I rise—wobbly. Slit eyes, trembling jaw. I walk to the window. I stare out: the city lights flicker, life going on. Somewhere he’s trapped, miles away, sentenced. Somewhere I carry a secret that might mean hope or destruction.
I whisper to the empty room, to the future, to the silence:Please be alive.
The drive to my mother’s house is numb. My mind is quiet with shock, like a circuit gone open. I grip the steering controls so hard my knuckles blanch. The city passes by—neon signs, traffic hum, advertisements flickering promise. Nothing means anything anymore.
When I arrive, the air is soft—the smell of baked bread, damp grass under dome gardens, jasmine bushes outside the entrance. My mother is waiting on the stoop, arms crossed, calm as a judge. She doesn’t run to me; she waits.
I step down. She opens her arms. I collapse into her. I don’t even feel the sob that shakes me. I just let my body drain out.
My sister Vira bursts out behind her, eyes red, trembling. She rushes forward, cries, hugs me until I can’t distinguish between her voice and my heart. “Oh, Jae,” she says. “What have they done?”
I press into them both. I can’t speak. I feel a cold emptiness where I used to feel hope.
My mother’s voice is level. “We will be okay,” she says. “This changes nothing of what matters. You matter. He matters. We will figure this.”
I nod. The words slip. I think:Your mother is made of stone and soft words.
Later, in my bedroom, I find my terminal. I open the message logs—old ones, drafts I never sent. His messages are sterile, clipped—“Recovery progressing,” “Status report,” “We will get through this.” None of them sayI miss you. None of them sayI love you. I taste betrayal. Not because he failed. Because I never gave him a chance to know.
I flip to the tribunal footage on loop. The moment they led him away—his face, golden skin shadowed; his eyes burning with defiance. The cameras catch it all. The judges, the cuffs, the lift off ramp towering. He never saw me standing behind the glass. He never knew I was there. I never told him I was.
Days pass. I move through them in a haze—meals, patient schedules, data logs. My body is an automaton: calibrate this, reboot that, attend a hearing tomorrow. My mother gently cares for me; Vira hovers. But none of it breaks the fog.
On the final hearing day, I dress in my best suit—dark, tailored, the fabric stiff. I carry the sealed envelope—my words, unspoken. I arrive to a chamber more sterile than the tribunal before. Glass walls. Cameras. Press. They seat me in the gallery. My heart pounds. I stand when they call for character statements—and am told I may not speak. Not allowed. My throat closes. I watch the judges glare, their gavel raised. My hands tremble.
Then through the glass wall I see it: the transport ship, ramp descending, engines humming, crew boarding. He stands on that ramp, framed by roaring exhaust. Everyone sees him being taken—broken man and war hero. I place one hand, trembling, on my belly. The touch is small but real.
“He’ll never even know you exist,” I whisper.
The words echo as the ship lifts. Steel doors hiss closed. Noise. Flash of engines. The earth he’s leaving slides out of sight.
I stumble back. I fall to the ground. The courtroom shouts. Someone reaches for me. I don’t care.
That night, my apartment is dark and silent. The only light is moon through window slats. I wrap myself in sheets. I am alone. The weight of every unspoken confession presses on me. In the hollows of my chest, the life inside me stirs—tiny kick. Flicker. Something alive, something real.
I let tears come because there is no more holding in. Because regret and fear crash over me like waves. I sob until I cannot hear the world. Until the apartment is nothing but salt and shadows and the heartbeat inside me.
And as I drift toward half-sleep, I feel that kick again. A little surge, delicate—but it floods me, floods me with silence and hope and the terror of what’s to come.
CHAPTER 10
KYLDAK
The hum of the prison ship is a low, constant vibration—like a heartbeat that doesn’t belong to me. The air tastes recycled, metallic, sharp with disinfectant and grease. My cybernetics are dead weight, disconnected at the neural links. The limbs that once made me a weapon now just hang—cold, useless, heavier than guilt.
They’ve shackled me withmetal cuffs.Actual metal. No energy tethers, no plasma restraints. It’s a humiliation tactic, I know it. Iron—something they reserve for relics, for beasts. The kind that clinks loud enough to remind you that you’re less than human.
I sit against the bulkhead, eyes half-closed, trying to ignore the eyes on me.
The other prisoners—human, mostly. Some Martian miners, a few lunar defectors, one pale Drenthi smuggler with too many teeth. They glance my way, whispering. One laughs—high, nervous, mocking.
“Big hero,” one sneers. “Alliance golden boy. Guess they ran out of medals.”
I don’t answer.
Another voice, rougher, slurred. “Vakutan, yeah? Heard you eat your enemies. Let’s see it.”
The laughter is jagged, sharp.
