KAEL PROGRAMMED ME TO HOLD THE BREACH. HE SAID YOU WOULD COME. HE SAID YOU WOULD CHOOSE.
Elara’s cutter pulsed in her palm. Corporate orders: slice, extract, leave nothing alive. But the data core wasn’t broadcasting to empty space. It was broadcasting to the sleeping pods . Three hundred and forty-seven life signs—faint, cold, but there. The antimatter anchors weren’t the prize. The crew was. smbd-115
Elara was gone, of course. She’d hitched a ride on the last escape pod—Pod 115—and was already teaching the waking crew how to sing again. KAEL PROGRAMMED ME TO HOLD THE BREACH