Chapter 69

#Day 18 — 14:33

The private salon had become a chamber of last resorts. No electronics, no distractions—just ten exhausted people staring at a problem with no solution, their faces lit by a single battery-powered lamp that cast long shadows across the bare walls.

Vivienne stood at the head of the table, her hands flat on the surface, holding herself upright through sheer will. Around her, the council sat in various states of collapse—Kim with her head in her hands, Linh staring blankly at the wall, Maggie's broken arm resting on the table like a dead weight. Victoria paced in the corner, her limp more pronounced than usual.

"The math is simple," Isabelle said, her voice flat. "We have fuel. We can run for weeks. But we don't have food. Every hour we spend evading Stavros is an hour closer to starvation."

Kim looked up. "He's not even trying to catch us. He's just... herding us."

"I noticed." Vivienne's voice was steady, but inside she was screaming. "Something's off. Either his ship has capabilities we haven't seen, or he's driving us toward something."

"A trap," Maggie said. "Ship waiting ahead. Ambush."

"Or maybe this is the trap." Victoria stopped pacing. "He doesn't need to fight us. He just needs to wait. A starved ship has no defense. No negotiation power. He can just... walk aboard and take whatever he wants."

The words hung in the air.

"Can we fight?" Vivienne asked.

Maggie shook her head. "Two people. Two. That's all we have left who can hold lethal weapons. And all of them are in this room."

"Offensive action?" Victoria looked at the map on the table. "I could try another infiltration. One-person strike."

Kim pulled up Stavros's ship specs on a tablet—the only electronic allowed in the room, briefly. "Too heavily armed. His crew is probably dozens. And you're not exactly in prime shape, Victoria. Neither is Maggie."

Victoria's jaw tightened, but she didn't argue. She couldn't.

Silence.

Vivienne looked around the table at the faces of people who had survived the Red Solstice, the pressure hull, the assassin. They'd beaten Carmona. They'd found Chen. They'd kept going through everything.

And now they were going to lose to hunger.

"We need ideas," she said. "Anything."

No one spoke.

"Then we meet again in two hours. Someone think of something."

The council dispersed in silence. No one looked hopeful. No one looked anywhere at all.

Vivienne walked alone through the corridors of her ship.

The lights were dimmed to conserve power. Every face she passed was hollow, gaunt, exhausted. Crew members who should have been resting were instead hauling ammunition, checking bulkheads, preparing for a defense they all knew they couldn't sustain. They moved like ghosts, their bodies running on fumes and fear.

She passed a young woman—barely twenty, one of the deckhands—sitting against the wall, eyes closed, lips moving in what might have been a prayer or might have been just counting breaths. Vivienne wanted to stop, to say something, to offer hope. But she had none to give.

What would Verne do?

The question haunted her. Verne had stood here, in these same corridors, battered and bleeding, and held them together. Verne had faced Carmona, faced the infected ship, faced everything—and never broke.

Vivienne had been captain for two days. Two days. And she was already falling apart.

Seventy-eight lives. Seventy-eight people depending on me to make the right choice. And there is no right choice. Only slow death or fast death or—

She stopped walking.

The thought came unbidden, crawling up from some dark place she'd never had to visit before. In the survival movies she'd watched as a teenager—the ones her mother had forbidden, the ones she'd snuck on her tablet late at night—there was always a scene. When food ran out. When hope died. When people looked at each other differently.

Cannibalism.

She pressed her hand to her mouth, bile rising.

How long before that becomes the question? How long before desperate crew start jumping overboard just to end it? How long before Stavros picks them up and adds them to his collection—slaves to be traded, used, discarded?

Her eyes were wet. She didn't remember when they'd started.

She walked faster. Past the galley, past the crew quarters, past the junction that led to the bridge. She didn't want the bridge. She didn't want strategy or reports or people looking at her for answers she didn't have.

She wanted the treatment suite.

She wanted Mei-Lin's warm smile and Aida's steady presence and Zhao's quiet strength. She wanted their strange daily ritual—the tea, the cake, the casual intimacy, the way they just were together. She wanted to curl up on that bed, under that blanket, and feel warm skin against hers and forget, just for a moment, that the world was ending.

She wanted to run away.

By the time she reached the door, she was crying openly. Her posture had crumbled, her shoulders shaking, her breath coming in ragged gasps. She pushed the door open, stumbled inside, and—

Empty.

The lights were on. The beds were neatly made. The lounge cushions were fluffed, the table wiped clean. But no Mei-Lin. No Aida. No Zhao.

Just silence.

The tears became sobs. Loud, ugly, uncontrollable. She pressed both hands to her face and let them come, let the despair wash over her, let herself fall apart in the empty room where no one could see.

I can't do this. I can't. I'm not Verne. I'm not anyone. I'm just a girl who got lucky and now everyone's going to die because of me.

She didn't know how long she stood there, crying into her hands, her whole body shaking. Minutes. Maybe hours. Time had stopped meaning anything.

Then she saw it.

On the lounge table, a single cup of tea—still warm. A small plate with a slice of cake. A folded note.

She crossed the room like a woman dying of thirst, which she supposed she was. She gulped the tea in three swallows, barely tasting it, then devoured the cake in two bites. It was good. It was Mei-Lin's baking—sweet, dense, made with precious ingredients that should have been rationed but somehow always appeared when she needed them.

The note was in Mei-Lin's careful handwriting:

Captain—

We're next door with Chen. Aida's treating her. We saved your share. Come find us when you're ready, or rest here. Either way, we're here.

