—The word safe usually betrays you. Especially when you’re tired.

  [POV: Nardia]

  We pushed Shiratori in ultra-high-speed mode again and reached the Rondo System without dropping stealth.

  When Space Station Fanark came into view, my first thought was, It’s beautiful.

  That made me angry at myself.

  Fanark was a research station—white, clean, and skeletal, like bones floating in the night. No needless ornamentation. Nothing like Lankis’s orbital elevator station with its gaudy layers and loud “look at me” design.

  From the outside, cleanliness looks like comfort.

  But the moment you step inside, comfort usually turns out to be another name for surveillance. I knew that. I still let myself be fooled for half a second.

  “Fanark: docking permission granted. Receiving traffic guidance. Thrust suppression. Stealth mode—disengage.”

  Shiratori’s flat voice read it out.

  Today, the flatness was a blessing. If the voice had emotions, my emotions would wobble too.

  “Ugh… I hate dropping stealth,” I muttered.

  Genichiro answered without even glancing over.

  “If we don’t, we don’t get in. And we’ve been burning hard—SER and the capacitors are under load.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I get it. But dropping stealth right after a pursuit feels like walking around naked.”

  “Then don’t walk naked. Walk in armor.”

  “Your phrasing!”

  On the external feed, our starboard hull still carried a scorched scar where one of those returning lightblades had kissed us. The outer shell was sealed behind auxiliary bulkheads.

  Not lethal.

  But space loves that kind of math—nonlethal damage + nonlethal damage + nonlethal damage = dead.

  Ahmad’s voice cut through our bickering, calm and clean.

  “After docking: Mu-Arcium goes directly to the lab. We file our report. Genichiro, emergency inspection on Shiratori. Nardia—”

  “Radar and comm log summary?” I guessed.

  “Yes. Record everything: pursuit pattern, fireball and lightblade behavior, coordinate shifts in the medium reactions.”

  “Roger. …I’ll do it. Even if I feel like throwing up.”

  Genichiro, of course, landed on his favorite topic.

  “Don’t puke. If you puke, the number of cleaning runs goes up.”

  “Don’t circle back to that!”

  Miyu sat quiet in her seat, breathing—still breathing, despite the metal body. I could tell she was exhausted. That blinding trick she’d thrown to break enemy locks had a cost, and the price was written in the stiffness of her shoulders.

  Maybe there was another cost too—something uglier. That feeling of I was useful as a weapon, and how much you hate yourself for it.

  Ahmad’s voice softened by a fraction.

  “For now, you two rest. Logs can wait until we’re stable.”

  I nodded, and then looked at Miyu.

  “…You okay?”

  Miyu nodded once.

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  “…Probably. But the fear… it’s still there.”

  “That’s fine,” I said. “Fear staying means you’re normal.”

  The docking lights flared as we approached, bright enough to sting. Bright, but cold—sterile as a clean room.

  The moment we entered the dock, the station’s people moved fast.

  Too fast.

  It didn’t feel like welcome. It felt like processing.

  Like Shiratori—like us—were cargo entering a pipeline.

  And of course, there were GDC armbands.

  Here too.

  “...They followed us?” I murmured.

  Genichiro’s answer was immediate and annoying.

  “They didn’t follow. They were already here. This is a research station.”

  “That’s worse.”

  Ahmad exchanged short, efficient words with the staff.

  Receipt of Mu-Arcium.

  Transfer to a shielded chamber.

  A quick radiation sweep over our hull feed. A sterile swab across my gloves like I was contaminated just for touching the wrong air.

  Then—

  Eyes slid to Miyu.

  A look can hurt worse than words.

  A staff member in white gloves said it with perfect formality.

  “…We’ll need the technical collaborator to undergo a brief confirmation later.”

  Brief confirmation.

  A convenient phrase—the kind you wrap around unpleasant things so they slide down easier.

  Ahmad’s reply was calm, but it had teeth.

  “I will be present. Everything is recorded.”

  “Understood,” the staff member said.

  The pronunciation was too pretty to trust.

  Pretty words usually hide blades.

  The procedures ended smoothly.

  Too smoothly.

  When you’re exhausted, speed feels like anesthesia.

  And the moment anesthesia hits is when you’re most vulnerable.

  After that, we were moved—officially—into a “hotel standby” section.

