It was meant to leave.
24
LIA
And it didn’t.
No one speaks.
Not even Tomas, who usually fills silence the way lungs fill with air after panic does. The chamber stays exactly as it is. The panels are dim, the lights steady, the systems settled into an unnerving calm that suggests the ship has already done what it came to do.
The recording is gone, but it hasn’t left us.
I feel it pressed behind my eyes, like a weight that doesn’t belong to my body but refuses to move.
Commander Madeleine Ortiz. Maddy. Human. Here. On Tajss.
It’s a truth that rearranges everything. Everything.
Before the Devastation—has to be.
Long enough ago that her name became dust without ever becoming a story. My thoughts keep clawing for a way back to before, and there isn’t one.
Everything I thought I understood was wrong, and the new shape of the world won’t stop shifting.
Rakkh’s hand is wrapped around mine.
I don’t remember when that happened, but at some point, his fingers closed around my hand and I didn’t pull away. His grip isn’t tight. It’s firm in that deliberate way that says I am here, not you belong to me. The difference matters. I feel it in my bones.
Tomas finally exhales, a shaky sound that breaks the tension like a crack in ice. He scrubs both hands over his face, dragging them down slowly.
“She was human,” he repeats quietly. It is not disbelief now, at least—more something closer to awe. Or grief. “She was really human.”
“Yes,” I say. My voice sounds steadier than I feel. “She was.”
Travnyk turns slightly, his tusks catching the ambient light as he studies the panel where Maddy’s image had been. He doesn’t touch it. He doesn’t need to.
“This explains much,” he murmurs.
Rakkh’s thumb shifts once against my knuckles. A small movement. Grounding. I glance at him without turning my head fully, and the look in his eyes steals what little breath I have left. He isn’t angry. He isn’t confused. He looks… recalibrated. As if something fundamental inside him has been forced to change shape.
“Humans were never part of our stories,” he says slowly. “This… how did…” He shakes his head, light dancing off his horns. “How did I not know? How is this possible? Your kind… you were not part of Tajss.”
“We weren’t,” Tomas says weakly. “According to our stories we barely survived leaving Earth.”
“And yet she did long before,” Rakkh replies. His gaze flicks back to the panel. “She came here. She built this. And she trusted some of us.”
The way he says trusted lands heavier because I realize, with a strange tightening in my chest, that Rakkh isn’t looking at me the same way he did before. It’s not worse or better or… it’s just… different. The only way it makes sense is if it’s like the ground under his feet has shifted and he’s already adapting.
Whatever the reason for it, it makes something inside me ache.
The ship hums a low, almost imperceptible sound. It is not calling or guiding; it feels more like an acknowledgment that the conversation has reached a point of relevance.
“I don’t think she meant for this to happen,” I say quietly.
All three of them turn toward me.
“The crash,” I continue. “The contamination. Any of it. This ship was supposed to be in orbit. It was designed to disperse output into vacuum, not atmosphere. It never recalculated because… why would it? How would it?”
