The healer didn't even slow down, just shrugged his shoulder out of her path. "Watch it."
He didn't notice the weight missing from his pocket.
Her fingers curled tight around the plastic card. It was warm from his body heat, sharp edges digging into her palm.
She glanced back over her shoulder. Kirr was still arguing, his broad shoulders tense, his orange hair bright under the harsh lights. He looked magnificent. He looked like a hero.
He deserved better than her.
Tears burned the backs of her eyes, hot and stinging, but she didn't let them fall. Crying wouldn't fix this.
Leaving would.
So she turned her back on him… on Delilah…
On everything she’d ever known or wanted.
To save them.
Harper didn't look back. If she looked back, she would see Kirr and the medical bay doors sliding shut with Delilah on the other side. If she looked back, she would stop, and if she stopped, she would destroy him.
So she walked.
She kept her head down and her pace steady, forcing her legs to move with a rhythm that screamed I belong here. Not running. She knew better than that. Running drew eyes. Running looked like guilt. She had to look like she was as bored as fuck. Like she was just another station occupant hustling between sectors on a Tuesday afternoon.
Her hand sweated around the stolen keycard in her pocket. The corner dug into her palm, a grounding point of pain in a world that had gone fuzzy and gray.
Right. Left. Down the service ramp.
The layout was burned into her brain from the emergency schematics she'd studied during the crisis. The irony wasn't lost on her. The same skills she'd used to save the station were now helping her escape it.
A security checkpoint came into view. Two guards in black uniforms stood by a blast door, scanning IDs. A week ago, she would have frozen. Two days ago she'd have looked for Kirr to handle it. Now she just tightened her grip on the stolen ID and walked straight toward them.
Panic burned up her throat, hot and acidic. This was a crime. A real, deportable, prison-time crime. Stealing credentials, accessing restricted areas, unauthorized flight. If they caught her, she wouldn't just be sent home; she'd be sent to a penal colony.
Good, a dark voice whispered in the back of her mind. Then she really couldn't hurt anyone else.
She reached the scanner. One of the guards shifted, his helmet tilting toward her. He was huge, though not as big as Kirr. No one was as big as Kirr.
"Sector access?" the guard grunted.
She didn't speak. She didn’t dare to. Her voice would shake, and that would end it. Instead, she pulled the stolen ID from her pocket and slapped it against the panel with a weary carelessness she didn't feel.
Please let the healer have high clearance. Please let him be important.
The panel chirped. A green light flashed.
She didn't exhale. She didn't flinch. Just shoved the card back into her pocket and stepped through the opening doors as if she owned the place.
The corridor beyond was cooler, the air cycling with a hiss from somewhere above her head. She hurried along, her steps faster now.
It was better this way. She had to believe that.
She turned a corner, and the air changed. The sterile antiseptic smell of the station interior vanished, replaced by the heavy, oily scent of refined fuel and ozone. The vibrations through the floor increased, rattling her teeth.
The Transport Bay.
She emerged onto a mezzanine walkway, and the sheer scale of it hit her. It was a cavern of steel and shadow, vast enough to swallow a city block. Dozens of ships sat in various stages of docking and repair. Loader drones buzzed through the air like angry wasps, carrying crates as steam vented from cooling pipes, obscuring the far wall in thick white haze.
