The Bound Worlds

Book 3: The Devoured Worlds

by Megan E. O'Keefe

Genres: Action & Adventure; Post-Apocalyptic sci-fi; Space Opera

Synopsis

Worlds will collide and fates will be rewritten in the thrilling conclusion to the Devoured Worlds space opera trilogy by award‑winning author Megan E. O’Keefe.
 
Naira and Tarquin have found a new home on Seventh Cradle. But the peace they’ve built is short-lived as mysterious assailants ambush the settlement and Naira is haunted by visions of a monstrous future. Catastrophe strikes when Tarquin uncovers a plot to bring about the end of the universe. As humanity races against the clock to prevent their extinction, old secrets come to light and loyalties fracture, and Naira realizes she may be the key to saving the world—or ending it.

The Devoured Worlds
The Blighted Stars
The Fractured Dark
The Bound Worlds

For more from Megan E. O'Keefe, check out:

The Protectorate 
Velocity Weapon
Chaos Vector
Catalyst Gate 

Release date: June 25, 2024

Publisher: Orbit

Print pages: 544

Sample

ONENairaSeventh Cradle | The Present

Naira rolled up her sleeve and placed the cold nub of an injector against the interior of her arm. The golden glitter of her pathways obscured the dark tracery of her veins, but Dr. Bracken had assured her that she didn’t need to hit the vein precisely for the medication to work. She took a breath. It was fine. She’d done this before.

The injector clicked. Heat burned through her veins, diffusing with the speed of her racing heart. Soft cotton swaddled her thoughts. Her vision dithered around the edges.

Naira snapped the cap back on the injector and slipped it into her pocket, then rolled her sleeve down. Her skin was insensate beneath the brush of her fingertips. That was normal. It would pass.

Tarquin cupped her cheek. After the injection, his touch made the world feel real again.

“Okay?” he asked.

“Yeah.” Her lips were numb, the words slow. That would fade, too. The side effects were always temporary. “I’m fine. Let’s go.”

Tarquin kissed her, and she wasn’t sure if he was trying to reassure her or himself. Quite probably both.

Cass and Caldweller flanked Tarquin while Diaz and Helms closed around Naira. She let her hand drift to the weapon strapped to her thigh. Despite the fact she wasn’t, technically, an exemplar anymore, Naira still attended formal events in her armor. The extra protection couldn’t hurt, and it reminded people of what she was. Made them hesitate before they whispered behind their hands that she was cracked.

“They’re ready for you, my liege,” Caldweller said.

Tarquin nodded. The door slid open, and Naira had never been more grateful for the numbing fog of the memory suppressant.

It wasn’t a warpcore. But it was close enough.

The powercore that would provide energy to the first settlement on Seventh Cradle dominated the room beyond. Ribbed in the dull green of amarthite, the sphere punched a hole of emptiness into the center of the room. Those void-mouth globes, whether installed on ships to facilitate warp jumps or used on stations and cities to generate power, always made her skin prickle. Made her feel like she was being watched.

The ceiling loomed above, vanishing into darkness. Naira locked her face down as she followed Helms, focusing on her exemplar. On Tarquin. On the subtle scent of greenery in the air—air that lacked the metallic edge of station recyclers. Grit crunched beneath her boots from dirt tracked in by the spectators who ringed the powercore at a safe distance.

Her vision blurred. The strongest memory she had—walking across a hangar to the decoy ship that was meant to go to Seventh Cradle, the ship she’d blown up with Tarquin, the one she saw in her dreams, because she’d been forced to make that walk over and over again during interrogation—roared to the surface. It threatened to drown her, to rip her back into the past.

On the edge of the crowd, her mother waved. Dr. Sharp hadn’t been anywhere near the hangar that day. The stifling blanket of the medication washed over Naira’s thoughts, muting the screaming memory that her cracked mind was certain was the genuine moment. When she came back to herself, she’d missed only a single step. No one seemed to have noticed.

She let her gaze wander up the side of the powercore, pretending to admire it, when a twist of inexplicable fear tensed her from within. The shadow of a face emerged on the matte surface of the core. A brown cheek, quickly turned away. Naira blinked, and it was gone

Wrapped in the warm, numb fog of her memory-suppressant medication, Naira couldn’t be sure she’d seen anything at all. A reflection from the crowd, perhaps.

But the cores weren’t reflective. Must have been a trick of her overburdened mind.

While she waited off to the side, Tarquin stood at a podium in front of the core, explaining in more detail than his audience probably cared for how useful the powercore would be to Seventh Cradle’s first settlement. He really couldn’t help himself.

She skimmed her eyes over the crowd and found someone she didn’t recognize. A tan-skinned man with a scar running down the side of his face, intense brown eyes fixed on the powercore. Her mind was playing tricks on her again. There were only a thousand people in the settlement, and she knew every one of them. There couldn’t possibly be a stranger. Naira pulled up her HUD and ran a facial recognition query. Nothing.

She opened the exemplar chat and tagged his face.

Sharp: I don’t know this man, and he’s not in the database. Tell me I’m hallucinating.

Caldweller: You’re not.

Cass: Scrambling Merc-Sec.

Helms: Sharp, please assume spear formation.

Naira fell back a step as Helms and Diaz moved in front of her, the powercore to her right. She gritted her teeth, resisting an urge to step in front of Tarquin herself as Cass slipped unobtrusively to his side and angled their body to be prepared to shield Tarquin at a moment’s notice.

Tarquin didn’t miss a beat in his speech, though a ripple ran through the crowd. The man looked straight at Naira and winked, tipping his chin briefly before he wended his way toward one of the side exits.

Caldweller: Merc-Sec is moving to secure that exit.

Naira bit the inside of her cheek. The stranger had seemed amused. Confident, even. Catching him was important, but that was the look of someone who’d already accomplished their goal. She scanned the ceiling, the walls, the other exits. There were no more strange faces in the crowd. Not a hint of anything amiss.

That face swam into focus on the side of the powercore again. It wasn’t warped, like a projection would be. It seemed solid, as if someone was standing across from her, only that curve of brown cheek visible behind the otherwise opaque surface of the core. As if it were emerging from shadows.

In the corner of her HUD, the exemplar channel filled with reports on the location of the stranger. He’d slipped past the cordon on the door. Merc-Sec was trying to keep their cool, but they were panicking. Tarquin drew toward the end of his speech, not cutting it off, but definitely avoiding the extra flourishes he was prone to.

Naira ignored it all and focused on that face, on the tug at the side of its mouth,

as if it was shouting. Those pathways… They were a muted streak of gold, but they seemed familiar.

“E-X?” Diaz whispered, barely moving his lips so that the crowd wouldn’t notice.

Right. The way she was staring at the core and ignoring the chat, she probably looked catatonic. She opened her exemplars’ chat channel.

