"Are you the legendary Golden Viper?" he continues, "Or merely a broken pit slave who found a competent handler?"
I try to focus, to call up the combat instincts that kept me alive for three years in the circuits. But everything feels wrong, off-balance, like trying to fight with my dominant hand severed. How did I ever do this without Zola's tactical awareness filling the gaps in my perception? How did I track multiple threats without her calculations running in the background of my mind?
The answer hits me with terrible clarity: I didn't. Not well, anyway. I survived through rage and desperation and the kind of reckless aggression that earned me the name Golden Viper—but also left me covered in scars and barely functional between matches.
Thek-Ka moves.
This time, without the bond feeding me Zola's tactical awareness, I don't see the feint hidden in his primary strike. His upper arms draw my attention with a flurry of blade work while his lower right hand—the one I'm not watching because I don't have that battlefield overlay in my mind—drives into my ribs like a battering ram.
Something cracks. Pain explodes through my chest, sharp and clarifying, but not in a good way. The kind of pain that says internal damage, cracked ribs at minimum, possibly punctured lung if I'm unlucky.
My vision blurs. The servo-assists in my suit struggle to compensate for the way I'm now favoring my left side.
"Disappointing," Thek-Ka observes, pressing his advantage. Another strike catches me across the shoulder before I can fully evade. My left arm goes partially numb, fingers spasming inside my glove as the servo-assists fight to maintain function.
I'm spinning now, not strategically, not with any tactical purpose, just spinning because that's what you do when you're off-balance and desperate. Debris flashes past in a disorienting blur. Starlight catches on Thek-Ka's armor as he circles me like the apex predator he is.
Blood fills my mouth where I bit my tongue. The taste is copper and failure.
"I had hoped—" Thek-Ka begins, and there's genuine sadness in his voice.
But I don't hear the rest of his sentence because he's moving again, and this time I'm too slow, too clumsy, tooaloneto stop him. His chain-blade wraps around my damaged arm with brutal efficiency, the weighted end pulling me into a spin I can't control.
I try to fire my thrusters to compensate, but without Zola's awareness, I overcorrect. The maneuver sends me tumbling toward a large piece of debris—the jagged edge of what used to be a station strut, now a floating blade edge that will open my suit and kill me if I hit it wrong.
"Zola!" I cry out again, knowing she can't hear me, unable to stop myself. "Zola, please—"
Nothing.
Just the terrible, echoing silence where my partner used to be.
Thek-Ka's plasma cannon charges with a sound like thunder contained in a bottle.
And in this moment—tumbling toward death, unable to feel Zola's presence, my body damaged and my mind reeling from isolation I never learned to function without—I have a single, crystallizing thought:
I'm going to die out here.
Not because Thek-Ka is stronger. Not because I lack skill or courage or determination.
But because I let myself forget who I was before Zola Cross walked into my life.
I let myself forget how the Golden Viper was born—not from tactical genius or perfect partnership, but from blood and pain and the stubborn, furious refusal to let the universe decide when I stopped breathing.
The plasma cannon fires.
15
For Partnership
Crash
Theplasmabolttracesa line of superheated death through the void, and for a split second—the space between heartbeats where decisions become destiny—I have a choice.
I can let the silence defeat me. Let the absence of Zola's awareness convince me I'm nothing without her tactical genius.
Or I can remember.
You are not nothing without me. You're the Golden Viper—deadly, brilliant, and magnificent. I don't complete you. I complement you.
