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⮞ Chapter Four: Dark Fury (Part Two) Pairing: Jungkook x Reader Other Tags: Convict!Jungkook, Escaped Prisoner!Jungkook, Piolet!Reader, Captain!Reader, Holyman!Namjoon Genre: Sci-Fi, Action, Adventure, Thriller, Suspense, Strangers to Enemies to ???, Slow Burn, LOTS of Angst, Light Fluff, Eventual Smut, Third Person POV, 18+ Only Word Count: 16k+ Summary: When a deep space transporter crash-lands on a barren planet illuminated by three relentless suns, survival becomes the only priority for the stranded passengers, including resourceful pilot Y/N Y/L/N, mystic Namjoon Kim, lawman Taemin Lee, and enigmatic convict Jungkook Jeon. As they scour the hostile terrain for supplies and a way to escape, Y/N uncovers a terrifying truth: every 22 years, the planet is plunged into total darkness during an eclipse, awakening swarms of ravenous, flesh-eating creatures. Forced into a fragile alliance, the survivors must face not only the deadly predators but also their own mistrust and secrets. For Y/N, the growing tension with Jungkook—both a threat and a reluctant ally—raises the stakes even higher, as the battle to escape becomes one for survival against the darkness both around them and within themselves. Warnings: Strong Language, Side Character Death, Violence, Blood, Talks About Past Characters Dying, Trauma, Graphic Injury scenes, Jaded Characters, LIGHT Religious Themes (I mean no harm and do not want to offend anyone), Smart Character Choices, This is all angst and action and that's pretty much it, Reader is a bad ass, Survivor Woman is back baby, preforming surgery on one's self, Gardening, terraforming, some mental health issues, survivor's guilt, lots of talking to herself, and recording it, because she'll lose her mind otherwise, bad science language, honestly all of this has probably had the worst science and basis ever, let me know if I missed anything... A/N: So, because Tumblr makes no sense, I'm having to cut this chapter in half because of a text block issue. So, you'll technically be getting two updates at once (even though it's the same chapter). Yay. I love this flatform so much. Thanks for reading!

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The skies above M6-117 were quiet now. Empty, wide, and harsh. The kind of quiet that didn’t mean peace—just the absence of screaming.

The eclipse had ended. The suns had returned, casting a bleached-blue glare across the scorched landscape. The heat came fast, drying blood, baking bones, erasing evidence. The bioraptors had vanished back underground, like the monsters they were—real, but unseen.

The wind hadn’t stopped. It kicked up grit in steady waves, howling across the dunes and cliffs. Thin, high-pitched. Like something still mourning.

In the shadow of a broken rockslide, part of a cave lay half-buried in sand and debris. Inside, it was cooler. Still. The air stank of blood and dust and something darker.

A body lay on the ground, facedown in the red sand.

It twitched.

Then again.

A low, strangled gasp broke the silence. Y/N Y/L/N dragged in a breath like it hurt. Her fingers clawed at the sand, trying to push herself up, but her muscles didn’t answer right away. She blinked, dust clinging to her lashes, and saw only the ground in front of her face.

Her mind spun. Pain screamed at her from every direction. Her ribs were cracked. Something deep in her gut pulsed with fire. But she was alive.

She wasn’t sure how.

She shifted—and the pain in her side became unbearable. She cried out, a rough, animal sound, sharp enough to echo. Her hand pressed instinctively to the source, only to feel the jagged, cold edge of something unnatural jutting from her body.

It was part of a bioraptor. The broken tip of its antenna—long, thin, sharp—embedded just below her ribs.

She stared at it.

Her breathing turned shallow.

She could feel the warm trickle of blood around it. Too much blood.

Her hands trembled as they hovered near the wound.

“Okay,” she whispered. It didn’t sound like her. “Okay… okay…”

She took a breath. Just one. Then wrapped her fingers around the antenna and yanked.

It came free with a wet pop.

The pain dropped her flat again. She couldn’t even scream—her breath caught in her throat like broken glass. For a second, everything went gray at the edges. She fought to stay conscious. One hand pressed into the wound, trying to stop the bleeding. Her other hand dug into the sand, anchoring her.

