If I route power to junction six, I could force open the sluice grates. Corridor Delta-3 is still sealed by residual atmospheric pressure—I could pop the locks and vent that whole stretch into the vacuum. Not fatal, not quite. But enough to send a message.
Let the ship do the bleeding.
I mutter the thought aloud, a low growl of consideration. “Scare ‘em. Shake ‘em. Keep my knife clean.”
But then she appears on the screen again.
The woman.
She’s small, soft-skinned, a splash of purple against the Hulk’s ash-pallor. Her eyes flick everywhere—too bright, too alert. She’s not like the others. She doesn’t walk like someone looking for profit. She walks like she’s trying to be brave, and barely holding the mask in place.
She shouldn’t be here.
Her voice cuts through the monitor’s feedback, sharp and clear. She’s performing, I can tell—talking to a droid that floats just behind her shoulder like a twitchy little shadow. But the fear’s in her tone now. Real. I taste it in the static.
And that... other one. The tall one with the crooked horn and the smile that isn’t a smile. He watches her too closely.
I know that look.
Predators know their own.
One Horn—yes, that’s what the others call him—starts lingering near her more often. He leans too close when she speaks. Takes too long to move when she shifts away. There’s hunger in the way he watches, and it’s not the kind that gets satisfied with gold or old tech.
I don’t need sound to know what he’s thinking.
My fingers curl around the hilt of my blade.
It’s not much. A scrap-metal edge honed to a whisper of usefulness, hidden away in my bunker for years, like the last vestige of who I was. It’s the kind of weapon you keep for the moment you finally give up on peace.
I told myself I wouldn’t get involved.
Not again.
Not for outsiders. Not for thieves and posers and holonet darlings with no business waking the ghosts that sleep here.
But when One Horn touches her arm—pretending it’s by accident, drawing her away from the others, down a corridor too quiet, too forgotten?—
My instincts scream.
She resists. I see the flick of her elbow, her retreat, the unease on her face when no one else seems to notice. She says something, and he answers with a laugh that doesn’t reach his eyes. Bokis glances their way, uncertain, but does nothing.
They disappear from view.
The screen blinks out.
I rise.
The Hulk’s systems still hum beneath my claws. I could still do it. Trip the corridor seals. Shut them off. Herd them like cattle through the ship’s arteries. Let it swallow them one by one.
But this isn’t about tactics anymore.
This is instinct.
This is blood memory rising to the surface, raw and undeniable.
I sheath the blade. I tell myself:Stay hidden. Let the ship decide.
But when the screaming starts?—