Sharp: I’m lucid. Do you see anything in the core?

Diaz: No.

Sharp: Give me a sec.

Naira wiped all channels away and craned her neck, trying to figure out if it was some kind of holo projection. There was no source she could find. She looked back to the core, frustrated, and thought she saw a sand-crusted boot kick toward the bottom from within, at the amarthite rib.

She broke formation and crouched down beside the rib. They’d checked them all, but—there. On the edge facing away from the crowd was a slim black rectangle.

“Explosive device,” Naira called out, interrupting what was probably a very nice set of closing remarks from Tarquin.

Diaz tried to pull her aside, but she shook him off. Shouting roared to life all around her, along with the panicked stomp of boots. Naira’s thoughts were fuzzy, but she didn’t recognize that device. It was smaller than what the Conservators used. Precise. She glanced at the other ribs near her and saw nothing. A small detonation, then. That’s all it would take for the powercore to break containment and wipe out the settlement.

“E-X,” Diaz said. “We have to evacuate.”

“You can’t evacuate far enough. Check the other ribs.”

“But—”

“That’s an order.”

Diaz let out a frustrated grunt and sent Helms around to investigate the ribs while Naira examined the device.

“Naira!” Tarquin shouted.

She glanced over her shoulder and found Cass and Caldweller dragging him toward the exit. Naira waved at him to continue. It didn’t matter if Naira died violently; she was already cracked. And she knew a thing or two about explosives. She ran her fingers along the side of the device, where it touched the amarthite. Slightly tacky, the glue not yet set.

“Are we clear?” she asked.

“Clear,” Helms and Diaz echoed.

Well, then. Whoever had planted this one didn’t want to push their luck by planting others. Or maybe they hadn’t had the time. Naira could find no seam on the device, no lights, nothing to indicate when it would blow or what it was connected to. She drew her knife and placed the tip against the sticky glue on the top.

Slowly, she levered it free. It was smooth and cool and fit in the palm of her hand. Naira eyed the cavernous ceiling, made a few brief calculations, and decided she didn’t have the time to come up with a better plan.

“You two.” She pointed at her exemplars with her knife. “Draw your weapons. I’m going to throw this as hard as I can over there.” She pointed up to the place where the wall met the ceiling, lost in darkness. The direction away from the fleeing settlers. “Both of you need to fire on it, because I can’t trust my aim right now.”

Helms’s brow furrowed. “That will bring the ceiling down. Maybe even the wall.”

“Neither of which will break the powercore containment. We don’t know when this thing will blow, so we don’t have time for deliberation or to take it somewhere else. Can you do it?”

They drew their weapons and squared off. “On your mark,” Diaz said.

“Duck behind the core for cover after you hit.” Naira hurled the device with all her pathway-enhanced strength.

Diaz and Helms aimed, the targeting lasers on their weapons painting sketchy lines in the dark. They waited. Waited. Waited until a fraction of a second before the device would strike the ceiling.

“Mark,” Naira said.

They fired in tandem. Naira couldn’t say which one of them hit, but the results were immediate.

The blast stole her hearing, temporarily overwhelming those pathways until a muted whine filled her head. A flower of twisted metal bloomed outward from the ceiling, letting in the sunlight above. Smoke choked that light. Metal creaked. Chunks of concrete foam struck the ground. The structure sagged inward, the ceiling and wall both leaning drunkenly for the powercore. Adrenaline burned through her medication too quickly.

Naira’s cracked mind slipped.

She believed she was in a Mercator warehouse with Jonsun, Kuma, and Kav, shouting as the bomb they’d planted in a sector full of supplies went off too soon. Stinging smoke clogged her nostrils and a searing flash of heat beat against her skin.

Someone grabbed her. Pain burst through the memory, yanking her back into the present. Diaz had kicked out her knees and dropped her to the floor. He flung himself over her and wrapped his body around her as a human shield.

The impact hit, stealing her breath. Diaz jerked, chunks of concrete and metal bouncing off him. His arm tightened around her and he grunted—a short, pained sound.

She wanted to tell him he was an idiot. That she could be crushed to bits and it didn’t matter, because her mind was already broken. But it was too late for that, and so all she could do was make herself as small as possible until the chaos faded so that he could make himself small, too.

The impacts slowed. Diaz groaned. Naira twisted onto her back as he lost his balance and collapsed. Dust smeared his face, coated his armor. His

eyes were open, but they were bright with pain.

“Diaz, you absolute moron, talk to me. How bad is it?”

He smirked at her, and that eased some of her panic. “Told you I’d get it.”

“What?” Oh. The maneuver she’d taught him to shield a charge with the bulk of an exemplar’s body. “Real bad time to learn.”

A laugh rattled in his chest. “Fuck. Sorry. Broke some ribs. That’s all, I think.”

Warm blood seeped through her pant leg, proving the lie to his assessment of the damage. Naira eased him off her and onto his back.

The injury wasn’t as bad as she’d feared. A piece of metal had sheared through his calf, showing bone beneath. Naira ripped his E-X kit off his belt, rummaging for medical supplies.

Helms extricated herself from a small pile of debris and rubbed her eyes clean before she found them. She locked eyes with Naira over Diaz’s bloody leg, and her face slackened with fear. Naira gave her a subtle shake of the head—don’t panic him by panicking yourself.

Helms took Diaz’s hand and kept him talking while Naira examined the wound. He was losing a lot of blood. Amarthite prints didn’t heal as well as exemplars were used to, and his health pathways couldn’t keep up. Naira packed the wound with gauze and pulled up her HUD. She ignored Tarquin’s call request and opened the E-X channel—they’d tell him she was safe. Diaz didn’t have time for Naira to soothe Tarquin first.

Sharp: Diaz needs medical, and he needs it yesterday.

Caldweller: The doors are blocked with debris, but we’ll get through as quickly as we can.

Cass: The mystery man was killed in the wall collapse. No other potential hostiles sighted.

Naira abandoned pressure on the wound for a tourniquet. Diaz hissed in pain as she pulled the strap tight. Not a good sign. His painkiller pathways weren’t keeping up.

“Hang on. Help is coming.”

“Thanks, E-X,” he said weakly.

Diaz was unconscious by the time medical got through, but he was breathing. Naira rocked back to her heels, letting her bloodied hands dangle between her knees. The emergency team swooped him up onto a gurney and rushed him away with assurances that he’d been fine. He was alive, and even if he lost that leg, he’d been calm before he lost consciousness. Diaz was unlikely to crack if they determined reprinting was the best course of action.

She knew all those things already. It didn’t make watching his dust- and blood-smeared body being hauled away any easier. No one should ever have to be injured in her defense.

