Verzius leans in, touching his forehead gently to mine.
“He already thinks you hung the moon.”
I sit beside Dar’s bed one last time before I go.
He’s dreaming. His lips twitch in a half-smile, and one hand curls around the edge of his blanket like it’s a lifeline. His face is the only peace I’ve known in years. Round-cheeked, bronze-skinned, storm-eyed like his father.
Like Kaz.
I bend down and kiss his forehead.
“We’re going to be okay,” I whisper.
I lie.
But maybe if I say it enough, I’ll make it true.
CHAPTER 29
KAZ
The hangar smells like ozone and blood.
Not fresh blood—the ghost of it. The kind baked into steel after too many accidents, too many pilots who didn’t walk back through the decontam doors. The kind of scent you learn to stop noticing if you want to keep flying.
Daveros is the edge of everything. Cold winds. Red sky. A horizon so flat it feels fake. The facility here isn’t even on official maps; it’s buried under sand and secrecy, miles from the nearest colony. The only real thing here is the sound of turbines grinding and the hiss of my oxygen line when I strap in.
“Test subject 2173, visual diagnostics clear,” the intercom crackles. The voice is clinical, detached. A machine reading from a machine. “Prepare for flight integration.”
I pull the helmet over my head and let the silence settle.
The ship they’ve given me—Threshold Unit-9—isn’t built for comfort. It’s built for endurance. The hull’s black composite, unmarked, seamless. The controls are half analog, half neural-linked. Every switch hums with barely restrained voltage.
They tell me this is progress.
I tell myself it’s just another cage.
Dr. Stark is pacing when I step off the platform. His coat’s too big, sleeves rolled to his elbows. Hair like he combed it with static. The kind of brilliance that eats itself alive.
“You’re late,” he says without looking up.
“I’m three minutes early.”
“Then time’s slow. Sit.”
He points to a chair surrounded by consoles. Holograms flicker to life above his desk—sim readings, wormhole distortion patterns, energy feedback loops. Chaos dressed as math.
He doesn’t ask how I’m holding up. Doesn’t ask if the nightmares stopped. Just dives straight into it.
“The last three simulations collapsed in under ninety seconds,” he mutters. “Probes can’t handle the spatial drift. We need a human pilot again. One who’s survived exposure before.”
“You mean me.”
“I mean the only one who’s still breathing.”
He smiles like that’s a compliment. It isn’t.
“You’ll hold a course through the distortion threshold at one-point-five light microseconds,” he continues. “Our instruments will monitor the cascade. You might see… anomalies.”
