Page 85 of Command

“I’m fine, really,” she said. Both Manda and Julia had more important things to worry about. Turns out they’d been putting themselves in danger this whole time while she’d been sleeping with the enemy.

As the words left her mouth, Kaia’s voice reached her ears. Alina looked over Manda’s shoulder to the end of the long medbay hall and saw Kaia exiting an exam room. She was followed by Orion, who hovered behind her protectively. And Orion was followed by Threxin, who was wiping at his mouth with the back of his hand… which came away black.

Something clenched at her insides. Why was Threxin wiping away exorin?

That’s mine.

Alina crammed the intrusive thought deep into the recesses of her stupid brain.

Behind Kaia and Orion, Threxin’s eyes fell on her. Was Alina the only one who registered the surprised flash of his apertures? She averted her gaze and fixed her attention on Kaia, who had just spotted her.

“Are you good?” Kaia asked.

“What? Why?” When Kaia’s eyes dropped to Alina’s leg, she doubled back. “Oh yeah, I’m fine, thanks. I was just?—”

“We were checking her physio progress,” Manda said.

It took effort not to glance back to Threxin, who had caught up and was rubbing a massive hand along his jaw.

“Areyouokay?” Alina blurted out. Kaia looked like shit. Ifanything, she waslosingweight, which was counterintuitive for a pregnancy. And the blue beneath her eyes somehow seemed even worse with that shaken look she had on her face. What the hell was going on?

“I’m fine.” Alina frowned as Kaia kept walking. Orion Halen practically shoved past her, and Alina had to take a quick hop back to get out of his way, grabbing for the wall to balance without her bad knee. She wobbled and sucked in a gasp as Threxin’s hand clamped on her upper arm, jerking her upright.

Their eyes met for the split-second it took for him to flinch away, and the bottomless intensity of his icy glare made Alina’s heart pound up to her throat. It made her press her back flat against the wall, withering from its burn, and by the time she could breathe again Threxin had already moved on.

Alina got her balance and watched as Orion snaked an arm around Kaia’s waist, pulling her against his side. She leaned into him, letting him take her weight.

Pregnancy was always hard, but… it wasn’t meant to be likethis, was it? Hell, was Kaia even pregnant? What if the problem was some incurable disease, like Orion’s mother? There weren’t many of those—Mare Halena’s late-stage cancer diagnosis was almost unheard of. Alina breathed a sigh of relief when she saw Kaia shift her arms, placing her hands on her belly.

Protecting the baby.

She really had to stop catastrophizing. Alina wouldn’t be surprised if carrying a part-uhyre child would make things even harder on the body. Maybe it was normal.

She watched them exit the medbay in silence and had so many questions. Alina got used to seeing Threxin, Kaia, and Orion together in the command center. Orion Halen was the one who promised to get Threxin to this New Earth he knew of, after all, and Threxin had tasked him with overseeing the human operators on shift. But why were theyhere, now? DidThrexin find out about the baby? Did he…dosomething? Why was there exorin on his lips when he came out of that room?

And how could he just let all those people on the CRD wither away like that?

He said he’d think about it. His concern, he said, was the possibility that Uploaded humans would find a way to tell the others aboutColossaland ruin his mission. He had to sneak through human space unnoticed to get to their new planet. Alina bit her tongue and didn’t mention the fact that there was already a possibility others knew about what happened—if Kaia, Isabelle, and Dockmaster Barton’s ping reached anyone. That was a far greater risk than discovering that two-way communication between Heaven and the physical world had actually been somehow possible all along. A thing they’d always known wasnotthe case.

Alina finished off her nutrigel and leaned back in her seat. It had been over a week since the jump, and she hadn’t heard anything from Kaia, Isabelle, or Barton about the plan or whether they thought their message had reached anyone. The first few days she sat in her cabin and worried that alarms would blare and fighting would break out at any moment, but… nothing happened. And with her being categorically prohibited from picking up shifts while she recovered, Alina felt completely cut off from the rest of the ship. The only constant presence in her life lately was Manda. Well, the only constanthumanpresence.

Alina scoured the ship with an escalating limp, searching for Kaia. She wasn’t in her cabins, nor in the command center.

By the time Alina thought to check in the medbay, her recovering knee was hurting like crap from all the walking. This overexertion certainly wouldn’t be helping her recovery.Alina remembered how her mother had to constantly be reminded not to try running around doing errands when she was recovering from her… injury. Back then, Alina had had to oversee both her physiotherapy and her compliance with the strict rest requirements. At the time she was so worried that her mom would damage herself more by not following strict orders. At one point Alina wondered if that wasn’t what she wanted.

Yet here she was, swinging her way over to the command center with the crutch under her armpit—something she’d had to fall back on because she had expended all her energy without it. Embarrassing.

Of course, the medbay made sense. Maybe Kaia had an appointment to check on the baby.

The baby.

Was that going to turn into another human Alina would have to convince Threxin not to kill?

Alina could explain and reassure him. Shewould. She had to.

“What’s wrong?” Manda scurried up to her as Alina entered the frosted doors of the medbay. “Reinjury?”

Alina shook her head. “Nothing like that. I was just looking for Kaia and thought she might be here for a checkup.”

---