static, the bones of the bunker groan as if remembering riot and ruin. I feel every echo in my bones. My body aches like I’ve carried a war for years and finally laid it down on these cold concrete slabs.
But there’s a fire inside me too.
I press my fingers over the scar above my brow. The place they split me open and tried to rebuild me in someone else's image. Below that, the faint ridges where the cybernetic grafts meet flesh. I trace the lines quietly. The scar is mine. The graft is mine. This body, battered but still beating, is mine.
And somewhere in the blur is her.
Rynn.
Her hand on my chest last night. The way her fingers found my second heart—slower beat, deeper pulse. The way she whispered in my ear, “I’m terrified… but with you.”
I remember her lips. Soft, salty like sweat after the debrief, the new metal scent of my arm creeping into the space between us. I remember her eyes—amber halo from the lantern light, darker edges, full of dusk and promise.
That memory is a weapon now.
I draw it in, let it fill my lungs. I replay her voice.
“You don’t have to stop running.”
“You’re built for survival.”
“We’re just getting started.”
I sit against the far wall of the bunker, legs drawn up, feet filthy and bare. The cool metal floor presses into my spine. The scrambler collar hums low, a reminder of the lie we strapped to our necks so we could vanish. I pull it off, let it rest on my thigh. The air around the collar smells like ionized circuits, ozone lingering like regret.
Beside me, the unconscious body of the shadow-runner remains hidden. Her armor dented. Her knife dulled. She’s proof the chase is real. She will wake. She will bleed. She will scream for vengeance. And I will be ready.
But momentarily—just momentarily—I rest.
I close the hatch behind me. The gap between us and the outside narrows. Every moment that passes is a countdown. The sensor net still pulses somewhere. The drones still hum above. Tarek’s shadow is longer than these tunnels.
Yet I sit. And I remember.
Her hair, tangled around pillows. Her fingers grazing the scar on my shoulder. Her voice cracking like glass when she said, “We’re safer together.”
I stand. My joints click—the servos in my shoulder grumble like a wounded engine. I flex my fingers. I hear the soft electric hiss as the implants calibrate. The tactile shock when metal presses metal is familiar—my world. She accepted that metal. She kissed around it.
I lean my head back, eyes closed. The memory becomes a tide.
Her scent. Lavender and old coffee and something new: hope. I inhale it in my mind and it feels like the first breath on a new planet. I let it flood me.
“What did you do?” I whisper to the darkness. “What did we become?”
