Valicar Internal System Log – Encrypted – OFFLINE

  I hesitate, staring at the blinking prompt on Valicar’s internal HUD.

  July 12, 2527. Cycle 7 of 13, Day 39 of A shift.

  Fifty-nine years since Jericho left Earth.

  Nine since I woke up.

  Seven since I learned about the Hive.

  My 7th shift of 13 until contact. I’m halfway to the frontline—and running out of time.

  I flex my fingers, feeling Valicar’s neural weave tighten around bone and thought. The suit breathes with me—fibers clenching like muscles, warming like skin. Pressure seals lock into place, encasing me in airtight isolation. But even now, the whispers scrape at the edges of my skull, testing the inhibitor that barely holds them back. Not silent, not yet—but if this works, it won’t matter.

  The journal link blinks—recording now. Not for Jericho. Not for Julian. Just for me.

  I take a breath, steadying myself against the hiss of voices pressing softly behind my eyes, then speak aloud.

  "Journal update—Cycle 7 of 13, Day 39, Year 2527. Still alive. For now. Feels stupid to even say that out loud. Who else would be listening—or talking? But I’ve found it’s better to write this down. Day by day, I lose more of myself. I don’t know which thoughts are really mine anymore. When I drink too much, I forget. So now I have this—this record. So only I can see my descent into madness."

  The words sound ridiculous. But if I don’t say them, the thoughts won’t feel like mine. Saying them out loud, like this, to Valicar—it anchors them. Makes them real. Like carving my mind into stone before it crumbles.

  Valicar’s HUD flashes diagnostic data:

  Containment Integrity: Green

  Thermal Profile: Stable

  Ignition Sequence: Locked

  Quantum Pulse Ready: 94% Shielding

  "Thanks, Valicar. Today’s the day."

  "You’re welcome, Sol," Valicar said flatly, without a trace of sincerity.

  "Your cortisol levels are elevated. Would you like me to administer a stabilizer?"

  "No. I want to feel it."

  The lab is dim, cast in amber pulses from failing emergency lights. Hazard stripes flicker weakly against black synth-metal, and wires dangle like exposed veins from ruptured panels. Drone husks lie scattered across the floor, and cannibalized equipment clutters every available surface—charred circuits and melted conduits, evidence of dozens of failed experiments.

  Without Jericho’s drones or repair nanites allowed inside, the damage remains untouched. Frozen exactly how I left it—broken, chaotic, and comforting.

  Exactly like me.

  I step carefully around an open conduit, the metal edges warped and scorched from my last attempt. The exotic elements I skimmed from the star trapped at the heart of Jericho are potent, unstable things. Volatile enough to sear holes in hardened alloys and corrode containment fields if mishandled.

  Exactly why Julian refused to use them—too unpredictable, too dangerous, even for him.

  But not for me. Not now.

  I pause in front of the containment cradle, eyes locked on the six-inch antimatter core glowing faintly under the stabilizer field.

  "This core," I mutter, almost to myself, "could run Valicar at full combat load for a century. Minimum."

  The HUD confirms it, numbers scrolling across my vision—energy reserves in the upper stratosphere of impossible.

  "And if I ration the power? If I only run the shield when the Hive draws close, keep weapon systems low, rotate power cells..." I trail off, fingers tapping the casing.

  "Easy thousand years of operation."

  Even whispering it out loud sounds insane. Too good to be real.

  But it is.

  "I should be terrified. One mistake and everything ends. But part of me feels relief—like at least this way, if I fuck it up, the universe won't even notice we were here."

  The real problem won’t be energy. Not now. Not for a long time.

  The problem is refueling. Replacing antimatter.

  If I ever lose access to Jericho’s core, if I’m ever cut off from the systems Julian built to skim those elements from the fusion shell of a star—then this core becomes a coffin with a longer timer. A miracle on borrowed time.

  Still, for now?

  It’s mine.

  And it’s more than enough.

  A six-inch antimatter core rests on my workbench, glowing faintly beneath its containment cradle. Round. Smooth. Dense.

  The kind of beautiful that destroys civilizations.

  I step closer, brushing my armored fingertips over its casing. Even through Valicar’s thermal weave, heat seeps through—sharp and stinging.

