"Where's the agricultural sector?" she asks, voice cutting through the noise with surprising authority.
"Not yet." I guide her toward the main corridor with a hand hovering near her lower back, not touching, just present. Proprietary in a way that makes my jaw clench. "You need to understand what you're working with first."
The main thoroughfare cuts through the Spire's residential levels like a concrete artery. Narrow, crowded, lit by emergency strips that haven't been replaced in years because we use every credit for food and medicine and ammunition instead of aesthetics.
People press against the walls to let us pass. Miners with void-lung coughing into filtration masks. Mechanics with prosthetics more sophisticated than their remaining organic limbs. Children with too-wide eyes and hunger written in the spaces between their ribs.
Ksara's breathing changes. Short, shallow pulls of air that suggest panic trying to claw its way up her throat.
But she keeps walking. Keeps looking. Really looking, not the performative glances Apex dignitaries give when they pretend to care about theouter territoriesduring election cycles.
A woman steps forward from the crowd pressed against the corridor wall and spits at Ksara's feet. The glob of saliva lands inches from her expensive shoes, those impractical things designed for climate-controlled government chambers, not the gritty reality of station floors, accusatory and precise. A calculated insult delivered with the kind of fury that's been fermenting for years.
Ksara stops walking. For a heartbeat I think she might keep moving, might pretend it didn't happen the way Apex officials always do when confronted with the consequences of their policies. But she doesn't.
She turns. Slowly, deliberately, rotating to face the woman head-on instead of offering the cut of a shoulder or the defensive angle of a retreat.
She meets the woman's hate-filled glare with something that might be understanding or might be grief. Something raw and undefended that makes the muscles in my chest pull tight because this isn't political theater. This is a genuine response to genuine rage, and I can see her absorbing it like she thinks she deserves every drop of venom this stranger wants to pour over her.
"I'm sorry," she says, and it sounds genuine. Not the polished apology of someone covering their ass, but the raw acknowledgment of complicity. "For what my mother did. For what I didn't stop because I was too weak and too stupid to even know it was happening."
The woman blinks, caught off-guard. Her anger doesn't evaporate, but it shifts, redirecting slightly away from pure personal hatred toward something more complicated.
We keep moving before anyone else decides to test boundaries.
The infirmary occupies three converted storage units near the residential core. Medical equipment scavenged from decommissioned ships, held together with ingenuity and prayer. Dr. Nyx runs this section, a former Apex trauma surgeon who defected when the Council ordered her to triage based on economic contribution rather than medical need.
She looks up from a patient chart as we enter, her augmented eyes whirring softly as the optical enhancements click through multiple visual spectrums, infrared, ultraviolet, enhanced contrast, before finally settling back on baseline human perception. The faint glow behind her pupils fades to something approaching normal, though the precision of her gaze remains predatory in its assessment.
"Lord Haid." She nods once, crisp and professional, the greeting of someone who's seen me carry too many bodies through these doors to waste time on pleasantries. Then her gaze shifts to Ksara and sharpens into something harder, more evaluative. Her jaw tightens just slightly. "The hostage."
The word lands between us like a blade, and Ksara flinches beside me even though she doesn't move.
"The asset," I correct, keeping my tone flat and authoritative even as the word tastes like ash in my mouth. Like I'm trying to swallow something burning. I ignore the sensation, ignore the way my own language makes me complicit in reducing her to an object. "She needs to see the children."
Nyx's expression goes carefully, deliberately neutral. The kind of neutral that medical professionals perfect when they know exactly how bad things are about to get but can't afford emotional investment. She holds my gaze for a long moment, reading something there, then glances at Ksara again with an assessment that's equal parts clinical and protective.
"Ward C," she says finally, closing the chart with a soft snap.
We walk deeper into the infirmary. The temperature drops as we move away from the main heating ducts. My breath doesn't mist, quite, but it's close.
Ksara's definitely misting. Little clouds of condensation with every exhale, visible proof that she's still warm and alive in a place where heat is a luxury most can't afford.
Ward C holds twelve beds. Eight are occupied. Children ranging from maybe four to thirteen standard years, all exhibiting the telltale signs of void-cough. Grey skin. Labored breathing. Blood vessels visible beneath translucent tissue, mapping their slow starvation in blue and purple.
Ksara stops in the doorway like she's hit a force field, that instant, invisible resistance when your brain processessomething so fundamentally wrong that your body refuses forward momentum as self-preservation.
Her breath catches audibly, a sharp inhale that she doesn't seem able to release. I watch her take it in with the rows of beds with their too-small occupants, the medical equipment that's been repaired and jury-rigged so many times it barely resembles its original function, the pervasive grey pallor that hangs over everything like a shroud.
"What..." Her voice cracks mid-word, fracturing on the single syllable. The sound is raw, unguarded. She swallows hard, and I can see the effort it takes, the working of her throat, the way her jaw tightens as she forces down whatever's threatening to come up. When she tries again, her voice is barely above a whisper, fragile as frost. "What is this?"
It's not really a question. Or rather, it's the question someone asks when they already know the answer but need to hear it spoken aloud, need the horror confirmed so they can't pretend they misunderstood.
"Void-cough," Nyx says, clinical and brutal because sugar-coating doesn't save lives. "Respiratory degradation caused by prolonged exposure to recycled air with insufficient oxygen saturation. The scrubbers are failing. We patch them, but they're sixty years past the recommended replacement."
"Why don't you just replace them?" Ksara asks, and immediately realizes how the question sounds. Her face flushes. "No. Stupid. The blockade."
"The blockade," I confirm. "Apex won't sell us the parts. Won't let neutral parties sell to us either. Economic sanctions, they call it. Collective punishment for refusing to surrender our mining operations and submit to Council oversight."