Tarquin rushed over the debris toward them, despite his exemplars begging him

to be careful. He was dirty but unharmed. Naira stood and held her arms out to either side.

“I’m fine, I’m just a mess—” She grunted as he grabbed her and crushed her against him, smearing his expensive clothes with Diaz’s blood. Naira gave up on keeping him clean and wrapped her arms around him. The medication dulled her emotions, and the strength of his fear and relief stunned her. “Tarquin, really, it doesn’t matter if I die.”

He pulled back and took her face in his hands, trying ineffectually to brush dust off her cheeks. “It matters to me. I thought—” He swallowed. Shook his head. “What happened?”

“Diaz shielded me when the wall came down.”

“I’ll give the man a commendation.” Tarquin combed a hand through her hair. She smiled at that. He always needed to touch her when he was shaken. To assure himself she was still here.

“He disobeyed orders,” Naira said.

“With respect,” Helms said, “they were shit orders that went against our training.”

“I’m your trainer.”

“Precisely so, E-X.” Helms couldn’t stifle her small smirk before Naira saw it.

Something high in the rafters groaned. All of them eyed it warily.

“My liege,” Caldweller said, “I suggest we retreat to a more stable location.”

“Good idea,” Tarquin said.

He took her hand and turned back to the passage they’d made in the debris, but Naira couldn’t move. She’d been looking at Helms, watching her for any sign of serious injury, when the side of that face appeared in the core once again. Appeared, and came fully into focus.

Naira stared at herself.

The other-Naira stood at formal rest, hands clasped behind her back, studying Tarquin as if she thought she couldn’t be seen. Love haunted those eyes. And regret, too.

This variant of herself had shorn her hair, and a network of scars crowned her skull. A fine tracery reminiscent of the scars that’d draped her body when they’d taken her pathways to make amarthite serum.

Naira’s mouth dried out. That was no memory. No version of herself she’d ever seen. No moment sneaking up on her out of the recesses of her mind. Tarquin tugged gently on her hand. She scarcely noticed.

She wasn’t slipping. Naira was perfectly aware of the world around her, and it was shock alone that narrowed her focus to that alternate version of herself.

The other-Naira had been watching Tarquin, and as he turned to her, so did those impostor eyes. Something like desperation clawed through the phantom, and she lunged at the interior boundary of the core, reaching, mouth opened wide with a shout.

Tarquin stepped in front of Naira and blocked her view. She swore and pushed to her toes to see past him, but her other-self had vanished.

TWOTarquinSeventh Cradle | The Present

That Naira had gone to the hospital without protest worried Tarquin. In his experience she had to be either half-dead, unconscious, or otherwise bundled up like a hissing cat to agree to medical treatment. He reluctantly left her in Bracken’s care, then went to meet with his security team at Merc-Sec HQ. Dust made the air murky on the streets, and people moved about furtively, but already the settlers were cleaning up the damage.

Captain Ward and Security Chief Alvero had beaten him there, the space between them crowded with a wide variety of holos projected from the table. Alvero cocked his head to the side, listening to a report, while Ward leaned toward the holos, her thick fingers curled into loose fists against the tabletop. A scowl carved her craggy face.

Tarquin put a video call through to Jessel Hesson so that they could join the gathering from their post on the Sigillaria, in geostationary orbit above the settlement.

“Mx. Hesson,” he said, “I presume you’ve been apprised of the attack?”

“I have.” They crossed their wiry arms and leaned back against a console podium. “Jonsun and his crew are still quiet up here on the Cavendish. We haven’t heard a peep from them. If it was them, they’re lying low.”

“Do we have anything on the stranger?” Tarquin sat and hoped he didn’t look as relieved as he felt to be off his feet. He’d hardly exerted himself, but his worry had chewed up all his energy and left him wrung out. Pliny gave his arm a reassuring squeeze.

“Not yet, my liege.” Dust peppered Alvero’s dark hair. “I ran all the footage I could find of him against our master databases, the HC rosters, and the rest of MERIT. That man should not exist.”

“An unregistered print design?” Ward asked.

“It seems likely,” Alvero said. “We’re running a body language analysis to see if we get a hit.”

Tarquin wasn’t so exhausted that he missed Caldweller, guarding the door, shifting his weight. He frowned. The man wasn’t prone to fidgeting. “Do you have a suggestion, Ex. Caldweller?”

“I’m not sure, my liege. It sounds unlikely, even to me.”

“I’d hear it regardless.”

“I just… I think I know that man. Recognize him, I mean.”

“Why didn’t you say so sooner?” Jessel demanded.

“Because it’s not possible,” Caldweller said. “He looked like an old friend of mine. Rusen. But Rusen disappeared when he was seventeen. His map was never registered anywhere that I could find.”

Tarquin’s brows reached for his hairline. “Nor that I could find, and I did look. You’re certain?”

“I can’t be, my liege. It might just be a resemblance, but if it is, it’s a strong one.”

“Family, perhaps.” Tarquin drummed his fingers against the table. “Alvero, have the techs pull up old footage of Rusen and digitally enhance his age. See if there’s a match. If there’s not, we’ll look at the extended familial line. Do a complete DNA search.”

“I think we must also consider Rochard’s hand,” Alvero said. “Though nothing came of them sending weapons to the unionists, they may have gotten more creative in their methods.”

“Which leaves the matter of how the man got to the damn planet to begin with,” Ward said, then tucked her chin. “Apologies, my liege.”

Tarquin brushed her apology away. “I agree with the strength of your sentiments. It

would be impossible to stow away on our shuttles, and the few printing cubicles we have in the settlement are highly secured. Mx. Hesson, have the Sigillaria’s sensors picked up anyone attempting to land on the planet?”

They shook their head. “Nah. Like I said, Jonsun and his people have been real quiet. I’ve got enough ears to the ground up here that I’d know if something was rumbling. As for MERIT and their lot, we’ve seen a few drones and satellites trying to get a look at the planet, but that’s all.”

“Someone in the settlement must have printed him,” Ward said. “There’s no other explanation.”

“Perhaps a hack of the printer itself?” Alvero asked. “Jonsun has Kav Ayuba in his employ, after all.”

Tarquin rubbed his forehead to cover the wince he couldn’t suppress. That Kav had allied himself to Jonsun was a sore spot, despite Jessel’s assurances that both Kav and Kuma were staying near Jonsun to keep him from going too far. Tarquin didn’t want to think of Kav as being involved in the attack, but his skill set was uniquely suited.

“It’s possible,” Tarquin admitted.

“I’ll have Info-Sec do a complete teardown of the network,” Alvero said. “I’ll also have the print cartridge inventory levels checked to see if they’re lower than they should be.”

“Do that,” Tarquin said. “Meanwhile, Captain Ward, I’d like for you to conduct discreet interviews of the settlers, starting with those who work in or near the print facility.”

