Tynrax
Everything hurts.
My head feels like someone took a plasma torch to my brain.
But beneath the pain, there’s warmth. Softness. I’m lying on something yielding. Not stone, not metal.
Aris.
My head is in her lap. I can feel the fabric of her pants under my cheek, the heat of her body, the slight shift of her breathing. Her hand is in my hair. Has been for some time, from the gentle weight of it.
I need to move. Need to sit up and face what I’ve done.
For just a moment, I stay here. Take comfort I don’t deserve from someone who should be running from me.
Her fingers move slightly. A soothing motion. She doesn’t know I’m awake yet.
I don’t want her to know. Don’t want her to pull away. Don’t want to see fear in her eyes when she realizes what I am.
Every thought comes wrapped in static, distorted, barely coherent. And my body, my entire body aches with the kind of deep exhaustion that suggests I’ve been running for hours.
But I haven’t been running. I’ve been...
The memories slot into place. Fragmentary. Incomplete. Wrong.
The side passage. The interface. Touching it. Pain. Then... nothing. A gap where my consciousness should be. And after the gap, waking up here on the floor with Aris looking down at me and...
Sarpi.
Sarpi’s body against the wall, his head at that impossible, final angle. Blood pooling dark on stone. Not moving. Never moving again.
The bodies of the dead creatures litter the chamber floor. Six of them. Maybe seven. Armored carapaces cracked open. Limbs twisted. Mandibles broken.
And my hands.
“What did I do?” The words come out rough, like my throat has forgotten how to form sounds properly.
Every muscle in my body aches. The kind of exhaustion that comes from pushing too hard for too long. My hands are shaking.
I know what happened. The feral state removed every limiter, every psychological control that keeps a Zephyrian from tearing themselves apart. And now I’m paying for it.
“You killed the pack hunters.” Aris’s voice. Steady. Too steady. Like she’s forcing calm through sheer willpower. “They attacked. You defended us.”
Defended. That’s one word for it. Massacre would be another. Butchery. Complete loss of control resulting in extreme violence.
I try to sit up. The world tilts sideways and Aris’s hand lands on my shoulder.
“Easy. You collapsed pretty hard. Give yourself a minute.”
“Sarpi...”
“I know.” Her hand tightens slightly. “I’m sorry.”
I push past the dizziness and sit up anyway. Need to see. Need to understand what I did even though every instinct I possess is screaming at me to look away and never think about this again.
The chamber is a slaughterhouse. No other word fits. The hunters died violently. The way their bodies lie shows the brutality of the fight.
I did that.
Me.
“I don’t remember.” The admission feels like failure.
Like admitting I’m fundamentally broken.
“I touched the interface in the side chamber and there was pain and pressure and then... nothing. Complete gap. I killed him.” The words scrape out of my throat.
“If I hadn’t gone feral. If I’d stayed in control.
I could have reached him faster. Could have stopped the alpha before it. ..” I can’t finish.
“The alpha killed Sarpi.” Aris interrupts. Firm. Like she needs me to hear this. “Its mandibles crushed his neck before you even reached them. You tried to stop it. You were too late. That’s not the same as killing him.”
“I can’t remember doing it.” That’s worse, somehow. That I can look at this carnage and have no memory of causing it. “What if I had hurt you? What if during the gap I...”
“You didn’t touch me.” She shifts so I can see her face better. “You killed the hunters. All of them. Then you collapsed. You never came near me except to fall over, and I caught you before you hit your head.”
I search her expression for deception. For the polite lie people tell when they’re afraid of triggering another episode. But she just looks tired. Scared, yes. But not lying.
“What happened in the side chamber?” she asks. “You said you touched an interface?”
The memories are fractured. I reach for them carefully, trying to assemble a coherent sequence from fragments. “There was a control panel. Similar to the one in the main chamber but smaller. More active. When I touched it...”
How do I explain? The pressure. The voices that weren’t voices. The feeling of my consciousness shattering and reforming as something else. Something that operated on pure instinct instead of reason.
“Something in that chamber shattered every control I’ve spent years building.” I look at the dead hunters. At Sarpi’s body.
She’s quiet for a moment. Then: “Can I take some readings? Your markings are still flickering irregularly. I want to see if there’s measurable difference in your bioelectric signature.”
I nod. Don’t trust my voice.
“This isn’t going to work.” She studies her scanner’s readout. “I need the ship’s medical bay. Better equipment. And we need to assess our situation,” she says.
Our situation. Right. Because we’re not just dealing with my catastrophic loss of control.
“The ship.” I push to my feet, ignoring the way my legs protest. “If the facility’s energy surge hit our systems...”
“We could be stranded.” She stands too, steadier than I am. “‘The relay is still broken,’ she says, her voice flat. ‘And we’re a man down.’“
The practical reminder helps. Gives me something to focus on besides the horror. We have mission parameters. Objectives. Five thousand people depending on us to restore power transmission before Christmas Day.
Can’t do that if we’re trapped here.
