The Dominion transport ship Vigilant Crown felt less like a vessel and more like a judgment chamber drifting through space. Cold steel corridors stretched endlessly, illuminated by white lights that seemed designed to bleach color and emotion out of anyone who walked them. Rourke had never been on a Dominion ship before—most citizens tried to keep it that way.
Vehr and the silent agent escorted him down a narrow hall toward an isolated containment wing. Rourke's hands weren't cuffed, but the presence of two heavily armored guards flanking the doors made it clear escape wasn't on the menu.
The ship hummed with a steady vibration—not mechanical, not structural. It was too soft, too rhythmic. Rourke felt it echoing inside his chest again, syncing with that hidden pulse he'd been trying to ignore.
He cleared his throat. "What exactly are you expecting to find?"
Vehr didn't slow down. "Answers."
"About what?"
"About you."
"That's not an answer."
Vehr gave a tight, humorless smile. "It wasn't meant to be."
They reached a glass-walled chamber—a clean, pristine room with a single chair bolted to the floor and a table lined with scanning equipment. It felt less like a cell and more like a laboratory disguised as a polite interrogation room.
Rourke stopped at the threshold. "You planning to dissect me?"
The female agent answered without looking up from her tablet. "Only if you become uncooperative."
Rourke wasn't sure if she was joking. Vehr motioned him inside.
He hesitated. Not out of fear—but because the moment he stepped toward the room, the hum in his chest intensified. The air grew heavier. His footsteps felt anchored, as though the room itself pulled at him.
Something here resonated with whatever lived beneath his skin.
"Inside, Talon," Vehr said.
Reluctantly, Rourke entered.
The door slid shut behind him, sealing with a metallic hiss.
Vehr circled around the table, adjusting the scanning instruments. The female agent remained near the door, watching him with the unblinking patience of someone trained to notice everything.
"Sit," Vehr ordered.
Rourke sat. The chair was colder than expected.
Vehr activated the scanner. A faint beam traced across Rourke's torso, then his head, then his hands. Numbers danced across the display—erratic, spiking, falling, stabilizing, destabilizing.
"Your gravitational signature is fluctuating," Vehr muttered. "Again."
"Is that bad?" Rourke asked.
"It's unnatural." Vehr tapped the screen. "Humans don't emit gravitational signatures."
"Well," Rourke said, trying for humor, "I've always been charming. Maybe gravity just likes me."
Vehr didn't even blink.
The scanner beeped sharply.
The female agent stepped forward. "Inspector, the readings are climbing again."
Rourke felt it too—a low, rising pressure inside him, like a tide pushing against its dam. It wasn't painful, but it was wrong. Foreign. Alive.
He gripped the chair arms. "I don't know what's happening to me."
Vehr leaned in. "Neither do we. That's the problem."
The inspector picked up a small cylindrical device from the table—a gravity dampener, recognizable by its blue-ringed core and the faint harmonic tone it emitted.
Rourke stiffened. "What's that for?"
"Calibration." Vehr positioned it near Rourke's chest. "Don't move."
The dampener pulsed.
Something inside Rourke pulsed back.
The lights flickered.
Vehr's brow creased. "That shouldn't—"
A shockwave blasted outward from Rourke's body.
The scanners crashed to the floor. The ceiling lights shattered, raining glass. Alarms blared through the ship. The female agent slammed backward into the wall, caught off guard by the sudden gravitational surge.
Rourke remained rooted to the chair—not by force, but because he couldn't move. The pulse inside him had erupted, flooding his veins with heat and pressure. His breath caught in his throat.
The room warped—edges bending, lines curving, as though space itself twisted around him.
"Turn it off!" the female agent shouted.
Vehr tried. He slammed his fist onto the dampener controls, but the device sparked and died, overwhelmed.
Rourke squeezed his eyes shut. "Make it stop!"
"We're trying!" Vehr yelled.
Another pulse ripped outward, stronger than the first. The glass walls bowed inward, the metal table screeching across the floor as gravity shifted directions.
The female agent scrambled for stability. "He's destabilizing the entire wing!"
"No," Vehr said, voice grim. "The energy is originating from inside him. It's not destabilizing—it's responding."
"To what?!" she demanded.
Vehr looked at Rourke—really looked at him.
"To us."
Rourke gasped, a wave of pressure crashing through him. Gravity rippled outward like a broken heartbeat. The ship groaned as structural supports strained.
He felt something—some instinctual sense—telling him the pulse wasn't an attack. It was a reflex. A defense mechanism. Like a cornered animal lashing out.
He forced his trembling hands upward, palms outward, as if pushing against the invisible pressure.
"Stop," he whispered—not to the agents, but to the thing inside him.
The pressure hesitated.
Wavered.
Then slowly, impossibly…
It obeyed.
The air settled. The walls straightened. The alarms softened as the ship's stabilizers recovered. Rourke sagged in the chair, drenched in sweat, chest heaving.
Vehr stared at him with an expression that was equal parts awe and fear.
"That," the inspector said quietly, "was not a mechanical anomaly."
Rourke swallowed. "Then what was it?"
Vehr's voice lowered, nearly a whisper.
"That was the signature of a Gravity Wielder."
Rourke shook his head. "Those don't exist. They're myths. Stories told in mining ships to scare rookies."
Vehr didn't blink.
"They exist. The Dominion has been hunting them for decades."
The female agent stepped forward, voice tense. "If he's one of them—"
"He's not just one of them," Vehr said, eyes locked onto Rourke.
"He might be the strongest we've ever recorded."
Rourke's pulse thundered in his ears.
"What does that mean for me?" he asked, voice barely steady.
Vehr gave the only answer that could have made things worse.
"It means," he said, "you're far too dangerous to remain human."