And the quiet certainty that for the first time in my life, I’ve said exactly the right thing.
CHAPTER 15
MARA
We find shelter in a forgotten pocket of the station—buried deep beneath the administrative wing, tucked behind layers of security no one’s bothered to update since before I was old enough to hack my first lock.
A cultural sim chamber.
Used, once, for diplomatic morale programming. Designed to help soldiers acclimate to foreign environments. They called it cultural empathy back then.
Now, it’s nothing but dust and silence and a projection system clinging to half-life.
The doors seal behind us with a heavy groan. The lights stutter—and then the space transforms.
Not all at once.
It flickers into being, piece by fractured piece.
A garden.
Or some strange, impossible approximation of one.
Tall stalks of glowing flora curl around artificial stone, their translucent leaves shifting color with every faint change in temperature. The walls stretch into a dome of flickering stars—too many to count, constellations unfamiliar and perfect. Theground is soft beneath my boots, covered in moss that isn’t real but still smells like earth after rain.
Tatek steps in behind me, and even he pauses.
“This is a Vakutan temple garden,” he says quietly.
I glance at him. “You’ve seen one?”
He nods, just once. “When I was young.”
I let the silence sit between us, let the weight of it hum like electricity under my skin.
I don’t ask what it meant to him.
I don’t need to.
Because something about this room—this whole place—feels like it was waiting for us.
Not fate. Not destiny. Just… timing.
The kind that breaks you open.
He crosses the space first, testing the perimeter, checking the corners like always. I drop my bag near one of the false trees, fingers dragging over the synthetic bark. It’s warm. Faintly pulsing with stored light.
It shouldn’t feel comforting.
But it does.
“I used to think I’d die in a place like this,” I say.
He looks back at me. “A garden?”
“No. A lie.”
I gesture to the projection—the soft light, the starlit ceiling, the careful illusion of safety. “Places like this are designed to trick you into thinking you’re safe. Calm. Connected. They lull you into vulnerability. I used to hate that.”