“Right away, my liege.”

“We must move forward under the assumption that we’ve suffered a security breach,” Tarquin said. “Do you feel secure up there, Mx. Hesson?”

Jessel stroked their jaw, then glanced through the holo at something on the ship. For the most part, the unionists kept to themselves. According to Jessel—and the rest of their intelligence—Jonsun had transformed the unionists on the Cavendish into something like a cult, bent to Jonsun’s cause of the complete destruction of MERIT and canus both. Goals that should have made them allies, but despite Tarquin’s best efforts, Jonsun refused to work with “a Mercator.”

“I think we’re sitting all right,” Jessel said at long last. “Jonsun’s not a big enough fool to take a swing at the Sigillaria. Not when his life support systems are under our control.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” Ward said, “because we don’t have the people to spare. If you want me increasing boots on the ground, my liege, I need more feet to fill ’em.”

Tarquin squinted at the personnel roster. “I’ll have five squads casted to us from one of the less critical Sol stations.”

“Do we have the amarthite to print that many?” Alvero asked.

Tarquin grimaced, running the numbers. “No. But we can’t print people with relk, and I can’t make amarthite appear out of thin air. We’ll have to

make do with what we have. I want a twenty-five percent reduction in the newly printed squads’ nonessential pathways. They won’t like it, but it will give us some much-needed breathing room.”

“Understood, my liege,” Ward said in a tone that implied she wasn’t looking forward to breaking that piece of news to the people they’d cast over.

All the assets of Mercator weren’t enough to magic more amarthite into existence. But the hole blown in the side of the powercore building was something he could fix. Tarquin pulled up the status of the settlement’s construction bots and redirected most of them to work on repairs. The forecasted rain would slow them down, but not by much.

He examined the schedule and imagined the way the next few days would go. People would stay in their homes, coming out only to work. Paranoia would set in as Ward began questioning suspects and people started looking to their neighbors and colleagues, wondering who the saboteur among them was.

The situation was far too close to the crash landing on Sixth Cradle for Tarquin’s comfort. It would only be a few days, but he knew how quickly sentiments could swing in a scant few hours.

“I want a bonfire tonight,” he said. “Break out some of our better food stores and set up in the open square near the powercore building. I want the settlement eating outside, together. Music, even, if it can be arranged, to ease the tension before the storm comes.”

“Easy enough,” Ward said.

“Indeed.” Alvero nodded. “It’ll give us a chance to observe interpersonal interactions. See if anyone already suspects one of their neighbors.”

The last thing he wanted was for the settlers to feel watched over during the dinner that was supposed to bring them together. Before he could voice that concern, Alvero frowned, his attention focused inward, on a HUD channel.

“My liege, preliminary results are back on the body language scan. Of the footage recorded, only about ten seconds match anyone we have on file.”

Alvero pushed the report through for all to see. They’d recorded the man entering the building, the scan running alongside the footage displaying zero matches as it struggled to parse out the stranger’s movements. Tarquin leaned closer, studying that placid face. The side doors opened, signaling Tarquin’s entrance to the scene. Still, no change.

Naira looked directly at the man. He transformed. His chin lifted, a wary cant to his spine as a slow smirk curled up the side of his face. The scan alerted, accuracy ratings climbing higher until the man winked. The scan peaked. Locked in at 96 percent certainty, then began to fall once more as the stranger suppressed his body language.

Predicted Match: Fletcher Demarco, Mercator Holdings Employee, ID#54148937

Tarquin was struck 

speechless.

“I’ve confirmed with our techs that Mr. Demarco’s map remains on ice,” Alvero said.

Tarquin found his voice at last. “Unless there’s another copy we never found.”

“It’s possible,” Alvero allowed. “It’s also worth considering that specialists are trained to mimic the body language of known agents to fool such systems. It’s only a fraction of the footage. If someone meant to throw us off their scent, this would be a good way to do so.”

“A bastard of a move,” Ward muttered to herself.

“I need confirmation. In the meantime, no one is authorized to breathe a word of this to Naira, am I clear?”

A strained silence followed that statement, broken up only by the blunted, thumping sound of Ward tapping the side of her thumb against the tabletop in thought.

Jessel said, “She’ll skin you alive if she finds out you kept it from her, my liege.”

“That’s a risk I’m willing to take. She doesn’t need this right now. Her mind is still—she’s still recovering.”

Not that she would ever completely recover. Not without the use of the repair software she continually refused, but he kept those worries to himself. Ultimately, everyone in that room was beholden to the head of Mercator. They could disagree with him all they liked—and perhaps, a small part of him whispered, they were right to do so—but they would obey.

“As you say, my liege,” Alvero said. “None of us wants to burden Ex. Sharp unnecessarily.”

“Fragile thing that she is,” Ward said, completely deadpan.

“Do you have a problem with your orders, Captain?” Tarquin asked.

A muscle in Ward’s cheek twitched. “No, my liege. No problems here.”

“Then I suggest you all go and see to your duties. I require confirmation of that man’s identity and a full report on how he came to this world in the first place.”

They chorused their assent, and if there was hesitation in that agreement, well—he didn’t blame them. He didn’t want to keep anything from Naira, but in the year since her cracking, she’d only begun to leave their private rooms in the past few months. Fletcher’s sudden arrival… He sighed, rubbing his forehead. Those memories were too painful for her to risk getting trapped within.

The meeting broke up, but before Tarquin could make it to the door, an incoming call from Thieut Rochard—the head of that family—flashed in the corner of his HUD.

“Liege Thieut,” he said, betraying nothing with his voice, “this is unexpected.”

“Is it? I presumed you came to the obvious conclusion that I had something to do with the attack today.”

“And how would you know of such a thing?”

“Don’t insult my intelligence, Liege Tarquin. You are fully aware that every family in MERIT has multiple satellites pointing their eyes at that planet of yours. I’m not calling to debate with you over whether Rochard was involved. We were not.”

“You must understand that I can’t take you at your word.”

“Which is why I’ve called to tell you something the other families may not,” she said. “Your settlement wasn’t the only location bombed today. Each member of MERIT experienced a similar attack. One station for each family, in fact.”

“Which stations?”

“I’ll send you the roster, but I can spare you wondering why they were targeted. Every station carried the largest amarthite stockpile for each family. We lost millions of tons of the stuff today, and I can only presume your settlement is currently the largest concentration of amarthite for Mercator, is it not?”

It was, but Tarquin wasn’t going to volunteer that information. “I’ll deploy nanonet catchers to the blast radii the second you transmit me the station list.”

“I’m sure that will be helpful.” Her voice dripped with condescension. “But I suggest you spend more of your very valuable time cleaning up the mess behind your own walls.”

“What are you talking about?”

