“I trust you,” she says, as his knife rests against her throat.

Her voice is steady, but soft. Like it’s been through war and is tired of fighting. I The blade in his hand isn’t just a blade—it hums, flickering between something real and something impossible. It’s more energy than metal, and if he lets it sink even an inch into her skin, it won’t just kill her—it will erase her. Erase her from time, from memory, from everything.

And yet… she trusts him.

Kai’s hand shakes, just barely. It’s not fear. It’s something worse. Doubt.

“You shouldn’t trust me,” he says, eyes locked on hers. “You know what I was made for.”

“I know,” she replies, her breath brushing against the edge of the blade. “I’m trusting you anyway.”

They’re standing in what’s left of the Astral Gate—a tall arch of shattered crystal and pulsing light. It used to be beautiful. Now it’s broken. Like everything else on this side of the galaxy.

The Protocol says that in order to fix the Gate, a sacrifice has to be made. One life to restore the balance. And she—Lira—is the target. Not because she did anything wrong. But because the people who wrote the Protocol feared her power.

She’s not fully human. Not anymore. But then again, neither is he.

Kai wasn’t born. He was built. A soldier created for moments like this. Precision. Loyalty. No mercy. He was trained to see people like her—“Unstable anomalies”—as a threat. She’s not a person in the Protocol’s code. She’s a variable to delete.

And yet…

“Why aren’t you afraid?” he asks her.

Lira’s eyes are glowing faintly now. A soft blue, like moonlight through water.

“I am,” she admits. “But I’m more afraid of what happens if you follow the Protocol without thinking.”

The word thinking stings.

Because that’s what’s different. He’s not supposed to think. But ever since he met her, something in his programming has started to shift. Glitches, they’d say. Malfunctions.

But it doesn’t feel like a glitch. It feels like waking up.

“I’m not supposed to feel any of this,” he says, pulling the blade away from her neck slowly. “Not fear. Not choice.”

“And yet, here you are,” Lira whispers.

He steps back. The energy in the blade fades. She reaches up and gently presses her hand to his chest—right where his artificial heart beats just like a real one.

“You’re more than what they built,” she says. “You know it, don’t you?”

He doesn’t answer, because the truth is… he does.

Every memory they fed him, every order they programmed—it’s all starting to crack. She’s the first person to see him as someone real. And somehow, in her presence, he is.

“You’re still holding back,” she says, stepping closer. “You think you’re protecting me by not hurting me. But you’re not choosing me yet.”

The words hit hard. Because she’s right.

Turning off the blade is one thing. Choosing her—choosing to fight back against everything he was built to do—that’s something else.

“The Protocol will come for us both,” he warns. “If I don’t finish the mission, they’ll send others.”

“Then let them come,” she says. “But not until we finish what we started.”

Lira walks to the core of the Gate and places her hand on the cracked console. The lights pulse beneath her fingers. She’s the key. Not the threat. Her DNA is the only thing that can reboot the Gate and reset the energy grid across the system.

But it’s not enough alone. It was always meant to be done by two. A bond. A choice. One from the stars, one from the system.

“You were never supposed to kill me,” she says. “You were supposed to choose me.”

He stares at her, stunned.

“You were supposed to wake up.”

He walks over, slowly, and lays his hand next to hers on the console. The lights react instantly—bright, steady, alive.

For the first time, he doesn’t feel like a machine. He feels like a person making a real choice.

The Gate begins to heal itself. Cracks mend. Light surges upward into the sky. All around them, the broken pieces of the world start to come together.

Then the alarm sounds.

Kai’s head jerks up. In the distance, dropships are descending. More soldiers. More blades. The Protocol is coming to finish what he refused to.

“They’re going to try to stop this,” he says.

Lira looks at him, calm. “Then we don’t run. We finish what we started. Together.”

He nods. The knife is gone now, absorbed into the suit on his arm. He doesn’t need it anymore. His weapon isn’t the blade. It’s the choice he made.

The choice to trust her back.

They stand side by side as the Gate begins to shine like a second sun, a beam of pure light shooting into the sky.

This time, he wasn’t following orders.

This time, he was free.