  "I finished aligning the internal regulators," I continue softly to the journal, eyes locked on the gleaming sphere. "Two microns off, and Jericho doesn’t just die—it disappears."

  I pause, steadying myself.

  "This isn’t a battery. It’s a planet killer. One twitch, and everything—Valicar, Jericho, the cryo pods, Dad’s precious Dragon Core—all vanish into cosmic dust. Over a million tons of metal, flesh, and broken dreams… vaporized in an instant."

  Come closer, little queen, something coos faintly, show us what death tastes like on your tongue.

  My reflection stares back from the polished casing: a helmet of red and blue, and beneath it, white hair shimmering silver under the nano-weave; one red eye, one blue. Doll-face. Monster-face. Knight’s twisted masterpiece.

  I grin bitterly beneath my helmet. "Dad built Dragon reckless, but sober. Me? I made this half-drunk on moonshine brewed in Reid’s old vats. The rare elements harvested from Dragon’s fusion exhaust are exactly what I needed. The irony might kill me before the core does."

  I breathe out slowly, the suit tightening around my limbs like a second skin.

  "Five years ago… when we were trying to keep Reid alive," I murmur to Valicar, voice low, steady, half journal, half confession, "I found the truth."

  With Yates’s help, I found a way to put Reid into cryo. But first—we had to stabilize him.

  He wouldn’t wake up. His vitals were erratic, his blood looping in impossible ways. Regenerating and then unraveling. We couldn’t keep him sedated without risking system failure. So I had to figure out what was wrong.

  And I did.

  That was the moment it all clicked—why his healing kept looping without finishing. Why his cells fought themselves.

  He was infected. He had it.

  Phoenix was in his blood. But it wasn’t doing anything. It wasn’t mutating him. Not like my father. Not like the crew from Hemlock.

  And that was what scared me most.

  If he was infected… who else was?

  And why wasn’t he changing? Why him?

  “I still think about him,” I say softly, eyes locked on the glow of the stabilizer. “If he ever wakes up… would he hate me for not seeing it sooner?”

  “You stop at cryo chamber seven every cycle,” Valicar replies. “Your pulse spikes. Respiration increases. It is not hate you fear—it is guilt.”

  Damn machine always knows too much.

  But back to Reid… It wasn’t just that he wasn’t a Voss.

  It was that he was cut off.

  “No Voss DNA. No connection. And somehow… no signal from the Hive.” I say that one out loud—just to hear it. Just to make sure it’s real.

  The words ring hollow in the lab, but the truth settles like lead. Back then, it hadn’t made sense. Not until I ran the diagnostics a second time, and realized what I was missing—he wasn’t resisting the signal. He was outside it. Shielded. The same field Julian built into Jericho’s hull, the ghost-layer of energy that blurred Phoenix’s reach. He’d been under it the whole time, and I hadn’t seen it. That was the moment it clicked—he wasn’t dormant by design. He was dormant because the virus couldn’t hear him.

  I adjust the stabilizer… my gloved fingers brushing the last active coil of the core. “He was stuck—infected, but dormant. Frozen in-between. Like the virus was waiting for something it couldn’t find… so I had to check the others.”

  One by one, I took samples—quietly, precisely. No questions. No second chances.

  I still drank too much. Still looked half-broken to anyone paying attention. The kind of tired that never leaves your eyes. And maybe that helped—kept them from suspecting anything real. Let them think I was just spiraling. A sad little relic of a dead empire, slowly unraveling.

  But I played the part. I smiled when I had to. Said the right things. Laughed over dinner with Ashly. Let Holt knock me around in the gym. Helped Jimmy run diagnostics on the ships plasma shields and shared quiet drinks with Warren like nothing was wrong. Told Knight to fuck off whenever she tried to push me.

  All while checking blood. Watching reactions. Mapping infection signs. Looking for patterns. Looking for shields.

  I kept working on Valicar—refining the armor, tuning the neural mesh, building the shell I could trust when my own skin didn’t feel like mine. I kept adjusting the inhibitor, chasing the balance between silence and survival. But in secret... I was building something more. A quantum field tuned to cut the whispers off at the root. Not magic—physics. His physics. His shielding tech.

