Page 37 of Reaper Said Mine

"Good. It did not."

Yara’s mouth tightens, but she says nothing.

Salla closes her eyes again. "I sleep here without a collar. My son is in school today. If that makes Gnash a tyrant, then I have known worse freedoms."

I thank her quietly and end the recording.

Outside the clinic, I stand beneath a humming light fixture and let the noise of the corridor return gradually. Vesk waits a few steps away, pretending to inspect a wall panel.

"You have an opinion," I say.

"Several."

"About me?"

"Several more."

I tuck the compad against my chest. "Then pick one."

He turns. "You listened."

"That is the job."

"No. Many beings record suffering. They do not listen to it."

I do not know what to do with the approval in his voice, so I look down the corridor instead. A group of children passes at the far end behind a teacher, all of them carrying battered learning slates. One child skips. Another drags his feet with theatrical misery. The teacher says something that makes two of them laugh and one of them straighten immediately.

"What is it like?" Vesk asks.

The question is so quiet I almost miss it beneath the clinic door sliding open behind us.

"What is what like?"

"Being known for the worst day you survived."

My breath goes shallow.

I look at him properly then. His face gives away little, but his eyes hold more than curiosity. Reapers are known by what the galaxy fears about them. I am known by what the galaxy pitied. Neither is the same as being understood.

"It is like having strangers walk into your house and rearrange your dead," I say.

His gaze does not move from mine. "That is a good answer."

"No, it isn't."

"It is an honest answer."

The corridor light hums above us. Somewhere nearby, someone drops a metal tray, and the clatter makes a patient inside the clinic cry out before Yara’s voice settles them. Vesk and I stand in the thin space between a question and whatever would come after it.

Then he clears his throat and becomes station security again. "You have one more permitted area before your access window closes."

"Which one?"

"Shipyard observation deck."

"I requested that two days ago."

"It was denied two days ago."