He doesn’t answer.
He doesn’t have to.
The air between us shifts again. Something unseen. Not forgiveness. Not agreement.
Understanding.
He takes a breath like he’s swallowing glass.
“I don’t believe in him,” Tatek says. “But I know what belief looks like. And I won’t be the one who takes that from you.”
I want to thank him.
But I don’t. I just nod—short, not enough, but all I’ve got left.
There’s no room for gratitude between us tonight. Just the thrum of shared silence and the weight of what’s coming.
Tatek steps back, eyes holding mine for one last breath before he turns away, letting me be alone with it. I watch the curve of his shoulders as he settles back into the shadows of the room, giving me space without leaving.
He won’t come with me. Not for this part.
This part’s mine.
By the timeI make it to the access corridor leading down to the lower decks, the station has quieted to its late-cycle hum. The kind of hush that only comes when most people are asleep or pretending they are. Every sound feels louder in it—my breath, my boots, the rustle of my coat brushing the side of my leg.
The memorial garden is buried deep, past half a dozen disused junctions and a security door that still hums like it remembers its prime. I take the long route—on purpose. Not because I’m afraid of being seen, but because I need the walk. I need the time. To feel the pull of every step. To be sure.
The override key. Jax says he has it. And if he does, then this—right now—is the fulcrum everything tips on. All of it. Every name etched in silence. Every life rewritten or lost or broken. My own.
Tatek didn’t stop me.
But I carry the echo of his voice with me, low and steady:
“I won’t be the one who takes that from you.”
The doorto the garden groans open like a warning.
I step through.
The shift in temperature is instant. The air’s cooler here, thinner. Smells faintly of metal and something older—like dried moss left too long in shadow.
No lights, not really. Just a few dim guide beacons near the floor, flickering like they’re tired of their job. The rest is starlight, stretched thin through the wide viewport at the far end of the chamber, silvering the rows of glass monoliths that make up the garden’s core.
Each one bears names. Spiral-etched in long columns, visible only when the light hits just right. They catch like ghosts in motion, lines of lives reduced to identifiers: rank, station, designation.
Dead.
Missing.
Erased.
I don’t rush.
There’s a calm here I hadn’t expected. The kind that doesn’t comfort so much as settle in your bones. This place used to mean something. Before the politics. Before the memory wars. Back when loss was honored instead of scrubbed.
I move along the outer path, fingertips grazing the edge of one monolith. The glass is cold beneath my skin. Too clean. Too quiet. It doesn’t feel like remembrance—it feels like forgetting, dressed up in reverence.
I stop in front of one of the older pillars and crouch, brushing at the dust near the base. My knuckles scrape the edge of a name I recognize.
