My fingers hover over the keys. I type three words, delete them. Try again.
I have to save them.
That's all. No apology, no explanation, no plea for understanding. Just the truth, stark and simple.
I stare at the words until they stop making sense. Then I hit send before I can talk myself out of it and turn away from the terminal, slinging the duffel over my shoulder.
The weight settles familiar against my spine. Not heavy enough. I should take more supplies, more seeds, something to bargain with when I get back to Demeter's cold, sterile world.
But I can't make myself care about preparation. Can't think past the next hour, the next step, the airlock that will take me away from this place.
Away from him.
I pause at the door, hand on the control panel. Look back one last time at the bed where we tangled together, where he held me like I was something precious instead of a resource to be exploited.
The sheets still smell like him. My throat closes around the words I want to say, all the things I should have told him when I had the chance.
"I'm sorry," I whisper to the empty room, my voice breaking on the second word. Sorry for leaving without facing him. Sorry for being too much of a coward to explain why I have to go, why I can't let thousands of people die just because I found something here that I never knew I needed. Sorry for caring about him when caring makes this so much harder. "I'm so sorry."
The silence swallows my apology, offers nothing back. No absolution, no understanding, just the quiet hum of the station's life support systems and the distant clang of machinery from the lower decks.
I force myself to turn away, to stop looking at the rumpled blankets and the indent his head left in the pillow. Looking back won't change anything. Won't make this easier.
Then I key the door open with trembling fingers and step into the corridor before I can change my mind, before I can throw the duffel aside and crawl back into that bed and pretend the rest of the universe doesn't exist.
The station is quiet this early. Skeleton crew on duty, most of the miners still asleep after the night shift. I move through thehallways like a ghost, keeping to the shadows, avoiding the main thoroughfares where security cameras track every movement.
I know this place now. Learned its rhythms over the past weeks while Haid and I worked side by side in the labs, building something impossible out of dirt and desperation. I know which corridors lead to the docking bays. Which access codes override the automated locks.
I shouldn't. He never gave me clearance. But I watched him key in the sequences, memorized the patterns without meaning to, and now I'm using that stolen knowledge to run from the only place that's ever felt like home.
The irony tastes like ash.
I make it to Bay Seven without incident. There's a small courier ship docked there, fast, maneuverable, designed for quick runs through contested space. Haid's people use them for supply runs when they can't risk the larger transports.
I can fly it. Demeter made sure I learned basic piloting, one more skill to increase my value on the marriage market.A well-rounded wife is worth more than a pretty one,she'd said, and I'd hated her for it then.
Now I'm grateful for every tedious lesson, every hour spent in the simulator while Demeter critiqued my form and precision.
I'm halfway up the loading ramp, my boots echoing too loud in the cavernous silence of the bay, when I hear other boots on metal behind me. The sound stops me cold, freezes me mid-step with one hand braced against the ship's hull and my breath catches sharp and painful in my chest.
My heart stops. I turn slowly, expecting Haid. Expecting to see those void-dark eyes burning with betrayal, demanding answers I can't give without breaking both of us.
But it's Thanatos. Haid's lieutenant. The cyborg watches me with an expression I can't read, augmented by an eye glowing faint red in the dim bay.
"Going somewhere, Spring Queen?" His voice is flat. No accusation, just observation.
I should lie. Make up some excuse, fabricate a story about emergency supplies or a message from Demeter or anything that might sound plausible. But I'm so exhausted down to my bones, so tired of lying and pretending and hiding the truth behind careful words and calculated smiles. And Thanatos deserves better than that, he's been nothing but honest with me since the moment I arrived on this station, answering my questions without evasion, treating me with a directness that feels almost foreign after years of Demeter's manipulations.
"Yes." I meet his gaze steadily, refusing to look away or let shame bend my spine. My chin lifts slightly, defiant even though my heart is hammering against my ribs. "And you're going to let me."
He tilts his head slowly, deliberately, the augmented eye whirring softly as it focuses and refocuses on my face. Processing. Calculating. Running through scenarios and protocols and whatever complex algorithms govern the cyborg parts of his consciousness. "Lord Haid gave no such order."
"I know." I hitch the duffel higher on my shoulder. "But if you stop me, people die. Thousands of them. Children. The same ones I saved when the support beam collapsed."
Something flickers across his face, a subtle shift in the set of his jaw, the micro-expression around his remaining organic eye. Not quite emotion, because there's too much metal and circuitry threaded through his neural pathways for anything as simple as human feeling, but recognition, maybe. Understanding. The kind that comes from standing at Haid's side for years, watching him navigate impossible choices and moral gray areas that would break lesser men.
"He will come after you," Thanatos says quietly, and there's something almost gentle in his voice, a warning wrapped inreluctant concern. "You understand that, yes? The moment he discovers you're gone, he'll tear this station apart. He'll burn through every favor, call in every debt, mobilize every ship in his fleet. There won't be a corner of the void dark enough to hide you."