“We need to check the ship’s status,” I say. “And we need to...” I look at Sarpi’s body. Can’t finish the sentence.
“Bury him.” Aris’s voice is gentle. “I know. But ship status first. We need to understand our resources before we make decisions.”
She’s right. Emotionally, I want to take care of Sarpi immediately. Give him proper respect. But practically, we need information.
I start toward the entrance, carefully stepping around the dead hunters.
My body moves normally now despite the exhaustion.
Whatever the facility did to me, it’s not affecting my motor control anymore.
Just my neural patterns. Just my ability to maintain the emotional suppression that keeps me stable and controlled.
Just the fundamental foundation of Zephyrian psychological health.
Aris falls into step beside me. Doesn’t say anything. Just walks close enough that I can reach out and touch her if I need to. The thought shouldn’t be as comforting as it is.
“I could have killed you,” I say quietly. “If you’d been in front of me instead of behind. If I’d turned the wrong direction during the episode.”
“But you didn’t.”
“Pure chance.”
“I don’t think so.” She glances at me. “You were feral. Operating on instinct. And your instinct was to protect what was behind you. Me. Whatever that facility did to you, whatever state you were in, you still knew I was there. You still kept me safe.”
I want to argue. Want to explain that instinct is unpredictable and dangerous and she’s attributing intentionality to what was likely random chance. But I remember something. A fragment from the gap.
The word “protect” blazing through my consciousness like a command I couldn’t ignore.
And her name. Aris. Surfacing through the chaos as the single coherent thought I could hold onto.
“Maybe,” I concede.
We emerge from the ruins into pale moonlight. A sharp cold that cuts at my exposed skin.
The relay station sits a kilometer away. The ship beyond it, another kilometer distant.
The damage to our ship is visible from here.
The communication array is bent at an unnatural angle. Wrong. Broken. And one of the landing struts has buckled, the ship is listing slightly to port. Ground shift. The secondary quake must have destabilized the landing site.
“Fusion hell,” Aris whispers.
She stumbles on loose regolith. My hand shoots out, catching her elbow.
“Thanks.”
I should let go. My hand stays where it is.
We walk the rest of the distance like that. My hand on her elbow, ostensibly to steady her. Actually because I can’t bring myself to break the contact. She doesn’t pull away. Doesn’t comment on it.
Just walks a little closer to me than strictly necessary.
The simple trust in that. The fact that she’ll let me touch her after what she witnessed. It does something to the guilt crushing my chest. Doesn’t fix it. Makes it bearable.
I pull out my datapad, trying to ping the ship’s systems remotely. The connection establishes. Good. Ship still has power. But when I check diagnostics, my chest tightens.
“Communication array is destroyed.” I scroll through the damage reports. “Structural damage from the ground shift. Propulsion system offline, can’t fire engines with the ship at this angle or we’ll tear the remaining struts. Two landing struts compromised. We can’t fly. Can’t call for help.”
“So we’re stranded.” She says it flat. Statement of fact, not panic. “Just us. On a moon with dangerous ruins that make you go feral. With a relay to fix before Christmas or five thousand people die.”
“That’s an accurate summary of our situation.”
“Okay.” She takes a slow breath. Lets it out. “Okay. We can work with this. First, we bury Sarpi. Then we assess what supplies we have. Then we figure out how to fix the relay without you losing control again.”
I dig with methodical focus, each movement precise despite my exhaustion.
Aris’s hand brushes mine when we exchange the shovel. Brief contact. I feel it like an electric current. She doesn’t pull away immediately. Lets our fingers overlap for a heartbeat before taking the tool.
Later, when we’re placing stones on the marker, it happens again. Our hands reach for the same stone. This time she doesn’t let go. Just covers my hand with hers. Holds it there for three seconds.
“I’m sorry,” she says quietly.
I don’t know what she’s apologizing for. Sarpi. Touching me. Witnessing what I became.
I turn my hand under hers. Not pulling away. Shifting so we’re palm to palm. Her hand is small in mine. Warm. Alive.
“I’m sorry too.”
We stand there, hands clasped over a stone that marks a grave I couldn’t prevent. The weight of failure and unexpected comfort mixing until I can’t distinguish between them.
She starts walking toward the ship. “Come on, Commander. We have work to do.”
I follow her across the regolith. My markings flicker irregularly, can’t maintain stable emotional control. Can’t suppress the guilt and horror and fear churning through my system.
But when I look at Aris walking ahead of me, shoulders back and determination in every step, something in my chest loosens slightly.
She’s not afraid of me. Should be. I’m dangerous. Unstable. Lethal when I lose control.
But she’s already planning our next steps. Already working on solutions. Refusing to accept failure.
Her relentless optimism in the face of catastrophic circumstances might actually be what saves us. She refuses to accept failure. Refuses to stop trying. That determination might be exactly what we need.
“We’re stranded,” I say quietly, testing the reality of it.
She glances back. Gives me a smile that’s more determination than happiness. “Yeah. But we’re not dead yet. That’s something.”