"We're coming back."
"If we don't."
She puts her hand over my mouth. "Then it won't matter what we said tonight. But we will. So I'd rather talk about what happens when we do."
I kiss her palm. She lets me.
"When we come back," I say against her skin, "I'd like to be something other than a strategic acquisition."
"You already are." She replaces her hand with her mouth. The kiss is soft and certain and tastes like the future. "You already are."
The dockingbay hums with the particular frequency of a ship being loaded for a journey no one can guarantee return from. Crates of equipment, weapons, medical supplies, rations calculated for a crew of six and a mission of indeterminate length. The ship itself is a Torrence mid-range cruiser, modified with the shielding I specified and the Consortium sensor arrays Aura negotiated into the alliance terms.
Zane oversees the loading with the quiet efficiency of a man who's done this before and expects to do it again. Talia checks weapons systems with a focus that borders on devotion, her hands moving over console readouts with the same precision she applies to everything. Elissa arrives last, a single bag over her shoulder, her face composed and still and older than it was when I met her.
Dexter stands with Astra near the bay entrance. Staying behind. Someone has to run the station, guard the alliance, holdeverything they've built while the rest of us fly into something that might eat us whole. Dexter catches my eye and gives me a nod that carries the weight of everything we've been through and the faith that I'll bring his people back alive. Astra's hand rests on his arm, and she watches Elissa board the ship with the expression of a teacher who has given her student everything she can and now has to trust it's enough.
Ky Zalt is there too, standing slightly apart, his hazel eyes clear and human in the bay's harsh light. He watches Aura with the steady attention of someone committing a face to memory. She walks to him, and they exchange words I don't hear, and then she boards the ship and takes her place beside me.
The final checks take twenty minutes. Twenty minutes of system confirmations and seal verifications and the small, unbearable bureaucracy of leaving.
Then Aura turns to me, and the bay noise fades, and there's just her face in the artificial light, her dark eyes, the set of her jaw.
"When this started," she says, "you were a strategic acquisition. A useful monster I could control."
"And now?"
"Now you're my monster." Her hand comes up to my face, palm against my cheek, fingers curving along my jaw. The touch is warm and certain and holds nothing back. "Mine. Whatever we find on the other side, you're mine."
The word settles into me like a key turning in a lock I forgot I had. Hers. Not Protocol's asset, not a tool shaped for someone else's purpose, not a chameleon cycling through identities in search of one that fits. Hers.
"Yours." I turn my head and press my lips to her palm. "Whatever it costs."
She smiles. Not the Consortium smile, not the political weapon. The real one, small and fierce and a little bit terrified. The one I'd burn worlds to see.
We take our seats. The ship seals. The docking clamps release with a sound like bones cracking, and Veridian-7 falls away beneath us, spinning slow and bright against the dark, the home we built out of crisis and compromise shrinking to a point of light among the stars.
Ahead, the anomaly.
I can see it growing in the viewport as we approach. Not a hole, exactly. More like a wound in the fabric of the visible universe, edges ragged with light that bends wrong, stars behind it warped and doubled and scattered like reflections in shattered glass. The readings on the console in front of me confirm what the probes suggested: stable spatial environment, breathable atmosphere, energy signatures that match nothing in any database I've ever accessed.
Strange light. Wrong stars. The unknown wearing the universe's face.
Aura's hand finds mine on the armrest between us. Her fingers lace through mine, and her grip is steady, and her presence beside me is the most real thing in a reality that's about to come apart at the seams.
I've spent my life being what others needed me to be. A tool shaped by Protocol's hands. A weapon aimed at whoever they chose. A chameleon changing colors to match rooms I never belonged in. Every identity a mask, every relationship a mission, every version of myself a lie told in service of someone else's purpose.
Now I'm hers. Just hers. Whatever comes.
The anomaly fills the viewport. Light that has no name bends around the ship. The hull groans, a deep resonance I feel in myteeth and my sternum and the base of my skull. Aura's hand tightens in mine.
"Ready?" she asks.
"No." I squeeze her hand. "Let's do it anyway."
The ship plunges forward, and the wrong stars swallow us whole.
Epilogue: The Ones Left Behind
