Page 22 of Claimed By the Alien Assassin
I stare right back until he looks away.
I don’t think either of us wins that round.
Later, as we’re reviewing supply caches and scavengeable equipment lists from the station manifest, I ask, “Why do you care? Really.”
His eyes don’t lift from the console. “You asked.”
“That’s it?”
“For now.”
He doesn’t elaborate. He doesn’thaveto. I hear the gravel behind the words, the weight of a thousand reasons too sharp to speak aloud.
And I realize I want to pry him open like an engine casing. I want to find the sadness lodged behind his stoicism, the wound hiding beneath the callouses. I want to take his silence and turn it into music.
But I don’t.
Not yet.
Because I get it.
We’re both running on fumes and trauma, on hope wrapped in duct tape and desperation. There’s no room for unraveling right now.
But there will be.
Therewillbe.
The ship groans like it’s alive. A bitter, wounded thing, cobbled from parts too proud to die and too stupid to quit.
I like it already.
It smells like dried copper and scorched insulation—like someone bled in here once and the wiring never forgot. The pilot’s seat creaks under my weight, the headrest stiff with years of sweat and failure. It’s the kind of vessel you steal in desperation and pray doesn’t blow up mid-jump. But the controls respond to me with something like grudging respect.
Dayn sits behind me in the copilot’s chair, silent as ever. The kind of silence thatknowsthings. He hasn’t said a word since we left the docking ring. Just watched. Observed. Calculated.
I can feel his eyes on the back of my head even now, cool and unreadable. He’s close enough I can hear the quiet hitch in his breath every time I bank the ship too sharp. He doesn’t complain. He doesn’t flinch. But Iknow.
“Ship’s not exactly stealth tech,” I mutter, flicking a switch to override the main transponder. “But with the right vector and a prayer to any gods still listening, we’ll slip past their orbitals.”
“You believe in gods?”
“Only when I’m desperate.”
A beat.
“I believe in physics,” he says.
I smile despite myself. “Then let’s hope the math’s on our side.”
He leans forward, not close enough to touch, but close enough that the air thickens between us. His voice, when it comes, is low and smooth. “You always fly like this?”
“Like what?”
“Like you’re daring the universe to stop you.”
“Only when someone’s watching.”
Another silence. This one... warmer. Like a truce neither of us wants to break.
