“And where the hell were you when she was born?” I shout. “When I was bleeding out and alone and terrified I’d have to bury myself and my baby under a new name on a planet no one maps?”
“I didn’tknow!”
“Exactly!” I hiss. “You didn’t know. And you didn’t ask. You disappeared, Valtron. Youchoseduty. You chose glory. You chose everything but me.”
He reels back like I slapped him.
But I’m not done.
“Don’t come to me now with wide eyes and regrets. Don’t chase me down whenyoumade me a ghost. I raised her. I held her through night terrors and read her stories about stars and taught her that her father wasgonebecause he had to be. Not because he didn’tcare.”
He tries to speak.
I won’t let him.
I turn.
I walk.
I leave him there—alone in the ring, under lights that no longer shine.
That night, Ripley’s already asleep when I get back.
I sit on the floor beside her bed and stroke her hair.
She murmurs, presses her face into her bramblebear, and sighs.
And I weep.
Silently.
Because my heart’s too full to hold it anymore.
And somewhere across the compound, Valtron sits alone, bathed in the blue glow of an old archived feed.
Me.
Laughing.
Smiling.
Back when my eyes were unguarded and my voice was joy and the galaxy hadn’t torn us open.
He watches the loop again.
And again.
And again.
Until the breath in his lungs feels foreign.
And he finally understands what he lost.
CHAPTER 17
VALTRON
The scent of hot metal and ozone greets me before I’m fully inside the production corridor. The smell catches on my throat, ragged, like I forgot how to breathe in the compound’s belly. Arena lights behind steel-glass panels pulse in a rhythm that matches my heartbeat—boom-boom-boom.
