The wormhole roars.
And I fly.
CHAPTER 48
NOVA
The launch bay shakes beneath my boots like the whole world’s holding its breath.
Bright-white floodlights cut through the mist, slicing lines across the fighter’s hull as Kaz moves into position—fluid and focused. His armor gleams like burnished gold under the flicker-stutter of warning lights. I know that body better than I should. The slope of his shoulders, the way he cracks his neck before he flies, the quick flex of his fingers before liftoff. His rituals are always the same.
Like he's not afraid.
Like dying's just something that happens to other people.
The comm station is warm under my palms, the panel’s glass warming with static as I press both hands flat to steady them. The room is too bright, too sterile, the recycled air too dry. Everything’s vibrating with that electric hum, like a wire stretched too tight—about to snap.
“Support Pod One is ready,” Verzius says coolly over the internal link. “I’ll chase him into hell if I have to.”
“You already are,” I mutter.
Kaz’s voice cuts in next. Steady. Confident. Infuriating.
“Test pilot Kaz reporting in. One override drive locked and loaded. One dumb plan in motion. One heartbeat skipping like a glitch in a jump drive.”
His words make me want to scream and laugh and cry all at once.
Instead, I do my job.
“Telemetry is green,” I say. “All systems reading stable. You’ve got a six-minute window once inside. After that, the singularity destabilizes and the failsafe self-retracts.”
“Plenty of time to flirt with death and make it jealous.”
Verzius snorts. “Remind me why we’re trusting our lives to a himbo with commitment issues?”
Kaz laughs, soft and dark. “Because I finally found something worth staying for.”
That silences both of us.
He always did know how to cut straight through the noise.
A new alarm blares—low and pulsing. The wormhole’s activation sequence kicks off, and the chamber floods with a light that isn’t light at all. It’s colorless and full-spectrum, like standing in the eye of a star. The air bends. Reality folds. And in the middle of it is the gate—churning open with a scream no ear can hear.
My hands shake now. I don’t hide it. Not from myself.
“Kaz,” I whisper into the open line. “You’ve got green. Engage.”
His fighter lifts off with a grace that doesn’t match the fury inside that man. He banks low, hard, an elegant arc of controlled chaos, then bolts for the center of the wormhole.
And gods help me—he looks beautiful doing it.
Verzius’s pod lifts next, taking the outer flank. “I’ve got his six.”
“Copy that,” I say.
The rift pulses. Warps. Grows.
Kaz hits the edge like a bullet from a railgun, his afterburners carving molten lines into the skygrid.
