11. Jillian
JILLIAN
No one says it aloud.
But the fear is everywhere.
It clings to the camp like humidity before a storm—thick, cloying, inescapable. Conversations are shorter now. Eyes dart more. Laughter’s extinct. Even the air tastes different, like copper and ozone. Something bad is coming. We all feel it.
Grady’s voice cuts through the silence like a serrated blade.
“Double patrols! If you’re not on shift, you’re on backup!”
He’s always been a bastard, but now he barks like someone’s lighting a fire under his boots. The marines obey, because they’re trained to, but I see it—the nerves in their fingers, the hesitations in their steps. They’re scared too.
Good.
They should be.
I move through the camp like a ghost. No one stops me. No one talks to me. Maybe they think I’ll snap. Maybe they’re waiting for me to. I don’t care. The only thing I care about is the compad pressing against my hip, hidden in the folds of my field jacket.
Carson’s compad.
I shouldn’t still have it. Technically, it’s evidence. Probably already marked “missing” in the camp logs. But no one’s come looking. Not Grady. Not Ciampa. Not Darwin.
Especially not Darwin.
He doesn’t even meet my eyes anymore. I catch him once, across the mess tent—he flinches when he sees me. Looks down, mutters something to the guy next to him, and slips out before I can cross the floor.
It stings more than it should.
But that’s the thing, right? I’m not even sure if he knew. Carson tried to warn someone. Tried to tell me, maybe. Or Darwin. Or both. But he got dead before any of it mattered.
And now I’m the one holding the pieces.
I spend my nights tucked behind the equipment storage, where the noise of the vents drowns everything else. The compad’s decryption software is old—patched together with half-legal plugins and cracked code. But Carson knew what he was doing. Each layer I peel back is another punch to the gut.
Falsified atmospheric data.
Mineral discovery logs that don’t match the real samples.
Projected budgets based on veins that don’t exist.
And worst of all—there’s audio.
I don’t even want to play it again, but I do. I sit there with my back against the rusting frame of a broken rover and press the file open, just to remind myself I didn’t dream it.
Ciampa’s voice. Calm. Measured. Like he’s reading from a goddamn grocery list.
“As long as no one else dies, they’ll keep sending funds.”
That’s it. That’s the whole thing.
Just that one sentence, clipped and polished and horrifying.
He knew.
He knew, and he kept us here anyway.
I want to confront him. Storm into his lab and shove the compad in his face.
Scream until someone listens. Until someone believes me.
But the file’s buried. Scrubbed. I barely got it open with Carson’s backdoor keys.
If I go in half-cocked, he’ll deny it. Say it’s fake.
Tampered. Blame it on me. And with the way things are? They’d believe him.
I have no proof.
I have no backup.
I have no one.
Sleep’s a stranger now.
I don’t even bother pretending anymore—just grab my jacket, slip outside, and sit with my back against the metal frame of the bunkhouse. The night’s wind presses in cold and quiet. Thin wisps of dust swirl across the packed earth, scattering like ghosts when the gusts pick up.
The sky’s that violet hue again—like bruises blooming across a black canvas. It’s beautiful in a way that doesn’t feel real. Too soft. Too still. As if the stars are trying to make up for the nightmare below.
The hum of the perimeter fence fills the silence.
Low and constant. Almost comforting if I didn’t know it was one blown node away from collapse.
The outer beacons flicker where the sand’s started eating through the power relays—snapping into darkness and stuttering back, like they can’t decide whether to hold on or give up.
Kind of like me.
I pull my knees to my chest, wrapping my arms around them.
The cold’s sharp through the fabric, biting down to the bone.
My thoughts scatter, try to stretch back to anything familiar—home, campus, even those awful long labs with Darwin griping about inventory.
But nothing fits anymore. Those memories feel like someone else’s life.
What’s left is this: static in the sky, blood in the soil, and a silence so wide I swear it might swallow me whole.
I don’t know what I’m doing.
I don’t even know who I am anymore.
But I do know one thing.
He didn’t kill Carson.
I whisper it into the night. Not loud. Not defiant. Just… honest.
“I don’t believe it was you.”
My voice breaks a little on the last word. Maybe from the cold. Maybe from the weight of saying it aloud. I wait. Listen. Nothing stirs. Just the wind and the slow throb of the generators humming in the distance.
“I don’t know what you are,” I say softly. “But I don’t think you’re a monster.”
A long pause.
I almost stop there.
But I don’t.
I close my eyes and lean my head back against the wall. My breath fogs the air in front of me, curling like smoke.
“Will you help me?” I ask. “Please.”
No answer comes.
No shadow moves. No warm breath in the darkness. Nothing watching. Nothing near.
But I feel something.
Not presence. Not certainty.
Just… hope. Fragile and foolish, but alive.
I sit there until the moons fade and the sky softens into a dusty pink. When I finally crawl back into the bunkhouse, there’s frost on the railings and numb in my fingertips.
But when I open my door, something catches the light.
A fang.
Half of one.
Polished until it gleams like obsidian. Curved and jagged, just like the one I saw buried in that sting tail’s skull.
It’s sitting right on the threshold, like an offering.
I stare at it for a long time. Don’t touch it. Don’t breathe.
Then, carefully, I kneel and pick it up.
It’s warm. Still. Somehow.
I don’t know what it means.
But I tuck it into my pocket anyway.