“I’m not the only one. I know that now.”
I step forward. Just a little.
“There are others. You think you erased them, contained them, repurposed them. But they’re still here. Waiting. Watching. Enduring. Like me.”
I let silence fill the space for a beat, then end the feed.
No edits. No filters.
Kimberly breathes out like she’s been holding it the whole time. “Gods help us.”
“No,” I say. “Gods help them.”
The response isn’t slow.It’s seismic.
We’re barely back in the command hub when signals start pouring in—encrypted bursts from dead systems, relay echoes from places I thought were long gone. Some of them I recognize. Most I don’t.
“Tur,” Ishaan calls out, scrolling through signal stacks. “I think… I think they’re Reaper codes.”
My stomach knots. “How many?”
“Too many to count.”
They’re not messages. Not at first. Just… acknowledgments. Pingbacks. Location ghosts. A thousand whispers rising from the dark.
Kimberly leans over Mara’s shoulder, eyes scanning the grid as it lights up with color. “They’re everywhere.”
I can’t speak. My mouth is dry, tongue thick behind my teeth.
Then come the words.
From the Varanth Drift:We see you.
From Sector R-17:Still alive.
From deep core ice stations:Never forgot. Never forgave.
Dozens. Hundreds. Names. Coordinates. Signal flares like heartbeats. Whole networks rising like roots from the grave.
I grip the edge of the console until my fingers ache.
They’re real.
We were never alone.
CHAPTER 35
KIMBERLY
The scent of charred wood still clings to the rafters no matter how many times we scrub them. Paint doesn’t cover trauma. You can patch a hole in a wall, sand it smooth, but the structure remembers. This building—what’s left of it—remembers fire, remembers blood, remembers what it was asked to hold. And now, we ask it to do something stranger: hold peace.
I walk the perimeter of the Fierson Grill for the tenth time this morning, hand trailing the smooth curve of the newly installed banister, head tilted as I listen to the pipes murmur. Tur’s voice buzzes in my earpiece. “Booth seven’s loose again. Wobbles like a drunk on grav-sick leave.”
“I’ll wedge it,” I mutter, squatting to check the bolts. “We’ve had worse.”
“We’ve been worse.”
That makes me smile, which I hate a little. “Don’t get sentimental on me, soldier.”
