He laughs once, delirious. “Lucky.”
“Not for long.”
I yank at the cuffs. The chain creaks but doesn’t break. My cybernetics are still dead—no power, no feedback. I drag myself to the cargo hatch, where daylight cuts through the smoke. The heat hits me like a fist.
Outside, the ground glows. Sand and slag stretch to the horizon. In the distance, black silhouettes rise—towers? Machines? No. Bones of old ships, half-buried in dunes.
The Drenthi crawls after me, wheezing. “Where do we go?”
I look out across the wasteland, wind clawing my face, heat shimmering. I can feel it already—the pull of the planet. The weight of exile pressing against me.
“This isn’t a prison,” I say, voice low. “It’s a tomb.”
He laughs again, a broken sound. “You sound like you’ve been here before.”
I crack my neck. “No.” I look at the endless horizon. “But I know how to survive graves.”
I shove my heel against the cuffs, twist, pull until my wrist bones grind. The metal finally gives with a sharpclang. The skin beneath it is torn raw.
I tear off the chain. Toss it into the sand.
The wind catches my hair. My breath tastes of salt and smoke.
“Fine,” I mutter. The word barely audible. “Let’s see how long your monsters last with a real one among them.”
Behind me, the wreck still burns. Ahead, the dunes roll forever.
I take one step. Then another. Limping. Bleeding. Alive.
The sun climbs higher, a white eye glaring down. My reflection flashes in the shattered visor of a dead guard as I pass—scales dulled, eyes burning red.
I don’t look back.
I keep walking.
Because this isn’t exile.
This is rebirth.
And somewhere, in the back of my mind, I hear her voice again—Jaela, soft and defiant, whispering something only I can hear:Don’t die yet.
I smile. “Not planning to.”
Then I vanish into the sand.
CHAPTER 11
JAELA
Kel is screaming again.
Not the cute, wobbly kind of baby scream that makes strangers in line at the grocer coo and say, “Oh, someone’s cranky!” No. This is a banshee-howl, sharp enough to lance through walls and skulls. It’s raw. It’s rage. It’s gotmytemper andhislungs and it’s been peeling the paint off my eardrums since 0430.
I rock him in the crook of my arm, pacing the narrow arc of our apartment like a worn groove in an old record. My hips move on autopilot. My spine feels like someone’s playing tug-of-war with my nerves. My left eyelid has been twitching since yesterday. I haven’t slept in two days.
“Mama’s here,” I whisper, more to the cracked ceiling than to him. “Mama’s always here.”
Kel doesn’t give a shit. He wails louder, his tiny fists flailing like he's training for interstellar MMA. One of them catches me in the jaw. Not hard. Just enough to sting.