Move. Just move.

She rolled onto her side, breath ragged. Her fingers found the antenna again and, slowly, shakily, she used it like a crutch to pull herself up.

The suns outside were merciless. Light poured through the cracked stone above, stinging her eyes. She squinted, shielding her face as she staggered toward the cave’s opening. Each step was an argument with gravity. Her legs barely held.

But she made it.

Outside, the wind hit her like a slap. Sand scraped at her skin, got into her wounds. Her jumpsuit was torn, crusted with blood and dust. Her lips were cracked. Her throat burned.

She looked out over the desert.

Nothing but dunes. Heat shimmered off the sand in waves. But in the far distance, barely visible, was the broken spine of the Hunter-Gratzner. Half-buried. Still smoldering.

She stared at it like it was a promise. Or a curse.

Then she started walking.

She leaned hard on the antenna, every step like dragging dead weight. Her breath came in low, steady huffs. No room for panic. No energy for hope.

Her mind kept flashing images—pieces that didn’t fit right. Screaming in the dark. Jungkook’s voice, sharp and close. Leo. Namjoon. The ship rising into the sky without her. Or maybe that was just a dream. Maybe it hadn’t made it off the ground.

She didn’t know.

She walked anyway.

At some point, her knees buckled and she hit the sand hard. She stayed there a while, staring at nothing, waiting for her legs to stop shaking. Then she pushed herself back up.

The wreck was closer now.

It took everything she had left.

When she reached the wreck, her legs gave out. No dramatics—just gravity, and her body finally saying enough. She collapsed at the base of the scorched hull, the heat from the metal pressing into her cheek. For a second, she stayed there, breathing shallow and fast, the air burning in her lungs.

She pressed her face to the ship’s skin like it might recognize her. Might remember what she’d given to get back here.

It didn’t.

She dragged herself through the narrow corridor, her hand leaving a smearing trail of blood across the wall. The inside of the ship was hollowed out, quiet in a way that felt too final. Sunlight leaked through bent panels in thin, golden shafts. Dust floated in the beams. Everything else was still.

She found a corner—small, cramped, out of the sun—and dropped there. Her back hit the wall, and she slid down with a grunt, her body one long, dull scream of nerves. The jumpsuit clung to the wound. She peeled it back slowly, trying not to scream when the fabric tore away dried blood.

The wound was worse than she’d let herself believe. Deep. Angry. Still bleeding. She swallowed hard as she probed it with trembling fingers—and felt it. A shard of something still inside her. Bone? Metal? No. She knew exactly what it was: the antenna. A piece of that thing. Still with her.

She almost laughed. She didn’t.

Instead, she grabbed what was left of her belt and tied off a section of fabric over the wound. It was sloppy. Crude. But it was what she had. Her fingers hovered there a moment, pressing, breathing.

Her head dropped back against the wall, her jaw clenched. Every breath came with a spike of pain. And exhaustion… it was creeping in fast. The kind that didn’t ask for permission. The kind that felt like sleep—but leaned closer to surrender.

Memories came in flickers. Not in order. Not clear.

Darkness, wet and full of teeth. The glowworm bottle shaking in her hand. Screams she didn’t know if she’d imagined or made. The taste of her own blood. The moment the antenna had gone in.

But there’d been something else.

Another one of them—bigger, meaner—crashing into the one that had pinned her. Claws raking flesh, jaws tearing. It hadn’t been mercy. Just hunger. A bigger predator taking down the competition. It didn’t come for her. Not then. Just devoured its own.

She didn’t remember crawling to the cave. Didn’t remember sealing the entrance. Just remembered the sound—their claws dragging across the rock, trying to dig her out. The pressure in her ears. Her own heartbeat louder than everything else.

And then, nothing.

Until now.

She blinked the sweat from her eyes and forced herself to move. The med bay wasn’t far. She didn’t think about what would happen if it had already been stripped. She just moved. Every step was calculated, robotic.

