Chapter Sixteen: No One Leaves Clean
We didn't speak for a long time after escaping Red Echo.
The ship's engine hummed as we drifted through dark space, no destination, no plan. Just the echo of everything we left behind. Mira was at the controls, her jaw tight. Elin sat curled in one of the side seats, knees to chest, eyes staring into nothing.
I stood near the viewing window.
Stars blinked back at me—silent witnesses to our failure or our survival. I couldn't tell which.
I thought I'd feel triumphant. We made it out. We were alive. But inside, I felt frayed. Tired. Like something had been carved out of me in that station and left behind.
"Who was he?" Elin asked softly. "That… other version of you?"
I shook my head. "A possibility."
"But he was watching you. Like they still had control."
"I don't think they ever lost it," I said.
Mira scoffed from the pilot seat. "Then why run? Why not fight?"
I turned. "Because knowing you're watched and choosing to resist anyway—that's the only kind of freedom we get."
She met my gaze. "And what's the plan now? Keep running until they catch us?"
"No," I said. "We find them first."
Mira stared at me for a long moment. Then, surprisingly, she nodded.
"We'll need supplies," she said. "Fuel. Weapons. A place to disappear until we resurface."
"There's a system near the Outer Vail," Elin added, pulling up a small map on her tablet. "A planet called Idris Nine. It's not controlled. There's a black market outpost there."
Mira tapped coordinates into the nav. "Then that's where we're going."
I didn't move from the window.
A part of me wanted to forget all of this. To land somewhere quiet, change our names, and live out whatever borrowed time we had left.
But I knew better.
There would be no peace while the Architects still existed. No safety while they could watch us from behind broken screens and control panels. They built me. They thought they owned me.
And that made me dangerous.
"I've been thinking," Elin said suddenly. "About why they're really after you."
I looked over.
She swallowed. "What if it's not just that you're unpredictable… What if you're the only one?"
I frowned. "What do you mean?"
"You're not just a defect, Kael. You're a key. A crack in the system they can't patch. And cracks… spread."
Her voice was quiet, but it landed heavy in my chest.
A key.
A crack.
A threat.
I turned back to the stars.
"No one leaves clean," I said quietly. "But if I'm a crack, I'll break their whole foundation."
And this time, I wasn't going to run from who I was.