Chapter 31
JILLIAN
“The intake valves are clear, but we have a problem.”
Maug’s voice rumbles from the cockpit, tight with frustration.
I’m standing on the rusted gantry ladder, looking down at the sleek, deadly curve of the starfighter.
The engines are humming—a low, thrumming vibration that shakes dust from the cavern ceiling—but the massive blast doors above us remain stubbornly shut.
“The mag-locks,” I say, looking up at the sliver of sky visible through a crack in the stone. “They’re fused, aren’t they?”
“Corroded,” Maug corrects, climbing out of the pilot’s seat. He looks at the ceiling with a snarl. “The internal release is dead. I can’t blast them open from the inside without risking a cave-in that crushes the ship.”
I tighten the straps of my pack. I know what has to be done. I knew it the moment the red error light blinked on the console.
“I have to go topside,” I say quietly.
Maug freezes. His golden eyes snap to mine, blazing. “No.”
“There’s a manual override on the outer ridge. You showed me the schematics,” I argue, stepping off the ladder to stand before him. “If I trip the hydraulic release from the outside, the doors will slide. You fly out, hover low, and I jump on the ramp. We’re gone before they even know we launched.”
“It’s too dangerous. The hive is hunting.”
“And if we stay down here, we’re trapped in a stone box,” I counter, reaching out to grip his forearms. His skin is hot, the muscles coiled tight as steel cables. “Maug. You can’t fit through the maintenance shaft. I can. I’m the only one who can reach the switch.”
He stares at me, a war between instinct and logic waging behind his eyes. He wants to lock me in the cockpit and keep me safe. But he knows I’m right.
Finally, he exhales—a ragged, defeated sound. He leans down, pressing his forehead against mine.
“Fast,” he commands. “You move fast. You trigger the release, and you get to the extraction point. If you aren’t there when I clear the doors…”
“I will be,” I promise. I kiss him hard, tasting ash and hope. “Fire it up. Be ready to fly.”
I pull away before I can lose my nerve and scramble toward the narrow maintenance shaft that leads to the surface.
I climb until my lungs burn. I climb until the air turns from stale cave damp to the dry, scorching heat of the surface. When I finally drag myself out of the fissure and onto the sun-baked rock, the wind hits me like a physical blow.
I check my bearings. The manual release junction is three hundred meters east, right near the canyon lip.
I start running.
I don’t see them until it’s too late.
I’m only a few klicks from the canyon’s lip—close enough that I can smell ozone where the ship’s atmospheric buffers are warming the air, a faint metallic taste on the back of my tongue that says escape. Almost there. Almost free.
And then they’re there.
Shadows in the dust. Flash of a boot. The glint of Darwin’s goddamn smile.
I pivot, instincts firing before thought, shoving hard off a rock and bolting toward the eastern trail.
A hiss cuts the air. Tranquilizer dart—misses by a whisper.
Another flash—Darwin again, moving too fast, too smooth.
He’s humming.
That’s what does it.
That sound.
It isn’t loud. Not really. Just this low, syrupy thread curling through the heat, brushing the edge of my skull like a vine wrapping around bone. It shouldn’t hurt. It doesn’t hurt. But it’s wrong. Too perfect. Too steady. Like a machine trying to mimic a lullaby.
“Stop,” he says gently, and his voice vibrates through my spine.
I scream. Raw. Human.
And I run.
I try to run.
But the sound burrows deeper. It pulses against my teeth, my eyes, my lungs. Each breath gets harder. My limbs start betraying me—just little things. A stutter in the right leg. A twitch in my wrist. Like my body’s not entirely mine anymore.
I trip.
Not far. Just enough.
They’re on me before I can lurch back up.
“Let go of me!” I snarl, claws bared, teeth flashing—but I’m slower than I should be.
The darts come next.
Two. Maybe three.
They don’t sting.
They blur.
The world slips sideways, like it’s trying to unspool itself, like gravity’s forgotten how to work. The rock under my cheek goes hot, then cold, then... gone.
Everything’s gone.
I wake strapped to a chair.
The overhead light is surgical white. Too bright. Too clean. It hums faintly—not the fungus hum, but close enough to make me gag.
I’m in one of the expedition labs.
Not the medbay.
A secondary lab.
Worse.
The chair’s wide and padded, meant for containment studies. My wrists are buckled. My ankles too. Not tight—but enough. Enough to say they don’t see me as a threat anymore.
They think they’ve already won.
The room smells like copper and bleach. Underneath that, the telltale damp rot of fungus. It crawls along the air ducts. Creeps under the cabinet seams. It pulses in the corners of my vision.
And then he walks in.
Ciampa.
His gait is steady. His smile—broad, almost beatific. And the crystals.
Gods.
They grow from his neck like delicate coral, iridescent and soft-looking. A halo of mycelial bloom, glimmering faintly under the light.
He looks like something divine.
He looks wrong.
“You’re awake,” he says softly. “Good.”
I don’t answer. My mouth’s dry, but I clench my teeth anyway.
He studies me like a father watching a child come down from a tantrum. Patient. Calm.
“You’ll feel better soon,” he murmurs. “Once you stop resisting.”
My heart kicks into high gear.
I swallow, slow, deliberate.
“So that’s it?” I say, hoarse. “Mind control via mushroom?”
He chuckles—chuckles—and sits on the stool across from me.
“It’s not mind control,” he says. “It’s harmony.”
He gestures around. “You think chaos is freedom. But freedom is noise, Jillian. We’re giving the world a chance to breathe. To be one thing, for once. A chorus instead of a million screaming solos.”
“You’re insane.”
He nods. “Once, yes. But not anymore.”
I feel it again.
That pull.
The song—not just sound now, but a sensation. Like tendrils brushing the edge of my thoughts, testing them. The parts of me that are frayed—the worry, the fear, the ache for Maug—they’re the places it presses hardest.
But I count. Like Maug taught me.
Heartbeat. Breath. Thought.
One, two, three. Breathe.
“Where’s Darwin?” I ask.
“Preparing the cargo.”
Ciampa’s voice is almost affectionate. “He’s very devoted. All of them are. Except you.”
He touches a crystal blooming from his wrist. It shifts color faintly, pulsing with a dull pink light.
“You should feel proud,” he says. “Your body’s strong. It resisted longer than any of us expected. Whatever you were exposed to in the wild, it’s… intriguing. But not unassailable.”
I glare. “I’ll fight it until I die.”
He smiles. “No. You won’t. You’ll sing. Eventually.”
I fight the bile in my throat.
“Let me go,” I snap. “You have no idea what’s coming.”
He leans forward, amused. “You mean your Odexian lover?”
He says it like a joke. Like it’s just a footnote.
And it hits me harder than anything else—that he knows. That he’s not afraid.
“You think he can save you?” he whispers. “He’s just another war machine. And war machines break.”
He stands, brushing imaginary dust off his sleeve.
“Sleep now, Jillian. Don’t fight it so hard. You’ll see. The song isn’t an enemy. It’s a home.”
He leaves.
And I sit there, trembling.
Not from fear.
From fury.
I wait.
I breathe.
The song grows louder—cycling through highs and lows like a tide against my skull. But I count.
Four, five, six. Breathe.
My arms ache. My lips crack from dehydration. But I listen. Beneath the song, I find the rhythm. The patterns. The gaps.
It wants control—but it’s not flawless.
It wants me to believe it’s inevitable.
But I know better.
And somewhere out there—he’s coming.
I just have to hold on long enough.