Chapter 12: Ghosts in the Machine
The hum of the energy blade was still in her teeth, the ghost of its heat on her neck. Vexis stood at the weapon rack, his back to her, examining a pair of curved, sickle-like projectiles. His tail swayed, a slow, predatory metronome. Liora forced air back into her lungs, willed the tremor out of her hands. The warm glass panels underfoot pulsed like living things.
Where your strength currently ends.
The words were a hook in her mind. She wiped sweat from her brow with a scarred forearm, the motion jerky. He wanted her to find a new beginning? Fine. She wouldn’t wait for his invitation.
She lunged for the discarded energy blade handle. Her fingers had just brushed the cool metal when his tail snapped out. Not to strike her. It wrapped around the handle and whipped it away, sending it clattering into the shadows.
“No,” he said, not turning around. “You rely on it like a crutch. Your body knows violence. Remember it.”
He turned then, empty-handed. He gestured for her to come. “Again. Without the pretty light.”
A hot spike of defiance shot through her. She charged, not with technique, but with pure, kinetic anger. A feint left, then a right cross aimed at the spot where his jaw met his neck.
He caught her fist in his open palm. The impact was a dull, meaty thud. He didn’t push back; he held it, his claws pressing into her knuckles. Her other hand came up, aiming for his side. He trapped that wrist too. They stood locked, her arms extended, his grip unbreakable. She was close enough to see the faint, intricate patterns in his iridescent scales, to feel the heat radiating from his chest.
“Good,” he murmured. “Anger is fuel. But unfocused, it’s just noise.”
He pushed her back, releasing her. She staggered, then regained her footing. He advanced. She tried a kick, aiming for his knee. He shifted, taking the blow on his thigh, and before she could retract her leg, his tail coiled around her calf. He didn’t trip her this time. He just held it, an anchor, while he stepped in.
His hand went to her shoulder, spun her, pulled her back flush against his chest. An immobilization hold. One arm pinned across her body, his other hand splayed against her stomach. She was trapped, her back to him, feeling the hard planes of his harness, the shockingly intimate warmth of him through their clothes.
She struggled, throwing her weight, trying to drive her head back into his face.
“Stop.” The word was a vibration against her spine. “Breathe. Think.”
She stilled, panting. The arena hummed. His scent—metal and that strange, dry orchid—filled her senses. His hand on her stomach was directly over Ryland’s scar. The heat of it seemed to sink through flesh and time.
The memory didn’t come as a thought. It came as a sensory ambush.
The humid, reeking air of the lower bunker, thick with mildew and the coppery tang of someone’s poorly-bandaged wound. The flickering, sickly blue light of the bio-vines crawled over rusted lockers. She was pinned, but not by scales and tail. By the rough fabric of a commander’s uniform, by the solid, unforgiving weight of a man driven half-mad by loss.
Ryland’s breath was sour with ration whiskey. His calloused hands gripped the backs of her thighs, hiking her up, her own trousers tangled around one ankle. The cold, pitted metal of the weapons locker door bit into her bare shoulder blades with every thrust.
“You see them out there,” he snarled, his mouth against the sweat-damp skin of her neck. His teeth grazed her collarbone. “You see what they do. You remember it. Every time.”
It wasn’t passion. It was a rite. A grim, desperate reaffirmation of allegiance. A claiming.
One of his hands left her thigh, clamped her jaw, turned her face to look at the map on the adjacent wall. Sectors were marked in what she hoped was red ink. “You belong to Earth first,” he rasped, his voice breaking. “To this. To me. Everything else is just breathing until the next fight. Remember that.”
His teeth sank into the muscle of her shoulder, not quite breaking the skin, branding her with a promise of pain and primacy. The groan that escaped him was equal parts pleasure and anguish. The rhythmic slam of their bodies was the only sound besides the dying hum of a generator in the hall.
It was freedom and cage, all at once. It was home.
“I said breathe.”
Vexis’s voice shattered the past. She was back in the arena, her body rigid, her lungs frozen. A full-body shudder wracked her.
Vexis went very still behind her. His head tilted, his breath stirring the short hairs at her temple. His nostrils flared. He inhaled, long and deep, against the side of her neck.
A low, rumbling sound emanated from his chest. Not a growl. Something more complex—a detector finding a contaminant.
His arm tightened across her collarbone. His lips, cooler than she expected, brushed the exact spot where her shoulder met her neck. Where Ryland’s teeth had been.
“Ah,” he whispered, the syllable dripping with dark comprehension.
His tail, still coiled around her calf, tightened its grip. The hand on her stomach pressed harder over the scar.
“I smell his ghost on you still,” he said, his voice a silken, dangerous thing in her ear. “The musk of fear. Of desperation. Of a small, dying world.” He inhaled again, and she felt his tongue, faintly abrasive, flick against the memory of the bite. A scientist tasting a sample. A predator identifying a rival’s mark. “He marked you here. In the shadows. In despair.”
He turned her in his grasp, his hands on her shoulders now. His gold eyes bored into hers, seeing the lingering horror of the flashback, the shame, the stubborn loyalty.
“He told you you belonged to a grave,” Vexis stated, no question in his tone. “He made his claim in the dark, like a thief.”
His thumb stroked over the phantom bite on her shoulder, a slow, deliberate caress that burned.
“I am not a thief, Liora Voss.”
He released her shoulders, took a step back. His gaze was a physical weight.
“I will make my claim here,” he said, gesturing to the bright, open arena, the humming field of combat. “In the light. Where you can see me. Where you can fight me for it.”
He turned and walked toward the exit, his tail giving one final, whip-like crack in the air.
“The lesson is over. The ghost is still here. But ghosts fade in strong light.”
The door slithered open for him and sealed shut behind him, leaving her alone in the vast, pulsing chamber. She stood, shaking, the feel of Ryland’s teeth and Vexis’s tongue warring on her skin. The warm floor, the charged air, the scent of metal and flowers—it all felt different now.
She wasn’t just a prisoner. She was a battlefield. And the war had just changed fronts.