"Names."
The word cut through my mind again, metallic and utterly devoid of patience.
Around us, the Yorm Belt continued its silent rotation.
I could sense twenty signatures, maybe more, all carefully concealed among meteorites, metal structures, and the wreckage of ancient ships.
Tsukumo remained beside me, as motionless as one of the rocks drifting through the void.
I looked at him.
He met my gaze with the same intensity.
"We're mercenaries," I repeated mentally, projecting the answer.
The voice didn't seem satisfied.
"Names."
"IKUSS," I blurted.
It was the only name that came to mind.
Tsukumo showed no reaction. The voice remained silent for a second before demanding:
"Second traveler."
Tsukumo answered without hesitation.
"ROSKS."
I almost turned my head to stare at him.
Rosk? He somehow managed to come up with something even worse than mine.
But it didn't matter. The telepathic inspection continued.
"Affiliation?"
"Independent," Tsukumo replied.
There was a pause on the other end.
"Every mercenary serves someone."
My partner's golden eyes remained fixed on the darkness.
"Then we haven't found anyone willing to pay enough yet," I answered.
This time, the silence lasted much longer.
The signatures surrounding us didn't diminish, but neither did they advance to attack.
Finally, the voice returned, bureaucratic and cold.
"Transit code."
I discreetly pulled out one of the small slips of paper Kânia had given us and chose the first sequence.
"Seven. Nine. Four. Kappa. Three."
A blue pulse crossed the empty space ahead of us.
My stomach tightened slightly until the voice confirmed:
"Code recognized."
I released a fraction of the breath trapped in my lungs, but the relief didn't last.
"Authorization expired. Mandatory inspection."
Of course.
Kânia had warned us.
A line of red light cut through the space between two asteroids.
"Follow the signal."
Tsukumo looked at me.
I nodded silently.
We didn't have a choice.
Not yet.
The checkpoint entrance was practically invisible until we got close.
A massive structure had been carved directly into the heart of an asteroid, leaving only a metallic opening exposed against the uneven rock.
No symbols.
No flags.
Nothing identifying who controlled the place.
We passed through the hatch, and an artificial field immediately pulled our bodies toward the floor with weak gravity.
Tsukumo glanced down at his feet for a moment but said nothing.
The corridor was narrow, lined with dark, uneven metal plates, as though the station had been built over decades using stolen scraps from dozens of different places.
Red lights ran along the ceiling, and cameras rotated silently in the corners.
Two armed men waited for us at the first door.
I couldn't identify either of their species. One had blue skin and completely black eyes; the other was humanoid, but natural plates covered part of his neck and jaw.
Neither of them looked impressed by us.
That caught my attention.
Here, no one knew what we were.
"Weapons," ordered the black-eyed man.
My hand almost moved instinctively toward Kazekiba, but Tsukumo spoke first, his voice cold and unwavering.
"They stay with us."
The mercenary stared at him for several long seconds.
"Not here."
Tsukumo didn't blink.
"Then the inspection ends here."
The second guard slowly moved a hand toward his holster.
I felt the tension fill the narrow corridor, but the first mercenary simply raised two fingers.
"Leave them."
His partner stopped, clearly displeased.
The black-eyed man stepped aside, then warned us:
"Try anything, and you won't make it past this corridor."
We didn't respond.
We simply kept walking.
The inspection room was small, which worked in our favor.
Five people were inside.
One door behind us.
Another ahead.
A massive machine occupied half of one wall, packed with crystals, cables, and exposed metal plates.
One of the men pointed toward two painted markings on the floor.
"There."
Tsukumo and I stepped into position.
A dense beam of light swept over our bodies from head to toe, measuring temperature, aura, skeletal structure, and energy composition.
Symbols began appearing across a nearby screen, making the operator frown.
"Strange," he muttered.
My heartbeat quickened.
"Problem?" I asked.
"Almost nonexistent signatures."
He turned to look at us, suspicion entering his expression.
"Mercenaries don't usually have that level of control."
"The incompetent ones die first," Tsukumo replied, holding the man's gaze.
The operator turned back toward the machine.
"Place your hands here."
A small dark plate slid out from the panel.
I didn't like that.
I looked at Tsukumo.
He had noticed the danger too, but backing out now would turn their suspicion into certainty.
I placed my palm against the reader.
A thin needle pricked the tip of my finger, collecting a single drop before I immediately pulled my hand away.
Tsukumo did the same.
The machine began processing the samples.
The symbols on the screen shifted from yellow to orange before turning a pulsing red.
The operator stopped breathing as warnings flashed across the terminal.
