Page 90 of Galactic Sentinels: Vol 2
22-Noviosk
I always knew this day would come. The day she’d find out who I really am.
I watch her, crumbling, wrecked by pain—and by what I kept from her. She trembles, unable to hold back her tears. And me? I just stand there, frozen, unable to take a single step toward her.
On the verge of regaining everything—my throne, my name, my power—I should feel something like satisfaction. But no. None of that. Just a weight. An itch. Her pain unsettles me. Because I know I caused it.
By the Stars… where did I screw this up?
Not when I let her brother be executed. Logan was a clear threat. He was going to leak Vagantu’s coordinates to that damn Confederation. And when he said he’d escape, I believed him. There was no choice to make. Just a decision. Cold. Necessary. Take him out. If I had to do it again, I would. No hesitation.
Not when I hid who I was. How would she have reacted if she'd known, from the beginning, that she’d rescued the former master of Vagantu? Her old jailer? She would’ve let me rot—and I wouldn’t have blamed her.
No… my mistake was thinking, for even a second, that I could be someone else with her. That her attachment to me meant something. That we could actually have something real. Maybe even let it become something more.
I’m Noviosk. And in this world, you survive through strength—or you disappear. Attachment is weakness.
I want everything back. My name. My authority. My empire. My place in the Eastern Quadrant. And to get there, I have to become who I was. Cold. Calculating. Unforgiving.
Sam… she was a detour. A brief light in the darkness. She healed me, protected me when I was just a broken shadow of myself. And for that, I’m grateful. Truly.
But gratitude has no place in my world.
She’s hurting because of me. And I can’t fix that. That’s just how it is.
I need to focus. Rebuild. Prepare.
Eight days. That’s all I’ve got. Eight days to become the deadly Srebat I used to be. To bury pain, doubt, memories.
Eight days to become Noviosk again, the ruthless master of Vagantu.
The hangar they’ve locked us in is massive, cold, impersonal. Probably an old freight depot. The walls shudder sometimes from nearby ship engines, but in here, it’s mostly silence.
Every morning, Sam leaves without a word. She walks across the hangar like a ghost, not even looking at me, and meets the two guards who escort her down the hall to the greenhouses and the lab.
There, she works on Zebulon. The drug they want more potent, more effective, more profitable. A guard let slip that they’ve even set up hydroponic grow modules to cultivate the base plant. Everything is streamlined. Controlled. And she’s trapped right in the middle of it.
While she’s gone, I train.
My leg screams with every move. A constant burn. But I grit my teeth. I strike. I fall. I get back up. Again. And again. Now only six days remain. Six days to turn this wreck of a body back into a lethal weapon. To become Noviosk again.
Evenings, she comes back.
We pass each other. We ignore each other. Two shadows in the same cage. Two strangers bound by a past we can’t erase, and a present we no longer know how to share.
Guards bring our food. Lukewarm, bland rations dumped on the floor. We eat in silence, separate. No words. No glances. Just the clink of spoons in metal bowls and the distant hum of the ventilation systems.
Then, like every night, we crawl into our sleep capsules—individual modules lined up like pods in a metallic beehive. Bigger than coffins, longer, higher. Feet-first entry. An inner shutter blocks out the hangar.
She slides into hers. I slide into mine, far from hers. The air is heavy with everything we don’t say.
Still, I wait.
Because I know her. Sam shines. Even in the dark, she finds sparks. She stumbles, she aches… but she’s not broken. Not by me. At least, I hope not. She just needs time to recover from all this.
But that afternoon, everything shifts.
I’m stretching after my session when I hear a noise. A muffled yell. I freeze. It’s coming from the corridor. A Human guard, pissed off, drags her back into the hangar, gripping her hard by the arm. She struggles, furious. He shoves her into the wall.
