Three words.
The enemy hauls me to my feet. My side is screaming. Vasquez's body is three meters away, her eyes still open, staring at nothing.
The transport engines fire. I can hear them through the station's hull—the specific whine of military-grade thrusters cycling up.
He's leaving.
Someone hits me. I taste more blood. My vision's going grey at the edges, shock or blood loss or the specific kind of breaking that happens when the person you?—
No.
I won't think it. Won't name it.
He's leaving, and I'm here, and whatever happens next happens without him.
The last thing I see before they drag me into the dark: the transport pulling away from the dock. Blue light from Dexter's marks visible through the viewport, getting smaller, getting distant, gettinggone.
SIX YEARS LATER
The docking bay looks the same as it always does. Blue-tinted overhead lighting. The smell of fuel and recycled air. The constant hum of Veridian-7's systems—a sound I've learned to sleep through, to work through, to live inside like a second skin.
I check my weapon for the third time. Loaded. Safety off. Holstered where I can reach it in under a second.
I shouldn't be here. Should have sent someone else. Let a junior officer handle the dock protocols, the security sweep, the professional welcome for the boss's brother returning from outer-rim service.
I'm here anyway.
Professional. That's what I tell myself. Head of Security reviews all high-value arrivals. Dexter Torrence qualifies. Doesn't matter that we served together. Doesn't matter that he left me to die six years ago on a station that smelled like this one, old death and fresh fear.
Doesn't matter that I spent the first year after Sigma-9 looking for him. Not to find him. To hurt him.
I killed three men who reminded me of him. Same height. Same walk. Wrong face.
The guilt comes in waves sometimes. Tonight it's barely a ripple. I'm watching the transport dock through the viewport, and all I can taste is the copper-bright memory of my own blood in my mouth while his engines fired.
Unable to retrieve.
My hand's on my knife before I make the conscious decision. Old habit. Six years of making sure I'm always armed, always ready, always capable of retrieving my own damn self.
The docking clamps engage with a magnetic thud I feel through the deck plating. The airlock cycles. Green light.
The bay doors open.
He walks down the ramp.
Same face. Older now. Harder. New scars I don't recognize cutting through his medium-blue skin. His eyes are that same electric blue that used to light up dark corridors—, months since he came back to Veridian-7. Three months of carefully avoiding the same spaces. Three months of Zane looking at me with that expression that says he knows something happened but won't ask.
Three months of knowing this moment was coming and not being ready for it anyway.
Our eyes meet across the dock.
His bioluminescent marks flare, those angular patterns along his temples and down his spine, visible through his tactical gear. Bright enough that people near him glance over, wondering what emotion could make an Empri glow like that.
He's reading me. Can't help it—Empri sense constantly, the emotional atmosphere of everyone nearby pressing against their awareness. He's feeling my hatred right now. Tasting it like poison on his tongue.
Good.
I'm walking before I decide to. Crossing the deck. His guards tense, they can see the knife in my hand, can read my body language even if they can't sense emotions the way he can.
