He leans slightly closer without moving his seat, the way a predator leans when it wants you to understand there’s no distance between you, only permission.
“You want convenient?” he says quietly. “Convenient would be me letting you die in the wash and taking your archive when your body cooled.”
My throat tightens.
“You didn’t,” I say.
“No,” he replies. “I didn’t.”
For a second, the silence feels charged, like the air between us is holding its breath. I can hear my own pulse loud in my ears, can feel the faint vibration of the engines through the seat, the subtle warmth of the console lights on my skin.
I break eye contact first, because holding it too long feels like stepping off a ledge.
“Fine,” I say, voice rough. “Framed. No proof. We’ll put that in the ‘mysterious murder mountain man’ column and circle back later.”
He makes a low sound of amusement. “Mountain man.”
“You live in the wilderness and stab people,” I say. “What else am I supposed to call you?”
“A survivor,” he says.
“A criminal,” I counter.
He shrugs. “Same thing, depending who’s writing the report.”
That lands harder than it should, because I can practically hear the IHC orphanage administrators in my head—their clipped voices, their paperwork, their rules that always mattered more than the kids living under them. Power structures writing reports and calling it truth.
I hate that he’s right.
The nav console chimes.
Lonari adjusts our approach vector.
On the forward viewport, Gur begins to swell into view.
At first it’s just a dark curve against the stars, ringed with scattered debris that glitters like broken glass. Then the planet rotates, and the light catches it.
Gur is not pretty.
It’s the color of old bruises and industrial waste—brown-gray landmasses streaked with black scars where the mines have gutted the crust. The atmosphere is thin and dirty, a hazy veil that looks like it’s been smoked through for centuries. City lights glitter unevenly across the surface, clustered in harsh grids and sprawling veins, surrounded by huge swaths of darkness like the planet itself is missing chunks of civilization.
Orbit is crowded.
Freighters drift in loose patterns. Small fighters dart between larger ships like gnats around a carcass. I see the hulking silhouettes of stations—industrial platforms bolted together from mismatched parts, some pristine, some patched like someone kept them alive through sheer stubbornness.
The traffic lanes look messy, informal, like nobody cares enough to pretend this is orderly.
My stomach knots anyway.
“That’s Gur,” Lonari says, like he’s pointing out a childhood home.
“It looks like someone took a planet and used it as an ashtray,” I mutter.
He snorts. “Yeah. That’s about right.”
We descend.
The shuttle shudders as it hits the outer atmosphere, turbulence rattling the frame. The view warps slightly with heat friction, the edges of the planet’s surface shimmering. I cansmell the change even through sealed vents—an acrid, oily tang seeping in, like smog and metal and old fuel.
