Page 28 of She Who Devours the Stars
Somewhere, deep in me, I felt something curl tighter, like a promise I had forgotten.
The Deep Cut host was still going, now gesturing at a star map riddled with dots of red. “Lioren built gods and broke them. He was arrogant enough to name his own doctrine ‘benevolent obliteration.’ Would’ve wiped a colony if it meant saving two more. Was he a tyrant? Absolutely. A genius? Undeniably. A lover? According to 900 documented sources—divinely forgettable. According to Zevelune? I quote—'not bad.’”
I snorted, but the sound felt too loud in the empty apartment. Of course, she’d say that. I hated how much I wanted to know exactly how not bad.
“He wasn’t a man,” the host said, lowering her voice to a reverent hush. “He was a myth in a mirror. And now we have a new one.”
The screen shivered, as if it knew what was coming. Then a hard cut, a flash of blue-white, and there I was: caught by a floating security cam, eyes full of resonance, hair blown back by the shockwave of my own existence. The video slowed, looped, zoomed in on the way my veins lit up along my left arm. The color was wrong, the angle distorted, but it was me, no doubt, even if the girl in the shot looked ten percent more dangerous than I felt.
The host’s voice went soft. “While debate rages over whether she’s Lioren reborn, one thing’s unanimous across Accord-space: those cheekbones could slice through treaty law.” A long pause. “Her name’s not Lioren. But she glows the same.”
I watched the replay. My glare, mid-turn, catching the camera with a look that said fuck off and also please god let me sleep. The world froze on that frame.
I closed the tile with a flick, then lay back and let the afterimage burn through my eyelids.
For a long time, I just listened to the apartment. The tick of the heating coil, the pulse of the coffeepot, the wind strafing the window with dust and last year’s pollen. There was no drama here, just the sound of life refusing to give up. I let my mind go blank, just for a second, and felt the buzz of myth and legacy hum through my bones.
Perc, after an eternity, muttered, “I liked the moon. She was polite.”
I grinned into the silence. “He didn’t deserve her.”
I stretched, feeling the pop and crackle of every joint. Let the history lesson leak out of me, molecule by molecule. Sometimes I wondered what it would be like to have been normal. But normalcy was for people who still got invited to their own birthdays.
I was about to slide into a nap when the first rattle hit the window. It sounded like hail, but the forecast was clear. I ignored it. The second hit was louder, more deliberate. The third time, the whole pane shuddered, and I felt the impact in my molars.
I stood, shuffled to the sill, and looked out. Nothing but the reflected lights of the city, the smear of Xenthis in the sky, and a single shadow on the balcony, wrapped in a blanket of static.
The storm had returned. This time, it knocked.
I turned back to the coffeepot, whose display now showed a single word: “Prepare.”
I didn’t laugh.
Chapter 5: Kill Team, Meet My Little Friend
Thread Modulation: Fern Meldin
Axis Alignment: Meldin Apartment, Pelago-9
I always hated breakfast, even when it wasn’t a euphemism for whatever was left in the feed bin that hadn’t yet achieved sentience. The Meldin apartment’s kitchenette was supposed to be the safest not-quite-a-room in the universe, a concept so hypothetical even the universe had given up pretending. Still, at 4:03 a.m. GST, it felt like the air had been replaced with a stillness engineered for surgical precision.
I was barefoot on the laminate, toes numb from the fridge’s leaking coolant, picking at a slice of bread so anemic the word “bread” had to be in quotes. I’d found it sealed at the bottom of a ration crate dated three cycles ago, and the yeast content was an urban legend. But the other option was the same as always: caffeine, despair, and maybe a protein square if Perc didn’t overheat the wrapper again.
I dropped the bread into the toaster, a relic from the last maintenance boom, and waited for the familiar rattle of gears and ozone. It didn’t come. The machine just sat there, inert, daring me to believe in a future where things worked as intended.
I pressed the lever again, then harder, and then with a punch that left my knuckles aching. Still nothing. No click, no judder, no cheap mechanical music. Just silence so deep it retroactively erased the memory of every breakfast I’d ever had.
“Perc?” I said, not turning. The coffeepot glowed faintly in the corner, but he’d gone dark except for a blinking blue dot. His LCD was supposed to default to sunrise emojis at this hour, or at least a grim motivational quote about the necessity of carbohydrates, but right now it just pulsed a single word: “Awaiting.”
I stared at it, unsettled.
“Don’t make me debug you before dawn,” I warned, but the joke fell flat even in my own ears.
The city outside made up for the apartment’s lack of personality. The Glimmer Zone was never truly quiet: even in lockdown, the hum of street vents, the pulse of day-old news feeds, and the slap of early-shift boots on wet pavement all filtered through the cracked seals of our windows. Tonight, or this morning, it was nothing except the distant, low-pressure hush of a world that had lost its taste for noise.
I pulled the bread from the toaster. The top was still cold, but the bottom had gone brittle in the ghost of a heat cycle. I chewed, jaw working slow, and let my gaze wander over the chaos of our kitchen. The counters were an archaeological dig of family conflict: Dax’s solder spools and micro-welders, Velline’s beauty bombs and color-coded infusions, and my collection of scavenged signal chips, blackmarket adhesives, and the one forbidden knife I’d never managed to re-hide after the last Accord sweep. The knife’s handle was slick with a kind of heatless static, and every time I touched it, my veins pulsed a little brighter for the rest of the day.
I finished the toast and ran my thumb over the jagged edge of the counter. The vibration was off, a half-cycle slower than usual. It took a second to realize what was missing: the argument. There was always an argument, usually about power consumption or whose turn it was to patch the mold-rot behind the utility panel. The silence in its place was loud enough to rearrange molecules.