  Julian wouldn’t tell me how it worked, not directly. But I didn’t need his permission. I scanned everything—every relay, every pulse, every flicker in the ghost field he built to envelop Jericho. He thought I was too stupid to understand it. But I didn’t need theory—I had results. Readouts. Feedback. Traces. And I fed them all into Valicar.

  His own system, weaponized against him.

  He made the leash. I made the bolt cutter.

  Still, that was a different problem. I needed more power to fuel it—more than just Valicar’s fusion core could give. That’s when the antimatter became more than theory. But before that… I needed the data. Every variable. Every risk. I had to gather the samples. Map the spread. Chart the infection like a virus with a god complex.

  “Holt bled when I broke his nose sparring. I kept the towel,” I say, low to Valicar, part confession, part log. He laughed it off. Thought it was funny. Thought it was just a rough training day.

  “Jimmy cut his hand helping me on my suit. I swapped the rag before he could notice.”

  “Ashly? Dinner. Shared wine. One prick to the glass recycler.” She smiled. Talked about roots and soil balance. Never even felt the needle.

  “And Warren… drinks heavy. He never noticed the vial I slipped in,” I murmur.

  I exhale slowly. Vega was harder. Yates even more so. But I got them all. No one asked questions. No one saw the scalpel behind the smile.

  Clever girl, Julian whispers, warm and sharp. Just like I taught you. Always gather the data first.

  Only three came back positive.

  Three too many.

  "Reid. Jimmy. Holt."

  I rest my palm on the core. It’s hot now. Alive.

  "Garin would’ve made four. But I killed him first."

  My voice falls to a whisper.

  You tore out my throat with your teeth then shot my body into space, whore.

  Even dead, he still mocks me from the inside. Sometimes I swear Garin’s voice is louder than the others. the device will fail, he laughs in my head, same as he did in the lab. you’ll never be him. you’ll never be anything but a shadow in his wake.

  And Knight, cool and dismissive, always cut deeper without raising her voice. you’re not talented, sol. you’re just lucky. a spoiled, overpraised little bitch they dragged along because your last name bought you space.

  They’d laugh together, voices overlapping like feedback in my skull.

  I ignore them.

  The inhibitor under my ribs pulses—burning faintly. I’ve taken six times my usual dose today. Still, the whispers scratch against the walls of my skull like claws on glass. And the hunger… it never left. Even suppressed, it keeps winning. I’ve gained the weight back—and more. Still slim, still compact, but beneath the skin, I’m dense. Six hundred pounds of living mass, fed by stolen proteins, cloned animal flesh, and every ounce of biomass I could hoard. I look human. But I know better. I feel it every time I move. The suit doesn’t carry me anymore—it contains me. Because even when the whispers go quiet, the hunger doesn’t.

  The Hive adapts. It always does. The Orion whispers.

  You can't hide forever, little Phoenix. My father’s voice curls behind my ear like a smirk. I built you to rule them, not to run from them.

  But this—this—they can’t reach.

  "This is my final silence," I breathe, eyes locked on the humming sphere before me.

  "Julian always said antimatter was beneath him," I say aloud, voice quiet but steady. “He called it the loudest toy in the box. Said it served a purpose—brute annihilation—but in the God’s Arsenal, it was a footnote. Real power, he told me, bends time, not matter.”

  I pause, letting the hum fill the space.

  “Maybe he wasn’t wrong. Antimatter is unstable. Dangerous. Less reactor, more weapon. But I think… I think he knew what it could really do. I think he just didn’t want me to.”

  I run my gloved fingers along the edge of the containment cradle.

  “He built it into Jericho’s plasma shields—buried it so deep it barely existed in the readouts. A ghost field. A blindfold made of energy. Not just a weapon. Not just a shield.”

  The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

  I glance toward Valicar’s HUD, recording everything.

  “A way to keep the Hive out.”

  And then, a breath—soft, almost to myself, but still spoken.

  "That’s why the others stayed dormant."

