Page 207 of Red Scale Daddy
Silence doesn’t fall—it fractures.
Dux stares at me like I just said something obscene. “No.”
“It’s the most efficient?—”
“No,” he repeats, sharper, angrier. “Try again.”
“This isn’t a negotiation.”
“It is when you’re talking about throwing yourself to them like bait.”
“I am not bait,” I snap. “I’m a calculated variable?—”
“That’s the problem!” he fires back, voice rising despite the danger snapping at our heels. “You keep reducing yourself to something expendable.”
“Because I am expendable,” I say, the truth of it clean and simple in my mouth.
Something in his face shifts—anger folding into something deeper, something that hits harder.
“Not to me.”
The words land wrong. Or maybe too right.
I shake my head, trying to push past him. “Irrelevant.”
He blocks me, not aggressive, but immovable. “Say that again.”
“It’s irrelevant.”
“Say it like you believe it.”
“I don’t need to believe it,” I snap. “It’s fact.”
“Then why do you sound like you’re trying to convince yourself?”
The ship groans around us, a long, low sound like it’s about to tear itself apart. The lights flicker harder, staying dark a fraction longer each time.
Pally steps closer, voice quieter now. “Roma… you getting us out doesn’t work if you’re not part of ‘us.’”
“I am part of the mission,” I correct.
“That’s not what I said.”
I look at him, really look at him—at the fear he’s trying to swallow, at the stubborn insistence in his posture.
Then I look at Dux.
He hasn’t moved. Hasn’t broken eye contact. There’s something raw in his expression now, stripped of the usual bravado.
“Stop deciding you don’t get to live,” he says, softer, but somehow more forceful than when he was shouting.
The corridor tilts again as another system fails, gravity shifting just enough to send loose debris skittering across the floor.
I should move.
I should be calculating routes, distances, probabilities.
Instead, I’m standing here, caught between two men who are looking at me like I’m more than the sum of my functions.
