He chokes. Struggles. I see the weight of what we’ve done in that silence.
I say nothing.
He sets the kid down in the cradle—safe, warm. Caelix yawns.
Troka rubs his shoulder. He looks at me. Stricken.
“I’m sorry,” he murmurs.
I duck my head. Too many things that “sorry” could mean.
He steps forward. “I’m here now.”
My voice cracks. “You said that before.”
He doesn’t argue. He just studies me like someone seeing a map in a broken city.
I upend a clean tray. “Well. Don’t fuck this up again.”
He doesn’t answer. He just watches me as I go back to serving. I can feel his stare on my back, in my spine, in my pulse.
When I glance back, he’s gone.
The bar feels too empty. The neon glints too harsh. The silence tastes like regret.
CHAPTER 14
TROKA
Being a soldier makes sense. You fight, you win, or you die. The rules are cruel, but they’re clear.
Civilian life? That’s another kind of battlefield. And I’m getting torn to shreds.
“Sir, we don’t yell at the customers,” says my new boss—formerboss, now—after I inform a loudmouthed human that his fake credit stick isn’t clever, it’s pathetic. The scammer tried to push past an elderly woman in the checkout lane. I may have shoved him through a floral hologram display.
Not my finest moment. But Iwascalm.
“You’re a menace, Troka,” the manager hisses as I stand in her over-scented perfume office.
I grin. “That’s accurate.”
She hurls a stylus at the desk and gestures wildly. “Leave. Now.”
So I do.
Two days later, I land another job.
Private security detail. Easy enough. Guard the mall. Walk the floor. Watch for pickpockets. Don’t break things.
Except the thief I caught sprinted through a children’s gravity maze, and I… well, I followed. Fast. Direct. Right throughthree walls and a synth-snow machine. The kid only stole a handful of credits from a vendor.
“Do youunderstandhow many credits in damages you caused?” the shift captain shrieks, pacing as my armor drips with fake snow and bits of foam stars.
“Half a million,” I say. “Rounded.”
He sputters.
“I’ll see myself out.”