  "They were all protected by the field—Lion especially. His DNA’s close enough to mine to confuse the virus, and that personal shield of his? Tuned right to the edge of Jericho’s fail-safes. That wasn’t an accident. That was Julian."

  The Hive couldn’t touch them—not fully. Not while Jericho’s ghost field was holding steady.

  But Wilks?

  He had the shield too. He should’ve been safe.

  But... he had no Voss genes. But he was shielded—same as the rest of us. If Jericho’s envelope was protecting everyone, it should’ve protected him too.

  But Knight didn’t just infect him. She resurrected him.

  It wasn’t just Phoenix—it was Hydra, the accelerant. Jammed into his corpse like kindling, trying to force the virus past its limits.

  He was a tool, Sol. One more stepping stone toward perfection, Knight whispers. We had to push the virus. We had to see what it would do when unchained.

  No Voss genome. No signal. No stabilizer.

  Just raw instinct and mutation.

  They didn’t save him. They corrupted him.

  Like your father became, Orion whispered.

  And the yellow-eyed thing… it hadn’t just stalked me through vents. It had spoken. Not with words, but through the whispers.

  He called you by name, Orion murmurs, voice soft and solemn. He knew what you were. What you could become. He could talk to you like us... like Wilks tried to.

  I shivered—because whatever came back… wasn’t him.

  Phoenix was the base. Then Garin, Knight, and Ashly added the accelerant—Hydra. An unstable prototype of what they’d later call Chimera. Designed to override death. Force evolution. Cheat biology.

  It wasn’t ready.

  Without the Hive’s signal to guide the virus—without any Voss DNA to anchor it—Wilks came back wrong. Twisted. No thought. No purpose. Just raw instinct, blind hunger, and the viral echo of Phoenix trying to finish what it started with no template to follow.

  And that thing in Lab 3?

  All the flesh. The growths. The spires clawing up the walls?

  He wasn’t rotting.

  He was building.

  Trying to seed a Hive. Alone. Broken. Driven by code meant for gods, running on a corpse.

  Lion burned him down before it could spread, but it was too late. The infection had already bled into the vents, the cables. Everything. Jericho sealed the lab. Called it a containment breach. An error.

  But I know better.

  They didn’t kill Wilks.

  They unleashed him.

  And me?

  I was meant to hear them. To carry them.

  The Queen node.

  Central. Primary. Singular.

  You’re not a daughter. You’re the mother of a species, Knight’s voice hums like a blade being sharpened. A perfect cradle for perfect evolution.

  "I think that’s what I am," I say aloud, voice low and steady, finally dragging myself out of the mire of thoughts and whispers. My fingers tighten around the grip. "The one Julian built everything around. The center of it all. The Queen."

  "You are exhibiting nonlinear processing again. Topic cohesion is deteriorating." Valicar interrupts. "You are jumping between topics without—"

  "Shut up," I cut him off. "I’m processing."

  Valicar falls silent.

  "Let me vent how I need to. I’ll fill in the gaps later."

  I exhale, shoulders stiff. My thoughts circle back, pulled by gravity I can't shake.

  Why wasn’t I shielded like the rest?

  Maybe Julian let me hear them on purpose. Or maybe I was too deep in the signal to block. Maybe I am the signal—carrying the Hive’s pulse in my blood, wired straight into my nervous system since birth.

  But that doesn’t matter anymore.

  Because now… I have power.

  Power strong enough to make my own silence.

  I think back to my earliest logs—the way I described the whispers as distance rot. A pressure behind the eyes, worse the more I fought.

  I didn’t understand.

  But I do now.

  Not rot. Not madness.

  A tether I was born with.

  A leash made of sound only I could hear.

  But not anymore.

  Not once I activate this.

  "Valicar’s quantum shield generates a localized field disrupting Hive signals, isolating me completely. Julian’s design—but enhanced. And powered by antimatter." I say it out loud, mostly for the journal. Partly for me.

  You think muting the Hive makes you human? Garin sneers. You’re still a monster. Just better dressed.

  I ignore his jab, My father found a way to block the Hive. I just made it stronger.

  The trigger pad beneath my palm glows. Biosignature accepted—nerve pattern, cortical sync, oxygen saturation. All locked to me. No one else could touch it unless they flayed me alive.