The medical kit was still there. Dusty, kicked halfway under a cabinet, but untouched.

She didn’t let herself feel relieved. Just opened it.

Anesthetic. Forceps. Needle. Thread.

Her hands shook too hard to hold anything steady. The syringe took two tries before she got the plunger back. She jammed the needle into the flesh around the wound. Didn’t flinch. Just exhaled, slow and ragged.

The numbing was partial. That was enough.

She picked up the forceps.

For a long time, she didn’t move. Just stared at the open kit. At her own bloodied fingers. At the wound.

Just get it over with.

The forceps slid in.

The pain was savage. She didn’t scream this time—just clenched her teeth so hard her jaw locked. Her body tried to curl in on itself, but she kept going, deeper, until she felt it.

A click of metal against metal.

She yanked.

It came out slick and sharp, the jagged end of the bioraptor’s antenna glinting red in the dim light.

She dropped it to the floor. Let it roll where it wanted.

She had to rest. Just for a second. Just a second.

But the blood kept coming.

She forced herself upright. Threaded the needle with shaking fingers. She didn’t think. Didn’t let her mind go anywhere but forward.

Each stitch was its own nightmare.

When it was done, she slumped again, panting, her skin cold despite the heat. Her hand rested on the bandage, her eyes tracking the slow drip of blood still escaping.

She tilted her head back. Stared up at the ceiling like it might say something useful.

Nothing came.

No voice. No rescue. No answer.

Just her.

She licked her dry lips, voice cracked and flat.

“…Fuck.”

It had been about a week since she’d dragged herself back to the wreck, bloody, broken, and sure she'd die there. Time didn’t work the same on M6-117. There were no nights anymore—just the relentless weight of heat and light from the planet’s three suns, painting everything in bleached gold and bruised shadow. Days blurred. Pain blurred. All of it became one long stretch of surviving.

The wound in her side was still tender, stitched tight by unsteady hands and whatever thread she could scavenge from a torn flight jacket. Every movement tugged at it—sharp reminders that she wasn’t out of danger, just walking beside it now.

But she was moving. That was something.

Her world had shrunk to a routine. A grim, necessary rhythm of searching for water in fractured pipes, picking through twisted metal for anything she could turn into a tool, a weapon, or fuel. And when she wasn’t scavenging, she was listening—really listening. For breathing that wasn’t hers. For claws. For the scratch of something still out there.

The wreck had gone silent after the eclipse ended. No bioraptors. No screaming. Just the groan of stressed metal and her own footsteps echoing off bulkheads.

She'd made a corner of the cryochamber hers. The cryo unit was done for, split open like an overripe fruit, but the space was small, shielded, and out of the way. She’d insulated the floor with old uniforms and a couple ruined blankets. It stank of old coolant and dried blood, but at least it stayed cool when the heat got bad.

The walls still bore remnants of what the ship used to be—old NOSA placards peeling at the edges, blinking panels that flashed error codes in dying green light, and soot trails streaked across the ceiling from the fire suppression system kicking in too late. It was a grave, really. She lived inside a grave. But it was better than nothing.

That morning, she forced herself to explore farther.

Her muscles ached—worse in the mornings, like her body needed convincing to keep trying. She kept her hand on the wall as she moved through the corridor, half for balance, half to feel something solid beneath her fingers.

She found herself at a section they hadn’t touched much before. Starboard storage, mostly sealed during the worst of it. Back when there were others to consider—people who needed her to be strong, fast, efficient. No time for curiosity. Only priorities: food, light, defense.

Now there was only her. And time. Too much of it.

The first door barely gave under her weight—half-crushed, bent inward like it had tried to fold itself shut during the crash. Y/N pressed her shoulder to it, felt the resistance, then forced it open just enough to slip through.

The metal scraped against itself with a harsh groan. She ducked low, her breath catching as the movement tugged at the stitched wound in her side. She winced but kept going, inching through the narrow gap until she was inside.

