Fracture - Book One of the Glass Galaxy Trilogy

Chapter 24: Return

I stared at my milkshake, "I can certainly understand wanting to do that..."

"So wait," Abaddon piped up. "Doesn't that mean that only two of us passed? If we failed their test then why did they decide to give us the cargo?"

"She mentioned seeing great potential in my future," I said as I sipped on my milkshake. It tasted much better half-melted.

"Potential?" Aria asked, confused. "Like, you're a psychic or something?"

I shrugged, "She didn't specify."

I took another sip from my milkshake, the icy cold painfully freezing the roof of my mouth.

Reaper set her new milkshake down on the table and dropped into her chair, sighing deeply. "So what comes next, Kalani? The Grezma are waiting for their delivery, and in return they will tell us where Kaeya is, but what if she's being held somewhere in the Federation that we can't reach?" She gestured around the table, "We're not exactly upstanding citizens by their metrics."

My brain-freeze was lasting a lot longer than I liked. "Viliana's ship is equipped with a stealth core. If needed to, I will ask her to help us."

Abaddon leaned forward in his seat, his interest piqued, "A stealth core? You mean like those cloaking devices in movies? You guys actually have stuff like that?"

"Yeah," I replied, "though it was new technology even by Teracon standards. It won't help in a fight, but it should let us infiltrate nearly anywhere in the Federation."

Abaddon let out a low whistle, and I could see that Reaper was thinking about the ways she could use such technology.

"What if Viliana isn't willing to help?" Reaper asked slowly.

I took another sip of my milkshake, apparently not content with letting my brain-freeze go away. "Then we go in with my ship."

Sarinna shook her head, "You didn't seem like a fool to me, so surely you understand that that would be suicide?"

I looked her dead in the eyes, "I might as well already be dead without Kaeya."

"So you are foolish. Why are you so obsessed with this Kaeya? What about the people next to you? Do you care nothing for them?"

I jumped to my feet and seized my milkshake in my hand, throwing it to the floor in rage.

Oh no.

"You are nothing compared to Kaeya!"

This was wrong.

"You will never understand me as she does, never share in my life as she does!"

Share in my life? I hadn't seen her in decades.

"Do you think that I should just abandon her to rot in some Federation prison?! To be tortured every day until she dies?!"

Sarinna doesn't even know any of this, it's not fair to get angry at her.

"What do the people next to me matter when the one person in this entire galaxy that cares about me is missing!?"

That's wrong, they do care about me, I know that.

I turned to storm out of the room and tripped over my chair, crashing to the floor with it. The fall shattered my anger, and the tears escaped.

I didn't want to show them this.

I tried to stand up, pushing up off my sideways chair, but my knees were too weak to support me and I slumped down. The dam inside me burst.