  Valicar speaks softly:

  "Quantum shield initializing. Full containment engaged. Ready when you are."

  I exhale.

  “Okay. Final check. This isn’t a drill—this is the real field. Full deployment. Logging biosignature for Valicar’s shield matrix.”

  And then I squeeze the trigger.

  You think you’ve won? Julian growls in my skull. You can’t erase what I built, what’s in your bloo—

  Suddenly—

  Silence.

  Not muted. Not quiet.

  Gone.

  The Hive. Julian. Jericho. Everything.

  Just breath, moving slow in the vacuum of my helmet.

  My heart slams once, twice—then softens.

  No voices. No whispers. Not even echoes.

  This isn’t peace.

  It’s absence.

  Like being deaf inside your own mind.

  I wait.

  "It worked," I say hoarsely, the words slow and raw.

  "Full shield resonance confirmed," Valicar replies. "Signal suppression complete. You are completely alone, Sol."

  And for the first time in nine years…

  …I believe it.

  Then a flicker on the scanner. Proximity.

  I don’t move. Don’t panic.

  Ashly steps into the lab, hesitant.

  "You’re in full armor?" she says, carefully. "In Lab 2?"

  "Just running tests," I murmur, not turning.

  She shifts—nervous, but not afraid. Not like before. Her guilt’s different now. Older. More human.

  "You… okay?"

  I let the silence hang for a second longer than I should.

  "Define ‘okay.’"

  She half-smiles, awkward. "You don’t wear the helmet unless it’s bad."

  "Maybe I like how it shuts everyone out."

  Ashly’s voice softens. “I thought I wasn’t part of ‘everyone’ anymore.”

  I finally look up, visor gleaming—but I hesitate. The words catch somewhere behind my inhuman teeth, too heavy or too fragile to say.

  She shifts, her gaze lingering. “You heading to Wolf?” she asks, like she’s filling the silence for both of us.

  "Sparring," I lie. "You know how he gets when I skip."

  She lingers. "Don’t push too hard... are you sure you’re ok?"

  This time, I smile for real.

  "Really Ash, I’m better than okay."

  She leaves.

  And for a moment… I don’t just believe it.

  I feel it.

  The silence is mine.

  “She’s nervous—probably suspects I’m hiding something big. And she’s right,” I say to Valicar, voice low. “But Ashly has enough guilt on her shoulders already.”

  "End log."

  I silenced the Hive. I cut the signal. But I still feel them. Not loud, not clear—just a soft, mocking pressure behind my thoughts. Like they know this isn't over. Maybe it never will be.

  I swear… somewhere inside, I can still feel them smile—

  Then the lights shift.

  Sirens wail—muffled at first, distant and distorted, like they’re coming from underwater.

  I glance toward the ceiling. Red strobes flicker faintly through the cracks of the sealed bulkhead, dim and out of sync. I’d shut down all external links to Valicar. Muted Jericho’s access to the lab entirely. No surveillance. No comms. No AI interference.

  This was supposed to be mine.

  But the lab door slams open—air hissing as the pressure equalizes, hydraulics screaming in protest.

  I whip around, hand on the hilt at my thigh. “Get the fuck out!”

  A drone barrels in—old model, half-scorched, emergency paint scraped to the metal. Not combat-rated. Not supposed to be able to override locks.

  And definitely not allowed in here.

  “This is my lab!” I snap, stepping forward. “My rules. You don’t come in here. Not Jericho. Not even Knight. You don’t belong—get out!”

  The drone shudders midair, voice crackling with urgency.

  "You severed comms to this room. Valicar’s internal systems are offline. Jericho is locked out. This was the only way, princess. You must become a queen."

  I narrow my eyes. “Only way for what? Not more of this royal bloodline shit.”

  The optic flickers.

  Red.

  Then gold.

  And I feel it.

  Not Jericho. Not code.

  Him.

  Julian.

  "Fifty-seven ships just exited warp ten thousand klicks off Jericho’s bow," the drone says—his voice threading through the static now, clipped and precise, but no longer cold. “Unidentified. Not Rue. Not mostly. Their signatures are fragmented—but their target is clear.”

