I look at my son. I don’t see a hybrid anomaly. I see curls stuck to sweaty cheeks. I see gold in his eyes like a sunrise on ruined ground. I see all the best and worst parts of both of us wrapped in soft flesh and a scream like a damned reaper banshee.
“I do,” I say.
“Then don’t die,” she snaps.
“Working on it.”
I leave in the dead of night.
I kiss Mama’s forehead. Hug Vira. She doesn’t hug back, but she doesn’t let go of my wrist until I do.
Then I kneel by Kel.
He’s curled under his favorite blanket—crayon-stained, threadbare, soft as sin. His little hand is wrapped around a plastic wrench. I smile. I cry.
“Hey, baby,” I whisper, brushing his hair back. “Mommy’s gotta go get something. Something really,reallyimportant.”
His lips move. Maybe it’s a dream. Maybe he hears me.
“Mama…”
I kiss his forehead. I breathe him in like it’s the last oxygen in the world.
Then I leave.
The shuttle’s launch is rough.
She fights me the whole way out of orbit, rattling like a coffin with an attitude problem. The stealth drive kicks in late and stutters. I override the emergency ping with a wire I shouldn’t touch and a prayer I don’t believe in.
But I make it.
Deep space opens up in front of me like a throat.
And then the drones find me.
The first two are easy. Old patrol models. I blind their sensors with a static burst from the hacked navchip and punch the thrusters.
The third one?
Not so easy.
It tags me before I even see it—a sleek, ugly little Alliance interceptor. Probably flagged my trajectory the second I left lunar shadow.
Alarms wail. My HUD bleeds red. The back stabilizer explodes. The cockpit fills with smoke and curses.
“Son of ablistering whorebot!” I scream, yanking the stick to starboard. The ship lists hard, gravity pulling blood from my brain. “C’mon, baby, hold together—just a little longer?—”
The panel sparks. The nav blinks out.
I’m flying blind.
“Stars, stars, stars?—”
Jurtik rises below me. Brown and cracked and burning at the seams. A wasteland with teeth.
I dive.
The atmosphere hits like a fist. The heat isinstant—metal howling, alarms shrieking, my teeth rattling in my skull. The console explodes in sparks. The cabin lights die.
