I close my eyes.
“Mara…”
“I’m not fragile,” she says. “I’m not a distraction. And I sure as hell am not your mistake.”
My jaw tightens.
She’s right. About all of it.
But it doesn’t make it safer.
It makes it worse.
Because if I lose her, I won’t come back from it.
Not this time.
“I know,” I whisper.
She steps closer.
“We survive this,” she says. “And then we figure it out.”
I nod.
Not because I believe it.
Because I need to.
Because we don’t have time for anything else.
“Seal the hatch,” I say.
She does.
I start the countdown.
The hatch seals with a muted clang that echoes louder than it should.
I stand there for a second too long, staring at the seam where the metal fused back together, like I’m waiting for it to betray us and reopen on its own. The timer in my peripheral HUD ticks down in faint amber numbers.
Sixteen minutes.
Mara exhales behind me. Not relief. Readiness.
“Okay,” she says, brisk, all business now. “Ghost trail is live, shuttle’s primed, and I just convinced the sanitation net that we’re a pair of particularly boring pressure fluctuations.”
I nod. “Then we move.”
We slip out into the maintenance corridor, low-lit and narrow, the air thick with the scent of old coolant and overheated wiring. My boots barely make sound on the floor plating. Her steps are lighter than mine, but I can still track her by the warmth she leaves behind, by the faint shift in air when she moves.
Every junction we pass is a risk.
Every camera node could already be turning toward us.
I’m not thinking like an officer anymore.
I’m thinking like an animal guarding its mate.
