Chapter 8 8

They'll waste their entire life away searching for a fix.

I love the way I feel when I hold Neron. I love it.

So I don't let myself touch it more than once a solar, at best. Because I know myself, and I know with how much I love this feeling, I would become one of those addicts.

But for now, I let my eyes slide closed. I let the Neron rush through me. With the simple contact of my skin, it's like it bonds with me, becoming one. I'm instantly aware of all the other Neron that surrounds me: in the air, in the walls of this building, far beneath my feet. I feel it in my blood.

Neron is everywhere.

Neron is energy. Neron is life.

I feel good, because the Neron is healing me. Any small bruise, any cracked finger. Any breaks deep inside me, Neron finds them and heals them.

For this moment, when I am holding this Neron, I am ageless. Time has stopped.

Though it's dark with my eyes closed, movement draws my attention. The air is very still and I realize I'm not breathing.

A shape steps through the shadowy fog. I find broad shoulders. Strong legs. A proud jawline.

I squint in the dark, searching for the face of this person. But it's dark.

He, I realize it is certainly a male figure, reaches out a hand toward me.

At first I think it's to ward me off, or maybe to push me away.

But as I once more look for his shadowed face, I think that maybe he's reaching for me. Inviting me.

A feeling of familiarity tugs inside of me. I slowly extend my hand. I take two steps forward.

But, just before our fingertips can touch, the entire universe collapses in on us, and it all ends with an explosion of blue Neron.

I drop the blue shard and take five steps back with a startled yell. I bump into a wall and leave myself there, breathing hard and panicked.

I've never actually seen anything when holding Neron. I've felt things, felt connected to people's emotions. But I have never, ever seen anything.

I don't know what that was, or who that was. But I don't want this feeling of heaviness and dread looming in my chest ever again.

With the edge of my tunic, I grab the Neron shard, secure it back in the center of my staff, and pack up.

It's one benefit of being mechanically inclined with a mind for engineering. I found this base level of our cube building a few solars ago. The power system it was operating on had to be over a hundred solars old. After talking with the building manager, I told him I could cut his power costs down to ten times less than what he was paying. If he would pay for the equipment, I could build and install it.

In exchange, he gave me use of the left-over space without question and without ever stepping foot inside.

I would take care of any problems with the system should they arise.

Zayne and I use the space to play with our toys.

Here, I pretend I'm something that I'm not. Here, I pretend that my life has more meaning than it does.

"I confirmed the rumors," I growl at Reena as she bustles around the shop. "I spent two hours in that bar and overheard two different groups talking about on-planet Neron. You're not being discreet enough."

"They have no way of proving that the Neron came from Korpillion," she says, hardly missing a beat. There are five other workers here in the processing room. We're a half a kilometer closer to the surface level than the actual mine. Huge, solid crystals of Neron as big as my head line shelves. The workers operate machinery I helped develop to split them into smaller, more discreet and portable-sized crystals, ready for distribution. "All Neron looks the same."

"You need to take this seriously," I say, taking a step forward and grabbing her arm, making her stop and look at me. "If Dominion finds out there's Neron here, I want you to imagine the consequences. Korpillion is the only inhabitable planet in the T, U, and V system that isn't owned by Dominion. Do you really want the displacement of all those people on your hands?"

Reena finally meets my eyes. She stares at me, and I realize why she unsettles me so much. She's cold. Her eyes are like ice. I really don't think she cares about anything.

Except me being on time.

"Dominion sweeps the systems once every fifty solars," she says. And all the little hairs on the back of my neck stand straight up. "Did you know that?"

I didn't.

"Their technology constantly changes, it gets better and better every solar," she explains. "Since Dominion was founded, they have swept the entire galaxy approximately eight times. It has been forty-six solars since they last scanned Korpillion."

Which means our planet has only four more solars until Dominion returns and scans Korpillion with far more advanced technology than last time.

"Dominion discovering our Neron has always been inevitable," Reena says in a cool, quiet way. "It doesn't matter if rumors spread to every corner of the planet. This will all be over in four solar's time, anyway."

"Why haven't you told anyone?" I breathe. "They're going to come and our planet will be gutted. If people knew now, they could prepare. They could move off-planet before things get bad."

Reena jerks out of my hold and goes back to her work. "Don't be foolish, Nova. There are twenty-eight point one billion people on this planet. It would take decades to evacuate them all. Not a notable fraction of them could leave before Dominion comes."

"So you're just going to let everyone get screwed over?" I demand. "You and about a dozen others know for a fact that there is Neron on this planet. You are one of the only people who could do anything about this, who could make a difference, and you're not going to do a slam thing?"

She turns on a grinder and the noise of the machine fills the entire space as it pulverizes the Neron into a fine powder. My pulse pounds in my ears as I watch her, being so calm, continuing as though nothing is wrong. Finally, she switches off the machine and scoops the sparkling blue material into a glass vial.

"I plan to make enough money for me and my crew to get as far away from this planet as possible when they come." She caps off the glass vial and sets it on a shelf with a line of others. "We have four solars to prepare." Her eyes rise to meet mine. "I suggest you do the same."