CHAPTER 5
GAROKK
She talks.
Stars above, shetalks.
At first it’s a low murmur, something about her arm, her blood, her hair—nonsense that fills the air like static. But soon the noise becomes constant. A flow of words that has no rhythm, no battle logic, no discipline. It’s maddening.
It should be maddening.
And yet… it isn’t.
Because it’salive.
The sound of her voice pushes back against the dead hush that’s filled this ship for decades. It echoes down the corridors where I’ve heard only my own breath. It’s color in the dark. Heat against the cold. It is life, and I’ve forgotten how that sounded until now.
She’s small, this woman. Barely reaches my chest. A creature of soft edges and fast expressions. Her hair’s tangled, black with streaks of purple that catch the dim lights like bruised twilight. The scent of her hits first—sharp and bright, some kind of flower mixed with the metallic tang of fear and blood. It doesn’t belong here. Nothing fragrant survives in this place. The Hulk eats everything pure.
But somehow, she’s still here. Still…her.
I don’t understand it.
I don’t understandher.
She sits on the old bench beside one of the auxiliary consoles, patching up her arm with my salvaged medkit. Her lips keep moving. She’s talking to that hovering droid again—the small, fussy one with the trembling voice. Reflector. I’ve seen it before on the monitors, shadowing her like a metallic parasite.
“Stop fussing,” she says, flicking at it. “I’m fine. It’s just a scratch. Okay, maybe not just, but I’m not dying, so let’s all take a deep breath and calm the hell down.”
The drone hums a worried little tune in response. “Your heart rate remains elevated. Minor blood loss, approximately?—”
“Reflector,” she interrupts, “if you finish that sentence, I’m uninstalling your drama module.”
I don’t know what half her words mean, but the tone—thetone—is the same one soldiers used when they were afraid and pretending they weren’t. And something about that makes my chest tighten.
I watch her from across the chamber, staying mostly in shadow. She doesn’t seem to mind. Or maybe she’s too busy filling the silence to notice me standing here.
Her eyes flick toward me once, quick as a pulse. I feel the weight of it. Her gaze doesn’t linger, but it hits hard. I’ve had weapons pointed at me that felt less piercing.
“Thanks, by the way,” she says suddenly.
It catches me off guard. “For what?”
Her head snaps up, startled. “Oh my gods—youtalk.”
I grunt. “Obviously.”
“I mean, yeah, but you didn’t before. You just—” she gestures vaguely with her hands, smearing a bit of dried blood on her sleeve—“you did the whole strong silent monster routine. Scary eyes, brooding, carrying me like a damsel from a pulp drama.”
“I carried you because you were bleeding.”
“Yeah,” she says, her mouth twitching. “That’s… technically true.”
She falls quiet for half a second. That’s all it takes for the silence to stretch again, long and deep and alive with the sound of distant ship metal shifting. Then she’s back at it, because of course she is.
“So what’s your deal, anyway?” she asks. “You some kind of war vet? Ship gremlin? Lonely guardian of the space tomb?”
I frown. “You talk too much.”
