Page 37 of Enslak

And again.

Her voice cut through the void. Distant but clear.

"Just hold on."

I would.

I would hold on.

I would survive this.

For her.

Always for her.

Chapter 9

Niki

The Bardaga swallowed me whole. Corridors stretched forever, ceilings vanishing into shadow, everything pulsing with faint bioluminescence—organic metal that looked alive. The air tasted clean but wrong, ozone mixed with something herbal I couldn't name.

Enslak was here. Alive. Safe.

The medical bay sat deep in the ship's belly. Getting there meant riding lifts that moved in directions my inner ear couldn't process—sideways, diagonal, up and down simultaneously. By the time I reached the right level, my stomach was doing flips.

Twelve days, fourteen hours, twenty-six minutes since I'd last seen him.

They'd transferred Enslak into a Garoot Healer the moment we'd docked, the same kind of machine that had saved my life. I'd gone through medical too—standard protocol for checking injury, infection, lingering effects from Merisalle.

The physical exam took an hour. Deactivating my implants took three.

The technician had too many joints in their fingers and apologized while powering down the tech embedded in my skull. "Asad protocol," they'd explained. "Recalibration periods between operations."

I'd wanted to argue—the implants had become part of me, an extension of my senses I hadn't known I needed until they were gone. Without them, the world felt flat and muted, like losing a dimension of perception.

But I'd nodded, agreed, let them shut everything down.

Because none of it mattered if I couldn't see Enslak.

I'd tried every day, sometimes twice, camping outside medbay with my back against the wall, waiting for scraps of information while the staff stayed kind but firm: isolation protocols, no visitors, no distractions.

I'd caught glimpses when the doors opened. Through those gaps, I'd seen the chamber—massive, cylindrical, glowing with soft blue-green light, his silhouette suspended in gel or fluid or something I didn't have words for.

Still—so terribly still.

Each time, my heart clenched. Each time, I wanted to run to him, press my hands against that chamber and will him to wake up.

But I'd stayed back, waited, hoped.

Twelve days, fourteen hours, twenty-seven minutes.

"Detective Nguyen?"

I looked up to find a small nurse with lavender skin. "Enslak?" I asked my go-to question.

"The Prime requested your presence first." Her expression was sympathetic. "She's waiting for you."

The Prime, her mate Cullen, and her other son Kavak had arrived ten days ago.