I don’t look up. I just breathe, slow, through the ache in my ribs.
I could break them. Even with half a body of deactivated tech, I could snap bones. I could rip through these chains like foil. But what’s the point? What’s left to prove?
So I sit. Silent.
The cuffs scrape my scales. The ship’s gravity stutters, tugging my stomach sideways. A hollow rattle follows with every tremor. The lighting is sterile blue; it turns the other inmates into ghosts.
And all I can think of is Jaela.
Her voice. The smell of her hair—ozone and skin and faint citrus. The way her fingers brushed my face that last time she didn’t even know she was touching me.
She didn’t come. Didn’t fight the verdict. Didn’t send a word.
I clench my jaw. The skin splits where metal meets flesh at my shoulder socket. Warmth trickles—slow, deliberate—down my chest. Blood. Dark red against gold.
“Bleeder!” someone calls from across the bay.
A guard strides over, boots ringing on the deck. His armor smells like oil and starch. “You.” He jabs his shockstaff toward me. “You leaking, soldier boy?”
I stare at the floor. “Just a scar reopening.”
He calls for a med-bot anyway. It hums out of its dock, small, spider-limbed, eyes glowing clinical white. It clacks over, spritzes disinfectant. The sting hits like fire.
I hiss. “Stop.”
“Noncompliance will result in tranquilization,” the bot chirps.
“Then tranquilize me.”
The guard snorts. “Still got that attitude, huh? Guess they didn’t strip that out with your limbs.”
He walks off. The med-bot finishes sealing the wound, applies a band patch, and scuttles away.
When the pain fades, the silence returns.
I try to sleep. Emphasis on try.
The hum of the ship blends with memory—the whir of lab machinery, Jaela’s voice, half laugh, half exasperation.“You’re impossible, Kyldak.”
I remember the curve of her mouth when she said it. The heat in her eyes. The way her pulse jumped under my fingers.
In the dream, she’s speaking again. I can’t see her face. Just the sound of her breathing. Close.
Then she’s crying. Calling my name.
I reach out—metal and flesh—toward the sound. But there’s nothing. Just static. Just the dark.
I wake with my throat raw. My heart pounding.
The hum hasn’t stopped. It never does.
My chains are cold, slick with condensation. My blood has dried under the patch. I drag my wrists up, testing the metal. It bites back.
One of the miners across the bay mutters, “Talking in your sleep, hero. Said someone’s name.”
I glare. “Say another word and you’ll lose your teeth.”
He laughs nervously, looks away.
