Page 22 of Nebula Hearts
“Yes.” She closes her scanner, not looking at me. “We do.”
We gather the equipment in silence, the failure hanging between us. My wrists still feel warm where she held them. My face still remembered her touch.
This is dangerous. Not just the ruins, but this. The growing awareness. The way my markings respond to her, the way her touch grounds me in a way that has nothing to do with science.
We’re professionals. That’s all this can be.
But as she bends over a supply case, hair falling from its knot, I remember waking with her head on my shoulder. How calm my markings were. How right it felt.
“Ready?” she asks, straightening.
“Yes.”
We walk back to the ship, the relay unrepaired, the colony’s power dropping. Christmas is in two days, and we’re no closer to a solution.
Back at the ship, Aris heads for the medical bay and the database. I should inventory our supplies, but instead I sit across from her and watch her work.
“It can’t be this hopeless,” she mutters, scrolling frantically. “Some method I’m missing.”
“Aris.”
“Not now. I’m close. I can feel it.” Her voice is strained, exhausted. “Empathic anchoring, neural patterns, physical proximity... I have to find it.”
I stand and place my hand over hers on the interface, stopping her. She looks up, her eyes red from the screen.
“You need rest,” I say.
“I need answers.”
“You need rest first,” I insist. “The answers will come when your mind is clear. We’ll be useless in thirty-six hours if we don’t rest now.”
She wants to argue, but she’s too tired to fight. “Fine. Three hours.”
“Deal.”
She stands, swaying slightly, and I steady her with a hand on her elbow. The contact is brief, professional, but the connection is still there. That sense of rightness.
She feels it too. I can tell by the way she looks at my hand before pulling away.
“Three hours,” she says. “Then we figure it out.”
She disappears into her cabin. I stand alone in the medical bay. The data screens offer no solutions, only silence. The ruins might kill me. But this thing growing between us might be more dangerous.
I can fight the ruins’ influence. Fighting the ruins’ influence was one thing; the pull toward Aris was a different kind of force, one I had no training to resist.
And I don’t know if I want to.
ARIS
The diagnostic scanner beeps three times. Wrong rhythm. I frown at the readout, then check it again.
“The readings are worse than I expected.”
Tynrax looks up from where he’s cataloging our remaining supplies. “What’s wrong?”
“The power coupling we fabricated yesterday. It’s showing a stress fracture in the tertiary connector.” I pull up the detailed scan. “See? Right here. The molecular bonding didn’t fully integrate. If we try to channel power through this, it’ll fail within hours.”
He crosses the cargo bay in four strides. Studies the readout over my shoulder. Close enough that I can feel his body heat in the ship’s cool air.
