And underneath the words, beneath the careful control that keeps every syllable measured and precise, I hear it threading through like a secret he didn't mean to reveal.
Awe. Raw and undisguised and utterly unguarded.
Like he's standing at the edge of creation itself. Like he's watching his dead world being born from nothing, from dust and memory and my trembling hands. Like I've given him something he'd forgotten existed, something he'd stopped hoping for so long ago that hope itself became a foreign concept.
It makes my chest ache in ways I don't want to examine.
6
Haid
I step into the bioluminescent glow, and the light hits my face like an absolution I don't deserve.
Her flowers have turned the arboretum into something out of myth. Blue and green and gold bleeding together, casting shadows that move and breathe across walls that haven't known anything but darkness for three rotations. The air tastes different already. Sweeter. Richer. Like standing on the edge of a forest after rain instead of choking on recycled carbon and desperation.
Like hope, if hope had a flavor.
I hate how much I want this. How much I need it. How the sight of those impossible blooms makes something crack open in my chest that I thought I'd welded shut cycles ago.
She still hasn't turned around. Just kneels there in dirt that's shifting from grey to brown, hands buried wrist-deep in soil that's coming alive beneath her touch. Her hair catches the bioluminescence, turns it into something that makes me think of sunrise even though I haven't seen a real star in longer than I want to calculate.
Small. Breakable. Kneeling there crying over dead things and loss she can't articulate while her gift erupts around her in waves of violent, gorgeous creation that she doesn't even seem to fully comprehend. She has no idea what she's doing, not really. No understanding of the magnitude of power flowing through those delicate hands like water through a broken dam.
The most dangerous weapon in the entire galaxy, wrapped up in soft curves and gentle compassion and empathy she doesn't know how to weaponize. Doesn't even understand couldbeweaponized.
Yet.
The word sits in my mind like a promise. Like a threat. Like the future I can see stretching out before us whether she's ready for it or not.
I move closer, boots heavy on decking that's already developing a thin film of moss. Fast. Too fast. Her power doesn't creep or coax; it conquers. Takes territory like an invading force and refuses to give ground.
She made this happen in minutes. Mereminutes. The transformation from sterile metal to living ecosystem unfolding faster than should be possible, defying every law of nature I thought I understood.
What could she do with months stretching before her? Years of unleashing that power without restraint or limitation?
What could she do to the dying stations of the Tartarus Belt if I gave her complete freedom, unrestricted access, and enough soil, enoughspace, to work with? If I let her loose on our suffocating corridors and failing life support systems like some kind of divine catastrophe wrapped in flesh?
The thought tastes like salvation and damnation fighting for dominance on my tongue, bitter and sweet all at once. Like hope, which is the most dangerous flavour of all.
"The Tartarus Belt is suffocating," I say, voice rougher than I intended. The words scrape out like confession, like admitting weakness to an enemy who could destroy me with it. "Seven inhabited stations. Two hundred thousand souls. We've been under Apex blockade for eighteen months."
She goes very still. Listening but not looking. Shoulders tight beneath fabric that's smudged with dirt and streaked with tears.
I keep talking because stopping feels impossible now that I've started. Now that the truth is clawing its way out whether I want it loose or not.
"No supply runs. No medicine. No seed stock." Each fact lands like a blow I'm taking instead of giving. "We've survived on hydroponics and recycled nutrients, but the systems are failing. Oxygen scrubbers break down faster than we can repair them. Carbon dioxide levels rising in the residential sectors. Children on supplemental oxygen because their lungs can't process what we're calling air anymore."
The vine she summoned pulses with light, almost like it's reacting to my words. Like her power has opinions about suffering and wants to make them known.
"Council won't help. We're Void-born. Cyborgs. Criminals and refugees and everyone the Core Systems would rather forget exists." Bitterness bleeds through despite my best efforts to keep my tone flat. Professional. "They'd watch us choke and call it natural selection."
"So you stole me." Her voice comes out quiet but steady. Not accusing. Just stating facts like she's cataloging data. "Because I'm what? Your salvation? Your miracle worker?"
"You're a bio-genesis architect." I move to her left, slowly, giving her time to track my position without turning. "You don't just grow plants. You create ecosystems. Self-sustaining, oxygen-producing, food-generating systems that could turn a dead station into a viable habitat."
"Could." She finally shifts, tilting her head just enough that I catch her profile. Tear-tracks catching bioluminescence, turning them into something that looks like war paint. "Theoretical. Unproven. My mother never let me work on anything larger than decorative arrangements for diplomatic functions."
The way she saysmothercarries enough venom to kill smaller life forms, the single word dripping with a toxicity that seems almost tangible in the air between us. Each syllable loaded with years of something dark and complicated, relationships twisted into knots I'm only just beginning to glimpse the shape of.
