My jaw clenches as I step into the corridor, vision narrowing.
For the first time since I took this assignment, I know exactly what I have to do.
Break protocol.
Burn my clearance.
Betray the system.
To save one woman.
No—To save the only truth in this place full of silence.
She’s asleep again. Not the shallow kind she falls into when she’s half-alert and wired from paranoia, but deep. Bone-deep. The kind of sleep that only comes when a body gives out before the mind does.
I don’t speak. Don’t move. I just stand in the dim glow of the panel light and watch her breathe.
Mara’s curled into herself on the narrow bunk, one arm tucked beneath her head, the other resting across her chest like a shield. Her legs are drawn up tight. Even in sleep, she’s bracing for impact. Like she knows it’s coming. Like she always knows.
Her hair’s spread across the pillow in disarray, dark strands catching faint blue light in threads like oil-slicks. There’s a crease along her cheek from the blanket edge, and a faint smudge of something—ink maybe, or grease from the compad she was hacking with earlier. The bridge of her nose twitches once. A dream. Or maybe a memory.
I step closer, soundless, and crouch beside the bed. My knees protest. Too many years of ship-borne war rigs and blast-drop impacts on unstable terrain. The metal floor is cold even through regulation boots. But I stay low.
I’ve faced death in twelve different systems. I’ve led extraction teams into cities still burning, walked through nerve-choked air while civilians wept blood through torn rebreathers. I’ve watched comrades lose limbs and minds and language itself to Ataxian tech traps and whispered it was an honorable price. I’ve watched—endlessly, dutifully, cold.
But this?
This is the first time I’ve felt afraid.
Because I don’t know how to protect her from this.
Not the way I’ve been trained to. Not with a gun or a perimeter scan or an override key. This isn’t a threat I can shoot. It’s systemic. It’s in the wiring. In the language they use to define who gets to be real and who gets replaced.
She doesn’t know yet.
She will soon.
And I can’t tell her. Not tonight.
Because tonight, for one fragile moment, she’s safe.
And I’m not going to break that.
Not until I have to.
I reach out,slow and careful, and brush a lock of hair from her forehead.
My hand hovers there longer than necessary. The texture of her skin still warms the air where my fingers passed. Her breathing changes—not sharply, not awake—just a shift in rhythm, like her body knows I’m near.
I pull back and press both hands to the floor, grounding myself.
You won’t have to run anymore, I vow, silent and absolute.
Not alone.
Back on the outer decks,the corridor lights flicker every seven seconds. They’re supposed to. It’s how they sync to the station’s chrono pulse. But tonight, it feels like a countdown. Each flicker a drumbeat pushing me closer to what I have to do.
I make it to the comms alcove without crossing paths with another officer. Lucky. Or planned. My internal chrono says shift rotation’s about to loop, which means for exactly three minutes, this section will go quiet before patrols reset.
