Page 4

Düren didn’t do warm. Not in its weather, not in the way it kept people alive.

They said Helion did.

They said Helion was a planet made of glass and green. That it was safe. That people there had more than enough. Most workers never saw the white inner districts anyway, only the transfer rings and outer sectors where Helion kept the people who served it.

Safe—if you were part of them.

Ryneth wondered if those rumors were true. What safety really looked like. What it meant to be part of them.

Would they see what he was the second they looked at him? Just another man desperate enough to take any job that kept his family fed.

“Next.”

The line shuffled forward. Ryneth moved with it, eyes down, paper ticket clenched in his hand. He thought of the apartment he’d left behind that morning. The cracked window. The thin mattress on the floor he shared with two younger boys. The door that didn’t close unless you lifted it first. They’d wedged cloth into the frame to keep the wind from whistling through at night.

Ryneth sighed. He should have fixed that damn door before leaving.

Tavi had been curled against his side, still asleep, thumb tucked into his mouth like he was five again instead of twelve. Ryneth had eased his arm out from under the boy’s head, slow enough not to wake him.

In the kitchen, Mara had been sitting at the table with her hands wrapped around a mug that held more steam than tea.

She always poured the water twice so the steam would last longer. She never drank until the boys had taken theirs.

This morning she had. Which meant she was worried.

Ryneth didn’t want her to worry.

“You don’t have to go to Helion,” she’d murmured without looking at him. “You could take the Kassa run. They’re hiring too. It’s closer.”

“I know.”

She’d given him that small, tired smile. “Can’t convince you. I never could.”

That was true.

But there was something else, something he didn’t dare tell her. Something that didn’t feel quite right.

Every time he’d tried to look at Kassa, things had gone wrong. Either the listing vanished, or the recruiter never showed. And Helion had kept sliding back onto the screen. Listings he hadn’t opened. Contracts he didn’t remember saving.

And that gold-and-white offer had always been waiting.

“Helion pays better.” He’d shrugged. “I’ll send it back. Get Tavi the treatment he deserves.”

Mara’s exhale had sounded like resignation, and it made him want to come back with enough coin to make her proud.

She’d pressed a thin credit chip into his palm. “Just in case.” Her fingers had lingered for a second, and instead of letting go, he’d closed his hand around the chip and her hand with it, holding on a little longer than he should have. It felt like goodbye, even if neither of them said it. “If something feels wrong, you get off the ship at the first safe port. There are more places than Helion.”

Mara always said that like he had choices.

Now, standing in the dock line, he could still feel the ghost of the chip pressing against his hip through the pocket of his trousers.

“Next,” the clerk snapped again.

Ryneth stepped forward and slid the ticket across the counter. He pulled one hand from his pocket and stretched it. Static prickled over his skin, eager to leap. He curled his hand to hide the faint glow.

Mara had shown him how to do that.

“Hands in your pockets,” she’d said once, wrapping his fingers closed when he was younger and the sparks had frightened him. “Hide it. People don’t like what they don’t understand.”