Tomas makes a faint sound, like he’s trying to remind us he exists. Rakkh doesn’t look away from me.
“From now on,” he says, low and lethal, “you do not touch it without me.”
“It tried to kill you,” I say with a laugh that’s almost hysterical—breathless.
“It tried to take you,” he corrects. “And anything that reaches for you like that is my enemy.”
The ship hums softly, almost as if it objects. I swallow, eyes flicking to the sealed corridor—still seamless, still closed. To thealcove with the hidden tool. To the grooves that warmed under my palm like skin.
And then, faintly, deeper in the ship, another sound answers.
A sequence of clicks—rhythmic, repeating—like a system unlocking a chain of doors one by one. Somewhere ahead, something is opening.
The violet glow shifts forward again, pulsing down the deeper corridor like a beckoning hand. My stomach drops. Rakkh follows my gaze and goes utterly still.
“What,” he says slowly, voice dangerous, “is it calling you to?”
I stare into the dim violet hall, skin prickling, heart hammering like I’m back under twin suns facing a poison I can’t name.
“I don’t know,” I whisper.
And that’s the worst part. Because I don’t think the ship is asking anymore. I think it’s deciding.
The hull hums, steady and certain. The light pulses again. And in that pulse I feel it—faint, eerie, fragmented—like an old recording waking from a long sleep. Not a voice. Not a face. Only an impression—words pressed into metal and time:
Authorized.
My breath catches. Rakkh’s hand tightens on mine, grounding me so hard it almost hurts, but the ship doesn’t care. The corridor ahead brightens—inviting and cold. I realize, with a dread that tastes like metal on my tongue, that whatever is buried in this ship has been waiting a long time to speak. And it just found the only person it thinks has the right to listen.
16
RAKKH
Ishift closer to Lia without meaning to, angling my body so she cannot be reached without coming through me. She is warm beside my ribs, the scent of her fear and determination tangled together—sharp, clean, and alive.
I should not want her scent. I should not catalog it like treasure, but I do.
The ship’s grooves pulse faintly along the wall. Spirals and segmented lines that look like breathing until you look too long—then they resemble circuitry. A living map. The light changes. Not brighter—colder. The violet edges toward blue-white, and the hum rises a fraction in pitch.
My instincts scream. The structure is not calming; it is waking.
The hum changes.
Not louder—denser. The vibration tightens, like a muscle drawing inward, and the air presses against my chest, as if the structure has decided we are worth holding onto rather than expelling.
The grooves along the wall pulse. Once. Twice. Then they begin to sequence.
Clicks echo through the chamber—dry, measured sounds, like joints locking into place far below us. Nothing about this sounds random or frantic. It looks and feels purposeful.
The ship is no longer reacting; it is executing.
The clicks repeat—closer. The floor vibrates beneath my feet, a subtle tremor that crawls up my leg bones and settles in my spine.
Tomas makes a thin sound behind us. “I don’t like that. I really don’t like that.”
“No one does,” I snarl without looking at him.
Travnyk tilts his head, listening. His stillness sharpens, the way it does before violence.
