I jab at his chest plates. The metal is freezing, a sharp contrast to the heat I felt at the restricted doors earlier. It feels like touching the surface of a frozen moon. "Give me back my ship. Give me back my things. Let me go, and we can both go back to our lives. You can go back to being a terrifying relic, and I can go back to being a free woman. This doesn't have to be a war."
His hand moves then—a blur of obsidian. He grabs my wrist, his grip firm but careful, and holds it away from his chest. The contact sends a jolt through the etched mark, a sudden, electric heat that steals my breath. More than just fear, it’s something else—a wild, frantic energy that makes my skin tingle where he touches me. It’s as if the mark is trying to fuse my skin to his.
"TheHarrowhails from a lesser species, and you have outgrown her." He locks his gaze onto mine. "You belong toVirex Primenow. There is no 'back,' Nyra. The universe has moved on while you were playing in the dirt of the fringe worlds."
Hearing him say my name feels like a sharp jab to my ribs. It sounds like a claim. Like he’s tasting the syllables and deciding where they fit in his world. I hate how much it affects me. I hate the way the mark responds to his voice, moving with a warmth that resolves into a connection I didn’t ask for.
"My name doesn't belong to you." I try to pull my arm back. He lets go instantly, stepping back as if the contact affects him just as much as it does me. He looks at his own hand for a second, his fingers flexing, before his gaze snaps back to mine.
"Eat your sustenance." His command returns to that cold, distant register. "The ship requires you to be at full capacity. Your weakness serves no one."
"Full capacity for what?" I shout after him, but he’s already moving toward the exit. He gives no explanation, leaving the question suspended in the heavy silence.
He turns and walks out before I can get another word in. The door slides shut, and the mag-lock engages with a final, heavy thud. The corridor’s violet effulgence fades into the dim, stagnant light of my room.
I’m alone again. I remain standing amid the emptiness of the room, my chest heaving, my wrist still tingling from where his fingers gripped me. My heartbeat shifts into a frantic drum in my ears, racing at a tempo that diverges from the anger I’m supposed to be feeling. A traitorous reaction unfolds—a total biological surrender that makes me want to scream.
"Idiot," I mutter, rubbing my wrist. "He’s an alien who wants to use you as a component. Get it together. He is a machine with a pulse."
Snatching the protein block off the table, I eat it angrily, tearing into the bland, dense material as if I’m trying to bite him. Every swallow feels like a small victory. I’m proving that I’m still in control of my own body, even if the room I’m in belongsto him. I need my strength. Whatever he’s planning for my "capacity," I need to be ready to fight it with everything I have.
As I eat, I reflect on the way the ship reacted to me today. I reflect on the doors opening and the lights guiding my path. While I may be a prisoner, I'm also a part of the loop now. If I’m part of the loop, that means I have access to the system—even if it’s only because the ship is acting behind Draevik’s back.Virex Primefollows its own agenda, and for some reason, it wants me out of this room.
I scan the locker again. My tools are in there. K-Seven is in there. Tomorrow, I’m going to use what I learned today. I’m going to find the terminal that controls the mag-locks in this wing. I’m going to get my drone back, and then I’m going to find a way to make Draevik Rhyx regret the day he ever pulled me out of the void.
I finish the water, the cool liquid settling in my stomach but doing nothing for the heat still buzzing under my skin. I lay down on the sleeping dais, staring up at the ceiling. My heart rate finally starts to calm, but the memory of his eyes burns into my eyelids. They are cold and piercing, as if he were trying to unearth a piece of history buried beneath my skin.
I’m one step closer. I can feel it. The ship is learning me, but I’m learning the ship, too. Every mechanical sigh, every flicker of light, and every surge of heat fits into the puzzle. And once I find the crack in the armor, I’m gone. I'll take theHarrow;I'll take K-Seven, and I'll leave this ancient monster to his archives.
