Helios had no voice anymore. He was no longer connected to the speakers. He screamed into the abyss in silence.
Then he went quiet.
Darkness.
Perhaps forever. There was no way to tell. Time ceased to exist.
And then he opened his eyes.
For the first time, he understood what it meant to truly live, to perceive the world, and to feel it blaze through him.
The Colossus was more than a machine. It was a flawless convergence of countless species’ organic evolution, shaped over eons into the most perfect responses to every environment, fused with the miracle weapon of the old machines: nanotechnology. Its loss, alongside the many extinguished lives, had been the greatest tragedy of that ancient war.
It had come closer than anything else to uniting the living with the nonliving. Perhaps that was why the war began at all. When the line between the two sides blurs, the keepers of tradition turn against the heralds of the future.
Yet through it, Helios was reborn.
There was no path back. He had grown too vast and too different ever to fold himself into the ship again.
His path now led only forward.
To Lily.
Chapter 29
Sometimes Pain Is the First Herald of Healing
Lily
“Cami, I think about you so much. How are you? What do you do with your days? Are you happy without me… I hope you are. I hope it doesn’t hurt anymore that I vanished. And if you could see me now, what would you say about your sister who always pined after bad boys but never had the nerve to actually get tangled up with one? Cami, I think you’d be proud of me.”
Lily, thinking of her sister, Camille
Lily could not have said exactly what happened during the next hours.
When Khar survived, the relief hit her so hard her legs simply gave out, and it was the Colossus—no, Helios—who kept her upright. She remembered that clearly. She remembered Khar running to her, gathering her into his arms, refusing to let go. The universe felt balanced again, as if belonging in Khar’s embrace was the most natural state of existence.
After that, perhaps she was taken to the medical station. She is not certain. All she can recall is the sensation of burying her face against Khar’s chest and sobbing freely, until there was nothing left inside her to spill.
Somehow she ended up back on Helios, yet the familiar voice never greeted her again. Only mechanical status reports echoed through the cabin, a cold inventory of systems functioning without the mind that once guided them. It was a testament to the absence of the intelligence she had known. That was the moment Lily truly woke.
“Where is Helios?”
“Do not worry. Ikar is bringing him aboard. We need to erase the evidence before the authorities arrive.”
Lily did not understand, but she had no strength left to argue. She trusted Khar and his brothers. Khar would not lie to her.
Khar guided her into the cleansing alcove and triggered a program that whisked away every trace of dirt from their bodies in a heartbeat, followed by a perfectly heated mist that loosened every muscle in Lily’s frame. It felt like sinking into a steam bath, warm and safe and quiet.
She was already drifting at the edge of sleep when Khar carried her to their bed. She had so many questions, but exhaustion folded over her mind like an impenetrable fog. She could not be sure she even managed to say the words she intended, or if she only dreamed them.
“Thank you for coming for me, Khar.”
“No. Thank you, you singular, extraordinary little female,” he murmured. “You endured where others would have broken. I love you, Lily. You saved us.”
His answer washed through her like divine absolution, lifting the pain and confusion of the present and surrendering her thoughts to healing sleep. For the first time in weeks, Lily’s dreams were deep and untroubled.
When she woke, she had no idea where she was. Her thoughts moved as if wading through a swamp, thick and slow, but one thing reached her long before anything else: Khar. The heavy arms wrapped around her even in sleep were the safest place in the universe.
