Awailthat vibrates the air, a shockwave of sound so sharp the lightbulb overhead bursts, showering the floor with glass.
My daughter enters the world screaming like a storm given flesh.
I collapse backward, shaking. My hands fumble, trembling, reaching for her. She’s slick and warm, her skin flushed a deep, unnatural red that shifts and fades as she settles. When her eyes blink open, I swear the breath leaves my chest.
They glow faintly. A pulsing ember-red, like she’s lit from within.
“Oh my gods,” I whisper. “Oh… oh sweetheart.”
Even newly born, she looks strong—muscles taut, fingers tiny but clenched with surprising force. She lets out another cry, this one lower pitched, resonant. It rattles the pipes.
Outside, the storm roars back at her.
I pull her into my arms, cradling her against my chest. The warmth of her body bleeds into mine instantly, grounding me, anchoring me. My tears spill hot and uncontrolled down my cheeks.
“You’re perfect,” I choke. “You’re terrifying, and perfect, and mine.”
I stroke her cheek with the back of a shaking finger. Her skin is soft, but hot—Reaper body heat running higher than human norms. I can feel her heart hammering against my palm, fast and powerful, like she’s already outracing the world she was born into.
“What am I going to do with you?” I whisper, and the truth lands in my chest like a stone. “What am I going to dowithout him?”
My daughter opens her mouth in a smaller cry, softer now, but still edged with strength. I brush a tear off her cheek—a cheek that, in the wrong light, might flash with the faintest shimmer of Reaper dermal patterns.
She’s not safe.
Not like this.
Not in this galaxy.
I name her there on the cold undercity floor, with thunder challenging the walls and my heart still aching for a man who doesn’t know he’s a father.
“Pepper,” I murmur, pressing a kiss to her tiny forehead. “After the girl who saved the universe in that dumb game I used to play.”
I laugh, breathless, half hysterical. “She was small and strong and angry all the time. You’re already two of those things.”
The storm begins to ease. Just barely. Enough that I can think again. Enough that the brutality of what comes next settles over me like a wet, suffocating blanket.
I need to hide her.
I need to hideeverything.
By dawn, I’m up, shaking, bleeding, weak, but moving. Pepper sleeps wrapped against my chest, her little fists curled in my shirt. She won’t stay little long. Reaper babies grow fast. I’ve already seen signs—her grip, her eyes, her heat.
I leave the squat apartment behind and navigate the undercity with a mother’s desperation boiling in my veins. I find a smuggler I used to interview back when I was a journalist with actual access. He squints at me, at my newborn wrapped in stained blankets, at the blood drying on my thighs, and mutters, “I don’t want trouble, Liora.”
“Too late,” I say. “I need tech.”
He doesn’t ask what kind. He leads me down a narrow hall littered with junked augments and damaged biomech limbs. The air smells like burnt circuitry and old oil. He digs through crates, tossing parts aside until he finds a palm-sized disc with glowing nodes around the edges.
“Prototype image inducer,” he says. “Experimental. Unstable. Might fry her neural pathways if you use it wrong.”
“I don’t have options,” I answer. And it’s true.
I trade every credit I have. Every last one. I forge the documents myself, fingers shaking over the cracked interface of my hacked comp. It takes hours. It’s imperfect. Illegal. Dangerous.
But by the time I’m done, Pepper Blevins exists.
Human. Unremarkable. Ordinary.
