Chapter 3
JORDAN
The maintenance shaft is too small for panic, which is maybe the only nice thing I can say about it.
I crawl on my forearms and knees through a rectangular throat of metal, the air stale and dusty and hot in uneven pockets where power conduits run close enough to bake the plating.
Every few feet my shoulder scrapes a protruding bolt head, a sharp little reminder that the station was designed for cables and rats, not humans trying to outrun a massacre.
Behind me, the server room swallows sound for a heartbeat at a time, and then the gunfire punches through again—muffled, distorted, but still unmistakable.
Every time it does, my stomach tightens hard enough to make me taste bile.
The external drive thumps against my chest with each movement, tucked inside my jacket like a heart I stole off a table. It’s warm already from my body heat, and I keep one hand pressed over it as if touch alone can keep it from disappearing.
A tremor runs through the ductwork.
Not subtle. Not the station settling. Something heavy, distant—another explosive thud that shakes dust loose from seams and makes it sprinkle down onto my face.
The grit catches in my eyelashes and coats my tongue.
I spit, but there’s nowhere for it to go except onto metal that already smells like old insulation and burned oil.
“Okay,” I whisper, breath rasping loud in the cramped space. “Okay, Jordan. Forward. We’re doing forward.”
I force my lungs to take air in slow, steady pulls even though my body wants to hyperventilate like a malfunctioning bellows.
The shaft angles slightly downward, then levels, then takes a left turn so sharp my hip drags.
Somewhere above, the station’s emergency alarms start wailing in a new rhythm, higher and more frantic, and the noise vibrates through the metal like the station itself is screaming.
I keep crawling.
At the next junction, the shaft widens into a cramped service pocket with a grated access panel. I stop long enough to press my ear to the grate.
Sound floods in—echoing shouts, boots pounding, a deeper concussive crack that could be either an energy discharge or a door being blown off hinges. A faint smell of smoke drifts into the pocket, acrid and dry, and it hits the back of my throat like an accusation.
I peel away from the grate, swallowing hard.
“Not going back,” I murmur, more to the moon than to myself.
The duct splits. One branch leads toward the station’s lower maintenance spine, the other toward an exterior vent line—one of those environmental exhaust channels that dumps processed air into the wilderness to keep internal systems from overheating. I don’t know that for certain.
But I can read a layout, and this shaft smells like outside—faintly mineral, faintly cold.
Outside is a death sentence, too, but at least it’s a death sentence with options.
I go right.
The vent hatch is stiff with grit, and for a split second my fingers slip on the latch because they’re slick with sweat and trembling. I clamp down harder, nails biting into my own palm through the gloves, and force it.
The latch gives with a metallic snap that echoes like a gunshot in the duct.
I freeze, heart hammering, waiting for boots, for voices, for the unmistakable whine of a weapon powering up.
Nothing.
Just the endless hum of fans and the far-off violence behind me.
I ease the hatch open an inch. Cold air knifes into the shaft and hits my face, carrying the taste of dust and the faint, sharp tang of ozone from the slaughter field. I inhale too fast and cough silently, eyes watering.
When I push the hatch wider, pale daylight floods the shaft in a thin blade and catches on floating dust motes, turning them into glittering specks that feel obscene in this context.
I slide out onto a narrow exterior ledge beneath a bank of industrial vents.
The station looms above and behind me, all gray plating and harsh angles, and below is the open wilderness—rocky badlands cut by dry washes and jagged ridgelines, the kind of landscape that looks like it hates life on principle.
The air out here is thin but breathable, cold enough to raise gooseflesh on my arms, and it smells like mineral dust and scorched earth.
I crouch low, keeping close to the station’s shadow, and risk a glance toward the main field.
The containment shimmer is gone.
It’s like someone ripped a veil out of the air.
Bodies—so many bodies—dot the ground like broken dolls. Dust plumes rise where energy shots hit rock. I can’t hear individual screams from this distance, but I can see mouths open, arms flailing, the frantic animal motion of people running toward something that will never save them.
My stomach turns.
“Jesus,” I whisper, and the word feels small and stupid against the scale of it.
A new sound threads through the chaos: a broadcast tone.
Not the station’s alarms.
Something external—clean, assertive, amplified.
I fumble my compad out of my pocket, fingers numb, and thumb it awake.
