The next morning, the receptionist gives me a strange look when I sign in.
“There’s a… visitor,” she says cautiously, “in the quad. Military. He asked for you.”
My gut twists. My legs move before I tell them to. I half-jog across the quad, Garma tucked under my coat, heart slamming with every step.
A woman in a base-issued trench coat waits near the stone bench by the physics building. Her hair’s regulation-tight, her boots spotless. She doesn’t smile.
“Lieutenant Commander Sanchez,” she says, clipped.
“Not anymore,” I reply. “It’s just Aria now.”
She tilts her head, unreadable. Then hands me a tablet.
“There's a debriefing we think you should see.”
I don’t take it. “Why now?”
“There was movement. On the edge of Sector Twelve. Underground.”
I still don’t reach for it.
The woman’s voice softens slightly. “The energy signature matches Vakutan neural frequencies.”
My knees nearly buckle.
Garma gurgles, sensing something.
“I have a baby,” I whisper.
“I know.”
I stare at the tablet. The last time I held something like that, it buzzed with Naull’s voice, synced in my mind like music.
“I don’t want hope,” I say through gritted teeth.
The woman doesn’t flinch. “It’s not hope. It’s data.”
That makes me laugh—bitter and sharp. I take the tablet.
I open the file.
And I stop breathing.
A heartbeat. A pulse. Faint, intermittent. Embedded in the wreckage’s neural alloy. Trapped.Alive.
I don’t remember walking back inside. Or buckling Garma back into the stroller. Or dragging us to the flat.
All I remember is standing at the window, watching the rain fall, and whispering:
“You weren’t supposed to survive me.”
CHAPTER 17
NAULL
The first thing I hear is a symphony made of metal and bone. Not human. Not exactly Vakutan. A low drone that stacks on itself until the world shifts under me. I taste burning fire in each limb. Sweat and ozone and something that feels like promise and regret mixed together.
When I try to speak… nothing. My throat locks. My jaw won’t move. My limbs feel hollow, as if I’ve been drained of strength and left to float.
