Page 81 of Reaper Said Mine

“Even if it damages you?”

“If the truth damages me, then perhaps I deserve the wound.”

“That is a dangerous answer.”

“You like dangerous answers.”

“I like honest ones.”

“Then tell me one.”

I breathe in, tasting metal, warmth, and my own nervousness. “I came here expecting to find a story. I did not expect to find a person.”

Gnash’s expression stills.

I push forward before courage fails me. “That does not absolve you. It does not excuse the blood on your record or make your choices simple. But it changes the question. I thought I was asking whether the galaxy was wrong about you. Now I think the harder truth is that the galaxy may be partly right and still using that truth to hide its own crimes.”

His gaze does not leave my face. “Will you say that on your broadcast?”

“Yes.”

“Dawson will hate it.”

“Dawson hates anything that requires viewers to think for more than six seconds.”

“Then I look forward to irritating him.”

“You and me both.”

For a moment, we stand together above the docking ring, wrapped in the mechanical heartbeat of Guyver Station and the impossible pressure of everything neither of us is ready to name. Below us, cargo crews shout, children laugh, engines cycle, and history moves in the dark with knives under its coat.

Gnash lifts one hand slowly enough that I can refuse.

I do not.

His clawed fingers brush a loose strand of hair back from my cheek with such careful restraint that my breath catches. His hand is enormous beside my face, capable of violence I have seen documented in casualty reports and raw footage, yet his touch is lighter than the drift of warm air from the vents.

“Ursa Ramone,” he says, and my name in his mouth sounds less like identification than vow. “You are going to make my life very difficult.”

I look up at him, pulse loud in my ears, compad still recording, career and ethics and attraction colliding so violently that I can barely stand still.

“I have a gift,” I say.

His thumb lingers near my cheek, not quite touching now. “So I have learned.”

The professional part of me knows I should step back, end the recording, ask about troop deployments, return to my berth, and write until I have turned this impossible day into something structured enough to survive broadcast. The woman inside me, the lonely one I keep sealed behind competence and sarcasm, wants to lean into his hand and see whether the bond between us feels as real in quiet as it did beneath the eyes of diplomats.

I make myself reach for the compad.

“End recording,” I say.

The pale ring of light collapses.

Gnash’s eyes darken further. “Interview complete?”

“For now.”

“And what begins now?”