Page 107 of Destined For Her Alien Daddy

Ghar’s expression tightens.

Brakk turns toward me slowly. “Kid.”

“I’m not saying she’s right,” I say quickly, hearing the panic rising in my own voice. “I’m not saying we hand it over. I’m saying she knew exactly where to press because some of it is real. Partial truth can hurt people. Full truth can hurt people. Suppressed truth can hurt people. Every option has bodies attached, and I don’t know who gave me the right to choose which ones count.”

Ghar steps closer. “No one gave Rolaev that right either.”

“I know.”

“Do you?”

The question is gentle enough to hurt.

I look up at him. “Yes. But knowing that doesn’t magically make me clean.”

His jaw shifts, and the conflict in his face tells me he understands too well. He has lived inside machinery that turned belief into casualties. He knows exactly what it means to survive a decision that someone else called necessary.

That is why his silence frightens me.

Brakk shoulders his fusion cutter with rough impatience. “We still need Sira back.”

The simplicity of that cuts through the fog.

Sira is alive.

Rolaev has her.

Whatever else the archive means, whatever moral catastrophe waits in the lower chambers, Sira is not a theory. She is our friend, our translator, and the person Rolaev took because she knew Sira could help me resist.

“You’re right,” I say.

Ghar’s eyes remain on me. “Are you able to continue?”

The question is practical, but I hear what sits underneath it.

Are you still with us?

I lift my chin.

“Yes.”

He studies me for another breath, and I know he can see the doubt. I know he heard enough of Rolaev ’s argument to recognize the fracture forming. I hate that I cannot hide it better, but I am too tired and too frightened to build another convincing mask.

Ghar turns toward the silver-lit passage. “Then we continue, but we do not chase her blindly.”

Brakk snorts. “Great. We’ll chase her intelligently through the ancient murder basement.”

I almost laugh.

Almost.

The passage ahead opens wider as we approach, revealing another downward route lined with thin luminous symbols. Somewhere beyond it, Sira waits in the hands of a woman who sounds terrifyingly sane. Somewhere deeper, the archive continues unfolding the kind of truth that may not deserve sunlight until someone wiser than me figures out how to carry it.

Unfortunately, wiser people are in short supply.

I follow Ghar into the passage with the archive case pressed against my ribs and Rolaev ’s question burning behind my eyes.

How many people can be destroyed before a truth becomes unworthy of its cost?