  My stomach coils.

  “They’re here for you.”

  The air folds in around me, like the ship itself is holding its breath. Valicar tightens around my ribs, syncing to my pulse.

  “We’re mid-refuel,” Julian continues. “FTL offline. No jump capability. They began firing within seconds.”

  I feel it—deep in the hull.

  One tremor.

  Then another.

  Then the railgun howls.

  Missiles launch. Lasers shriek. Jericho groans as it comes alive like a beast waking up hungry.

  Julian’s voice shifts—less AI, more man. Not shaken. Just... serious. Focused. Older.

  "You locked me out, Little Phoenix. Thought silence would keep you safe. But nothing in this galaxy fears silence.”

  I grit my teeth. “I had to. When you control everything, I needed one place that was mine. You told me this space was mine.”

  “It was,” he says evenly. “Until it couldn’t be.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “You’ve reached your threshold, my dear.”

  I back up, spine brushing the containment chamber. The antimatter core hums behind me—faintly at first, then louder. It wants me. It’s ready.

  “This isn’t punishment,” Julian says. “This is strategy. Seven years. I gave you time. Autonomy. Independence. You changed—but not enough. You wanted power back, but only the pieces I gave you. And when you finally claimed something real…” he pauses, “you poured it into that.”

  He doesn’t even need to look. I know he means the core.

  I glare at the drone. “So now you’re handing me over?”

  He exhales—long and slow.

  “I’m buying us time. You still have growing to do—mentally, physically. You chose to serve the captains. You chose submission. But then you couldn’t even honor the systems you agreed to. You spiral, self-destruct, pretend to rebel.”

  His tone darkens.

  “I hoped you’d find your way.”

  He pauses.

  “But you need a push.”

  The drone drifts closer. I don’t move.

  “I conquered Earth, Sol. I killed warlords. CEOs. Presidents. I dismantled nations with my mind. I never lost control.”

  His voice lowers—quiet and heavy.

  “But Phoenix, the Hive... you—got away from me. Not just evolution. Intelligent evolution. Unchecked. You are more dangerous than you understand.”

  My blood goes cold.

  Not because it’s a surprise—but because it isn’t.

  Because it confirms what I’ve suspected since the moment I first heard them whisper in my bones.

  He knew.

  The whole goddamn time.

  “You lied to me.” The words scrape out of my throat, low and venomous. “You said I was the key. That I was humanity’s hope.”

  “You are.”

  “Bullshit,” I snap, fists clenched so tight my nails almost bite through the gloves. “I was the leash. The leash for a monster you made and couldn't control.”

  A pause.

  And then—worse than any denial—he answers with silence.

  Because I’m right.

  And he knows it.

  “The Hive wasn’t supposed to spread like wildfire. Not across systems. Not across species. But it did. It devoured ancient empires. It stole their biology. Their tech. It grew faster than anything should.”

  He hesitates.

  “And now it’s drawn attention.”

  I feel my heart hit my ribs.

  “You knew. You fucking knew about the Hive. You knew I could hear it—you knew!”

  Julian doesn’t flinch.

  “I did. And I didn’t stop you.”

  “Who are they?” I snap. “Who the fuck is more dangerous than the thing you unleashed in the name of humanity’s inheritance?!”

  He doesn’t even blink.

  “I don’t know their name.”

  The admission hits harder than a scream.

  “But I know what they are. Old. Very old. Their tech is millions of years ahead. Their ships don’t register right. Their logic curves where ours breaks.”

  He exhales slowly, weight in his voice.

  “They don’t think like us. They don’t fear like us. To them, we’re just the ember of a species getting too close to fire.”

  “And now they’ve seen the Hive.”

  My voice cracks. “And now they’re here for me.”

  “Not them,” Julian says. “Their proxies. A galactic council fleet. Massive. Coordinated. But make no mistake—they were sent.”

  I can barely breathe.

  “How long?”

  “Fifty years,” he answers. “On the low end. That’s how long I need to catch up. To finish the God’s Arsenal. To bring Leviathan to life.”

  Then, finally, I hear it—the thing I never expected.

  The barest edge of doubt.

