Page 30 of Accidentally Fearless

The words felt like a slap. Not because they were cruel, but because they were true. I wasn't Velkorin. I was a human, from Earth, with a thirty-day contract that was running out and a life waiting for me on the other side. And the man standing in front of me—this seven-foot alien warrior with glowing scales—deserved someone who could say yes without hesitation.

"I need to think," I said.

"Then think." He stepped back. The distance between us felt like a canyon. "I will be in the command center."

I went to my quarters and sat on the floor. The cold metal was grounding. I needed to be grounded. I pulled my knees to my chest and pressed my back against the wall and let myself feel it.

The worst part wasn't the bureaucracy. Bureaucracy I could fight—I'd spent six years navigating the labyrinth of Battlezone's corporate ownership, submitting maintenance requests in triplicate, arguing with insurance adjusters who'd never set foot in a paintball arena. Paperwork was a solvable problem.

The worst part was the look on his face when I'd said I don't know. The way his bioluminescence had guttered. That single flicker of hurt, there and gone, controlled so fast that someone who hadn't spent three weeks learning to read him would have missed it entirely. But I didn't miss it. I saw him close down. And I'd stood there and let him walk away because I was too scared to say what I actually meant.

I'd done this before. Not with an alien commander on a distant planet—obviously—but the pattern was familiar. Someone gave me the chance to say what I wanted, and I choked. My sister offered to help me apply to four-year colleges. I don't know, Jess, maybe. My last boyfriend asked if I wanted to move in together. I don't know, let me think about it. My manager at the arena before Battlezone asked if I wanted the promotion. I don't know, am I qualified?

"I don't know" was my safety net. My emergency exit. The words I said when the real answer—yes, God, yes, more than anything—felt too dangerous to speak.

Because if you said yes and it didn't work out, you couldn't pretend you hadn't wanted it. You couldn't protect yourself with ambivalence. You'd wanted it, you'd reached for it, and it had been taken away. That was a wound that didn't heal. I knew because I had a drawer full of them.

I cried. Not the quiet, dignified tears of someone processing sadness, but the ugly, gasping kind that comes from the gut and sounds terrible and leaves you dehydrated and exhausted. The metal walls of my quarters bounced the sound back at me. I was grateful that Velkorin architecture was soundproofed.

When the worst of it passed, I sat in the quiet and took stock.

Seven days. My contract was ending. The Bureau had no budget for extensions. Immigration processing took six to eight months and required me to return to Earth during the wait. No intergalactic phone plan. No guarantee of approval.

Option one. I could go home. Back to Scranton, to my apartment, to Battlezone and Kyle and the fluorescent-lit repetition of a life that had been slowly suffocating me for years.

Option two. I could fight. File the immigration paperwork. Go back to Earth for six to eight months of silence, not knowing if I'd be approved, not able to contact Vrex, holding on to everything I'd found here—in a world that had no idea any of it existed.

Option three. There had to be something I hadn't thought of yet. Some creative loophole, some honor-code-style reading of the fine print, some solution that existed in the space between the rules.

I was good at option three. I just couldn't see it yet.

There was a knock at my door, lighter than Vrex's. His knock was heavy, the knock of someone who telegraphed their presence as a courtesy.

"It's Zenir."

I wiped my face with the back of my hand. It didn't help much. "Come in."

Zenir entered, assessed me with a single glance—puffy eyes, tear-streaked face, sitting on the floor emotionally collapsed, and without a word, sat down beside me.

For a full minute, she said nothing. Just sat with me. The silence was companionable in a way I hadn't expected from someone whose primary conversational mode was blunt tactical assessment.

"He is in the command center," she said finally. "Staring at the tactical display. He has been staring at the same display for forty minutes. He is not reading it."

"I know."

"He does this when he is processing grief. He did it for three days after his parents' deaths were confirmed. He did it for two days when the Council rejected his first campaign proposal." She paused. "He has been doing it for forty minutes. By Velkorin standards, this is an accelerated recovery. He is either adapting or in shock."

"That doesn't make me feel better."

"It was not intended to make you feel better. It was intended to give you accurate information." She looked at me with those sharp amber eyes. Zenir's eyes were slightly lighter than Vrex's, more gold than amber, and they missed nothing. "You had a disagreement."

"I told him I didn't know if I wanted to stay. And he heard that as no."

"Because in our culture, it would be."

"I'm not Velkorin."

"He said the same thing." She tilted her head. She was choosing her next words carefully, which for Zenir was unusual. She typically chose words the way she chose weapons—efficiently, with intent to hit the target. "Rory. Do you want to stay?"