We stand there, the two of us wrapped in this awful, buzzing stillness. The sim lights pulse low and steady. The AI hasn't reset yet. It’s just us. Just breath and heat and static.
“You keep saying you don’t feel it,” Naull says finally, softer now. “But I think you do. I think it scares the hell out of you, so you’re labeling it wrong. Repressing it. Making it manageable.”
I flinch. “I don’t repress.”
“Aria.” He steps in, closer this time. Close enough that I feel his presence like a magnetic field. “You hide behind logic like it’s armor. And itis—I get that. But the Meld isn’t something you fight into submission. It’s not a machine. It’s a dance.”
“A dance?”
His mouth quirks. “Yeah. Messy, unpredictable, hot as hell if you’re doing it right.”
I hate how much I want to smile.
I hate even more that I do.
“I don’t dance.”
“Then learn.”
I meet his eyes. The grin is there, sure, but underneath it... there's weight. History. That memory I felt yesterday—his sister, the fire, the guilt—it’s still there. Still real.
He’s letting me see it.
And maybe that’s the secret. The opening. He’s not asking me to be perfect. Just totry.
I close my eyes.
“Okay,” I say, voice barely audible.
He tilts his head. “Okay what?”
“One more try.”
CHAPTER 4
NAULL
The ground groans.
Not shakes. Not rumbles.Groans.
Like the planet itself is trying to crawl out of its own skin.
The launch platform bucks under my boots, a dull, deep vibration rising through the steel struts and up my legs like a warning growl. Wind howls past the blast shutters in a banshee’s wail, carrying with it dust, ash, and a bone-deep sense ofwrong.
This isn’t a regular megafauna.
This thing? It moves like a goddamn tectonic plate grew legs and decided it was pissed.
“Status report,” I bark into the comm. My voice comes back garbled, fuzzed with static.
Too much radiation interference.
Again.
Figures.
I stare up at Whiplash, parked on the deck like a coiled beast. Our mech. Our warhorse. Matte black plating and whip-arm coils still hissing steam from the last calibration run. It looks good. Angry. Hungry. Almost as ready as I am.
