2025-08-07 19:03:18
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The Last Vote
Seventeen minutes.My fingers work the manual thruster controls like I’ve done this a thousand times before. The pod jolts at every correction burn, the vibration crawling up my arms into my teeth.“Come on… come on,” I mutter, nudging the course away from the planet’s pull. The nav display curves, just enough to stop being a death sentence.Outside, station debris streaks past. Twisted panels, shards of glass, like the angry scatter from a busted hive.“There,” I breathe, watching our path slowly curve away from the planet’s gravity well. “Got it.”Rynn checks his scope, nods once. “Stable trajectory. We’re clear.”My shoulders sag. For the first time in hours, I notice Chen’s breathing sounds less like a rattle. The medbay’s synthetic blood is already putting some color back in his paper-white skin. Kid’s built from tougher stuff than he looks.Twelve hours later, we’re back.***The underground HQ hums with a kind of order that’s only skin-deep. Techs hunch over consoles, face
Narrow Escape
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
The Core Breach
Thirty-five seconds.The sentry’s red eye slices across the corridor. One blink, then another. Click, click, as it scans, hunting. Chen’s weight drags on my shoulder. Kid’s limp now. The bandages Kira threw on earlier are soaked through, blood warm against my jacket, creeping down my side. Feels like he’s pouring out faster than I can hold him in.“Devon!” My voice bounces off the walls, jagged.He’s already at the blast door controls, fingers hammering the interface like it insulted his mother. Hydraulic groan’s getting louder, but the gap is still just wide enough for a single desperate person.Twenty-eight seconds.The sentry’s head snaps toward us. Click-click-click. It locks on Something flashes past my ear. Rynn’s EMP grenade. Blue sparks trail it like dying fireflies. The burst swallows the corridor in electric glare.The sentry stiffens mid-step, twitching, then collapses in a heap, sparks fizzing from its joints.“That was the last one,” Rynn pants. No victory in it.
Something Still Alive
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.
Exactly This Mistake
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,
The Safehouse
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
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