I just wish I knew why my heartbeat fills my body like static every time he looks at me. It’s the mark, I tell myself. It’s just the mark reacting to him. It is independent of the way his voice drummed in my chest or the way he stood just a little too close. It’s a glitch—an unauthorized variable I will delete.
I close my eyes,Virex Prime’s undulating tone pulling me toward a restless sleep. Tomorrow. Tomorrow, the scavenger wins. Tomorrow, I will find the way out.
CHAPTER 8
DRAEVIK
Ihave fought campaigns that lasted decades, yet managing the pacing of a single human has proven more taxing than any siege. I stand before the primary terminal, my fingers hovering over the glass-smooth interface with a tension I cannot dispel. Below, in the residential tiers, the ship is misbehaving. The deck vibrates underfoot, a shimmering of light echoing the frantic pacing of the human four decks down. Every time her foot falls against the deck plating, the reverberation travels through the ship's nervous system and settles in the joints of my armor.
"You are overstepping." The sound echoes through the hollow of my chest.
Synchronization is at sixty-eight percent,the ship’s voice grinds through the internal speakers. The sound clicks and grinds, tectonic and stellar all at once, a thousand dying stars echoing in its wake. The mark’s resonance creates a blinding compulsion for proximity. Keeping her close feels like a tactical error, yet my biology demands it.
"I did not authorize the release of the stasis field." The demand snaps like a whip, biting through the hum of the machinery. "You are granting her passage through corridors shehas no right to tread. You are compromising the security of the Sector Nine block."
The vessel adapts to the pulse,the ship counters. It bypasses logic entirely to rely on pure instinct. A periodic violet, lambent sweep through the conduits, a physical manifestation of a loop I did not program. Nyra is no longer a guest, nor is she a simple prisoner.Virex Primehas begun to recognize her as a secondary heart, a vital pulse in a system that has been solitary for centuries.
Scrolling through the security logs to track her heat signature, I have to admit she has been clever. She moves with the caution of a scavenger, keeping her profile low, touching the walls as if learning the ship’s braille. Every point of contact lights up on my screen—a smudge of gold against the map. She is mapping me. She hunts for the cracks in my hull, unaware that the ship itself is opening them for her.
My initial intent was to study her. Originally, I viewed her as a temporary tool, a biological key to a lock I had yet to identify. I planned to decipher the anomaly of the mark and return her to the void once the data has been harvested. That strategy lies in ruins now. The mark renders those calculations obsolete. She has transitioned from a specimen into a permanent fixture of my reality.
A strange, debilitating static buzzes at the edges of my consciousness when I step away from her, accompanied by a tremor in my left hand that lasts twice as long as the one yesterday. I fiercely dismiss it as expanding stasis-sickness. The ship sends an encrypted warning about the mark that remains unparseable, signaling a vital missing piece of my own architectural logic. When the tremor strikes this time, my grip on the ship's ambient systems slips—the corridor lights around me shatter, and the deck plates groan beneath my boots as unchained power bleeds from my hands. My combat matrixthreatens to crash, leaving me breathless and leaning against the bulkheads in the dark, fighting to reel the monster back in.
I need answers. I need the locked memory crystal my mind refuses to access.
Studying the schematic of the mid-decks, my eyes catch on the Obsidian Sanctum—my private quarters sitting in the most reinforced section of the vessel, deeper into the ship’s bowels than any human has ever stepped. It radiates absolute control, far from the hangar bays and the observation ports she uses to pine for her past. The ship wants the two halves of the mark in the same atmospheric pocket. And as I eyeball her blinking icon, I realize I want her tucked away in the core of my world, where the bulkheads are thickest and the exits are non-existent. Placing her in the Sanctum secures the marker. The mark’s resonance indicates that peak performance occurs at zero distance. My predatory instinct demands she remain close, and keeping her safe becomes a tactical necessity.
"Prepare the Obsidian Sanctum," I command in a growl of finality. "Seal the peripheral vents and reroute the life support to human-optimal levels. I want the atmosphere heavy enough to remind her of her limitations."