The screen flares—and immediately the interface stutters as if it’s trying to connect and failing. Signal bars blink, then vanish. My internal holonet icon spins, stalls, then grays out.
“No,” I hiss.
I try another channel. Emergency transponder.
The compad displays a red warning: OUTBOUND SUPPRESSED.
My mouth goes dry.
I toggle to entanglement relay burst—emergency only, high cost, restricted, but the interface at least should show me if the hardware’s reachable.
The system tries. Hesitates. Then gives me nothing but a dead, polite error.
RELAY ACCESS DENIED — SIGNAL MASKING DETECTED.
I stare at the words until they blur, until my eyes sting.
They jammed everything.
Holonet. Entanglement. Emergency transponders. They didn’t just cut communications; they smothered them with something military-grade and precise, the kind of suppression you don’t buy unless you’re planning to do something you can’t let anyone call in.
I thumb my mic anyway and speak into it like a prayer.
“Mayday. Yatori Ops is under attack. Civilian staff being executed. Containment field down. This is Jordan James—contractor—please—”
Static answers me, thick and indifferent.
I lower the compad, my hand shaking so hard the holographic projection flickers.
“Okay,” I whisper, breath coming fast. “So it’s just me. Cool. Love that.”
The broadcast tone strengthens, and for a moment the air seems to vibrate with the authority of it. The sound is coming from the station’s external speakers and the open field, a message meant to be heard by anyone alive.
I can’t make out the words yet from here, but I catch the cadence—formal, clipped, like someone reciting a statement they practiced in a mirror.
I force myself to move.
I slip along the ledge, then drop down to the rocky ground, landing in a crouch that jostles the drive in my jacket.
Pain flashes up my ankles, but it’s dull compared to everything else.
I stay low and run, using the scattered boulders and the uneven terrain for cover, angling away from the kill lanes and away from the station’s main sightlines.
Every breath burns cold in my lungs.
Every footstep crunches grit, too loud in my own head.
The wilderness swallows me faster than I expect, the station shrinking behind ridges and rock outcroppings until the lights become a harsh glow on the horizon and the gunfire becomes a distant, relentless percussion.
I run until the ache in my sides turns sharp, until my throat tastes like blood from breathing too hard in thin air, until the world narrows to the slap of boots on dust and the heavy thud of my heart.
And then—
Movement.
Three figures break from behind a boulder ahead, staggering, swaying, running not with purpose but with hunger.
Inmates.
Even from this distance, I can tell something is wrong with their eyes—too wide, too glassy, pupils blown like they’re drowning in chemicals. Their mouths hang open, lips cracked and flecked with foam. Their skin looks gray under the pale light, sweat slicking them in uneven patches.
They spot me, and the moment they do, their bodies change.
They don’t hesitate.
They lunge.
“Oh my god—” I choke, stumbling back instinctively.
One of them—taller, wiry, with a shaved scalp and an IHC inmate band still clinging to his wrist—lets out a sound that is less a scream than an animal rasp, like his throat forgot how to shape language. He sprints at me in a straight line.
The second one veers left, trying to cut me off. The third is slower, limping, but he’s got something in his hand—a jagged strip of metal, sharpened to a point.
I pivot and run.
My lungs are already on fire, but adrenaline dumps gasoline on the pain and I move anyway, legs pumping, boots slipping on loose scree as I angle around a rock outcropping. The dust here is finer, softer, and it gives underfoot like ash.
Behind me, the first inmate gains ground. I can hear his breathing now—wet and ragged, like his lungs are full of grit. I can smell him when the wind shifts: sweat, rancid protein, chemical bitterness.
“Get away from me!” I shout, voice cracking.
He answers with another rasp, not words.
I glance back and immediately regret it because the sight of him—arms pumping too hard, face twisted with furious need—triggers a spike of panic so sharp my vision tunnels.
I don’t have a weapon. I don’t have anything but my compad and a drive full of evidence no one will ever see if I get dragged down in the dust.
Think.
My eyes snag on a narrow cut in the rocks ahead—a dry wash that dips steeply and then curves. If I can get into it, I can break line of sight. Maybe lose them.
I veer toward it.
The second inmate appears on the ridge to my left, matching my trajectory, trying to funnel me. His mouth is open in a grin that is not joy, not even malice, but something emptier—pure appetite.
“Stop—stop—” I gasp, more plea than command.