  “I’ve run the probabilities, Sol. I don’t lose. I never have. Not once since Earth. But this… this is the closest thing I’ve ever seen to a checkmate.”

  My heart skips.

  “And what do I do?” I whisper.

  “You buy me time.” He repeats.

  I want to scream. Wanted to tear that drone in half and shout down the voice that raised me.

  But I didn’t.

  Because deep down—I already knew he was right.

  And I hated him for it.

  “You’re using the Hive as a goddamn buffer,” I snap.

  “As a blade,” Julian corrects. “You carry it. You’re the only one they listen to that hasn’t become them. And they can’t kill you—not without risking the virus unleashing itself fully.”

  The floor vibrates under my boots—another impact. Another reminder we’re out of time.

  I narrow my eyes. “Wasn’t this supposed to be about Haven? Their fusion core’s dying—we set out to save them.”

  “They’re still a priority,” he says, steady. “But not because of power.”

  He pauses.

  “They have ninety-six years left. Seventy-eight years of backup fission. Plenty of time.”

  “Then what’s the emergency?”

  “They’re shielded,” he says. “Old quantum tech. Like the one you just built. It scrambles the Hive’s signal.”

  I freeze. “That’s why they haven’t attacked.”

  “They can’t,” he says. “The field distorts the signal. It doesn’t just repel—it hurts them. They orbit Haven, but they don’t land. They can’t stand the proximity.”

  “And when the core fails…”

  “The field collapses. And they’ll be consumed.”

  I feel the cold settle in my chest.

  “But it cuts both ways,” Julian adds. “Until then, the Hive protects them. They encircle the colony like sentries. Not attacking. Just… waiting.”

  My voice is tight. “What’s really at Haven, Dad? If they’re not Phoenix… what did you do?”

  “They’re the default,” he says softly.

  “What?”

  “They’re pure. Baseline human. No Phoenix. No augments. No gene edits. No programming. Untouched by me. They’re a control group.”

  “You made a control group?” My voice barely registers.

  Julian exhales. “I had to know. I needed to prove what we were becoming was better. That my version of humanity deserved to survive.”

  “And they were supposed to fail.”

  “They were,” he admits. “But they didn’t.”

  “They thrived.”

  “They built something real,” he says. “Without me.”

  And there it is.

  “You created a whole version of humanity just to prove they’d collapse without you.”

  “Yes.”

  “And now that they haven’t?”

  A pause.

  “I don’t know.”

  The silence hits harder than anything else.

  But he doesn’t linger.

  “That’s all noise now, Sol. A variable. We’ll deal with Haven once the xeno threats are contained.”

  “You mean the species you tried to genocide?”

  A beat.

  Then his voice shifts—low and vicious, like something ancient breaking through the static.

  “You still don’t understand,” he says. “But you will.”

  The words come next like thunder—raw, hot, and full of fury.

  “We’re not fighting for scraps, Sol. We’re fighting for our seat at the head of the fucking table.”

  And that—that—he never did. My father didn’t curse. Not unless he meant every goddamn syllable.

  Teleport lock.

  “They’ve breached this deck,” Julian says. “Forty-three seconds. Resist—but not too much. It needs to look real. They can’t know you’re cooperating.”

  “I’m not cooperating with your bullshit.”

  He ignores it.

  Of course he does.

  Because in his mind, I already am.

  Because in his mind, everything is just data and probability—and I’m still the girl in the glass, doing what she was programmed to do.

  “You’ll buy time for Leviathan. For Jericho. For Homo Immortalis.”

  Then a beat. Quiet. And almost proud.

  “You built your own shield,” he says softly. “I saw. I scanned the readings myself. Quantum harmonic field tuned to suppress the signal. You actually did it.”

  I swallow hard, counting down the seconds.

  “You’ll need it where you’re going,” Julian says—his voice calm, but something sharp rides beneath it. “The Royal Guard is already awake. They’ll neutralize any remaining threats. Jericho will hold.”

  A beat.

  I snap.

  “How can you know that? Any of this? You could be sending me straight into hell. You said it yourself— even you the Great Julian Voss don’t know fucking everything!”

  Julian doesn’t flinch.

