I meet his gaze, full and raw. “Because if I weren’t, this wouldn’t be real.”
He nods once. Then leans in. His voice comes close. “Stay sharp.”
“No.” I shake my head. “Stay human.”
He smiles, a ghost of something broken but alive.
“You teach me to.”
Later, I lie awake in the skimmer’s resting compartment. The cot is narrow. The lights are low. Outside the viewport, worlds drift—cold, silent, infinite. Valtron’s out of sight for now. I hear his boots on the walkway, the swish of his jacket, the slow breathing of the pilot station.
I wrap the blanket tighter, feeling the difference between his blanket and mine—the scale of his armor, the residual heat from his body, the scent of metal and sweat and something dark I don’t fully understand. My fingers find the scar beneath my collarbone. I trace it like a story I’m not ready to read.
I close my eyes.
I think of Quinn. Of the idealist who believed broadcast and truth could change the galaxy. I think of the young anchor I was behind the bright lights, the carefully edited segments—how soft I was. Too soft for what’s coming.
I think of Valtron. His warrior vows. His oath to Dowron. His shame for following orders he couldn’t believe in. His eyes when he told me about the training pits. The way he flinched when he admitted regret.
I think of the file. The implants, the covert operations, the genocide disguised as “friendly fire,” the civilians used as data sets. The Combine’s plan: privatized enforcement of the Alliance by contract soldiers. The officers complicit. The hierarchy rotten at the core.
And I think of me.
Standing at a crossroads.
And I realize: this isn’t just about telling a story anymore.
It’s about surviving it.
It’s about making sure Quinn’s death means something.
It’s about sometimes losing so much you gain the only thing that matters.
Because waking up, I know one thing for certain:
When this ends—if we end it—I don’t want to be the anchor that goes home.
I want to be the woman who walked through hell, held the truth, and came out on the other side holding someone she didn’t expect to love.
And if the cost is giving everything?
I’m ready to give it.
Because I’ve already lost someone I thought I could afford to keep.
And I’m not doing that again.
The hum of the relay’s generator washes through the air like a slow tide, its low vibration under the floor panels syncing with my pulse—tight, nervous, alive. The walls of Vice?Admiral?Leena Dray’s command suite are cold metal and old war-paint flecks, smell of coolant leaks and recycled air thick with cables overhead. I sit opposite Valtron, his red-scaled form hunched over the holo-console, the glow from the projection making his gold eyes glint like molten ore.
“I’ve found a lead,”I say. My voice sounds sharper than I feel. Maybe because I’m scared, maybe because I’m furious. Or both.
He pauses, doesn’t look up. “Tell me.”
I lean forward, fingertips tapping at the projected data stream. The crystalline shards of the file we decrypted flicker across the screen—names, dates, worn-out audio logs, schematics disguised as innocuous supply manifests. “Contractor codename ‘Bishop.’ He had the override chip. Prototype. Fled the Helios Combine after the test on Trenar-4. We traced his last jump to the planet Glimner—crime-infested, entertainment-drunk, law-light. Exactly the kind of place where someone disappears.”
Valtron stares at the data, jaw clenched. “Glimner?” He doesn’t like it. I can see that. The color drains from his posture. “You know what happens on Glimner.”
“I know what’s at stake,” I say. “If we don’t go after him, the trail dies. The file turns into a memory. I’m not willing.”
