The pod door splits with a hiss that punches through my ribcage. Gravity. Real gravity. My legs fold like paper. “Ezren?” Kira’s voice cuts through the fog. “You’re out. You did it.” Did it. Right. The Devourers are gone. We won. At least for now. I try to stand and my knees buckle. The infirmary floor rushes up, cold tile against my palms, that antiseptic smell burning my nose. “Easy.” Dr. Aveline’s hands find my shoulders. “Muscle atrophy is normal after extended immersion.” Normal. Nothing about this feels normal. Nothing about this life is normal. Devon appears beside me, offering his arm. “How do you feel?” “Like I got hit by a truck.” The words scrape out. My voice sounds wrong, too thin, like it’s coming from underwater. Marcus would’ve made some joke about trucks. Marcus would’ve… “The mission status?” I ask instead. “We held them back. For now at least.” Kira helps me to a chair. “We can consider that a small victory” Aveline adds. “Yes. The

The launch bay doors grind open with a mechanical groan, echoing across the cavernous hangar like some ancient beast yawning awake. Cold air rushes in. The shuttle waits, sleek, matte-gray, prow angled toward the stars like it’s eager to escape I fixate on the rivets lining its hull. Counting them is easier than remembering what happened to Marcus and the Eleven. “Standard recon mission,” Dr. Aveline says behind me, eyes glued to her tablet. “Two-person team. Six-hour flight window.” Two-person team. I clench my fists. Marcus and Sofia were a two-person team too. “I’m not doing this.” The words fall out of my mouth before I can stop them. Devon tilts his head. “Five minutes ago you were ready to charge into LA.” “That was different,” I snap. “It was ground-based. Contained.” “Contained?” His eyebrows lift slightly. Kira’s already halfway up the shuttle’s boarding ramp, hand trailing the frame like she’s reading it with her skin. “They’ve reinforced the hull. Upgraded sh

The figure in the rain vanished before I could wake the others.By morning, I was almost convinced myself it was just exhaustion playing tricks on me.Almost.“New intel came in overnight,” Dr. Aveline announces over the comm. I straighten up. “Satellite scans spotted an abandoned research station forty klicks northeast. Pre-Devourer era. Could be where your beacon came from.”Could be. Everything’s ‘could be’ these days.Devon checks his ammunition quietly. “Why wasn’t this station on our original surveys?”“Under fake terrain mapping.” Aveline pauses. “Someone didn’t want it found.”“Someone. Always someone else pulling the strings.” I respondI rotate a holographic blueprint above my wrist, the labs, the central core, and the corridors. “Looks simple,” I tell the team.“Simple?” Kira slings her pack over one shoulder. “When has anything been simple since we found the beacon?”Never. But maybe that’s when we start trying.***The station squats in a dry valley, concrete cracked,