The air was dry and stale. Hot. It smelled of scorched plastic and oxidized metal, and when she moved, a thin layer of ash and dust rose around her in lazy swirls. Her hand instinctively covered her mouth as she coughed.

The space was wrecked—storage bay maybe, or a utility room. Hard to tell. The walls were blackened with soot, panels popped loose from their bolts. Most of the crates had been crushed flat or ripped open, their contents spilled and warped from heat. Burned rations. Melted circuitry. Garbage.

She kept digging anyway. You couldn’t afford to pass anything up. Every scrap might mean one more hour alive.

Then her hand brushed something solid. Cold. Square-edged.

She froze. Reached again, slower this time. Whatever it was, it was lodged under a twisted shelf. She gave it a hard yank, and it came loose with a pop of static from the surrounding debris.

A camera.

NOSA-issued. Military-grade. Tough build. Matte black casing scuffed and scratched, the sort of thing meant to survive impact, weather, time. Her fingers curled around it like it might vanish. She turned it over, thumb brushing against the ridged power switch.

The screen blinked on with a low whir, grainy at first, then steadier.

The timestamp burned on the corner of the display: the day of the crash.

Her stomach turned. Not from the wound, not this time.

She stared at the date. Blinked. Her thumb hovered near the playback button.

What could possibly be on here? Footage from the wreck? A log? A view of her, maybe, shouting over the storm, trying to keep people alive, trying to outrun the dark.

Or something worse.

She let the camera rest in her lap. Leaned back against the edge of a crate and rubbed her hand across her face. Her skin felt dry and cracked, caked with dirt and dried sweat. The heat in this part of the wreck was worse. Less airflow. Fewer cracks in the hull.

“Right,” she muttered, looking down at the device. “Like any of this would’ve made a difference.”

The camera didn’t reply. Just sat there, screen glowing, lens aimed up like it was waiting. Like it was listening.

She hated that it almost felt alive. Too many days with only your own voice bouncing off the walls, and you started assigning souls to objects.

Still… the idea didn’t leave her. Not all the way. She could use it. Record something. Not a distress call—she wasn’t dumb enough to believe that kind of miracle was coming. But maybe just to talk. Something to anchor her to herself.

She didn’t press record.

Not yet.

Instead, she set it gently on the edge of a crate and stood, steadying herself with one hand. Her legs ached, and the muscles around her wound were starting to throb. She ignored it. There were more rooms to check. More corners of this grave to dig through.

She climbed through a low break in the wall, into another part of the ship—this one better preserved. Still messy. Still broken. But more intact. Storage crates littered the space, some cracked open, some still sealed.

She knelt beside the nearest pile. Pain flared up her side again, sharp and deep. She sucked in a breath and kept going.

Found food packs—sealed. Clean. Enough for maybe another week, if rationed right. A length of rope. A hand torch. Small wins. The kind that could mean everything.

She carried it all back to the cryo chamber in two trips. Set it down carefully on her makeshift bedding. Let herself breathe.

Her eyes drifted back to the camera.

It hadn’t moved. Of course it hadn’t. But it felt like it was waiting. Still. Quiet. Expecting something.

“Maybe later,” she said, mostly to herself.

But even as she turned away, the idea lingered. Not hope. Not exactly.

Just... the need to remember she was still a person. And that maybe, somewhere down the line, someone would want to know what happened here.

Even if it was only the walls.

The camera sputtered awake with a groan, like it resented the effort. The motor’s whine was sluggish, hesitant—like something half-dead remembering how to breathe. The lens jittered before settling, the flicker reminding her of a dying candle—just barely clinging on. It wasn’t a victory, not even close. But after the fire, the impact, and the soul-crushing silence of the days that followed, the damn thing still worked. She didn’t feel triumphant. If anything, it felt like the universe was mocking her.

She leaned into the frame, face streaked with dirt, sweat gleaming under the camera’s dull red light. Her eyes were hollowed by fatigue, lids heavy like sandbags. Hair plastered to her temples in grimy clumps, tangled and wild, a clear message that survival had long since outranked vanity. She squinted at the screen, muttering under her breath as she adjusted the focus. