Elara stands rigid at the console, chin lifted, fingers steady as the override confirmation scrolls past. Two Alliance officers argue at her shoulder, their hands slicing the air in sharp, irritated gestures. She does not look at them. She looks at me.
And even across reinforced glass, even through suppression fields and security lighting, the bond detonates between us like a secondary explosion.
The transfer doors seal and reopen toward corridor C-12.
We move.
The corridor is narrow and dim, lined with exposed conduit panels and maintenance hatches, emergency amber lighting flickering along the baseboards. The air hums faintly with redirected power flow, the station’s internal systems adjusting to something they were not programmed to allow.
Behind us, boots strike metal at a run.
“Stop the transfer!” a voice roars.
The guard at my right stiffens. “Override rescinded!”
A plasma bolt screams down the corridor, sizzling past my shoulder and slamming into the wall ahead of us. Composite explodes outward in a shower of molten fragments that ricochet off the floor with violent sparks.
The air fills instantly with ozone and heat.
“They’re firing!” one of the escorts shouts.
Another bolt tears through the ceiling panel above us, rupturing a conduit. A cascade of white-hot sparks rains down, thrumming against my spurs and scorching the floor plating.
“Elara!” I call, scanning ahead.
She appears at the junction thirty meters forward, breath sharp, eyes blazing. “This way! Move!”
The guards hesitate, caught between conflicting authority.
That hesitation gets one of them tackled.
An Alliance officer barrels into the corridor at full speed, weapon raised. I pivot despite the suppression cuffs biting hard into my wrists and slam my shoulder into his chest before he can fire again. The impact cracks his armor and drives him into the wall with bone-jarring force.
I do not break him.
I could.
Instead, I wrench the rifle from his grasp and fling it down the corridor, where it skids uselessly beneath a flickering light strip.
“Stand down!” another officer shouts.
A plasma bolt tears into my side.
Heat explodes across my ribs, searing through fabric and skin in a blinding flash of white. The suppression cuffs shriek in protest as my body tries to regenerate around the burn.
I barely feel it.
“Elara, go!” Varek roars behind me as he slams another pursuing officer into the floor hard enough to crater the plating.
She doesn’t go.
She runs toward me.
A third plasma bolt streaks toward her chest.
I don’t think.
I move.
