Rian Solari.
I close my eyes.
“Sorry,” I whisper. “I should’ve come sooner.”
I don’t know if the dead hear. But if they do, I want them to know someone still remembers.
I straighten slowly and keep walking. I don’t check the panels for my own name. Not yet. Not ever, maybe. I think if I saw it, I’d break something. And I need to be whole tonight.
The shadows are thick near the center of the garden. There used to be plants here—climbing vines and artificial trees made to mimic Earth’s old ecosystems. Now just dry roots and broken trellises remain, reaching like hands through the grates.
I pause at the central column.
The largest.
The first.
My palm presses lightly to the glass.
And I wonder—when the last system burns out, when the last station falls—will anyone remember this place? These names? This quiet?
Or will it all vanish like the people did?
“Mara.”
My breath catches.
The voice comes from the left, tucked in the dark between two monoliths. The sound is soft, but not hesitant. Familiar. Confident in the way only someone who knows youusedto trust them can be.
I don’t flinch.
I turn my head.
Straighten my spine.
And face the man I thought I’d never see again.
CHAPTER 22
MARA
Jax steps from the shadow like he never left it.
Same lean frame. Same too-casual posture. But everything else—his eyes, his mouth, the tilt of his head—has been carved deeper. Greed does that. It sharpens edges, hollows out the soul behind them. And he’s hollow now.
Not empty. Just... changed.
I watch him cross the distance slowly, like he owns the space, like time never passed between us.
He smiles. It doesn’t reach his eyes. “You look good, Mara.”
“I’m not in the mood,” I say.
His smile widens slightly. “You never were.”
He stops just short of arm’s reach, and for a second I think he might pretend this is a reunion. That he might offer a handshake or a joke or one of those slick lines he used to use when we still believed in causes.
Instead, he just lifts his jacket flap and taps the inside lining with two fingers. The material ripples slightly, the faintest shimmer of insulation tech catching the low starlight.
