“But it doesn’t feel that way.”
“Can you…” he says, voice cracked. “Can you trust me enough to hear what Iamdoing? Not just what it looks like?”
I open the door, stepping into the hallway where the light is brighter and the lockers smell of plastic and old lunchboxes.
“Have the truth,” I say. “Give me the full truth. Then we’ll see.”
He nods. His expression resolves into something I cannot read—determination, fear, regret. Maybe all three.
But I walk away.
I don’t wait for his answer.
Later—I’mhome, the apartment quiet except for the hum of the synth-fridge. I open the living room and see Ben’s drawings piled high on the coffee table. I slide the top one off—it’s the oneof Jav as the clawed superhero. The paper edges are jagged. The marker lines thick and eager. The smile on the hero’s face wide. Proud.
I drop the drawing into my lap and stare at it. I sense the weight of everything: the truth I’ve asked for, the lies I’ve accepted, the risk I’ve let him carry. The drawing shifts in my hands as I lean back on the couch. The texture of the paper rough under my fingers, the faint pigment smell of crayon strong in the air.
Ben’s asleep upstairs. I can hear the low buzz of his fan, the faint rustle of his blanket. I don’t call him. I just stay here, watching the superhero with claws.
This hero might not be real.
But the kid believes he is.
And I believe he should be.
What Idon’tbelieve yet is that the hero belongs to our family.
Not fully.
And maybe that’s the real truth I need to face.
Compromise. Trust. Transparency.
Words I haven’t figured out how to live yet.
My compad buzzes again—Maliek. I ignore it.
I set the drawing aside, close my eyes. The apartment smells faintly of the evening air from the open window, a hint of lavender from the diffuser I forgot I bought. The hush of the space feels like a pause before storm.
I stand, walk to the window, pull the blinds up. The city lights stretch out like a net of gem-dots in the night. I grip the sill. My pulse hammers like I've run a mile.
I need to decide.
Run or face.
And the choice just got harder.
CHAPTER 30
JAV
I'm alone in the classroom. The chairs are pushed under the tables. Half the drawings from yesterday’s play are still taped to the walls—stars, cupcakes, pirates, the whole mess. The room smells of melted glue and yesterday’s spilled juice: faint, sticky, the kind of smell that stirs memories better left locked away. The fluorescent lights overhead hum softly, slicing into the quiet like a surveillance drone. My ribs ache when I take a breath. I ignore it.
I lean against the teacher’s desk, the grain of the cheap wood rough beneath my palm. The whole space seems too big, too empty without the kids’ laughter bouncing off the walls, without Ben’s voice hollering, “Mr.?K! Look at my starfish!” The echo in this room is wrong. It’s full of expectation.
I pull out my comm-link and dial Garkin. My fingers hesitate before I hit send—because every time we talk, I’m pulled back to where I don’t want to go. The number beeps. Then his voice. Quiet. Alert.
“Kuraken.”
