A mother walking with a small boy abruptly crosses the plaza, clutching the child’s hand hard enough that he stumbles. The boy twists to look back, eyes huge, then hides behind her coat when the Vakutan shifts his weight. Two dockworkers stop laughing mid-sentence. An older man with a cane steps into the street rather than pass within arm’s reach.
The Vakutan does not react to any of it. He keeps his head lowered as though the pavement contains answers nobody else can read. His hands are tucked into the pockets of his jacket, but the fabric bulges around them. I can see scars along the side of his face where the hood fails to hide him completely. Pale marks cut through dark scales. One scar pulls from cheekbone toward jaw, jagged and old. Another disappears beneath the collar of his jacket.
I have seen him before. Of course I have. A person would have to be blind, deeply distracted, or clinically dead to misshim. He has been moving through Halo for months like a storm cloud with legs, never speaking, never begging, never causing trouble. Just watching. Just walking. Sometimes he appears near the bakery before dawn. Sometimes near the old drainage access by the harbor. Sometimes across the street from families waiting for late buses, his presence alone enough to make the rowdier drunks reconsider their evening plans.
Most people are terrified of him.
I probably should be.
Instead, the sight of him makes something under my ribs ache in a strange, quiet way. He looks dangerous, yes. Nobody with a working brain would argue otherwise. But he also looks tired down to the bone. Not sleepy. Not bored. Tired in the way old buildings are tired after standing through too many storms. Tired in the way people look when they have survived things and never been thanked for it.
The cargo disk bumps my heel, and I realize I have stopped walking in the middle of the plaza like an idiot.
“Well,” I whisper to myself. “That’s subtle, Evie.”
The Vakutan’s head turns slightly.
My pulse jumps because apparently whispering to myself in public is also how I choose to meet enormous alien strangers. He does not look directly at me yet, but I get the absurd feeling that he hears everything. Maybe he does. Vakutans are soldiers by reputation, warriors from birth if half the stories are true. The Alliance built legends around men like him and then dumped plenty of them back into the galaxy with scars, ghosts, and nowhere decent to sleep.
I should keep walking.
I absolutely should keep walking.
Instead, I lift my hand.
It is not a big wave. I am not a complete lunatic. It is a small, careful motion, my fingers curling through the mist as I offerhim the kind of smile I give nervous kids and elderly men who pretend they are not lonely.
“Hi,” I call softly.
The plaza seems to inhale.
The mother with the child looks at me like I have just licked a live wire. One dockworker mutters something I do not catch. Even the cargo disk’s whining feels judgmental.
For a moment, nothing happens.
Then the Vakutan looks up.
His eyes meet mine from beneath the shadow of his hood, and the rest of the street fades to a dull smear of wet concrete, neon reflection, and distant harbor noise. His eyes are darker than I expect, deep-set beneath heavy ridges, and filled with such startled confusion that my smile falters. Not because he frightens me. Because for one suspended breath, he looks as though kindness is a language he used to know but has not heard spoken in years.
I can see more of his face now. The scars are worse than I thought, and so is the exhaustion. Black scales cover him in smooth, fine patterns, with red highlights catching faintly along the ridges of his cheek and the strong line of his jaw. He is rugged in a severe, battered way, like somebody carved him out of volcanic glass and then tried to break him with a hammer.
He does not wave back.
That would be too easy, apparently.
His gaze drops to the bags in my arms, the bakery logo stamped on one of them, then returns to my face. His mouth tightens. Not cruelly. Defensively. As if I have offered him something he does not trust himself to accept.
“Rough weather,” I say, because my survival instincts have clearly left town and taken my dignity with them.
He says nothing.
“Right. Strong silent type. Very mysterious. Great for branding, terrible for conversation.”
His brow shifts slightly. It might be irritation. It might be confusion. It might be the smallest crack in a wall.
I should shut up.
I do not.