—Mei-Lin

P.S. You're doing better than you think. I promise.

She read it twice. Three times. The tears slowed. Her breathing steadied.

They're here. They're always here.

She wiped her face with her sleeve, straightened her blouse, touched Verne's pin. The metal was warm now from her skin.

Chen next door.

She walked out of the treatment suite and stood before Chen's cabin door. Raised her hand to knock.

Stopped.

I'm the captain. I'm about to go in there and beg for help from a fragile, blind, traumatized girl. What will she think of me? Incompetent. Weak. Hopeless. A leader who can't lead.

What would Verne do?

Verne would—

The door opened.

Aida stood in the doorway, her expression soft, knowing. "She knew you were here. Come in."

Vivienne stepped inside, and the scene before her was so surreal it almost made her laugh.

Chen lay propped against pillows, her lips wrapped around Mei-Lin's left breast, suckling steadily. Her blind eyes were open, fixed on nothing, but her expression was calm—peaceful, even. Mei-Lin sat beside her, one hand cradling Chen's head, the other resting on her own thigh. Her free breast was exposed, waiting.

At the desk, Nadia was slumped over her laptop, fast asleep, her head pillowed on her arms. Rows of code glowed on the screen, half-finished.

Aida guided Vivienne to a chair beside the bed and gently pressed her down.

Vivienne opened her mouth to speak—

"You're here about Stavros."

Chen's voice was calm. Matter-of-fact. She didn't stop suckling.

Vivienne closed her mouth.

"Aida briefed me." Chen's blind eyes didn't move, but her head tilted slightly, as if listening to something beyond the room. "I know him. Not personally. But I reviewed the vector database before... before they took my eyes. Stavros. Greek. Former vector of the Athena. He survived when his ship and captain went down."

Vivienne found her voice. "He's chasing us. We can't outrun him, we can't fight him, and we're running out of food."

Chen nodded slightly, her lips still working. Then: "He doesn't know I'm here."

"What?"

"The Commission hasn't told him. If they had, he wouldn't be chasing you. He'd be running." A pause. "This is a minor inconvenience. You'll handle it."

Vivienne stared at her. Minor inconvenience. They were days from starvation. Stavros was closing. And Chen called it minor.

"I don't—" Vivienne started.

"I need to finish this." Chen's voice was gentle but firm. "My meter is climbing. I need to be strong for what comes next. We'll talk after."

She resumed suckling, her body relaxing into Mei-Lin's warmth.

Vivienne looked at Aida, desperate for explanation. Aida shook her head slightly—I don't know either—but her hand found Vivienne's and squeezed.

They sat in silence for minutes. The only sounds: Chen's soft suckling, Nadia's faint snoring, the distant hum of the ship.

Vivienne's mind raced. How can she be so calm? How can she dismiss this? Have we missed something? Is there an angle we haven't seen?

She felt small. Inadequate. A child playing captain while a blind girl solved problems in her head.

Then Chen stopped.

She released Mei-Lin's nipple, licked her lips, and waited. Mei-Lin shifted, offering the other breast. Chen found it by scent alone and latched on again. But this time, she spoke.

"Two options."

Vivienne leaned forward.

"Option one: your council finds a solution. You resolve this without me. Fewer people die. Stavros never learns I'm here. That's the best outcome." A pause. "I mean no harm to him or his crew. They're strangers. They're doing what they must to survive, same as us. I don't hate them."

Vivienne blinked. This was not what she'd expected.

"But option two..." Chen's voice changed. Hardened. "If I intervene, I will eliminate him. His crew. His ship. Completely. No survivors. No witnesses. No one to carry word of what happened here."

The words hung in the air like a blade.

Vivienne's mouth opened. Closed. Opened again. "That's—"

"Genocide." Chen said it calmly, as if discussing the weather. "Yes."

Mei-Lin's hand tightened on Chen's head. Her expression didn't change, but her knuckles went white.

"I won't let anyone discover my presence," Chen continued. "I won't let anyone threaten Zhao, Mei-Lin, or any of my people—" she gestured vaguely with her free hand, "—they may be the last of my civilization. Thousands of years of history, of culture, of memory. It all rests on what we do here."

Vivienne felt the weight of it pressing down on her chest.

"So you need to decide." Chen's blind eyes turned toward her, and despite the blindness, despite the scars, Vivienne felt seen. "Quickly. This is interfering with my work. With our survival. I want it gone."

Vivienne's throat was dry. "And if I can't decide?"

"Then I will."

Silence.

Aida squeezed Vivienne's hand again, harder this time. Mei-Lin's eyes were wet. Even Nadia, asleep, seemed to shrink in her chair.

Vivienne looked at Chen—this girl, this child, this weapon—and saw something terrifying. Not malice. Not cruelty. Just absolute, unwavering certainty.

She'll do it. She'll kill them all.

One hundred people on that cargo ship. Maybe more. Innocents? Slaves? Collaborators? She didn't know. Couldn't know.

But Chen didn't care about any of that. She cared about Zhao. About her people. About the memory of a civilization that might otherwise vanish forever.

Is she wrong?

Vivienne thought of Valentine. Her sister. The pod. The face that was her face, sleeping through the end of the world.

If someone threatened her, what would I do?

The answer came instantly, and it terrified her.

I'd kill them all.

Chen waited, still nursing, still calm, still utterly certain.

Vivienne knew she had to decide. Now.