Chapter 9: The Southern Ring
1103 Words
The southern transit ring was nothing like the pristine symmetry of New Lux. Here, the air tasted of iron and engine fumes, humming with the constant thrum of mag-rails shooting cargo toward the Hollow. Smoke curled from exhaust vents like restless ghosts. The gleam of control thinned here; surveillance grids flickered, blind in places where the city’s perfection didn’t quite reach.
Elena moved through it like a shadow. Her graphite suit blended into the industrial greys, her hood low, hiding the neural glint of her spine. The hum of Valkor drones patrolling overhead was steady, but she knew their rhythm, their blind angles. She’d written those algorithms once.
A freight convoy hissed to a halt, couplers locking with a sharp metallic sigh. Workers in steel harnesses secured crates onto hover sleds, their voices clipped and low. No one noticed her slip between stacks of carbon shells, each marked with Valkor’s insignia—a phoenix wrapped in circuitry. She was a ghost in her own world, invisible because no one believed she could exist here.
Her HUD pulsed once.
Dock 47. Three minutes. Alone.
She didn’t need to confirm. She moved, boots soundless against the grating floor, sliding past conduits and neon-stripped panels until
Dock 47 loomed ahead: an abandoned loading bay, its entry light dead, its floor slick with condensation from ruptured coolant lines. A perfect place for secrets.
He was already there.
Cassian stood with his back to her, hands buried in the pockets of his tactical coat. Dark fabric, frayed at the edges, dusted with ash from the outer sectors. His hair caught the glow of a single flickering lamp, streaked silver against black—a scar of time he wore like defiance. A cybernetic implant glimmered faintly over his right eye, a map of circuits etched into flesh.
He didn’t turn when she entered. “You’re late.”
“You’re early,” she replied, voice even, though her pulse betrayed her.
“Or maybe,” he said, turning slowly now, “I’m just better at slipping through cracks than you remember.”
His gaze swept over her—not lasciviously, but sharply, like he was cataloguing every fracture she thought she’d hidden. And then his eyes softened, almost imperceptibly. “Elena.”
Her name on his tongue was a wound she thought had scarred. It hadn’t.
“Don’t,” she said quietly. “Not here.”
“Not anywhere, then,” he murmured. “Because that’s what you’ve been doing for years, isn’t it? Pretending you buried yourself.”
She ignored the ache his words stirred. “You brought me here for a reason.”
He studied her for a beat longer before reaching into his coat. A small holo-chip glinted between his fingers. “This is what I pulled from the Western Data Bridge. Not easy. Damian’s security nets nearly fried half my system.”
“What’s on it?”
He stepped closer, the distance between them folding like paper. “Enough to make you stop pretending you’re safe.”
She took the chip, its surface cold against her skin. “I’m never safe.”
“You’re worse than that,” Cassian said. “You’re owned.”
Her jaw tightened. “Careful.”
“Careful?” He laughed, low and bitter. “I’ve been careful, Elena. Careful while I watched you build a throne out of chains. Careful while I watched you smile beside a man who’d gut you the second you stopped dancing to his rhythm.”
“You think you know him,” she said sharply. “You don’t.”
“Don’t I?” Cassian stepped closer still, close enough that the hum of his cybernetic lens whispered faintly between them. “I know men like Damian. Power isn’t a goal for him—it’s oxygen. And he’ll strangle anyone who breathes more of it than he does.”
The words cut too close to truth. She hated that. Hated that Cassian could still read her, even when she’d spent years perfecting masks.
“You came here to warn me?” she asked coolly.
“I came here,” he said, voice dropping, “because you asked me to. Don’t pretend this is just business.”
She felt it then—the weight of the years between them, heavy with words unsaid. For a moment, the air thickened with something dangerous, something old. His presence was heat in a world gone cold, and it unsettled her more than Damian’s control ever had.
“Cassian,” she said, steadying her tone, “you and I both know what happens if Valkor suspects this meeting.”
“They won’t,” he said. “I scrubbed the grids before I came. Your signal’s buried under a decoy loop.”
“You’re sure?”
“If I weren’t, we’d already be dead.”
The certainty in his voice was a blade—sharp, clean, absolute. It should have comforted her. It didn’t.
She slipped the chip into a hidden compartment on her wrist cuff, locking it with a biometric pulse. “What else?”
“You tell me,” Cassian said. “What’s your play, Elena? Because right now, it looks like you’re trying to hold two worlds that can’t coexist.”
“They can,” she said, but even as the words left her lips, they sounded like a lie.
He shook his head, a faint smile ghosting his mouth—sad, almost tender. “You’re still trying to save the wrong thing.”
“And you’re still trying to save me.”
His silence was answer enough.
A distant clang reverberated through the bay—a crate shifting on metal tracks. Elena stiffened, scanning her HUD for motion
signatures. Nothing red. Not yet.
“We’re done,” she said, moving for the exit.
But his hand caught her wrist—not hard, not possessive, just enough to stop her. She turned, and for the first time in years, their eyes locked without pretense.
“You don’t have to go back,” he said softly. “Not tonight.”
For a heartbeat, the thought burned like oxygen. Then she killed it.
“Yes,” she said, pulling free. “I do.”
And she walked, each step heavy with the weight of what hadn’t been said.
Behind her, Cassian didn’t follow. He only watched as she vanished into the maze of steel and shadow, the sound of her boots fading like the echo of a promise he knew she wouldn’t keep.
Above them, the city gleamed—a crown of glass for a queen who no longer believed in thrones.
- Writer
