I lean my head against the bulkhead. The vibration runs through my skull, through my teeth, through the silence that used to hold her laughter.
“Forget her,” I growl. The sound is low, rough. It fills the narrow cell. “Forget her.”
But the lie burns.
Because I know I won’t.
Not in exile. Not in hell. Not even on Jurtik.
Her name is carved somewhere under the skin they couldn’t take.
The hum of the prison ship changes.
At first, it’s subtle—a low vibration underfoot that I can feel through the cuffs, through the dead circuits of my prosthetics. Then it deepens. The lights flicker. Gravity slips sideways.
A warning klaxon blares. The walls flash red. “Atmospheric entry: anomaly detected.”
The captain’s voice cuts through the comm, tight and panicked: “Brace for descent—repeat, brace for?—”
Then the ship screams.
The sound is alive—metal shrieking like something dying. I’m thrown sideways. My restraints snap against my wrists, grinding scales into the edges. My shoulder flares with pain. The whole hull lurches, and the scent of burning ozone fills the air.
Someone yells. Someone else prays. One of the humans across from me vomits into the aisle, and it floats for a half-second before gravity slams back.
I slam against the wall, forehead cracking metal. The cuffs tear skin. My prosthetic leg jerks in its socket, useless.
“Stabilizers offline. We’re coming in hot?—”
The lights die.
For a heartbeat, the only sound is wind tearing against the hull—then a sound like the world ending.
Impact.
The front end hits first, shoving everything forward. Bodies crash into bulkheads. The deck folds like paper. Sparks rain down, glowing embers in the dark. I hit the floor, hard, taste blood. The smell is copper and burnt plastic.
We skid for what feels like forever—grinding, slamming, metal screaming. Then silence.
The silence is worse.
I open my eyes. Everything is smoke. Black and red and orange. I’m still cuffed, half buried in what used to be a row of seats. The other prisoners are groaning, some not at all. A guard lies nearby—face down, neck at the wrong angle.
I grunt, rolling over, dragging my arms. My shoulder howls. I shove my knees under me and push.
My chains rattle, dragging through the ash. I grab the guard’s shock staff and use it for leverage. He doesn’t need it anymore.
The air tastes of fire and desert dust. My lungs burn when I breathe. Through the broken hull, I can see the sky—a jagged red, the color of infection.
Jurtik.
The wasteland world. The graveyard of the forgotten.
The sand outside looks like powdered rust. It moves in waves, whipped by wind that screams through the cracks in the hull.
Behind me, one of the prisoners stirs. The Drenthi smuggler. “We… Are we alive?” His voice is broken glass.
“Barely,” I rasp.
