Chapter 9: Edge of Insanity
The silence in the wake of the jump was a physical thing, a dense, humming pressure in the cramped cockpit. The blue tunnel of hyperspace streamed past the viewport, directionless and eternal. The tracker’s sizzle had faded from the hull, but its imprint was in the ship’s logs and in the air between them.
Matthew finally exhaled, a shaky, ragged sound. He pulled his glasses off, pinching the bridge of his nose. “That marker… it’s sophisticated. Quantum-entangled. Scrubbing it isn’t an option. They’ll know our exit point.”
Gwen didn’t answer. She was staring at her hands, lying flat and open on her thighs. They were trembling. A fine, constant vibration she couldn’t stop. She balled them into fists, nails biting into her palms. The fear from the confrontation had crystallized into a cold, sharp fury—at the alien ship, at the void, at her own helplessness. But beneath it, under the ice, ran a current of pure, undiluted terror. The kind that hollowed you out.
She stood up abruptly, the chair screeching against the deck. “I need a shower. The recycled water stinks like fear.”
She left the cockpit without looking back.
Matthew listened to her footsteps fade down the narrow corridor. He knew that tone. It was the one she used right before she put a fist through a wall or ran a combat simulation until her muscles gave out. It was the sound of Gwen Kogan coming undone.
He gave her twenty minutes. He used the time to run every diagnostic he could think of on the foreign marker, each test yielding the same grim result: persistent, unremovable, a leash around their necks. When he finally left the cockpit, the ship felt too quiet, a tomb hurtling through non-space.
The door to the crew bunk was shut. He knocked once, a soft rap of knuckles on cold metal.
No answer.
He palmed the entry panel. The door slid open with a hiss.
The room was lit only by the erratic pulse of a faulty emergency light, casting deep, jumping shadows. The air was warm, damp, carrying the faint, clean scent of soap from the lavatory. Gwen stood by the cracked viewport, wrapped in a thin towel, her wet black hair dripping onto her shoulders, darkening the grey fabric. She was staring out at the streaking blues of hyperspace, her reflection a ghost over the stars.
“We need to talk about a decoy protocol,” he started, his voice too loud in the small space. “Maybe if we jettison the main comms array before we drop out of warp, we could create a false signature—”
“Shut up, Matt.”
She didn’t turn.
“Gwen.”
“Just shut up.” Her voice was low, taut as a wire. “I don’t want to think about protocols or signatures or… or whatever the hell that thing was.” She finally looked at him over her shoulder. Her pale eyes were glittering in the half-light, not with tears, but with a desperate, wild intensity. “I can’t sit in that cockpit with that… that quiet. I’ll go insane.”
He understood. The quiet was where the thoughts lived. The thoughts of Keith, of Pidge, of that monstrous ship opening a wound in reality itself.
“What do you need?” he asked, simple and direct.
She let the towel drop.
It pooled at her feet, a circle of grey on the grimy deck. The blue light traced the elegant line of her spine, the curve of her ass, the strong, lean muscles of her thighs still gleaming with droplets of water. She turned to face him fully, naked and unashamed, a challenge in her stance.
“I need not to feel afraid.”
He crossed the room in three strides. There was no gentle kiss, no slow seduction. The time for that had burned up in their escape. He grabbed her face in both hands and kissed her with a possessiveness that bordered on violence, his mouth claiming hers, his tongue pushing past her lips. She met him with equal ferocity, her hands fisting in the front of his shirt, pulling him closer until their bodies slammed together.
They stumbled toward the lower bunk, a tangle of limbs and urgent hands. He shoved her down onto the thin mattress. The frame groaned in protest.
“Stay,” he commanded, his voice rough.
He grabbed the discarded towel, his fingers finding a seam and tearing it with a sharp rip. The sound was stark in the room. She watched him, her chest rising and falling rapidly, her nipples drawn into tight, dark peaks.
He took her right wrist, looped the strip of fabric around it, and tied it to the cold, vertical bar of the bunk frame. Not tight enough to hurt, but secure. He did the same with her left, stretching her arms out, opening her to him. She tested the bonds, a sharp tug, then relaxed into them, a surrendering sigh escaping her lips. The vulnerability in the gesture made his cock harden to the point of pain.
