The silence in the Star-Jumper felt different after Lira fell back asleep. It was no longer just empty; it was charged. Marc watched the steady rise and fall of her blanket, the faint glow of the data-cube on the bedside table. The Cerebrian girl’s words echoed in his mind, not as comfort, but as a catalyst. "You’re not disconnected. You’re just a different form." A different form. A weapon. A tool. That’s what he’d always been. But watching Lira, seeing the sheer, brutalized innocence in someone who understood the universe’s cruelty better than most adults, something in him solidified. The hollow feeling wasn’t filled with warmth, but with a cold, singular purpose. Talking, planning, waiting for the Guild—it was too slow. Too uncertain. It was what people who had time would do. He was done waiting. ʀᴇᴀᴅ ʟᴀᴛᴇsᴛ ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀs ᴀᴛ 𝕟𝕠𝕧𝕖𝕝⁂𝙛𝙞𝙧𝙚⁂𝔫𝔢𝔱 He didn’t make a sound. He stood, cast one last look at the sleeping girl, and slipped out of the room. The ramp hissed down into the perpetual twilight of the bazaar. The air was still thick with smells and sounds, but Marc filtered it all out. His focus was a laser. He moved through the crowds not with aggression, but with an unnerving, direct intent, people instinctively shifting out of his path. He knew where he was going. The Omni-Stellar regional headquarters was a gleaming spike of durasteel and reflective glass, a monument to cold efficiency that dominated the skyline of the commercial sector. It was the source of the poison. The heart of the machine that had chewed up Lira’s parents and spat them out. He didn’t have a complex plan. He had a simple one: walk in, find the person in charge of the Karys-7 cover-up, and persuade them, with extreme prejudice, to permanently end their interest in Lira. He was very good at persuasion. As he approached the wide, sterile plaza before the main entrance, a figure simply appeared in front of him. There was no blur, no sound. One moment the space was empty, the next, Lucian was standing there, arms crossed, his expression unreadable but his presence an immovable wall. Marc stopped short, his momentum arrested. He hadn’t even heard him coming. Lucian’s eyes, black and sharp, scanned him up and down. "Going for a walk?" he asked, his voice deceptively calm. "Something like that," Marc grunted, trying to step around him. Lucian shifted, blocking his path again without seeming to move. "The Omni-Stellar tower. Interesting destination for a stroll." "It’s a free planet." "It’s a planet with rules. Rules we can’t afford to break by starting a war with a megacorp because you’re feeling impulsive." Marc’s jaw tightened. A faint heat haze began to shimmer around his shoulders. "I’m not being impulsive. I’m being efficient. They’re a problem. I’m going to solve it." "By doing what?" Lucian’s voice remained level, but a flicker of spatial distortion warped the light around his feet. "Burning the place down? Crushing the CEO into a pulp? And then what? You think they’re the only ones? You kill these, a dozen more take their place. You’ll paint a target on Lira bigger than the one she already has. You’ll get her killed, and us along with her." "They won’t be a problem if there’s no one left to give the orders," Marc shot back, the heat around him intensifying. The air crackled faintly. "You think you’re the first powerful being to have that thought?" Lucian countered, his tone turning icy. "The universe is littered with the ashes of empires brought down by ’efficient’ men like you. And new ones always grow from the ashes, meaner and more paranoid than the last. You don’t solve a systemic disease by cutting off one finger." "So we do nothing? We sit and talk while she lives in fear?" Marc’s voice was a low growl. The pavement beneath his boots began to glow a dull red. "We do what Reia is doing right now," Lucian said, not flinching from the heat. "We find the pressure points. We leak the data to their rivals. We bankrupt them in the interstellar courts. We use the system they built to dismantle them. It’s slower. It’s less satisfying. But it doesn’t end with us being hunted across the galaxy by every corporate security force with a bounty to claim." He took a step closer, the space between them compressing. "You want to be a shield for her? Fine. But a shield doesn’t charge blindly into the enemy camp. A shield stands firm. It protects. It waits for the right moment to strike. What you’re doing isn’t being a shield. It’s being a wrecking ball. And you’ll bring the whole structure down on top of the very person you’re trying to protect." The logic was infuriating because it was right. Marc could feel the raging fire inside him, begging to be unleashed, to reduce the cold, arrogant tower to slag. But he also saw the image Lucian painted: Lira, forever on the run, not from one company, but from a shadowy network of them, all because of him. The red glow under his feet faded. The thermal aura receded, though the anger still burned in his eyes. He looked from Lucian’s impassive face to the towering symbol of corporate power. "So we just wait?" he asked, the fight draining out of him, replaced by a frustrated helplessness. "We be smart," Lucian corrected. "The time for burning might come. But it will be our choice, on our terms. Not a tantrum." He turned, gesturing back the way they came. "Now, come on. The others are waiting. We have a real plan to discuss." Marc stood for a long moment, his fists clenched, staring at the tower. Then, with a final, frustrated sigh, he turned his back on it and fell into step beside his brother. The weapon was sheathed, for now. But both of them knew the potential for destruction was still there, waiting, a contained star walking back into the shadows of the bazaar.