Punishment I was ready for.
This?
I don’t know what to do with this.
“You’ll be offered asylum,” he continues. “Formal status. Review board will argue, of course—but the logs, the samples, the survivors… it’s a damn good case.”
I glance sideways.
Jillian squeezes my hand harder.
Not comfort.
Not pity.
Anchoring.
“You don’t have to keep running,” she whispers.
And something inside mecracks.
Not from pain.
Frompossibility.
I nod.
Once.
I don’t take asylum because I want to hide.
I take it because it means I will be with Jillian. Forever.
CHAPTER 39
JILLIAN
Earth is offered first.
Clean. Familiar. Forgiving. The diplomats speak gently, like I’m a survivor of war, not a woman who started one. They promise me a lab at any university I want. Access to funding, prestige. A chance to be a voice in the new bioethics council.
Novaria comes next. Glass towers and mineral-blue skies. “Your intellect deserves a world that matches it,” the representative says, with a smile that doesn’t touch his eyes. “You could be the lead on any planetary geology research facility. We’ve already allocated you an apartment near the sky gardens.”
Then Mars. Red dirt and rigid order. IHC’s offer there is tactical—subtle penance wrapped in promotion. “We need you on the inside,” says the admiral who once looked ready to shoot Maug on sight. “We could use someone who knows what the hell happened.”
I thank them all. Politely. Even warmly. And then I say no.
Because I’ve already chosen.
Not safety. Not boardrooms or bureaucracies or planets with paved roads.
I wantthis.
Maug. The stars. A ship that rattles like a canteen in the wind and smells faintly of scorched engine coolant. I want a future that’s raw and unscripted, carved out of stardust and scars.
So we retrofit the old warbird.
The one he buried for exile.
