Chapter 23: Static Between Stars
(Mira's Perspective)
Kael was gone.
Again.
I watched the feed cut to black, the last pulse from his drone ship barely a flicker before the Nexus collapsed in on itself. My hands hovered over the console, trembling. Not with fear. Not yet.
With something worse—hope.
He said he'd come back. He always did. But something in the silence told me this time was different.
I leaned back in the pilot chair of the Omen, trying to breathe. The ship's walls pulsed dim blue, the emergency lights flickering as we coasted along the edge of the neutral zone. The stars out here felt colder, lonelier.
"I shouldn't have let him go alone," I whispered.
But I had. Because I trusted him.
Because part of me knew... he needed to face that place without me.
Still, I hated the quiet that followed.
Kael Riven wasn't like the others. Most defectors left pieces of themselves behind in the Architect wars. Some left limbs. Some left sanity. He left silence. A wall between himself and everyone else. Except, sometimes, me.
I don't know when I started seeing through his quiet. Maybe it was the day he shielded my body with his during a pirate ambush on Aris Station. Maybe it was when I found him staring at a child's drawing left behind in the ruins of Delven Core, unable to move for three hours.
Or maybe it was just the way he looked at me—like I was something human in a universe that had forgotten how to feel.
A sound chirped.
Incoming transmission.
Scrambled. Fractured.
I rushed to the console and patched it through. Static.
Then—
"Mira… starboard drift… breach—five—unmarked…"
His voice.
I nearly collapsed.
"Kael? Kael, where are you?"
Nothing.
I scanned nearby sectors. No signs. No vessels. Just debris from the Nexus wreckage burning in the void like dying embers.
I slammed a fist against the panel. "Damn it!"
He was out there. Alive, maybe. Hurt, probably. And I had no coordinates.
But I had his code.
Kael once programmed a backup tracker in the Omen's comm system, encrypted and buried beneath layers of firewalls. He never told me directly, but I knew where to look. Because I paid attention. Because I cared.
I dug through the digital layers until I found it—KAELSIGMA. Faint pulse. Barely functional. Orbiting a red dwarf on the edge of Syros Drift.
I set course.
The engines screamed to life.
---
By the time I reached the signal, it was weak—blinking once every ten seconds. A distress beacon, buried inside a collapsing drone.
The ship had no heat. No oxygen. Just Kael, unconscious, strapped to a broken seat, frost clinging to his lips.
I didn't think.
I docked, broke the seals, and pulled him into the Omen.
He was freezing. Skin pale. Breathing shallow.
But he was alive.
"Don't you dare die," I whispered, pressing my hands to his chest, trying to warm him. "You promised me. You said we'd finish this together."
I could feel his heartbeat.
Faint.
But steady.
I carried him to the medbay and hooked him into the stabilizers. Monitors beeped. Fluids dripped. The sectors ran checks. My mind was a storm of movement and noise.
But I stayed still.
Watching.
Waiting.
Hoping.
---
Hours passed.
He didn't wake.
I sat beside him, fingers tracing the bruises on his arms, the burn marks along his neck. Whatever he faced in that Nexus… it nearly took him.
And yet, he came back.
For me?
For the mission?
For us?
I didn't know.
All I knew was that, in that moment, Kael Riven wasn't a defector. He wasn't a soldier. He wasn't even a ghost.
He was the only person I couldn't bear to lose.
And that terrified me.