It fails.
Twice.
On the third attempt, I reach—through circuits and flame scars and buried voltage.
And Ifeelher.
Not words. Not images.
Just warmth.
Just…her.
I don’t cry. I don’t speak.
I just hold on.
Because that’s what I do.
Because I have only one mission now.
Bring her home.
CHAPTER 18
ARIA
The static starts at 2:13 a.m.
Not the fuzzy, normal kind—no. This isn’t the soft hum of a bad connection or a neighbor’s baby cam interfering.
It’sRhavadazstatic.
A low, rhythmic pulse that cracks like lightning across the baby monitor, followed by a digital distortion I haven’t heard since we fled that godforsaken planet. I know it instantly—deep in my bones, in my tech-trained ear, in the pit of the part of me that still dreams in Trimantium readouts.
It’s not possible.
Except it is.
Because Garma stirs. Doesn’t cry. Doesn’t fuss. Just… stares up at the ceiling with eyes that gleam like copper in the dark.
Wide. Alert. Too aware.
I throw the blanket off and stand, my body moving before my brain finishes catching up. I cross the nursery in three steps, crouch next to his crib, and gently brush my fingers across his scalp.
He blinks once. Then lifts one tiny hand and grabs my thumb with surprising force.
“I hear it too,” I whisper, breath tight.
His fingers squeeze tighter, and for one terrifying second, the staticshifts—goes from white noise to something more coherent. A frequency. A signature.
Aping.
“No,” I murmur. “No, no, no. That’s not possible.”
I spend the next two days acting like everything’s fine.
Lectures on adaptive neural interfaces. Afternoon tea with my department chair. Even a brief walk through the quad with Garma bundled against the chill.