“We captured footage of our bomber. See for yourself.”

Thieut pushed the data through. Tarquin didn’t recognize the person wearing a Rochard uniform in the video, but the same fidelity software his team had used to identify Fletcher ran beside the footage. There were no spikes. Just smooth certainty.

Predicted Match: Ex. Naira Sharp, Mercator Holdings Employee, ID#54146695

“An impostor,” Tarquin said, hating that his voice caught. “Naira hasn’t left this planet in a year.”

“Perhaps she has, perhaps she hasn’t. The truth of the matter is that, to the people of MERIT and the HC, Ex. Sharp’s state of mind is an open question. You wouldn’t be the first head of Mercator that she’s turned on. Perhaps she merely cozied up to you for greater access.”

“Naira would never—” He cut himself off, struggling to control his temper. “What do you want?”

“I need amarthite to recover my people, Liege Tarquin. You’re going to give it to me, or I’ll go public with the fact that the head of Mercator’s cracked lover has returned to her terrorist ways.”

“Done.” He was glad she couldn’t see the burst of shame he couldn’t control. “I don’t want your people on ice either, Liege Thieut. But if you attempt to slander Naira, I will rescind your access to amarthite.”

“I’m glad we understand each other. Good luck to you, Liege Tarquin. I mean that genuinely

But keep that woman of yours on a leash. I won’t hesitate to order her finalized if she steps foot on my stations again.” She ended the call.

The exemplars were watching him. They’d only heard his half of that conversation, but no doubt it was enough for them to have drawn the correct conclusions. The rest of it balanced on the tip of his tongue, but he swallowed the words down. He was head of Mercator. He couldn’t go running to his exemplars for advice over every little thing.

Tarquin reviewed the list of stations Thieut sent him, tallying the damage. Thousands of people would be moved lower on the reprint lists, their neural maps rotting on ice until enough amarthite could be secured to bring them back.

No one wanted to print into relk bodies, not after humanity became aware of the canus infection. The rarity of amarthite made the already overburdened waiting lists worse. People were growing old without their loved ones, waiting for them to be brought back into bodies that were safe.

His fault. Tarquin hunched over the holo projected from his arm. While the modus operandi and lack of bombing on the Cavendish itself—the only fully amarthite ship in existence—pointed to Jonsun, Tarquin couldn’t make the facts tally. Jonsun loathed canus with a fanatical fire. He wouldn’t do anything to limit humanity’s ability to get away from relk use, and by extension canus itself.

The canus-bound were the obvious suspects. They’d have enough knowledge of Naira and the Conservators’ methods—even of Fletcher—to impersonate them. But they’d been isolated on their stations, their transmissions blockaded, all attempts to send shuttles off-station shot down. Somehow, they must have gotten agents outside their walls. There was no other explanation.

Tarquin had planned on joining the cleanup effort. Instead, he sent orders to his fleets to help recover what was lost from the explosions in Sol, then swiped all those screens away and brought up the project that haunted his every waking thought.

The geological survey for Sixth Cradle, where the largest cache of amarthite had been found, unfolded before him. He set to work once more trying to match those conditions to geological surveys of other worlds. Other moons.

Tarquin was hunting for a needle in the haystack of the entire universe. If he didn’t find it, then all the living cradles in existence wouldn’t matter. Humanity would have to either stop printing themselves, or return to relkatite prints.

If he couldn’t find more amarthite, then the canus-bound wouldn’t need to leave their stations to win this war. They’d only have to wait.

THREENairaSeventh Cradle | The Present

Dr. Bracken had listened to Naira’s account of her hallucination and pronounced the one thing she’d dreaded to hear—they needed to run more tests. They’d brought her back to the powercore building to “measure her q-field activity near the core”—whatever that meant—and were busy muttering to themself over a handheld device.

It was already late evening, the sunset seeping through the hole in the roof to cast the room in murky orange light. A breeze brought with it the home-hearth scent of the bonfire she’d spotted outside, making her stomach rumble in anticipation. She wished Bracken would hurry up already so she could go eat.

“Ex. Sharp,” Bracken said, “would you approach the core for me? Slowly?”

“Sure.” She crept toward the core, counting down the distance in her head, waiting for the moment when her skin would prickle. About three feet away, the first brush of creeping static washed over her.

“Stop.” The sharpness of Bracken’s voice startled her into obedience.

“Is there a problem?”

They squinted at the device, a frown carving their face. Helms drifted closer, tensed for action. Naira shook her head slightly in negation—there was no threat here. At least, not one the exemplar’s usual method of “shoot until the threat stops being a threat” could handle.

“The device might be malfunctioning,” Bracken said. “Ex. Sharp, could you please return to your start position? And, Ex. Helms, if you would humor me—could you advance at the same pace Sharp demonstrated?”

“I’m working,” Helms said.

“It’s all right,” Naira said. “I promise not to be the target of an elaborate assassination attempt in the next five minutes.”

Helms rolled her eyes but repeated the same slow walk to the core. Bracken didn’t stop her until she was close enough to touch it. “Well?” Helms asked.

“Thank you, that’s all. Please return to your starting position. Ex. Sharp—”

“Yeah, yeah,” Naira said, “repeat the approach.”

This time, Bracken didn’t stop her. The fine hairs all over her body stood on end, and she crossed her arms to suppress a shiver, staring into the inky surface.

“How are you feeling?” Bracken asked. “Any visual events?”

“Prickly,” she said. “But I’ve always felt that way near cores. As for ‘visual events,’ no, I’m not hallucinating.”

“I remain unclear on if the phenomenon you’re experiencing is a true hallucination,” they said offhandedly, all focus on the device in their hands. “You say you’ve always felt ‘prickly’ near cores? Even before your map became temporally destabilized?”

“As long as I can remember,” Naira said.

“I’ve heard similar complaints. Engineers who dislike being near the cores because it makes their hair stand on end, but the sensation is quite rare.”

“It happens to Tarquin, Jonsun, and Kuma,” she said. “It can’t be that rare.”

Bracken looked up from the device. “Really? All the Conservators?”

“Not Kav,” Naira said. “I don’t know about Jessel.”

“Well.” Bracken squinted at the readout. “Your q-field is perfectly normal for a temporally destabilized map when you stand by the door, but when you approach the core, the reading spikes.”

“I’m sure that would be fascinating if I knew what a q-field was,” Naira said dryly.

“Ah, apologies. All printed minds have some level of interaction with various quantum fields, but this spike is unusual. Like a tuning fork being rung. It doesn’t happen for myself or Ex. Helms.”

“Okay,” she said. “But is that because my map’s cracked”—Bracken scowled at that; they hated it when she used the colloquial term—“or because of something I otherwise have in common with those who get the prickling sensation? Because those people aren’t all cracked, and it’s been happening since I was a kid.”

