Chapter Two: Ghost Frequencies
Traska Station isn't the kind of place where people live. It's where they rot slowly, tucked inside rusted corridors and half-lit compartments that groan with every orbit. It was once a mining hub. Now it's little more than a graveyard for those who ran out of places to go.
I'd been here three years. Changed my name twice. Learned how to disappear in plain sight. And then Mira's message cracked through the static like a voice from the dead.
She said they were building it again.
There's only one "it" she could've meant.
Project Requiem.
It was meant to be a deterrent. A weapon so devastating that no one would ever dare go to war again. They said it would bring peace.
But when peace looks like a planet burning, people stop believing the words.
I never saw the plans. Only glimpses. Hushed conversations in Dominion corridors, half-redacted briefings, and the cold pit in my stomach every time someone said the word "finality."
And now Mira says it's back.
I haven't spoken her name in years. I used to repeat it to myself just to remember how it sounded. Now, just hearing her voice again… it cuts deeper than the silence ever did.
I thought I'd buried everything when I defected. My past. My guilt. Her.
But this—this pulls it all back.
I spend the night staring at the old data pad she sent the message through. There's no sender ID, no traceable signal—just a raw, encrypted file hidden under layers of noise. The kind only she would know how to slip past Dominion firewalls.
Which means she's not just alive. She's still fighting.
And she needs me.
I look out the viewport. The stars are cold tonight. Distant. Uncaring.
My fingers hover over the pad. There's a call code embedded in the encryption. One tap, and I send the signal back.
But it means everything changes.
Again.
I take a breath. I'm tired of running.
And I owe her that much.
I tap the pad.
And the silence answers.