Let them think that.
Let them believe I’m broken and stuck.
Because one day—I will bring Whiplash back online.
But not without her.
Cowley shows up again. This time he brings intel.
“She’s at Oxford. Engineering division.”
I raise a brow. “What, you think I forgot how to use a satellite?”
“She has a child,” he adds, voice lower.
I freeze.
“What?”
“A baby. Male. Born two months after you were declared?—”
“Dead.”
He nods once.
My knees buckle, but I don’t fall.
I grip the edge of the diagnostics table like it’s the only thing keeping me from shattering.
“Garma,” Cowley says softly.
I look up sharply.
“How do you know his name?”
He shrugs. “She filled out the birth record at New Bastion. Listed no father. No contact.”
I swallow. “You think it’s mine?”
“I don’tthink, Naull. Iknow.”
It doesn’t feel real. Not yet. Not completely.
A son.Ourson.
Built from the only moment in my life where I let myselfbe.
Cowley shifts, then says quietly, “She thinks you’re gone.”
I clench my jaw.
“Well, then. We should fix that.”
That night, I pull Whiplash’s neural coil out of cryo and wire it into the base’s holotable.
No tech support. No oversight.
I initiate a blank Meld tether.