“If I had another subject to test who experiences the same thing, then we could start formulating hypotheses.”

Naira met Bracken’s slightly abashed glance and snorted. Tarquin was the only available option. She could hardly blame Bracken for their reluctance. If it’d been Acaelus, she’d hesitate to mention it to him, too, but Tarquin’s method of rule was another story. One the employees of Mercator were having a hard time adjusting to.

Naira held no such compunctions. She called Tarquin on video, and he answered immediately, his tired face warming upon seeing her.

“Naira.” The way he said her name always made her skin tingle, a much nicer sensation than proximity to the cores provided. “Is there something I can help you with?”

“Dr. Bracken needs to take a few readings on someone else who gets prickly in proximity to cores, and you’re the only one I’m sure of.”

“I’ll be right there.” He closed the call.

Bracken bowed their head to her. “Thank you, E-X. I didn’t want to bother our liege myself, but—”

“I know.” Naira crossed her arms tighter. “Believe me, I know. He’s still…” She swallowed down what she really wanted to say—that though he meant well, he was still clumsy with his power. “He’s head of Mercator and all of what that entails. But he’s willing to listen.”

Tarquin arrived a few minutes later, Caldweller and Cass following at a cautious distance. The exemplars looked to Helms for confirmation that all was well before they nodded to her. It stung, but she kept the petty hurt from showing. Naira was a charge, now. Outside of the core operations of the exemplars. She could hardly expect them to treat her as they’d always done. The admiring smile Tarquin threw her eased some of that resentment.

“Doctor.” Tarquin took Bracken’s hand and shook it. “How can I help you?”

“If it’s not too much trouble, I’d like to take a few measurements of your q-field as you approach the core.”

Tarquin slid Naira a curious glance. “I can do that. Tell me where to stand.”

Bracken shuffled them around the room, then ran Tarquin through the same slow

 approach.

“Well,” Bracken said, “that confirms that the phenomenon is a trait of those who experience frisson when near the cores. Though Ex. Sharp’s ratings are orders of magnitude higher than yours, my liege, the core’s q-field does spike the nearer you draw to it.”

“What does that mean?” Tarquin asked.

“I haven’t a clue,” Bracken said with a shrug. “But it’s another angle to explore.”

Bracken muttered to themself once more, poking at the device. Released from the experiment, Tarquin wrapped an arm around Naira’s shoulders, and she leaned her weight against him.

“I wish I had a reading of you when you experienced the hallucination,” Bracken said.

Tarquin startled and looked down at her. “What hallucination?”

“I saw myself, in the core. Not an image from the past, not a reflection, not a projection of any kind. That vision warned me about the device.”

“A side effect of the medication?” Tarquin asked Bracken. The hope in his voice cut. He wanted it to be anything but a deterioration of her condition. She wanted it to be anything else, too.

“Possible,” Bracken said as tactfully as they could manage. “Is there anything else about the vision you could tell me, E-X? Were you in your preferred print?”

“I was,” Naira said. “I couldn’t see much detail, but my hair was shaved and my head was covered in scars. They looked like the scars I developed when my pathways were excised, but I didn’t recognize the configuration.”

“That’s impossible,” Tarquin and Bracken said at the same time.

Naira narrowed her eyes. “What did you two do?”

“Go ahead, Doctor,” Tarquin said. “You can explain it better than I can.”

Bracken blanched and looked very much like the last thing they wanted was to be the one to explain. Hesitantly, they pulled up their holo and projected a framework design of pathways fitted around a skull.

“Did the configuration look like this?” Bracken asked.

Naira slipped from under Tarquin’s arm and approached the projection. She pointed to two pathways branching off the central band.

“Those two were at a twenty-degree angle, not forty, but yes, that’s it exactly. What is it?”

Bracken flipped the model around. “Huh. That’s an excellent suggestion.”

“Doctor,” Naira said firmly.

“Ah. Yes, sorry, it’s..."

They cleared their throat. Tarquin was suspiciously quiet. “Liege Tarquin and I discussed your experience in the simulation crown, when Liege Canden interrogated you, and we both noted that you were remarkably stable during that time.”

“You discussed this without my knowledge?” Naira asked Tarquin.

“I didn’t want to worry you or give you false hope,” he said.

“Hope about what?”

“Well,” Bracken said, “interrogators use simulation crowns to suppress the subject’s memory so that they forget they’re being interrogated. To the best of Liege Tarquin’s recollection, you didn’t appear to slip into memory while inside the simulation, is that correct?”

“Yes,” Naira said.

“Excellent.” Bracken warmed to the subject. “Of course, we could hardly place you in a simulation long term. But, after imaging your brain during moments of regression, I’ve been able to define what it looks like when you experience a time slip. The memory lights up, so to speak, and connects with your sensory systems, overriding the present. Basing my model off the simulation crown, I devised a pathway arrangement that should suppress such an event.”

Naira blinked, too stunned to otherwise react. That strange, slipping sensation that overtook her before she fell into a memory coiled through her, but she managed to stay in the present. For a moment, she thought she saw a golden light, but her vision cleared. “What happens when I intentionally try to remember something?”

“That, I’m still fine-tuning.” Bracken looked at Tarquin, and he nodded permission. “I believe the answer is an issue of thresholds. Your catatonia-inducing memories are much more active than a normal remembrance. Getting that threshold correct has proven difficult.”

“But you think it will work?”

Bracken looked past her, to Tarquin again, and she clenched her fists. Whatever sign Tarquin gave, they nodded enthusiastically. “I believe so, yes.”

“Then why the fuck”—Naira didn’t bother to smooth her anger—“did I see myself with that pathway arrangement cut out? Those were scars. Not pathways.”

Bracken’s excitement drained away. “I don’t know.”

“But you have a theory, don’t you?”

Bracken looked to Tarquin again. Naira cracked her jaw. “Tarquin, if Dr. Bracken seeks your approval one more time, I will make you stand in the corner facing the wall until they can stop. I’m talking with my doctor about my health.”

His eyes widened. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to—”

“I know.”

“I—” Bracken stammered a moment, started to glance to Tarquin, but caught themself and cleared their throat. “I apologize. Old habits, I’m afraid.”

“I understand,”

Naira said, “but don’t do it again. Now, please explain your theory to me, Doctor.”

“We’ve never seen someone live for this long while temporally destabilized,” they said. “It stands to reason that, though we’ve no evidence of such a thing until now, the future is as open for perception to the destabilized mind as the past.”

“You think I saw myself in the future?”

“I see no reason why such an event couldn’t happen.”

“Why haven’t I seen such things before?”

