And I will protect that, until the last breath.
CHAPTER 24
RYNN
Gantry smells like ozone and rot.
It’s the kind of scent that sticks to the back of your tongue — old oil, burned metal, bodies that have lived too long in recycled air. The port hums underfoot, a heartbeat of engines and greed. Every corridor’s slick with condensation, every face’s a mask for someone else’s lie.
Nessa’s hand grips mine tight. Too tight. She’s quiet, eyes darting under the hood of her borrowed jacket. The light glints off the faint gold rings in her irises, and my stomach knots. I tug the hood lower.
We move through the market level fast — past stalls selling scrap coils, counterfeit IDs, black-market rations. Every sound feels sharper here. The whine of drills. The static crack of comms. The laughter of people who’d sell your shadow if they could find a buyer.
“Stay close,” I murmur.
“I am,” she says, small voice half-lost in the noise.
Her fingers are damp with sweat, the way they get when she’s scared but trying not to show it.
I keep my head down and my pace steady. There’s a shuttle waiting, one Drel arranged through an old contact who owes me a favor I swore I’d never collect. A transport out to the asteroid rim. No paperwork, no scans, just passage. The last safe run we’ll ever get.
We reach Dock?47. The lights flicker. A single hangar door half-open, wind from the pressure seals whipping through. I spot the contact — a wiry man in a grease-stained coat, cybernetic eye clicking as he scans the manifest.
“You’re late,” he says.
“You’re charging triple,” I shoot back.
He smirks. “Everyone’s got bills.”
I shove the chip into his hand. “Then we’re square.”
He pockets it, glancing at Nessa. “Kid’s yours?”
“Yeah.”
“She doesn’t look registered.”
“She’s not,” I say, flat.
His good eye narrows, but he shrugs. “Not my business. The freighter’s on refuel. Ten minutes. You wait inside the hangar. Don’t talk to anyone.”
I nod. “We’ll wait.”
The hangar’scolder than the corridor outside, open to the vacuum dock on one side. The light’s wrong too — too white, too sterile, like it’s trying to hide how everything here’s falling apart.
Nessa sits beside me on a crate. Her legs swing, not quite reaching the floor. She pulls Razorclaw from her pack and makes the broken wing flap weakly.
“He’s tired,” she says softly.
“Then let him rest,” I whisper.
But my eyes aren’t on the toy. They’re on the far doors — the ones that lead to the maintenance access.
Someone’s watching us.
I can feel it. The prickle on my skin, the old soldier’s instinct I never learned to shut off. I don’t look directly. Just enough to catch the reflection in the crate’s polished edge.
Three men. One woman. Armor mismatched but functional. Faces wrong — too clean for this station.