He stood at the edge of the bunk, looking down at her. She was spread out before him like a feast, her skin glowing in the erratic light, her wild hair fanning across the pillow. The viewport behind her painted shifting blue stripes across her stomach and thighs.
He started slow, deliberately, forcing a control he didn’t feel. He leaned down and took one nipple into his mouth, sucking it deep, his tongue flicking the hardened tip. She arched off the bed with a sharp gasp. He moved to the other, lavishing it with the same attention, biting down just enough to make her cry out.
“Matt…”
“Quiet,” he murmured against her skin, his mouth trailing a searing path down the quivering plane of her stomach. He kissed the hollow of her hip, the soft skin of her inner thigh. He could smell her arousal, a musky, sweet perfume cutting through the soap.
He hooked his arms under her thighs, pushing her legs wider, baring her completely to his gaze. Her cunt was flushed and glistening, her folds already slick and swollen. He didn’t touch her there. Not yet.
He lowered his head and blew a soft, cool breath over her wetness.
She whimpered, a high, strained sound.
Then he pressed his mouth to her.
He licked her in one long, slow stripe from her entrance to her clit, gathering her taste—salty, earthy, uniquely Gwen. He circled her clit with the flat of his tongue, then sucked it gently between his lips.
“Oh, god,” she moaned, her hips lifting off the bed, seeking more pressure.
He gave it to her. He ate her with a focused, relentless hunger, his tongue spearing into her hole, fucking her with it, then returning to circle and suck on her clit. He used his fingers to spread her wider, to watch her pink flesh glisten under his ministrations. Her moans became continuous, broken pleas.
He felt her body begin to tighten, her thighs starting to tremble against his ears. Her breathing hitched, becoming ragged, urgent. She was right there, on the trembling edge.
He pulled his mouth away.
“No!” The cry was ripped from her, raw and frustrated. Her body shuddered, the climax receding like a wave pulling back from shore. “Don’t stop, please, fuck, don’t stop!”
He sat back on his heels, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. He was still fully clothed, the bulge in his pants straining against the fabric. He reached down and unzipped his fly, freeing his cock. It stood thick and angry-red, leaking pre-come. He gave himself a slow, tight stroke, never breaking eye contact with her.
“You look beautiful like this,” he said, his voice dangerously soft. “Completely wrecked. Completely mine.”
He crawled over her, positioning himself between her splayed thighs. He nudged the head of his cock against her soaked entrance, pressing just the thick tip inside. He held it there, letting her feel the stretch, the invasion, but going no further.
Her hips bucked, trying to force him deeper, but he held himself still. “Please,” she begged, tears of frustration now mingling with the sweat on her temples. “Please, Matt, I need it. I need you to fuck me.”
“What do you need?” he asked, grinding the tip in a tiny, torturous circle.
“I need your cock. All of it. I need you to fill me up and fuck me until I can’t remember my own name.”
He pushed forward an inch, then stopped again. Her inner muscles fluttered around him, trying to pull him in. “You’re so greedy for it. So fucking wet and open.”
He withdrew completely.
She screamed, a wordless roar of fury and need, pulling hard against the fabric ties. “You bastard! Don’t you fucking dare!”
He ignored her. He lowered his head again, burying his face between her legs, and licked her throbbing clit twice, fast and hard. Her shouts turned into shattered sobs. He felt her orgasm rush up again, a tsunami building just beneath the surface.
He pulled back once more.
This time, she didn’t shout. A broken sob escaped her. She was shaking uncontrollably, her body slick with sweat, her eyes pleading. “I can’t… I can’t take it. Please. I’ll do anything. Anything you want. Just let me come. I need to come so bad it hurts.”
He believed her. The raw need on her face was the most honest thing he’d seen in a year. He leaned close, his lips brushing her ear. “Promise me,” he whispered.
“I promise. I swear on Keith’s life. On my own. Whatever you ask.”
That was it. The last thread of his control snapped.
With a guttural growl, he gripped her hips, angled her up, and slammed his cock into her to the hilt in one brutal, deep thrust.
The sound she made was one of pure, shocked relief. Her back bowed, her head thrashing against the pillow. He didn’t wait, didn’t give her a second to adjust. He set a punishing, driving rhythm, fucking into her with deep, powerful strokes that rocked the entire bunk frame against the bulkhead. The sound of their collision was wet and filthy, a slap of skin on skin echoing in the metal room.
