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Even more worrying was that the interior was empty, stripped of all furniture, gear, personnel, and equipment.

It was as if someone had gutted it for parts.

‘Where is she?’ Riv muttered, his heart sinking in despair as he realise that Élisa was nowhere to be found.

He searched head to tail of the vessel with his brothers, hoping to find some clue or sign of her.

He gotnada, nothing.

They never found a trace of her.

Mirage scoured space around the asteroid and found vestiges of a ship that had passed through a few days earlier. ‘A Galaxy Skiff. It disappeared into hyperspace, and no trail leads to where it might have gone.’

After a four-day intensive search, Kainan called it, and they returned to Eden II.

Riv fell into a deep depression.

His darkness plumbed into the depths of his soul.

It eclipsed the joy he’d found with Élisa and drowned out any of what they’d shared like a black hole shrouding a star. It grew darker and heavier, bent on destroying any vestiges of hope in him. So much so, his hair turned even more silver.

It tore him away from the old Riv, the maverick renegade with a sense of humor and a love of the finest food, drink, and living.

Instead, he spent hours in his meta suit soaring alone over the bleak, endless lunar mountain peaks of Eden II, eschewing any company as he brooded.

His self-imposed darkness lingered.

Mirage came to the rescue a few weeks later, suggesting that she fit out his ship with high-tech surveillance gear and systems to track Élisa.

Riv stirred back to life with this new purpose.

With an AI node from Mirage’s supercomputer loaded onto his ship, he traveled the galaxy, casting a wide net for his woman.

He used the latest Sable tech to hack into the communications of criminal organizations and track their movements, hoping to find a lead.

Riv flew through the vast expanse of space, scanning every planet, asteroid, and space station he came across, sifting for any pointers that might lead to Élisa. He never gave up hope, even when the trail grew cold, and his spirits sagged.

Obsessed with his life mission, Riv lived on board his ship. He had an apartment on Eden II but had yet to use it.

He turned his vessel into a hybrid surveillance ship, most of its surface covered in infrared security cameras.

Riv spent his little downtime processing the raw data they collected, sifting the endless volumes of footage and hundreds of millions of faces.

Searching for her, only her.

11

Early Days of Dawn

ÉLISA - NOW

Élisa tossed and turned on her furs.

Outside, a burnished pygmy owl shared its distinctive seven-note call as it winged past Räk House.

The hour was late, but her mind would not let her rest.

She was consumed by worry.