The low, pervasive vibration of the Stray Dog's drive was a physical presence, a constant hum that had replaced the chaotic psychic noise of the Ceres Down-Spiral. Kaelen felt the shift in his bones. For two days, they had been a silent knife sliding through the cold dark, leaving the asteroid’s screaming markets and Rexer’s suffocating null-zone behind. The debt to the information broker felt like a fresh scar, invisible but tender. In his pocket, the small, cool weight of the jade carving—the second fragment of Aris Volkov—was a constant reminder of the price.
He sat in the cramped cockpit, a space that was more nest than bridge, built for one pilot and the occasional, unwelcome guest. The chair opposite him was empty. The main viewport showed a starfield of impossible density, a fine powder of distant light spilled across black velvet. The air smelled of ozone, recycled oxygen, and the faint, bitter aroma of old, over-brewed coffee. Every surface of scuffed, dark-gray metal was worn smooth in places from the touch of a hand or the rub of a sleeve. This ship was a single, continuous scar, just like its captain.
Walter Bell was a silent weight elsewhere in the ship, a black composite statue in low-power mode, conserving energy. The raven Uplift’s presence was a quiet hum at the edge of Kaelen’s awareness, a constant, low-grade pressure of protocol and purpose.
The Ghost-Eater Shunt at the base of his neck was quiet. The absence of the ghost’s agonizing static was a new kind of pain, a hollowness that echoed the void outside.
The cockpit door hissed open. Zaina Petrova entered, moving with an economy of motion that spoke of years spent in zero-g and tight spaces. The scar that cut through her left eyebrow was a pale line against her skin in the dim glow of the instrument panels. She held a small, metal flask, its surface dull and unmarked.
— You look like you could use this, — she said, her voice a low rasp. She held the flask out to him.
He looked at it, then at her. Her eyes were tired, but steady. Accepting was a risk, a crack in the armor of his survival catechism. Don't be seen. Don't make noise. Don't exist. This was noise. This was being seen. He took the flask. The metal was cool against his palm.
He twisted the cap and raised the flask to his lips. The liquid was clear and thick, smelling faintly of fermented grain and something metallic, like starlight. Sinter-Lich, the contraband liquor of the outer belt miners. It burned a clean, hot line down his throat, a warmth that spread slowly through his chest. He handed the flask back to her.
Zaina took a slow sip, her eyes never leaving the starfield. The silence stretched, filled only by the low hum of the ship’s life support.
— You don't look like a ghost hunter, — she said, her gaze still fixed on the void. It wasn’t an accusation. It was an observation.
Kaelen watched the distant, cold fire of a nebula bloom at the edge of the viewport, a bruise of violet and magenta against the black. He could lie. He could deflect. He could retreat back into the silence, into the hollow man he had become. The ghost of Aris Volkov was a quiet, coherent presence in his mind now, a passenger, not a tormentor. The truth was a choice.
— I wasn't, — he said. The words were quiet, but they felt heavy in the small space.
The admission was a single, clean cut, a move away from the erasure he had lived in and toward something else. A flicker of honesty in the long dark. The Ghost-Eater Shunt on his neck felt like nothing more than a patch of cold metal. Its purpose had shifted. It was no longer a source of pain, but a quiet receiver, waiting.
Zaina turned her head, her gaze finally settling on him. She saw it then, not just the exhaustion, but the deep, tectonic guilt that shaped the lines around his eyes. She saw a man who was not just running from something, but trying to outrun himself. Her expression didn't soften, but a flicker of understanding passed through her eyes. She had seen that look before, in the mirror.
Kaelen, in turn, saw the cost of her life etched into her face. The constant tension of a captain in the lawless expanse, the weariness of a thousand close calls and a hundred broken deals. He could feel the shape of her fatigue in the Resonance Field, a low, steady thrum of resilience and bone-deep exhaustion.
— No, — she said, her voice softer now. — I guess you weren't.
She took another sip from the flask, then capped it. The moment of connection was a fragile thing, a soap bubble in a hurricane. It couldn't last. The mission was a gravity well, pulling everything back into its orbit. The pocket watch from the Ganymede auction and the lab keycard from the Europa dome were cold, hard facts waiting in a shielded box in the cargo hold. They were four fragments down. Three to go.
He thought of the heist, of the psychic weave he had used to distract the guards. The strain had left a metallic taste in his mouth for hours, a reminder of the cost of using his Empath abilities in such a fine, controlled way. It was a tool he was only just learning to reuse, to repurpose from erasure to misdirection.
Kaelen stood up, the worn deck plates cool beneath his boots. The quiet of the cockpit felt different now, less like peace and more like a temporary truce. He had allowed himself a moment of stillness, a brief shelter from the storm. But the storm was still there, waiting. The quiet was a luxury, and he couldn't afford to get used to it.
He turned and left the cockpit without another word, the hiss of the closing door cutting off the view of the starfield. He was returning to the mission, to the cold calculus of the hunt. He had to sever the connection, to put the wall back up. The price of refocusing was the warmth he was leaving behind.
The low hum of the ship’s engines was a steady, monotonous drone. The distant light of the nebula painted a faint, violet line under the corridor’s emergency lighting.
The quiet was a brief illusion and the hunt for the watch was next.
