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I had heard whispers about both long before I started working in the lab.
Human women living outside the main colony structure. Traders who asked fewer questions. Settlements where no one cared whether a woman had come through an auction so long as she could pay for food or earn her place.
After Sera’n petitioned for me, those stories of far-off settlements had stopped mattering. I had a job, a room, a routine. I’d chosen the life in front of me instead of chasing rumors about another one. Now those rumors were the only plan I had left.
I wandered through the station until I found another departure board. Several routes glowed softly. One freight vessel was leaving within the hour, another was heading toward an outer mining settlement, and there was one independent transport with no destination listed. Interesting.
I approached the desk beneath it. Empty. A small sign directed passengers toward the docking corridor. Also interesting. Probably stupid—but then again, stupidity seemed to be my main strategy today.
I followed the corridor as it curved away from the main hub. The farther I went, the quieter it became, until my footsteps were the only sound. That should have bothered me, and it did, but I kept going anyway.
The corridor opened into a small docking area where one ship waited. Dark hull, no markings, no crew in sight. I slowed. Maybe not. Definitely not.
I turned to leave just as a door slid shut behind me with a soft hiss. I stopped breathing. The docking bay suddenly felt very large, and very empty.
Then I saw him.
A male stood near the opposite exit.
I had not heard him enter.
Had not heard him move.
Nothing.
He was simply there, a flaw in the air itself.
Taller than any Zunatorian I’d seen, his shoulders broad beneath dark, unmarked fabric that seemed to drink the station’s low light. His hair was the color of deep space, pulled tightly back from a face all sharp angles and stillness. But it was his eyes that held me—pale silver, like cooled metal, and utterly fixed. Unblinking.
No visible weapon.
That somehow made him worse.
My hand tightened around my bag strap.
He did not move.
Neither did I.
A faint line of silver-white light moved beneath the skin of his forearm and disappeared.
My stomach dropped.
I glanced toward the sealed door behind me.
Then back at him.
“Can I help you?”
His expression didn't change.
When he spoke, his voice was low and controlled.
“Talia Mercer?”
Every muscle in my body locked.
Nobody here should know my name.
