The command hub buzzes with white noise and bad coffee. I follow Devon and Kira past banks of monitors, each one showing the same thing, empty space where the Devourers used to be. Still out there. Just waiting. Dr. Aveline stands hunched over the central console, her fingers dancing across holographic displays. “Signal’s been cycling for over an hour,” she says without turning. “Same frequency. Same coordinates. No response.” The beacon pulses red against the black screen. Hypnotic. Urgent. Kira folds her arms. “What’s the source?” “That’s the problem.” Aveline enlarges a data stream. “The signal’s broadcasting from Los Angeles… but the encryption signature…” She hesitates. Her jaw tightens. “It matches our simulation protocols.” The room stills. The only sound is the soft whir of the hub’s ventilation. Our protocols. From inside the pod. Devon shifts beside me. “Could be an echo,” he mutters. “Residual bleed from the neural systems.” I watch his reflection in the mon

The safe-house smells like dust and someone else’s life. Faded family photos line the mantel, and the couch sags in all the wrong places, but it’s real. Solid. After the sterile command hub and the failed launch, real feels like a gift.“Pass the salt,” Devon mutters, sawing at a bland MRE with a plastic knife that’s threatening to snap in half.Kira nudges the little packet toward him. “Beef stew, my ass. Tastes like cardboard.”“Cardboard with texture,” I say, poking at my meal. “Somehow worse.”Devon lets out a quiet laugh through his nose.And for a moment, just a breath, it’s like we’re somewhere else. Not fugitives. Not fractured. Just kids again, pretending the world isn’t cracked wide open.Kira leans back against the arm of the couch, her lips curled into a rare smile, the kind that touches her eyes. Devon’s posture softens too, like his muscles finally got permission to stop bracing for impact.Peace, real or not, feels like a foreign language. But we speak it anyway.“Re

The ancient eyes blink out as the emergency lights stutter to life. Red washes over the chamber, dim, pulsing, just enough to show us what should’ve stayed hidden.Two figures stand at the far end. Human-shaped, but… off. Their bodies are wrapped in biomechanical plating that pulses with the same sickly rhythm as the graft stitched into Rynn’s hand. Cables stretch from their backs, plugged into the walls like leeches feeding on something still alive.Test subjects. Still breathing. Still wired in.Devon exhales behind me. “What the hell are those?”The figures turn. Exactly together. Like puppets yanked by the same invisible string.Their faces, or what’s left of them, are half-covered by hissing-pumping respirators. Black tubes feed into where the mouths should be. Eyes are dull behind cracked lenses.Rynn swallows. “Devourer tech. Hooked into human nervous systems.”His voice barely clears his throat. Tight. Controlled. But his fingers twitch like he’s ready to run.Twenty years.

Forty-five seconds.The floor drops out from under us. Not a clean drop, but a stomach-twisting shudder that sends my weight pitching sideways.Chen’s gurney rolls toward the fractured wall. I dive, fingers hooking the frame before it smashes into jagged metal. The kid’s eyes snap wide. He is more awake now, but his skin is the color and texture of wet paper.“Move!”The word tears out of me over the shrieking alarms.Along the corridor, the magnetic rails thrum to life, low at first, then a bone-deep vibration that creeps up through my boots and plants itself in my chest.Overhead, the bulkhead plates groan like a wounded animal, grinding against each other as the station’s frame fights to stay whole.Thirty-eight seconds.Kira rams the gurney forward, IV bag swaying wildly. Chen’s got a death grip on the side rail, his knuckles the color of bone.“Stay with me,” she murmurs, but her voice shakes like it’s on borrowed strength.The blood’s still seeping through his bandages. Each bu

DR. AVELINE’S POVThe alien voice is still clinging to the walls when I drag Ezren down to Lab Seven.It’s in my ears, in my bones, the way a bad song loops even after the speakers go dead.“Dr. Aveline, wait…” He digs his heels in, sneakers squeaking on polished tile. “What exactly are we doing down here?”“What we should’ve done weeks ago.” I don’t slow, don’t look back. Three levels underground, my fingers fly over the keypad. The steel door blinks green, and the first lock hisses open. “Sixteen hours, Ezren. That’s all the time we’ve got before those probes hit the atmosphere.”The corridor swallows us deeper with each checkpoint, retina scan, heartbeat signature, and a metal bite against my palm for DNA. The air smells colder here, filtered through systems that haven’t seen daylight in years.Devon leans toward the last scanner, the red beam dragging across his eyes. “Doc, this is overkill. What’s hiding down here that needs this much paranoia?”“Our future,” I say simply. “If