Chapter 15: Shared Gravity

  The medbay lights flickered overhead, casting sterile glimmers across half-scrubbed floors and aging equipment. Emily Duval sat on a supply crate, shoulders hunched, a roll of bio-foam dressing clutched in her hands like a talisman she didn’t know how to let go of.

  The clinic had gone quiet. The kind of quiet that only came after too many critical calls in a row—when the adrenaline drained out, and all that was left was exhaustion and the hum of overworked filtration units.

  She stared at the last entry in the patient queue: Valtor, K. – Assisted evac. No treatment logged.

  “Of course not,” she muttered, setting the dressing aside. “Of course you didn’t stay.”

  This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

  He never did. Drop off the wounded, vanish before anyone could say thanks. He wasn’t cold, not exactly. But there was a distance to him, like every moment was borrowed, like getting too close might collapse something delicate and unspoken.

  Emily exhaled and rubbed the back of her neck. The synthetic skin over her knuckles was still scuffed from earlier triage. She hadn’t even noticed at the time.

  “You're not curious,” she told herself. “Just tired. That’s all this is.”

  But her mind drifted anyway, to the look he’d given her when their hands brushed over the same stabilizer kit. The flicker of something behind those tired eyes. Not attraction. Recognition. Shared gravity.

  He knows what it’s like to carry ghosts.

  The thought sat heavy in her chest. She stood, moving to power down the diagnostic station, but paused at the last second. Fingers hovering over the switch.

  “You’re not curious,” she whispered again.

  But she didn’t power it down.