I shake my head. “She needs me.”
The first time they try the Meld with another pilot, it’s a disaster.
A woman named Lira. Talented. Sharp. The kind of soldier they build in training sims and propaganda videos.
She barely straps in before the neural backlash knocks her unconscious.
Her vitals spike. The med-techs rush in.
The second pilot, Kaen, gets farther. Five seconds of connection. Then screams. Blood from his nose. Nerve shock.
He doesn’t speak for two days.
They try five more. All experienced. All cleared by psych.
Same result.
They burn through candidates like matches. Until even the room starts to smell like failure.
Until even the technicians won’t meet my eyes.
Eventually, they stop trying.
They stop calling me a pilot.
Now I’m just a liability with lungs.
They try to reassign me. I say no.
They try to ground me. I go feral.
They try to sedate me. I break the IV stand in half and throw it across the room.
They stop trying.
I spend most nights in the bay, staring up at Whiplash’s frame, stripped and inert.
What’s left of it, anyway.
The core is fused. The arm blown clean off. The hull carbon-scored with a scar that mirrors my own down the center of my chest.
And yet… when I lay my palm on the cockpit shell, I swear itbreathes.
Not just metal. Not just tech.
Us.
I whisper into the hatch like a prayer. “You hear me in there? We’re not done.”
I start repairing it myself.
Not because they ask.
Because I have to.
I steal parts from unused shells. I cannibalize old boosters. I reroute circuits with trembling hands. The techs don’t stop me. They probably think I’ll burn myself out.
Good.
