Jealousy
(Rainier's pov!)
The cockpit of the Void-Skipper felt like a coffin made of glass and glowing circuitry. As I slammed the airlock shut, the roar of the depressurizing station was replaced by the high-pitched whine of ion engines fighting for life.
I fell into the pilot's seat, my hands flying over the manual overrides. My Bio-Clock was still a mess of static—a glitchy cocktail of my identity and Devillione's. We were a 'shared account' now, a single pulse beating in two bodies.
Behind me, Devillione wasn't sitting. He was a looming shadow over my shoulder, his hand braced against the bulkhead. I could feel the heat radiating off him, the lingering scent of ozone and the heavy, metallic taste of the oxygen he'd forced into me back in the hallway.
"The Syndicate's 'Interceptor' class ships are already detached from the main ring," Devillione said, his voice dropping into that low, tactical hum that meant he was back in the hunt. "They don't want the ship, Rain. They want the data in that briefcase."
"I know what they want!" I snapped, my fingers dancing across the haptic display. The shuttle groaned as I pushed the thrusters into the red. "But if I dump the case, Vricksen triggers the kill-switch in my neural link. I'm a dead man either way."
The radar screen pinged—three signatures, fast and aggressive, closing in from the station's dark side. We were being boxed in.
I looked at the briefcase sitting on the floor between us. That matte-black box contained the Ghost-Slugs the digital souls of men who no longer existed. It was a bribe, a cage, and a weapon all at once.
"Dev, look at the sensor feed," I pointed to the flickering holographic projection of the pursuing ships. "They're tracking the briefcase's signature, not the shuttle. Vricksen put a beacon in the credits. He never intended for me to vanish; he intended for me to be a decoy while he slipped out the back."
"The old man played you," Devillione remarked, his eyes narrowing. "So, what's the move? We can't outrun Interceptors in a cargo shuttle."
I felt a cold, sharp grin touch my lips. It was the kind of reckless idea that only comes when you've already died once in a hallway. "We give them what they want. But we don't give it to them for free"
I reached down and flipped the latches on the case. The 'Ghost-Slugs' glowed with a faint, pulsing blue light. I didn't plug them into the console. Instead, I wired them to the shuttle's emergency flare dispenser.
"What are you doing?" Devillione asked, stepping closer, his chest nearly brushing my chair.
"I'm spreading the debt," I whispered.
I hit the launch button. Instead of flares, the shuttle ejected the carrier slugs into the vacuum. They didn't just float; they shattered upon exit, releasing a cloud of high-density data-fragments into the solar winds.
To the Syndicate's sensors, it looked like a thousand different were suddenly fleeing in every direction.
The Interceptor ships hesitated. Their targeting computers began to spin wildly, locking onto a thousand ghosts at once.
The shuttle lurched as we broke the station's gravity well, punching into the silent, cold dark of the Outer Reach. The silence in the cockpit was heavy. The bribe was gone. The money was space-dust. Vicky was still in a coma, and I was still a Zero.
I leaned back, my breath hitching in my chest. I looked at Devillione. He was watching me with an expression I couldn't read—part triumph, part predatory hunger.
"You just threw away a fortune," he said, his voice dangerously soft.
"I threw away a leash," I countered, meeting his gaze. "Now the only person who knows where I am is you."
Devillione reached out, his thumb brushing the line of my jaw where he had held me during the kiss. "That's exactly how I like it, Rain. No ghosts. Just us."
As the stars stretched into long, white lines of warp-travel, I realized that it wasn't the end of my debt. It was the beginning of a new one.
I didn't owe the Syndicate anymore. I owed the man who had given me the air to breathe, and in this game, that was the most expensive debt of all.
---
The hum of the engines was a low, gnawing vibration that seemed to settle directly into my marrow. We had punched through the atmospheric ceiling of Ombre Vault, leaving the neon-drenched smog behind, but the silence of deep space didn't feel like peace. It felt like a vacuum waiting to be filled with the things we hadn't said.
I stayed slumped in the pilot's seat, my hands still hovering over the haptic controls, though the autopilot was now tracing a jagged, erratic path through the debris-belt of the Outer Reach. My chest still felt tight. The borrowed air from Devillione's lungs had integrated into my system, but the psychological weight of it remained—a phantom pressure against my ribs.