“I’ve no idea,” Bracken said, with all the excitement of a scientist with an unanswered question laid at their feet. “Though if I were to hazard a guess, I would say that the powercore resonated with your mind and amplified your ability to slip, providing the opportunity.”

“You said that version of yourself was in rough shape, didn’t you?” Tarquin asked.

“Yeah. The scars alone looked nasty.”

“I’m no quantum theorist,” Bracken said, “but just because you saw that moment doesn’t mean it’s destined to happen. While that future interacted with this one, we can’t be certain what that means.”

“Requisition whatever you need to research this, Doctor. In the meantime.” Tarquin took her hand and placed one hand on her waist, pushing her away from him into a brief spin. “We should join the dinner. Let the settlers see me with my love, unconcerned about the bombing. I’ve ordered music, you know.”

Naira let him draw her close and gave him a sour look. “You know I can’t dance.”

“Please, I’ve seen you fight. It’s hardly much different.”

She groaned, and he silenced her building complaints with a kiss that she couldn’t help but lean into. When they parted, he guided her toward the exit, the exemplars rearranging themselves around them in a loose cordon. Grit crunched beneath her boots, dust from the explosion, and she feared she’d fall back into another memory, but Tarquin’s hand was a warm, firm anchor keeping her grounded.

“Huh.” Bracken paused to look at the q-field detector.

“What?” Naira asked.

“A small spike.” They thumped the device with the side of their hand, frowning. “Perhaps it’s broken after all.”

“Doctor,” Helms said, “you’re standing about where that stranger was.”

The moonlight slanted, casting a gleaming, silver glow across the floor. In her mind’s eye Naira saw the man standing there. Watched him wink. Her mind slipped.

Naira wasn’t in the powercore building anymore. She was staring at a pile of corpses, faces grey, mouths and eyes stretched wide from desiccation.

The memory was gone as soon as it’d come, replaced with another—Kuma putting a patch in her hands, taken from the bodies. Naira had crushed

it in her fist and said it was a bridge, and she still didn’t know why.

Again she fell, the world yanked out from under her feet until she was in no room she recognized, no real memory, aside from a woman who’d been a corpse on a pile, but was now glaring down at her, fury bright in living blue eyes.

Naira felt her mouth move, though the words didn’t make sense. “I won’t let you harm him.”

The woman struck her, a solid backhand that sent Naira reeling. Blood filled her mouth as her cheek split. The moment blurred with another, with Fletcher’s hand connecting with her face, his usually laughing smile curled in a sneer that bared his teeth. Naira threw up an arm to protect herself against a blow that’d landed years ago.

She slipped. Reeled backward under the remembered force of that blow and fell against the rubble. Her head bounced. Something crunched. Blackness blurred the edges of her vision and her stomach knotted, bile filling the back of her throat.

“Move.” Bracken’s familiar hands supported her neck. They tipped Naira’s head to the side and prodded, carefully, around a wound that made her hiss with pain.

“Easy,” Bracken said. They shone a light into her eyes, then nodded to themself. “A scratch and small concussion. Nothing your pathways can’t handle.”

She blinked until the fuzzy blackness cleared. Tarquin knelt at her side, struggling to suppress the fear on his face and doing a poor job of it as he clung to her hand.

Bracken pulled an injector from their pocket, dialed something into it, and plunged it into the side of her neck. The nausea subsided. Fiery relief rushed through her veins. She could still feel the damage, but everything was smoother. The jagged edges filed off, making it easier to deal with.

“Thank you.”

Bracken’s smile returned. “Just doing my job.”

They backed away, giving her space. Tarquin stood slowly, still holding her hand, and helped her to stand with him. She stumbled, but Tarquin was there to brace her.

“What happened?” he asked.

“I saw…” Naira tried to make herself focus, but her thoughts kept drifting. “I don’t know. Fragments, all very fast. There was this woman I didn’t know, and she struck me, and then… Fletch.”

Tarquin took in a short, sharp breath and wrapped his arms around her, his grip tighter than was strictly comfortable, but she didn’t mind.

“Can you tell us anything about the woman?” Bracken asked.

Naira breathed in Tarquin’s familiar scent. “Not much. Blue eyes, tall. I don’t know her, but I think she might have been one of the bodies we discovered on the Cavendish. One of the ones with the bridge patch.”

“We couldn’t find those names in the registry either, could we?” Caldweller asked

“No, we couldn’t,” Tarquin said stiffly. “Though Jonsun hasn’t seen fit to provide us with their full names, so we have only Naira’s memory of what she saw embroidered on their uniforms to go off of.”

“This woman’s uniform said Degardet,” Naira said. “I’m sure of it. Which doesn’t narrow it down much. There are a lot of wards of Gardet out there.”

“We’ll look for her,” Tarquin said, “but right now I’m taking you home.”

“Ex. Sharp,” Bracken said, “do you want the suppressant?”

Naira hesitated. She felt unmoored, memories lurking at the edges of her consciousness, Fletcher’s sneer in the moment he’d struck burned into her retinas. While she’d kicked his ass for that, the betrayal remained. That had been the first time since cracking that she’d fallen into a memory featuring Fletcher.

Naira didn’t want those moments back. Even if it might be useful for her to flirt with the edges of her consciousness, to tempt visions of the future, she couldn’t do it. Not tonight. Not again. Not with the sting still fresh on her cheek.

“I’ll take it.”

Tarquin brushed a kiss against the top of her head, understanding. She closed her eyes, pressing her face into his chest, and tilted her head aside, giving Bracken access to the side of her neck.

Their touch was gentle, as it always was, and as the medicine raced through her veins, panic flared bright and jittery within her, but soon the suppressant muted that feeling, too.

Bracken had given her more than usual. Her head was numb and floating. Tarquin scooped her up and carried her home.

 

FOURNairaSeventh Cradle | The Present

Naira woke in the middle of the night. She had vague memories of dragging on one of Tarquin’s too-big shirts and collapsing face-first onto bed. The sheets had twisted around her, damp with sweat, and Tarquin’s arm was heavy over her waist.

She stared at the ceiling and tried to process all that had happened. If the visions were really from the future, as Bracken had claimed, then there must be some clue there for her to unravel. A hint that had connected that moment to the bomber’s appearance in the settlement.

The more she dug into the memory, the more Fletcher’s presence lurked at the edge of her senses. Years of moments good and bad and somewhere in between waiting to surface, to drag her back down into a person she didn’t want to be anymore. Her skin crawled and she sat up, carefully extricating herself from under Tarquin’s arm. He rolled aside, still sleeping.

A moisture-heavy breeze whispered into the room. Tarquin had left the door to the balcony partially open. Wrapping her arms around herself, she crossed the room to the balcony and leaned against the railing.

Tarquin had told the exemplars that the balcony wasn’t a security risk because the back of the building came right to the edge of a steep cliff that dropped away into a tangle of forest too thick for anyone to traverse with ease. It faced away from the settlement, to the unaltered planet.

