"I know that too." My throat tightens painfully, muscles constricting around words I don't want to say but can't hold back. The thought of Haid waking to find me gone, of the look that will cross his face when he reads whatever inadequate explanation I manage to scribble, makes something in my chest crack open. "That's why I need a head start. Why I'm asking you for this instead of just trying to steal the ship."
Silence stretches between us, heavy and weighted with implications. I can practically hear the whir of processors, the cascade of calculations running behind his augmented eye as it continues to focus and refocus on my face. He's running scenarios, I realize. Weighing loyalty against logic, protocol against pragmatism. Measuring the variables of letting me go versus raising the alarm, factoring in everything from Haid's likely reaction to the strategic implications of thousands of deaths I might prevent.
Finally, after what feels like an eternity compressed into thirty seconds—he steps aside, his massive frame no longer blocking my path to the waiting ship.
"The ship's fueled. Navigation is unlocked." He pauses. "You have two hours before he wakes. Maybe three if I delay the shift change."
Relief crashes through me so hard my knees almost buckle. "Thank you."
"Don't thank me." Thanatos turns away, already walking back toward the main corridor. "I'm doing this for him, not you. He's been half-dead for years. You made him remember how to live. If you're leaving, best you do it clean."
Then he's gone, and I'm alone with my choice and the open ship and the clock counting down to the moment Haid finds my note and realizes I'm gone.
I take the ramp at a run.
16
Haid
The cold wakes me.
Not the ambient chill of the station's recycled air or the usual temperature drop during sleep cycle. This is different. Specific. The absence of warmth where warmth should be, where it's been for the past three nights, where my body has already learned to expect soft skin and steady breathing and the faint luminescence that pulses beneath Ksara's flesh when she dreams.
I reach across the mattress before my eyes open. Tactical reflex, checking positions, confirming presence. My palm hits nothing but cooling sheets.
Empty.
I'm upright in seconds, combat-trained reflexes overriding the fog of sleep. Scanning. The bathroom door stands open, darkness beyond. Her clothes from yesterday are gone from the chair where I draped them after peeling the fabric from her body, taking my time, memorizing every gasp and shiver. The duffel bag she arrived with is missing from the corner where it's sat untouched for weeks.
My boots hit the floor.
That's when I see it. A piece of flimsy paper, the kind we use for non-critical data logs, folded once and propped against the tactical lamp on my desk. My name written across the front in her careful script.
Something in my chest goes very still.
I don't want to pick it up. If I don't read it, if I leave it sitting there untouched, maybe the reality it contains won't exist. Schrodinger's betrayal, simultaneously happening and not happening until I collapse the waveform by observing the evidence.
I pick it up anyway.
The paper unfolds with a whisper of sound that feels too loud in the terrible silence of my quarters.
Haid,
By the time you read this, I'll be gone. Please don't follow me. I know you will anyway, but I'm asking you not to.
My mother has a kill-switch in the Tartarus oxygen scrubbers. She's threatening to activate it unless I return. I can't let thousands of people suffocate because of me. I won't.
You said I was the only thing in this universe you couldn't lose. But I can't be that person if it means watching everyone you've protected die. You made me see that some things are worth the cost. This is my cost to pay.
I'm sorry I didn't say goodbye. I'm not strong enough for that. Not when it comes to you.
Don't burn the world for me. You have people who need you alive more than they need revenge.
K.
I read it twice. Three times. The words don't change. The careful handwriting doesn't reveal itself as forgery. The message remains exactly what it appears to be: Ksara, choosing tosacrifice herself, believing she can negotiate with a viper who will devour her the moment she's back in reach.
The paper crumples in my fist.