"You're shaking," Devillione said.
He hadn't moved back to the passenger's bay. He was still there, a wall of dark fabric and suppressed violence, standing just behind me. I could feel his gaze on the back of my neck, tracing the line where my neural port met the skin.
"It's the adrenaline dump," I lied, my voice sounding thin even to my own ears. "And the fact that I just turned ten million credits into stardust."
"You didn't turn it into stardust. You bought us ten minutes of invisibility." Devillione reached around me, his arm brushing my shoulder as he tapped a command on the navigation console. The screen flickered, showing the distance between us and the nearest Syndicate relay.
"But visibility isn't your problem, Rain. It's the tether."
I looked down at my wrist. The Bio-Clock was still stuttering. Because of the forced union at the airlock, the display wasn't just showing my time anymore.
It was a dual-layered readout. My red-line deficit was being propped up by Devillione's high-tier surplus.
"We have to decouple," I whispered, staring at the numbers. "If the Syndicate traces your signature, they'll see me. If I crash, I take your credits with me. You're bleeding value just by standing next to me."
"Then....Let it bleed," he muttered.
He didn't pull away. Instead, he moved closer, his hand sliding from the console to the headrest of my chair.
The possessive energy I'd felt in the hallway hadn't dissipated; it had fermented into something quieter and more dangerous.
"You've spent your whole life trying to be a 'Zero,' Rainier. Uncounted. Untraceable. But look at you. You're more connected now than you've ever been. You're breathing my air. You're spending my time. You're a subsidiary of me now."
–––
I closed my eyes, the image of Vicky in that stasis stage flashing behind my eyelids. The guilt was a cold, sharp needle. By throwing away the bribe, I had ensured my own survival, but I had left her in the dark. Devillione wouldn't kill her—not yet. She was still a variable he could use to pull me back into the orbit of the city.
"She's still there," I said, my voice cracking. "I took the coward's way out. I let you kiss me, I let you save me, and I let her burn."
"She was burned the moment you took the job," Devillione countered, his voice devoid of sympathy. He leaned down, his face inches from mine, forcing me to look at him.
"Stop playing the martyr. It doesn't suit a man with my breath in his lungs. You want to save her? You don't do it with Vricksen's bribes. You do it by becoming the thing the Syndicate is afraid of. Not a runner. A ghost who bites back."
The cabin lights flickered as the ship's power plant struggled to maintain the stealth-shroud. In the dim, red glow of the emergency lights, the tension between us became something tangible—a physical heat.
I hated him. I hated the way he looked at me like I was a prize he'd finally hunted down.
I hated that I had needed him. But as I looked at the hard, scarred line of his mouth, I remembered the way his lungs had felt against mine.
It wasn't just oxygen he'd given me; it was a spark of defiance.
I stood up, the movement abrupt, forcing him to take a half-step back. We were in the cramped confines of the cockpit, the air recycled and smelling of heated electronics and the salt of our own sweat.
"What happens when the override expires?" I asked, my hand trembling as I reached out to touch the heavy tactical vest he wore. "What happens when the system realizes I'm still a Zero?"
Devillione's hand shot out, catching my wrist. His grip was like iron, but he didn't pull away. He drew my hand toward his chest, pressing my palm against the steady, heavy thud of his heart.
"Then I'll give you more," he said, his voice a low, terrifying promise.
"I'll feed the Ledger until it chokes on my name, as long as it keeps you upright. You're not going back to the Zero-Class, Rain. You're staying right here. In the red. With me."
I realized then that the "Zero Sum Game" was a lie. There was no such thing as an even trade. Someone always paid. Someone always owned.
I leaned forward, my forehead resting against his chest. I was a runner who had run out of road. I was a thief who had stolen the only thing I couldn't trade back.
"Then show me how to bite back," I whispered.
Devillione didn't answer with words. He reached up, his fingers tangling in the hair at the nape of my neck, and for the first time since t
he hallway, the look in his eyes wasn't just jealousy—it was an invitation to a war we were both destined to lose.