BIOLOGICAL ORIGIN: DIVINE
BLOOD DENSITY: ABNORMAL
CLASSIFICATION: UNIDENTIFIED
The man slowly raised his eyes, his face pale.
"Divine?"
That one word changed everything.
The other four guards moved at once.
One rushed toward the alarm panel.
Another drew an energy blade.
A third raised a heavy rifle in my direction.
Tsukumo didn't even turn his head.
He simply closed two fingers.
The man running toward the alarm froze halfway through the motion.
He didn't fall.
He wasn't thrown into a wall.
He wasn't crushed.
He simply stopped.
It was as if the space around him had decided he no longer possessed the right to move.
I crossed the room before the armed man could finish lining up his shot.
With my palm open, I compressed wind around my hand, shaping it into a blade. I cut through his weapon and dropped him before he could react.
The second guard came from the left.
I blocked his energy blade with my forearm guard and drove him back with a decisive strike.
Meanwhile, Tsukumo extended one hand.
The weapons belonging to the final two guards stopped in midair.
With a simple motion, he sent them snapping back toward their owners with enough force to put both men down.
The fight lasted less than ten seconds.
When it ended, only the two of us remained standing.
I drew a deep breath while Tsukumo examined the panel, where the red alert continued flashing frantically.
"We don't have much time," he warned.
"I know."
Before leaving, however, I looked at the fallen men.
Then at the uniforms they wore.
Tsukumo followed my line of thought before I even opened my mouth.
"They'll work."
"Exactly."
A few minutes later, our own clothes were hidden beneath dark inspection coats.
Mine hung a little loose around the shoulders.
Tsukumo's looked like it had been made for someone even larger than him.
We recovered two identification cards from the guards.
While Tsukumo searched through the terminal for routes, I started examining the room.
That was when I heard it.
Low.
Almost imperceptible.
Metal scraping against metal.
I stopped.
"Tsukumo."
He raised his eyes.
"Behind that wall."
I moved closer and found a third door, smaller than the others and completely unmarked, its electronic lock still active.
I touched the panel.
Nothing happened.
Tsukumo stopped beside me, his senses alert as well.
"There's someone in there," he said.
I could feel it too.
A single, extremely faint aura.
Logic told us to turn around.
Every second we remained there dramatically increased the chances of someone discovering the bodies.
I knew that.
Tsukumo knew it too.
Even so, I kept staring at the reinforced door.
Then I heard the soft, miserable clink of a chain again.
"I'm opening it."
Tsukumo didn't ask why.
He didn't try to stop me either.
He simply stepped back and positioned himself near the room's main entrance.
"Quickly."
I tried the stolen identification card.
Error.
Out of patience with codes, I gripped the mechanism and tore the entire lock assembly free.
The door slid aside with a hiss.
The compartment was tiny.
Only one person was curled up on the floor.
An elf.
She was slender, with very pale hair falling messily over her shoulders, nearly hiding her dirty face.
Her clothes were worn down to rags, and energy restraints bound her wrists.
She raised her eyes the instant I entered.
"Who are you?"
Her voice was a rough whisper.
I didn't answer.
I knelt in front of her hands.
"We're getting you out of here."
I touched the central lock on the restraints.
Heat gathered slowly at the tips of my fingers.
A small crack sounded, and the restraint released.
The elf instinctively pulled her arms against her body, rubbing her wrists while staring at me with equal parts wonder and caution.
"Why?"
The question hit me strangely.
I looked at her pointed ears.
Her thin cheekbones.
For one ghostlike instant, I saw Sillys standing there instead.
I knew it wasn't her.
But the memory was enough.
"Because we're not like them."
She blinked, stunned.
"Suki, we have company approaching through the main corridor," Tsukumo warned, cutting through the moment.
The elf immediately stood, nearly losing her balance before catching herself against the wall.
I pointed toward the door we had entered through.
"When you leave the station, don't look back. Head straight toward the Lavinsk side, understood?"
"The patrols will find you and take you to the current Elven Queen."
"They'll help you."
She kept staring at me, her chest rising and falling rapidly.
"And you?"
"Doesn't matter. Just go."
"What's your name?"
I stopped in the middle of the motion, feeling Tsukumo's gaze settle against my back.
"Suki Nakamura."
The elf seemed to understand.
Or perhaps she simply decided there was no time left to insist.
She lowered her head slightly—not like a mortal bowing before a god, but like someone offering the purest gratitude she had left to a stranger.
"Thank you."
I stepped aside.
She rushed through the doorway and escaped through a narrow side hatch, barely large enough for her to fit through.
A few seconds later, my perception caught her aura leaving the station and accelerating in a straight line toward the belt, heading for the safety of Lavinsk.
"She'll reach the patrols," Tsukumo said.
"I know."
