The first thing Sommer Dai hears is
dripping water. Slow. Echoed. The second is the sound of
metal shifting — not machines, but old ship bones, creaking from pressure and rot.
Then she tastes blood in her mouth.
She stirs, eyes fluttering open to hazy light.
Everything is
tilted. Her limbs feel heavy, her thoughts slow.
Her body lies atop a cold slab that was once a med table, her wrists strapped with silk-black binders — not for pain, but for
display. The room smells of damp steel and spice. A tattered Imperial banner droops in the corner. Screens blink in and out of static, each one showing pieces of her past — stolen club footage, old bounty logs, even a childhood arrest record she thought destroyed.
"No…" she rasps. "No. Not here."
She struggles, but her body doesn't fully respond. Whatever Ghost gassed her with left a burn in her veins.
Her reflection flashes across one of the screens — pale, smudged, disoriented.
Then the screen changes.
A camera feed.
A live view of the sea. Two
figures streaking through the sky — black jet trails carving against the dawn.
Andrew.
Kael.
Coming for her.
She exhales a ragged breath, tears hot in her eyes — not from fear, but from the sudden rush of
not being forgotten.