Just me and the dark.
A chill seeps into the cockpit, biting through my armor. The emergency life support kicks in with a feeble hum. A last gasp of survival.
Then a quiet chime.
Torpor field engaged.
No.
“No—wait?—”
But my protest is sluggish, too slow. The system doesn’t care what I want.
It only cares that I’m dying.
Cool mist floods the cockpit, silver vapor curling around my legs, up my chest, into my throat. My limbs go heavy—no, weightless. Thought dulls. Memory fades around the edges.
My last breath catches.
I try to hold onto her face.
Her scent.
Her voice.
“Wait for me,” I whisper. “Please…”
Everything slows.
Then stills.
Then dies.
The last light winks out.
CHAPTER 17
AYLA
The word they use is “rescued.”
Not “abducted.” Not “extracted.” Not “ripped from everything I love and sealed inside a porcelain coffin painted to look like privilege.”
Just “rescued.”
The media swarms it like carrion birds. Holo-feeds loop clips of me from five years ago, smiling beside my father at Alliance charity galas, while anchors gush over my “safe return.” They play heavily edited footage from the IHC cruiser—me unconscious, crumpled on a medical bed, one eye swollen shut—and narrate it like a heroic fairy tale.
Lady Ayla has been recovered from the alien insurgent cell. Lady Ayla is home.
They don’t show the screaming.
They don’t show the restraints.
They definitely don’t show the needle in my neck, or the way my body tried to claw its way back into orbit just to feel his touch again.
The Verne family estate hasn’t changed.
Everything’s exactly the way I left it—except me.
