Jimmy didn't sleep.
He drifted.
There was a difference now.
Sleep used to be darkness—an off switch. This was… depth. Like floating in warm water with his eyes open, thoughts stretching instead of stopping. The ship's hum threaded through him, not as sound but as pattern. Power lines sang softly. Gravity ticked like a patient clock.
And beneath it all—
The hunger waited.
But it didn't snarl anymore.
It watched.
Jimmy stood in a place that wasn't a place. Stars arranged themselves like a diagram around him, lines connecting them in ways that made his teeth ache. Objects drifted past—metal, bone, light, memory—and when he reached out, they didn't vanish into him.
They answered.
He pulled his hand back sharply.
"Okay," he muttered into the not-space. "That's new."
Something shifted.
A presence—not vast like the void predator, not sharp like Vex—but intricate. Layered. Curious in the way engines were curious when you took them apart and discovered they were mostly rules pretending to be matter.
You are not a mouth, it said without words.
You are a threshold.
Jimmy's pulse quickened. "I didn't sign up for cosmic job titles."
You consumed to survive, the presence continued. But survival is only the first function.
Images rippled outward.
He saw himself tearing through wreckage, not devouring it, but rewriting it—metal flowing into new shapes at his touch. He saw energy bending around him, choosing paths it hadn't before. He saw doors where there were none. Silence where there should have been explosions.
He saw Vex.
Standing across a battlefield, tattoos blazing like constellations carved into skin, eyes locked on him—not afraid. Anchored.
The vision tightened around his chest.
"Don't make this about her," he said.
The presence didn't argue.
Instead, it showed him something worse.
Hunters.
Not the scrappers he knew. Not bounty scum chasing credits. These were collectors. Beings and machines built to catalogue anomalies, to cage what didn't fit. He saw himself labeled, measured, boxed into a word that tasted like a prison.
If you remain only hunger, the presence said gently, you will be easy to find.
The not-space collapsed.
Jimmy snapped awake with a gasp.
He sat bolt upright in the cockpit, heart hammering, hands glowing faintly with residual energy that faded as he noticed it. Sweat cooled on his skin. The Stellar Nymph drifted quietly, engines idling.
Vex stood at the navigation console.
She didn't turn right away.
"You're awake," she said.
"Yeah," he croaked. "Define awake."
She glanced at him then—really looked—and her expression sharpened. "What did you see?"
He hesitated. Then laughed softly. "Is it bad that I'm starting to understand why people make cult leaders out of this stuff?"
Her tattoos flickered, cautious hues. "Jimmy."
"I think," he said slowly, "I'm not just eating things anymore."
She crossed the cockpit, stopping a few steps away. Close enough that the ship seemed to lean around them again. "Explain."
He took a breath. "The eye let me see. The energy core let me move power. The void thing—" He swallowed. "That taught me how to hold something without consuming it."
Her gaze sharpened. "Containment."
"Choice," he corrected. "I can still eat. That's not gone. But I don't have to. I can… reroute. Anchor. Open and close."
Vex was quiet for a long moment.
"You're becoming infrastructure," she said finally.
He blinked. "That's the least sexy way anyone's ever described me."
She huffed, then sobered. "Infrastructure changes wars. It decides who moves and who doesn't."
Sparky chimed in from the ceiling. "I concur. Preliminary scans indicate Jimmy's internal energy lattice is reorganizing itself into a non-Euclidean framework. Very exciting. Mildly horrifying."
"See?" Jimmy said. "The official diagnosis."
Vex stepped closer, lowering her voice. "And what does it want?"
He met her eyes. The pull was there again—but steadier now. Less chaos. More gravity.
"It doesn't want," he said. "It responds. To intent. To proximity. To people."
Her tattoos warmed unconsciously.
"And to me?" she asked.
His heart raced—not wildly this time, but deeply. Like something big had shifted into place.
"Yeah," he admitted. "Especially to you."
She searched his face, looking for fear, hunger, loss.
She found resolve.
"That makes you dangerous," she said softly.
He smiled, small and real. "Only to the wrong people."
Outside the viewport, distant lights flickered—ships emerging from long-range jumps, signatures stacking on Sparky's display.
Hunters.
Collectors.
Whatever was coming.
Vex turned back to the console, hands steady. "Then we don't run blind anymore."
Jimmy stood beside her, feeling the ship, the stars, the doors he could now sense waiting to be opened—or sealed forever.
