He bends the knee. The grinding is quieter. The coolant leak lingers to a seep. He looks down at me with an unfamiliar expression—something between surprise and a grudging respect that makes the mark warm.
"Adequate," he concedes.
"You're welcome," I snap back, but I'm grinning.`
He reaches for a small, integrated terminal on the wall. His large fingers move over the ancient Hegemony interface with a familiarity that makes my stomach flip. The screen flickers to life, displaying a skeletal wireframe representingVirex Prime.
Primary breach in Sector Six remains open, the ship’s voice crackles through the speakers, sounding like grinding gravel.Atmospheric venting contained to secondary corridors. Structural integrity at sixty-four percent. Intruders detected in the galley and the hydroponics bay.
Draevik’s red eyes narrow. He looks at the schematic, his attention locking in as if he feels every deck and every bolt under his own skin. He sacrificed a piece of this ship—and himself—toget to that cage. He bypassed every tactical advantage to pull me out of the dark.
"Korr is still breathing," I mutter, my fingers lingering on a long scratch across his bicep.
"He is a ghost," Draevik drones, cold and final. "He flees into the shadows of his own cowardice. I will find him when the ship is secure."
He taps a command on the screen, rerouting power from the luxury suites to the internal defense turrets near the reactor. He moves with a lethal, practiced speed, a king reclaiming a ruined throne. I watch his muscles ripple under the healing skin as he coordinates with the ship’s dying systems.
A familiar, stuttering hum catches my attention. High above us, a small ventilation grate pops loose, and K-Seven squeezes through the narrow duct, its multi-lens optics whirring. The little drone bypasses the sealed bulkhead entirely, tracking my unique bio-signature through the ship's labyrinth to find its way back to my side.
"Your machine has followed you," Draevik observes, his eyes flicking to the sealed entrance.
“It does that.” A sudden, contained reaction moves through me. K-Seven was in the shaft when Rovik's men pulled me out. It watched them drag me away, and its programming kept it from intervening—too small, too outgunned, too literal in its understanding of survival. But it followed. It followed through a warship full of armed killers because its primary directive, buried somewhere under all that bootleg code and fried circuitry, is me.
Draevik taps a command, and the door cycles open just wide enough for the drone to zip through. K-Seven shoots across the bunker like a cork from a bottle, its lenses cycling frantically as it orbits my head. K-Seven emits a low, exhausted trill, its hovering dropping into a sluggish bob before it lands with a metallic clackagainst the deck. I start to reach for my portable battery pack, but before I can, the floor plating beneath the drone begins to hum softly. A ring of violet light pulses under K-Seven’s chassis. The drone lets out a contented, rhythmic chirp.Virex Primeis feeding it—treating my little scavenger bot like one of its own integrated sub-routines and passively charging its drained cells.
"Nyra! Unit has been tracking your biosignature for forty-seven minutes! Unit's distress protocols were at maximum! Unit was forced to hide inside a ventilation duct while hostile personnel passed within two meters! Unit requests acknowledgement that this was extremely undignified!"
"I know, buddy." I catch it gently, pressing my forehead against its cool chassis. "I know. I'm sorry."
"Unit is not accepting apologies at this time. Unit is conducting a full bioscan." A pause. Its lenses narrow. "Your cortisol levels are elevated but stabilizing. Your wrist abrasions are superficial. Unit detects... residual endorphins inconsistent with combat activity." Another pause. "Unit is declining to investigate further."
Draevik makes a sound that might, in another century, have been a laugh.`
"You went through a lot of boarders to reach me," I state, the realization finally settling into my bones. "You left your posts. You let them weld the doors."
"I followed the signal," he states simply, his eyes meeting mine. "Everything else was an obstacle."
I survey the wreckage of his armor on the floor and then back at the man who seems to be outgrowing the monster. He may be a relic of a war that burned worlds, but in this light, he is simply the one who held on. I lean my forehead against his uninjured shoulder, letting the scent of theWeaveand the ship wash over me.
"You're a giant idiot," I huff into his skin.
“You mean storm,” he reminds me, his hand coming up to cup my head. “And you are the only thing worth saving in the debris.”
I step away from his shoulder but only far enough to look him in the face. My hand stays anchored to his bicep, my fingers curling around the hard, obsidian-smooth muscle. Usually, I search for an exit or a way to retreat, yet now I find myself leaning into his heat. I want the contact. I want the reassurance of his massive frame shielding me from the lingering chill of the breach.
"The boarders have the galley, but they’re scattered," I note, pointing toward the flickering terminal. "Korr kept his crew on a short leash, but they’re greedy. They’ll be busy stripping the high-end tech from the luxury suites while their remaining commanders try to find a backdoor into the bridge."
Draevik shifts his weight, his red eyes tracking the movement of my hand on his arm. He seems to be adjusting to the lack of resistance, his posture losing that sharp, defensive edge.
"Korr seeks a throne he can never sit upon." A dense, unyielding gravity hitches to the statement, the delivery pulling the air down toward the deck and making the flooring beneath us pulse with a dark, persistent energy. "He comes for scrap metal, but he faces the architect of this vessel’s defense. He will find only locked doors and lethal surprises."
"He's persistent," I remind him, my thumb tracing a prolonged circle over a healing ridge on his skin. "He’s like a parasite. Once he latches on, he’ll tear the whole ship apart just to find the core."
"Then we shall remove the host," he declares, his gaze locking onto mine.
Communication feels different now. The words flow with a smooth lilt, free from the uneven edges of suspicion or the heavy weight of a captor’s demand. We have a singular target, a sharedenemy who dared to put me in a cage and him in a corner. I find myself babbling about the layout of the maintenance ducts, and he listens with a quiet, focused intensity that makes the bunker feel even smaller.
"I can get us through the sub-floors." I pull the explanation down into my chest, letting the rough, level friction of the delivery act as a stabilizing anchor for us both. "The sensors are old. They pick up only environmental shifts if we stay near the heat sinks. We can reach the galley before they even realize we've left the reactor."