I’m tired of being afraid.
Even if I’m not the Butcher, I canactlike someone who is. I’ve survived worse than this. Maybe not with guns and blood and tactical knowledge, sure—but I know fear. I know danger. I’ve lived with it coiled in my gut foryears.
So what if this version has claws and a ship?
I survived my father. I survived the academy. I survived every whisper, every panic attack, every breakdown behind bathroom doors just like this one.
I can survive this, too.
Even if I have to do it one fake answer at a time.
I stand.
I roll out my shoulders. Crack my neck. Splash cold water on my face and scrub hard, like I can scrape off the old version of me with fingernails and soap.
I don’t look at the mirror again.
I don’t need to see her.
I need to become someone else.
I unlock the door.
The hallway outside is quiet, lit in that soft, low amber that military ships favor when they’re not actively under fire. I walk it slow, every step echoing in my ears louder than the last.
My boots are too loud. My breathing is too shallow. But I don’t stop.
I find him in the cockpit. Of course.
He’s in the pilot seat again, spine relaxed but not soft, like a coiled wire just waiting for tension. His hands rest on the controls, fingers twitching now and then, running checks or habits or both.
He hears me before he sees me.
“Bathroom okay?” he says, still facing forward.
I clear my throat. “Functional.”
That gets a grunt. Maybe amusement. Maybe approval.
I slide into the seat beside him.
He doesn’t look at me. Just keeps adjusting things I don’t understand, toggling screens with alien graphs and route overlays. His scent lingers in the air—metal and smoke and something else, something earthy and hard to define. Not cologne. Not sweat. Somethinghis.
I steel myself.
“So,” I say, pitching my voice casual, “what’s the entry plan for Kaerva?”
He finally glances over.
There’s something sharp in his gaze. Not suspicion. Not yet. But curiosity, honed like a blade that hasn’t decided what it’s for.
“You asking because you don’t know, or because you’re testingme?”
I blink. “Wouldn’t you like to know.”
He raises a brow ridge. A challenge. A warning.
I lean back in the seat like I’m not breaking inside. “Look, I prefer to improvise in hostile territory. Rigid plans break. I don’t.”
