"We have reached the apex of solitude. There is no echo here. We have unlearned the name of man." - The Final Fade, Last Message From Anteris-9.
Kali sat alone at the counter, his back to the near-empty room while the bartender busied himself with the drink. Behind the bar, neon sigils pulsed in rhythmic loops, casting ultraviolet shadows across the chrome surfaces. Holographic ads flickered midair, some selling stimms, others peddling memories, while the occasional gust of synth-jazz floated in from the recessed speakers overhead.
It was a slow night. The bartender had said as much with a shrug, polishing the same glass for the third time.
Moments later, the drink arrived in an oddly angular vessel, its glass shaped like a distorted spiral, difficult to place in time or culture.
"A vintage Haritani," the bartender announced, sliding it forward with a practiced motion. "As ordered."
Kali nodded in acknowledgment. He lifted the glass, studied the translucent amber liquid as it shimmered under the neon wash, then took a slow, deliberate sip. Bitterness, smoke, and something faintly floral. He didn't smile. But something behind his eyes softened.
The barman noticed Kali's reaction and offered a satisfied smile.
"Not bad, huh?" he said, resuming his ritual of wiping down a perfectly clean glass. "Told you, the vintage stuff's worth the creds. Not many ask for Haritani these days. Bit of an acquired taste."
Kali nodded, swirling the amber liquid in his glass. "It's not the drink people come here for," he said evenly, his tone neither cold nor warm.
The barman chuckled. "Fair enough. Though on a night like this, hell, I'll take anyone who's not a synth-pop dropout or looking to sell me offworld fungi." He leaned an elbow on the bar. "What brings you out, anyway? You don't look like local color."
Kali took another sip, letting the silence stretch just long enough to become deliberate. "Waiting on someone," he said finally, setting the glass down with a soft clink.
"Hot date?" the barman teased, half-interested.
"Something like that."
The barman gave a courteous nod before turning to greet a new customer drifting up to the counter, an older man with the gait of someone more comfortable on low-grav freighters than solid ground. He mumbled his order, and the bartender shifted away with the tired professionalism of someone who'd been doing this too long to care.
Kali stayed put, nursing the last inch of his Haritani. The music, a synth-heavy ballad looping for the third time had begun to grate on him. He glanced toward the wall display, as if the sound might be coming from a visible source he could glare into silence.
Then, without a word of warning, another fellow who had just walked in slid onto the stool beside him. Their face was shadowed by a deep hood, the kind that didn't just hide features but intent. But Kali didn't need to see. He knew that voice the moment it broke the air between them.
"How long has it been?" the figure asked. The voice was soft, laced with something that might've been nostalgia.
Kali turned to face her. "Eight months, if memory serves," he said evenly. "Shorter than I expected. Longer than I wanted."
She pulled back her hood.
The pale light of the bar caught the strands of her long, white hair, stark against the murk, uncanny in a way that always unnerved him. It shimmered like something engineered to catch attention, even when hiding.
"Wasn't expecting your call," she said, folding her hands in front of her on the bar like a diplomat at a peace summit.
"I wasn't planning to make it," he admitted, his gaze holding steady on hers. "Thought I'd leave you out of it. But... things shifted."
Her expression turned playful. "I'd have you killed for that."
Kali smiled faintly. "I'm not the scared stray you picked up in the Wastes."
"No," she agreed, the edges of her lips curling. Then she laughed, sharp, sudden, loud enough to turn a few heads in the quiet bar. "You're not," she said, still smiling as she leaned in. "But let's be honest, Kali. You're not surviving me either."
He didn't bother arguing with a vow awakened, their type had to be unassailable even to a delusional degree. "You're here now," Kali said quietly, rising from his seat. "That's what matters."
He reached down and picked up the long, weathered bag at the foot of his stool, its weight shifting with a muted clatter of metal inside, then turned and walked toward the door without looking back.
She followed, close behind, matching his pace through the low-lit bar. Outside, the night pressed against them like a damp sheet, neon bleeding through mist, the scent of oxidized steel and ozone thick in the air.
As they moved down the narrow corridor of Medri's undercore, Kali felt the old memory stir. He remembered carrying her broken body through the ruins of Fort Harlow, blood seeping through bandages that weren't enough, lungs rasping with each breath like torn plastic. He hadn't expected her to survive the trip back, let alone the long, silent hours in that grim little room in Medri where she was patched by Kirel's odd doctors.
But she didn't die. Somehow, against the odds and the medics' grim predictions, she pulled herself back from the brink.
Darius had come not long after she regained consciousness. Still wearing his old field coat, still smelling like smoke and sour coffee, asking the one question they couldn't answer.
"Did you get the name of the contact? The one who paid the outpost commander?"
But they hadn't. Neither she nor Markus could get it. The commander had clung to that intel like a dying man clutches breath. And then the attack came. Fast. Surgical. Designed to erase.
"Where are we going?" she asked now, her voice cutting through the city's low industrial hum.
They turned down a side street, the glow of the core towers fading behind them.
"To the outer rims," Kali said without hesitation. "That's where we'll find Reaper. The Friction-awakened you fought, the one who took the relic." He paused, glanced sideways at her. Her expression was unreadable, but her eyes were cold with purpose.
"And if we're lucky," he added, "that's where we'll kill him."