“No more blind spots,” I say.
“Good,” Vihl replies.
I lean back slightly, letting the system run, not idle, but active in a way that doesn’t require constant correction.
“This is it,” I say.
Stacy steps slightly closer.
“This is what you were building,” she says.
“Yes.”
“And now you actually have it,” she adds.
I glance at her.
“Yes.”
She nods once.
“Then don’t break it,” she says.
I almost smile.
“I don’t plan to,” I reply.
CHAPTER 38
STACY
The room doesn’t look like anything else on the ship, and that’s the point.
The lighting is softer here, warmer than the sterile glow of the corridors, angled in a way that doesn’t just illuminate but settles, catching along the edges of surfaces instead of flattening them. The walls aren’t bare, not anymore, and the first time I see them filled the way I wanted, something in my chest shifts in a way that feels unfamiliar and steady all at once.
Canvas.
Metal.
Fragments of things I shouldn’t have had time to make.
And yet I did.
“You’ve been hiding this,” Tyrok says from behind me, his voice lower than usual, quieter in a way that tells me he’s not treating this like part of the ship.
I don’t turn right away.
“I’ve been building it,” I correct, my fingers brushing lightly across the edge of one of the pieces, textured metal layered with pigment that catches the light differently depending on how you look at it.
“That’s not what it looked like from the outside,” he replies, and I can hear him step further into the room, his boots softer against the floor here, like even the sound behaves differently.
“That’s because it wasn’t meant to,” I say.
I finally turn then, leaning back slightly against the table behind me, crossing my arms loosely as I watch him take it in, really take it in, not scanning, not assessing, but… observing.
“You made all of this,” he says.
“Yes.”