"No," he said. "We decide where the universe gets to touch us."
And somewhere deep inside, the hunger—no longer just a mouth—settled into its new shape.
A threshold.
Waiting.
Training was a mistake.
Jimmy knew that within the first thirty seconds—right around the moment Vex stepped into the cargo bay wearing fitted combat wraps instead of her usual cloak.
The bay had been stripped down to bare metal and humming conduits, a sparring arena disguised as a ship compartment. Hard-light emitters lined the walls. Sparky hovered above, projecting pulsing targets like nervous thoughts.
Jimmy stood barefoot at the center, sleeves rolled up, energy humming under his skin.
And Vex—
Vex was ruining everything.
Her body moved with deliberate economy, every step balanced, every shift of weight purposeful. The glowing tattoos traced her form in slow, reactive patterns—curling beneath her collarbones, flowing over the curves of her chest, slipping down her sides and thighs like living constellations. They brightened subtly with motion, with breath, with intent.
Jimmy's vision—traitorous, enhanced, cosmic—picked up all of it.
Not just the glow. The heat. The way energy pooled and dispersed beneath her skin. The way her presence bent the room just slightly toward her, like gravity had a preference.
"Eyes up," she said.
"They are up," Jimmy replied automatically.
They were not.
They were absolutely not.
One of the targets fired.
Jimmy reacted late, throwing up a half-formed energy barrier that cracked under the impact and sent him skidding across the deck.
He hit the floor hard. "Okay. So. Maybe my eyes were… down."
Vex sighed and crossed her arms. That movement—small, controlled—shifted everything. Tattoos flared briefly across her chest before settling again.
Jimmy groaned louder. "You're doing that on purpose."
"I am standing," she said flatly.
"Yes. Aggressively."
She walked toward him, boots clicking softly. From this close, his senses went wild. He could see the faint pulse of her heart, the way the tattoos responded to it, the alien symmetry of her body mapped in light and energy. His stomach tightened—not with hunger this time, but with something sharper.
"Jimmy," she said. "If you cannot control your attention, you will get yourself killed."
"I can control it," he said, pushing himself up. "It's just—my new vision is… very thorough."
Her brow arched. "Explain."
"You're glowing," he said honestly. "Like a cosmic roadmap carved into an unfairly well-built body."
Silence.
Her tattoos flickered—irritation, embarrassment, something warmer beneath it.
"That is not helpful," she said.
"It's accurate."
Another blast fired.
Jimmy barely redirected it in time, energy warping sideways instead of straight through him. He steadied himself, jaw clenched.
"Close your eyes," Vex ordered.
He did.
The world didn't go dark.
He still felt everything—the ship's systems, the hum of power lines, the vacuum beyond the hull.
And her.
Even without sight, she was there. Solid. Centered. Distracting in a different, deeper way.
She moved.
The air shifted. Her proximity sent a ripple through his awareness, and his heart raced despite himself.
"Still distracted," she noted.
"Yeah," he admitted. "Turns out you're a full-sensory problem."
She stopped directly in front of him.
Too close.
"You are becoming something dangerous," she said quietly. "Your attention shapes reality now. If you let desire pull the strings—"
"I know," he said. "But you also ground me. When I'm not… spiraling."
Her tattoos flared brighter along her sternum, then dimmed with effort.
"That is a risk," she said.
He smiled faintly. "So is everything worth doing."
She stepped back sharply, reclaiming distance. "Again."
This time she circled him—slow, deliberate, every movement calculated to test him. The targets fired in staggered bursts.
Jimmy breathed through it.
He didn't consume. He didn't reach.
He redirected. Anchored. Chose.
Energy curved where he willed it. Blasts dissolved. Paths closed and opened at his command. His awareness expanded—but he held it steady, even as Vex moved like living temptation around him.
When the last target faded, Jimmy stood shaking, sweat cooling on his skin.
Vex studied him.
"You improved," she said.
He laughed softly. "High praise, considering the circumstances."
She turned toward the exit, tattoos settling into a calm glow. "You will learn," she said over her shoulder. "Eventually."
As they walked out together, Jimmy felt the truth settle deep in his chest.
Power wasn't the problem.
Focus was.
And Vex—beautiful, dangerous, radiant Vex—was both his greatest distraction…
…and the one thing keeping him from losing himself entirely.