He leaned down, capturing her mouth, swallowing her moans. The kiss was messy, all tongue and teeth and shared breath. “You feel that?” he grunted against her lips, pounding into her. “That’s me. Right here. Nothing else is real.”
“Nothing else,” she chanted, her eyes screwed shut. “Just you. Just this.”
He released her wrists, fumbling with the knots. The fabric fell away. Her arms flew around his neck, her nails scoring down his back. He gathered her up, pulling her into his lap as he sat back on his heels, her legs wrapping around his waist. He was buried even deeper inside her now. He bounced her on his cock, her weight driving him into her with a devastating force.
“I’m gonna come,” she gasped, her forehead pressed to his. “Matt, I’m gonna—”
“Do it,” he commanded. “Come all over my cock. Show me.”
It crashed through her like the shockwave from a hull breach. Her scream was muffled against his shoulder, her body locking around him in a series of violent, rhythmic convulsions. Her cunt clamped down on him, a hot, milking pressure that tore his own orgasm from him. He thrust up into her two more times, hard and deep, and spilled himself with a choked-off roar, pulsing heat flooding her core.
They collapsed sideways onto the narrow bunk, a tangled, breathing mess of limbs. He was still inside her, both of them slick with sweat and come. The blue emergency light flickered across their still-connected bodies.
For a long time, there was only the sound of their ragged breaths slowing, and the distant, omnipresent hum of the hyperdrive.
Her fingers traced a meaningless pattern on his damp chest. “They’re still out there,” she whispered, the words barely audible.
“I know.”
“We’re still marked.”
“I know.”
She nestled closer, her lips against his collarbone. “The promise I made. I meant it.”
He held her tighter, his hand stroking her hair. “So did I.”
They drifted in the exhausted, numb silence. The fear wasn’t gone. It was just buried under the warm, heavy weight of spent desire and shared skin.
An hour later, an alarm chimed softly from the cockpit—the five-minute warning to realspace reversion.
They untangled themselves, moving silently in the dark, pulling on clean clothes. The earlier desperation was gone, replaced by a grim, settled focus. They were bruised, marked, and hunted.
But they were together.
Matthew took the pilot’s seat, his hands steady on the controls. Gwen stood behind him, one hand resting on his shoulder, her eyes fixed on the viewport as the blue streaks began to shorten, to resolve.
The Mirage shuddered as it dropped out of warp.
A yellow star blazed before them, small and distant. And directly in their path, hanging in the void like a rotten fruit, was a derelict space station. Its architecture was unmistakable, a blend of ancient Olkari design and brutal Galra salvage. It was the source of the original signal.
But it was dark. No power signatures. No life signs. Just a silent, spinning hulk.
And painted across its pocked hull, fresh and gleaming in the new sunlight, was the same crackling, sapphire symbol that had been burned into their own ship. A marker. A brand.
It wasn’t a destination.
It was a message.
Matthew’s blood went cold. “It’s a bait box,” he said. “And we just swam right into it.”
From the silent station, a single, focused transmission beam lanced out, striking the Mirage’s hull. Not an attack. An upload.
The main comms screen flickered to life. Not with a alien growl, but with a familiar, shaky video feed. It showed a green paladin helmet, cracked and scorched, placed on a metal floor.
A hand, human and trembling, reached into the frame and switched the helmet’s external comm on.
A voice, weak and distorted by static but undeniably belonging to Katie “Pidge” Holt, whispered through the speakers.
“If anyone can hear this… we’re not lost. We’re trapped. The artifact… it’s a door. And it’s open. Tell my brother… the coordinates are in the… the fractal pattern…”
The feed dissolved into screaming statis.
Then, a new voice, the multi-layered synthetic growl from the alien ship, replaced it, smooth and chillingly polite.
“Your siblings are such interesting specimens. We have enjoyed their company. Come inside, little flies. The web awaits.”
The transmission ended.
In the dead silence of the cockpit, Gwen’s hand tightened on Matthew’s shoulder. Her fingernails bit into his flesh through the fabric.
He reached up and covered her hand with his own. His was ice cold. Hers was burning.
He didn’t look at her. He kept his eyes on the derelict station, on the brand upon it, on the dark, open docking bay that beckoned like a throat.
“Plot a course,” Gwen said, her voice hollow, final. “Take us in.”