The Next Day
The next day, the hangar felt heavier than usual. Even the air seemed dimmer somehow. Boss Rourke stood in front of a heap of scrap so bad I wouldn't have touched it if I wasn't paid to.
"Move this one to the incinerator," he grumbled, pointing at the pile of rusted metal in the darkest corner. His voice was flat, soaked in a kind of long-settled despair. "Too far gone. Nothing left worth saving. Just taking up space."
I pushed my tool cart closer, squinting at the "junk." It was an Artifact, but unlike anything I'd ever seen. Shorter, denser—like an old fighter, muscled but scarred. Its frame wasn't sleek or aerodynamic; it was all strange ridges and sharp angles that looked like they belonged nowhere. The plating that had maybe once been silver was now crusted with thick rust and hardened grime, like a wound that had never healed.
"Which model is this, Boss?" I asked, trying to hide the spark of interest rising inside me.
"Don't know, don't care," he muttered, spitting on the floor. "Dug up from an old site outside the city. Catalog's gone. Just a nest for spiders and rats now. Dump it. Fast."
Then he left, leaving me alone with the wreck. His order was clear. But something about it pulled at me. Maybe it was the rawness of its abandonment. An Artifact so forgotten, so unwanted, it wasn't even good for parts. A mirror of how I felt about myself.
Once I was sure no one was watching, I stepped closer. With my oil-stained glove, I wiped some of the grime off its surface. Underneath, strange patterns curled and twisted like rivers or lightning bolts, nothing like the neat straight lines of modern Artifacts. I tried pressing a few of the dead buttons on its open chest panel, exposing cut cables and scorched circuits. No response. Total silence.
I didn't even realize how much frustration had been building in me—months, maybe years—at my own uselessness, at this brutal world, at a fate that kept me running in circles like a rat on a wheel. That anger boiled over, crystallizing into something sharp.
In a burst of desperation, I slammed my hand against the open chest panel, the rough metal tearing my glove.
"WAKE UP!" I barked, my voice hoarse and breaking, packed with all the pain I'd been holding back. "OR AT LEAST GIVE ME A SIGN! ANYTHING!"
And then—everything exploded.
Not in sound or light, but in sensation.
Not the soft blue glow of Aura. This was a violent surge of blue-white energy clawing up from the cold metal into my arm, searing every nerve with burning, paralyzing pain. I tried to scream, but the sound stuck in my throat, strangled by shock. My head spun; the world tilted and blurred. It wasn't heat I felt, but a freezing burn that stabbed down to my bones, like dry ice crawling through my veins.
And from inside the dead Artifact, a sound rose. Not a gentle hum, but a low, cracked rumble like a tombstone being dragged after centuries. Its drooping head—half torn from its neck—lifted slowly, with a jerky, unnatural motion that made my skin crawl. From its empty eye sockets pulsed a deep, sick red glow, uneven and frantic like the heartbeat of something dying, throwing wild, threatening shadows against the hangar walls.
I collapsed to the floor, gasping for breath, my whole body still trembling from the aftershocks. This was wrong. This was so wrong. Female pilots never described anything like this. For them, it was warmth, connection, a partnership.
This… this was a violation.
And then I saw her.
Behind a stack of parts crates stood Lena. The hands that were always neatly folded behind her back now covered her open mouth. That perfect, neutral mask of hers was shattered, replaced by raw, unguarded shock. Then, just as quickly, the shock shifted into something else—a wild, sharp flash of realization, a flicker of understanding that narrowed her eyes and curled her lips into something almost… a hungry smile.
She didn't say a word. No shout, no question. She just looked at me, then at the Artifact now glowing with its unstable red light, then back at me. Her gaze cut through me like a blade.
"No way…" she whispered, barely audible but crystal clear in the hangar's heavy silence. "Unless…"
She turned sharply, her footsteps echoing on the metal floor as she walked away, leaving me alone in the aisle—with my heart pounding like a war drum, my breath ragged, and an Artifact now alive in the wrong way, the painful way, the way it was never meant to be.
Sitting on the cold floor, I stared at my palm. The glove was shredded, and on my skin burned a spiraling pattern just like the ones carved into the Artifact's body, branded there with pain like a hot iron.
A mark of my forbidden touch.
A mark that said my life would never be the same again.