The man standing over Kaelen didn't possess the celestial glow of an Alpha or the digital shimmer of a nanite god. He was startlingly, brutally human. His tactical suit was scuffed with real dirt, and his eyes—a piercing, icy blue—held the kind of focused malice that only comes from a lifetime of being sidelined.
"Liam?" Elara’s voice was a ghost of a sound.
The name felt heavy on her tongue, dragging up a memory she hadn't even realized was suppressed. Liam. The boy who had tried to save her from the riverbank before the North Star scouts arrived. The boy the simulation had told her drowned so that Kaelen could be her savior.
"The simulation called me a 'casualty of narrative necessity,'" Liam said, his finger tightening on the trigger of the pulse-pistol pressed against Kaelen’s templ
