Chapter 2 #2
Wind—steady, harsh, carrying dust and the faint chemical stink of the ration vents that drift out into wilderness on certain days.
Heat—radiating from stone under my forearms. Sound—distant discharge, thuds, the soft metallic chatter of something collapsing inside the station.
Smell—ozone, copper, smoke. Taste—bitter air and old anger.
I open my eyes again.
And that’s when I see her.
At first, she’s just motion at the edge of the chaos—a smaller figure on an upper catwalk, briefly outlined against the atrium’s white light before the station’s emergency red strobes turn her into a silhouette.
Human-sized. Quick. Moving like someone who knows where she’s going, not like someone just running blind.
Then she disappears from the catwalk and reappears at a service hatch—an access point I’ve watched before, a route that leads into the maintenance shafts and out through the side vents that dump into wilderness.
No inmate uses those vents. They don’t know they exist, and even if they did, most are too fogged by rations to plan.
But a tech would.
A contractor would.
I squint, tracking her as she emerges from the side of the station, dropping to the ground and sprinting away from the kill lanes, angling not toward the prisoners but toward the wilderness like she understands the station is already dead.
Her movement has a sharpness to it—fear, yes, but not the sloppy kind. Focused fear. The kind that makes you fast and smart instead of loud and doomed.
I watch her for three seconds, four, five, and in those seconds I do the quick math my life has taught me to do.
A human tech out here is either bait, asset, or disaster.
If she’s bait, the troops will let her run long enough for her to draw something—or someone—out of hiding.
If she’s an asset, she’s carrying something. Data. Evidence. A key. Something worth killing a station’s crew to retrieve.
If she’s a disaster, she’s just a scared civilian about to stumble into the wilderness and get eaten alive by the first inmate she meets—or worse, the things that aren’t inmates.
She runs hard, boots kicking up dust, hair pulled back, posture forward like she’s trying to outrun the moon itself. Even from this distance I can see the way her head keeps snapping to the side, checking angles, reading terrain.
Not helpless.
Not stupid.
My mouth tightens.
“Alright, sweetheart,” I murmur, voice low, almost affectionate in the way you talk to someone who doesn’t know how much trouble they’re in. “What the hell did you steal?”
As if the universe hears me, the station shakes again—an internal detonation that sends a puff of darker smoke out of an upper vent. The troops inside are cleaning house. Erasing. Burning.
Her head jerks toward the sound and she runs faster.
And I’m already moving.
I slide down the far side of the ridge, keeping low, using the terrain the way I always do: not fighting the moon, just letting it hide me.
I move parallel to her line rather than directly behind her, because if she looks back and sees a seven-foot Grolgath shadowing her, she’ll either panic or shoot, and I don’t know which is worse.
I cut through a narrow wash where the dust is softer and holds prints like memory. I can smell her now—sweat, adrenaline, faint soap residue that doesn’t belong on Yatori. That scent is almost shocking out here, like perfume at a funeral.
She’s closer than she should be, and that means she chose her route well.
Which means she might choose her next route well, too.
And that makes her dangerous.
I catch movement ahead—two inmates breaking from the slaughter field, stumbling into wilderness, eyes wide, bodies twitchy with the rations’ chemical madness. One of them turns his head, sniffing the air like a starving animal catching scent of meat.
He sees her.
He bolts.
The other follows, gait uneven, arms pumping too hard, mouth open in a soundless snarl I can see even if I can’t hear it.
I slow, letting them pass into my line rather than chasing them from behind, because I don’t run unless I have to. Running burns energy. Energy is currency. Currency is life.
I keep my distance, tracking all three—her, the two inmates—measuring angles, distances, outcomes.
If I intervene too early, she might think I’m another threat.
If I don’t intervene at all, she dies and whatever she’s carrying gets scavenged by lunatics who won’t even understand its value.
And if this is bait—if the “Vakutans” want her alive long enough to lead them to somebody hiding out here—then me stepping in might put a spotlight on my head.
I swallow the thought and taste dust.
“Okay,” I say softly, to myself, to the moon, to the dead men in the field behind me. “We do this the smart way.”
I adjust my path, keeping outside turret range even though the field is down, because turrets don’t always need a field to kill, and corporate automation loves nothing more than proving it still has teeth.
The station’s lights flare again behind us, then dim.
A distant thud—another drop ship or another explosion, I can’t tell.
The silence of the troops gnaws at me, more unnerving than any roar. It’s a silence with purpose, the kind you hear from professionals who don’t need theater to feel powerful.
Vakutans fight like they want songs written about them.
These men fight like they want paperwork filed.
I watch the human sprint ahead, her boots leaving sharp prints in the dust, and I decide in the same moment that the decision is already made.
Whether she’s useful or dangerous, she’s now part of my problem.
And I don’t let problems roam free in my territory.
Not anymore.
I lower my head, pick up my pace just enough to close distance without announcing myself, and track her line through the rocks as the two drugged inmates gain on her, their shadows stretching long and ugly in the pale light.
“Don’t trip,” I murmur, like she can hear me. “Don’t be stupid. Don’t—”
She glances back.
Not at me.
At them.
Her shoulders tighten, and I see the moment fear tries to steal her coordination, tries to make her legs lock and her breath turn into panic.
She pushes through it.
Runs harder.
Smart girl.
“Alright,” I whisper, knife hand loosening, readying. “Let’s see what you’re made of.”
And I keep tracking, close enough now that I can hear her breath when the wind shifts, close enough to smell the sharp tang of terror and the faint electrical heat of whatever device she’s clutching to her chest, as if she knows—instinctively, perfectly—that the only thing more valuable than her life right now is whatever she’s carrying.
Useful… or dangerous.
Maybe both.
And on Yatori, that’s usually the same thing.