  A corridor escorted us there—silent walls, polite arrows on the floor, doors that only opened when the staff’s badge got close enough. Our own temporary keycards felt like toys in comparison.

  Outside every room: a small indicator light, always on. Not occupied—more like tracked.

  Standby.

  The instant I heard the word, a bad premonition jumped under my skin.

  “…I hate the word standby,” I muttered.

  Miyu hugged a pillow to her chest and nodded faintly.

  “…It feels like… being left behind.”

  “We’re not leaving you,” I said, forcing the sentence out like a vow. “Never.”

  I said it cleanly.

  And still, the word never caught in my throat.

  Space loves breaking clean vows.

  Ahmad went to file the report.

  Genichiro went to do emergency inspection on Shiratori.

  And the only ones left in the room were me and Miyu.

  The room was too clean.

  The floor gleamed. The air felt light.

  And the cameras were everywhere—tiny dark lenses nested in the corners, in the smoke sensor, in the mirror frame. Not hidden. Just… assumed.

  And—this was the part I hated most—there was the sense of an invisible someone.

  In a spotless room, an intruder should be obvious.

  But the obvious thing was… not obvious.

  The lighting suddenly lost its color.

  Not dimming. Just draining. Like the world flipped to black-and-white for a heartbeat.

  “…Huh?”

  My ears went wrong.

  Ambient noise shrank.

  My own heartbeat got louder.

  And the air turned thick.

  Not humidity. Not heat.

  Pressure.

  —It’s coming.

  I shot up, grabbed my terminal, and tried to call out.

  Signal was there.

  And yet it wouldn’t connect.

  Jamming.

  Again.

  “Damn it…!”

  Miyu’s breath hitched.

  “…There,” she whispered.

  “Where?”

  The moment I asked, cold crawled up my spine.

  A gaze I couldn’t see.

  A presence with no outline.

  A room that was supposed to hold only two people… and yet something was standing in it.

  I thought I heard the floor creak.

  Maybe it didn’t. Maybe my brain just labeled the silence as footsteps.

  Optical camouflage hides light.

  But it can’t hide weight.

  It can’t hide air moving around a body.

  “…Where?” I demanded again.

  Before the word finished, the air tore.

  A silhouette appeared.

  Thin. Human-shaped.

  Too smooth at the joints. Too perfectly controlled.

  No human hesitation. No micro-errors.

  An android.

  “Wai—!”

  I didn’t even get to finish shouting.

  An arm shot out—fast enough that “react” wasn’t an option.

  I swung the nearest thing I could grab: a table vase.

  It hit.

  For an instant, blue-white sparks burst from its wrist.

  “Stun—!”

  Pain wasn’t the right word.

  Heat wasn’t the right word.

  My tongue went numb. My jaw clenched so hard my teeth squealed. For a blink, I tasted copper—like I’d bitten through my own lip, even though I hadn’t.

  It was like every nerve in my body got told, Shut up, all at once.

  My muscles stopped accepting commands.

  My voice died in my throat.

  My lungs forgot the next breath.

  As I toppled, my vision wobbling, I caught Miyu in the corner of my eye.

  She was frozen too.

  Not frozen like fear—

  Frozen like her body had been ordered to stop.

  The android moved behind her and pressed something to the base of her neck.

  Miyu’s eyes went wide.

  “…Nar—”

  The sound cut off mid-syllable.

  Her strength drained, and she started to collapse—only for the android to catch her neatly.

  The last thing I saw, right before my consciousness sank, was Miyu being lifted in its arms.

  Then the optical camouflage flickered back on, and her outline thinned—fading, fading—like the room was swallowing her.

  A heartbeat later, Shiratori’s flat warning finally arrived, delayed and half-choked by interference.

  “Abnormal electromagnetic pulse detected. Localized. Source—

  For half a second, my terminal flashed a diagnostic tag—EMP signature: 18.4 GHz / narrowband—before the jamming smothered it. ”

  Cut off.

  Jamming.

  Too late.

  —Damn it.

  We survived the pursuit.

  And we get robbed here?

  I knew standby was a flag. I knew it.

  In the dark, as my vision went black, I made myself one promise:

  When I wake up, I’m taking her back.

  And I’m never letting anyone leave her behind again.