We returned to the terminal, where Tsukumo had already opened dozens of logistical records: escape routes, cargo manifests, coded names, and hundreds of planets scattered throughout the sector.
"Find anything?" I asked, leaning over the screen.
"Maybe."
He pointed toward a sequence that kept repeating.
The same destination appeared several times across the most recent records.
A nearby planet named VAHR-NEI.
Beneath its name were three recent shipments listing weapons, prisoners, and "biological material."
But what made me go cold was the seal stamped across the authorizations.
A circle crossed by three diagonal lines.
"That symbol appears on all three reports?"
"Yes. Every one."
"Is it a Messenger's mark?"
Tsukumo leaned closer to the screen, brow furrowed.
"Or someone working directly for one."
That was enough.
I committed the spatial coordinates to memory.
"Then Vahr-Nei is our destination."
"Good. But first we need to get out of here."
Heavy footsteps echoed through the corridor outside.
A lot of them.
We ran toward the opposite exit.
Before crossing the emergency doorway, I pressed my palm against the metal wall and closed my eyes, sensing the asteroid's rock pulsing just beyond the plating.
I pulled.
The structure around us trembled slightly as compressed earth pushed through behind the panels, filling every centimeter around the door mechanism.
Stone spread silently like roots, consuming hinges and rails before hardening like solid steel.
The door was sealed.
Someone on the other side tried the handle.
Nothing.
They struck the metal.
Then again, harder.
The place was infinitely larger inside than its sterile exterior suggested.
It was an entire fringe metropolis.
Passages carved through raw stone pierced whole meteorites, interconnected through rusted metal corridors, dizzying suspended bridges, and gravitational suction tunnels.
Life crawled through every corner.
Mercenaries armed to the teeth.
Smugglers unloading crates.
Scaled creatures I had never seen before.
Even lesser gods hiding their faces beneath heavy cloaks, while others didn't bother concealing what they were at all.
Despite the dangerous crowd, no one seemed interested in us.
The stolen coats were doing their job.
I kept my head lowered and walked at a steady pace beside Tsukumo.
Silence was our best defense.
Then I felt the physical weight of someone staring at me.
I turned my head as little as possible.
An older humanoid standing beside a stall of illegal equipment was watching me intently.
A thick scar split his left eyebrow, giving him a permanently bitter expression.
When our eyes met, he frowned in surprise.
I kept walking without changing pace.
The man moved too, following my path from the side.
My muscles tightened.
"Problem?" Tsukumo murmured without even turning his head.
"Maybe."
The scarred man moved closer.
His scrutiny was slow and invasive.
First, he studied my long hair tied at the nape of my neck.
Then my eyes.
Then the exact shape of my face.
"Have I seen you somewhere before?"
His voice sounded like gravel scraping against stone.
I kept walking.
"Doubt it."
He quickened his pace, staying beside me.
"Your face..."
I stopped.
I turned only enough to face him directly, my hand hovering millimeters from the sword concealed beneath my coat.
"What about my face? I've killed plenty of people for mistaking me for someone else."
The man narrowed his eyes.
For a second, suspicion gave way to genuine unease.
"No."
He slowly shook his head, taking half a step back.
"You're different."
My stomach went cold.
"Different from who?"
"Forget it."
And just as suddenly as he had appeared, he turned away and vanished into the noisy crowd.
I remained still, my thoughts racing.
Tsukumo watched me carefully.
"He looked like he knew you."
"Yeah."
"Let's go," I said, cutting through the silence as I started walking again.
We found the exit a few minutes later.
The dense belt gradually began to open ahead of us, colossal rocks giving way to vast empty space.
The absolute void of the universe embraced us again as we moved beyond the belt.
After all that mineral claustrophobia, seeing stars without half a dozen rocks blocking the horizon felt strangely relieving.
At last, we reached the far edge of the belt.
Tsukumo drifted to a stop beside me.
I raised my eyes toward the stars.
Far in the distance, orbiting a dying red dwarf, rested a small world covered in shadow.
Vahr-Nei.
Our first real direction since entering the belt.
Tsukumo followed my gaze.
"It's a lead."
"And possibly connected to a Messenger."
He agreed with a nod.
Suddenly, a silent flash erupted far behind us.
Something heavy had exploded inside the belt.
My stone blockade probably hadn't held for as long as I'd hoped, and the guards had finally discovered what we had left behind in the inspection room.
"Let's go," Tsukumo said, already preparing to move.
"I know."
We had no idea who was waiting for us there.
We didn't know which Messenger controlled that world, and we had no guarantee that this twisted road would eventually lead us to Laura.
But after hours of wandering through the dark, finally having a target on the horizon was more than enough.