The forest thinned at the far edge, becoming a scattering of trees that eventually gave way to a grassy plain tucked into the crook of the wide, lazy river that provided most of the settlement’s water. Glacial ice melt filled the river during the summer months, making it stunningly turquoise even under the moonlight.

That strip of grass was where Tarquin planned to build them a home, someday. Naira had agreed with the exemplars that the balcony was an unnecessary security risk. She was grateful for it, now.

Granite-grey clouds scudded across the sky, obscuring the moonlight, and in the brief darkness she could make out the glimmer of bioluminescent insects flitting between the trees below. Naira leaned her full weight against the railing and stared straight down, to the scree at the foot of the cliff. Even here, she could feel Fletcher’s shadow. Waiting for her mind to slip.

She wondered what would happen if she let herself tip over the edge. The fall would kill her, but what then? Tarquin would reprint her and she’d be right back where she was, walking a tightrope. Waiting to fall into a chasm that wouldn’t do her the decency of killing her, for how much it was going to hurt.

Naira understood, now, why most of the cracked fell into the endless scream. It built in the back of her throat, and as she stared out across the living forest that had been meant to be a sanctuary, all she wanted to do was let that scream rip free and fill the night.

Tarquin muttered in his sleep, and she squeezed her eyes shut. She didn’t want to go, not really. She didn’t want to break against the rocks. But she couldn’t keep it together, either.

Naira pulled up her chat channels, intending to ask Bracken to bring her more of the suppressant—she craved nothing short of oblivion—and watched in real time as one of her many unanswered texts to Kav flipped from unread to read.

Naira grabbed open the channel to Kav, let it fill her view instead of the biting rocks below.

Sharp: I’m falling apart and I need you.

The status flipped over to read. She clutched the railing hard enough to bend her already short nails back. A minute passed. Five. A text channel request flashed in the corner of her eye, no identifier she recognized

Ayuba: I don’t have a lot of time

Sharp: How do I know it’s really you?

Ayuba: No one else knows The Great Exemplar Sharp flunked her first advancement exams because she had a concussion from stepping in on a bunch of assholes beating me up. I fixed those scores and never told a soul.

Sharp: Are you safe?

Ayuba: No, and neither are you. Look, I mean it. I don’t have time for everything I want to say.

Sharp: Let us extract you.

Ayuba: No. There’s something going on here I need to figure out, and I can’t talk business, all right? If Jonsun gets suspicious that I told you anything, anything at all, then I’m dead and maybe Kuma is, too. I can’t tell with her, lately. But I can say this, and I know you won’t believe me, but I didn’t build those bombs.

Sharp: If you say you didn’t, I believe you.

Ayuba: I don’t deserve that level of trust anymore.

Sharp: You’ve always had my back, even when we were arguing. I’ve still got yours.

Ayuba: You texted me for a reason. What’s wrong? I mean, aside from the usual.

Sharp: I can’t control it. The cracking, I mean. I never really thought I could, but… It’s Fletch. I’d avoided thinking about him for so long, but then I saw this thing that kicked me right back there and I can’t undo it. All those years are waiting for me and I can’t go back. Especially now, knowing that even the good times were tainted by his weird messiah complex.

Ayuba: Wait, what messiah complex?

Sharp: He thought Mom printed me as a child and that I’d bonded with canus. That I’d be some sort of uncrackable savior.

Ayuba: …what the fuck

Sharp: Yeah, I know.

Ayuba: You’d be a shitty savior. Like, the worst. I’ve seen you ask where your boots are when they were on your feet.

A laugh burst free, and some of that corkscrew-tight tension eased out of her.

Sharp: Goddamnit, Kav, I’m serious.

Ayuba: I know, but I made you laugh, didn’t I?

Sharp: dick

Ayuba: That’s a yes.

He was still typing.

Ayuba: I’m going to deny I ever said this. But. I know what you’re dealing with is terrible and it’s my fault I couldn’t stop Jonsun. But. Shit. Okay. Don’t get pissed off at me. But Fletch? He knew he could never really control you. Even when you

 liked him, you were always wary, right? You always had one foot out the door, because you knew in your core that Fletch was poison. So if you get stuck in one of those memories, you don’t even have to bring anything you weren’t feeling then to the moment. Remember your wariness. Remember that foot out the door. Use it to get back.

Sharp: I don’t know if I can. All I want to do when I think about it is scream and never stop.

Ayuba: Then scream. Scream right in his face, Nai. And come back. You have to keep coming back.

She eyed the drop, and the rocks below.

Sharp: Why? Really, why? Why do I have to be the one to keep coming back? I’m so goddamn tired.

Ayuba: I don’t know what to tell you. I wish I could say that you just need to hang on until it gets better, but I can’t make that promise. If you… if you’ve got nothing else to hold on to, then come back for me, yeah? Because I’d be devastated if you let go, and no one wants to see me cry. I’m too pretty.

Naira snorted and hadn’t even realized she’d been crying until tears dripped off her nose. She scrubbed a hand over her eyes and let out a slow breath.

Sharp: Thanks. Really.

Ayuba: I’m deleting this chat and denying I ever said any of that.

Sharp: Yeah, yeah.

Ayuba: Seriously, though, I have to go. I’ll contact you again when I can. Don’t try to use this channel. I’m burning it.

Before she could respond, all traces of the channel disappeared and her HUD emptied, leaving her with a clear view of the planet once more. In the distance, thunder rumbled, and she lifted her face to the darkening clouds, breathing deep of the moisture-rich air. She felt lighter. Stronger. She could do this.

She also felt someone watching her from behind.

“It’s not polite to stare.”

Tarquin’s sleep clothes rustled as he leaned in the doorframe. “I heard you laugh and I didn’t want to interrupt. And really, who can blame me for staring?”

Naira looked over her shoulder and caught the slow slide of his gaze roaming over her. She held out a hand to him. “Come here.”

He took her hand and stepped behind her, wrapping his arms around her waist to snug her tight against him. She leaned back, letting him take her weight, and sighed contentedly as he brushed a kiss to her cheek. He paused. Licked his lips.

“You’ve been crying?”

She grunted. “Must you lick everything?”

“When it comes to you? Absolutely.” He hummed against her neck, making her pulse

flutter. “But that can wait until you tell me why you were crying.”

“I was struggling, and I sent a text to Kav. To tell him off, really, but he actually answered.”

Tarquin turned her so that he could face her. “What did Kav do?”

“Helped me. It was… good. I needed that.”

“You know you can always wake me up if you need someone to talk to, right?”

“I thought I wanted to be alone. Kav messaging back surprised me.”

He studied her for a moment and the worry faded, ...