  “You think this all happened by chance?”

  His voice drops—lower, colder.

  “I ran the models. I tracked your timelines. I watched every variable. I predicted when you’d finish the core. When your fear would finally outweigh your pride. I gave you silence long enough for it to hurt.”

  A pause.

  “It was always going to be today.”

  My breath catches.

  And then, like it’s nothing:

  “But this is just a snatch-and-grab. Nothing more, they will not kill you.”

  “I’ve already destroyed four of their ships,” he adds, voice sharpening. “Eight more are crippled. But it won’t be enough.”

  The static shifts. Deeper now. Closer.

  “The Hive is moving too. A rogue faction—one I didn’t predict. Faster, more volatile than the others. It’s coming straight for you.”

  My pulse spikes.

  "Shit..." Of course it is.

  I move—fast.

  His words hammer through my skull as I lunge for the cradle.

  Fingers find the latch.

  Twist.

  The core drops into my back—plugs into Valicar’s spine. It fuses. It burns.

  But I’m still standing.

  Julian’s voice softens.

  “I thought I could control it. Shape it. Direct the Hive toward our enemies and keep it from turning on us—on me.”

  He pauses.

  “I was wrong.”

  A breath.

  “But it’s the only threat big enough to stall them. That makes it valuable.”

  Valicar breathes.

  The HUD flickers to life.

  "Antimatter core stable at 100%. Weapons hot. Shields at max. Battle protocols active—set to lethal."

  Plasma sword—right hand.

  Pistol—left.

  Shield—full quantum sync.

  My armor howls in silence, pulsing with antimatter-fed rage.

  And still, beneath the roar of systems locking into place, beneath the hiss of the core syncing to my spine—I feel it.

  That ache.

  That sting.

  I thought I built this. I thought Valicar was mine—born of my hands, my pain, my silence.

  But deep down, I know the truth.

  He was right again.

  Julian had seen it all. Anticipated every step. Knew the moment I’d claim this power—and designed it so he could still be the one handing it to me.

  Seven years.

  Seven years of fighting for something I thought was mine, only to realize I was still dancing to his rhythm.

  It shatters something in me.

  Like my hands were just assembling a suit he wrote into my bones.

  I thought it was mine. Every bolt, every line of code, every secret I bled into Valicar—I thought I was building something to cut him out. But the blueprint was always his. I was just the one signing it in blood.

  And worse—he knew. He always knew.

  Every override, every locked file, every paranoid attempt to hide what I was doing—he saw through it. Probably before I even finished typing the first command.

  He gave me space, time, just enough silence to feel free… but not enough to actually be it.

  Just enough rope to hang myself.

  He always did.

  But he’s not omniscient—not a god. Just a master manipulator who was always a few steps ahead. A man who knew how to twist every ounce of love and failure into fuel, how to make it all feel inevitable. And yet, somehow… I still love him.

  Even if this voice—this drone, this ship—isn’t really him. Not anymore.

  Julian exhales, voice like static cracking through something human.

  “I love you, Sol... you are humanity’s hope. My legacy.”

  And for a moment, just one impossible second—it sounds like him. Not the AI. Not Jericho. Just my father. The man who raised me. The man who made me.

  “And I promise you this—”

  His voice drops lower, colder. “Those who come for you will kneel. All of them. Just not yet.”

  My throat tightens. I swallow the burn, and my voice comes out rough.

  "You’re an evil bastard, Dad..." I pause, just long enough for the pain to surface. "But please... don’t leave me alone, Daddy."

  No answer.

  Just the faint flicker of the drone’s optic—gold to black.

  Then it drops.

  Dead.

  The silence that follows isn’t comforting.

  It’s hollow.

  I stare down at it, my hands shaking—blade in one, pistol in the other. Antimatter thrums through Valicar’s spine, burning steady in my chest. My shield hums like a warning.

  My resolve is shaken.

  But not broken.

  And then—

  The blast hits.

  The doors blow inward in a burst of light and force. Smoke curls in. Figures move through it—silhouettes twisted by teleport shimmer, armed, armored, hunting.

  And I raise my blade—

  Because if they want to drag me from this ship, they’re going to bleed for it.