I grit my teeth until my jaw aches.
“No,” I whisper. My voice sounds small in the sterile room. “Not you too.”
I squeeze my eyes shut and repeat my name again. Louder this time. With rhythm.
Jillian. Jillian. Jillian.
The pressure pulses in time with the station’s rotation. My thoughts blur at the edges, like someone’s smearing grease across a lens.
I think of Maug.
Not as a concept. As apresence.
The weight of his arms. The smell of smoke and mineral and something uniquelyhim. The way his blood looked when it ran—dark, rich, threaded with something metallic that didn’t belong to humans or this place.
The mineral.
My heart stutters.
The water he drank. The pools in the cave. The way his body healed—not fast, not magically, butinevitably. Like it had the right ingredients and knew exactly what to do with them.
Maybe that’s it.
Maybe it’s not just the wild water. Maybe it’shim.
The thought is fragile, half-formed, but it’s something to hold onto. Something that isn’t the song.
I lick my lips. They’re dry. My tongue feels thick in my mouth.
“If I could just get a drop,” I murmur. “Just one.”
But he’s not here.
The realization hits harder than the migraine. I swallow past the tightness in my throat.
He’s out there somewhere, tearing himself apart trying to find me. Or he’s dead. Or he’s fighting his way through half the galaxy.
I don’t know which scares me more.
The lab door hisses open.
I flinch despite myself.
Ciampa steps inside, hands clasped behind his back. The fungal crystals at his neck have grown since the last time I saw him. They bloom outward now, delicate and obscene, catching the light in soft rainbow facets. He looks…thriving.
“Deep Space 12 suits us,” he says conversationally, as if commenting on the weather. “So much infrastructure. So many voices.”
“Let me guess,” I say hoarsely. “You’re going to call it a choir.”
He smiles. “You’re learning.”
The pressure spikes. I suck in a breath through my nose, fighting the urge to gag.
“You’re killing them,” I snap. “You know that, right? You’re hollowing them out.”
He tilts his head. “No. We’re freeing them from unnecessary complexity.”
He steps closer, peering at the restraints. “You’re still resisting. That’s impressive.”
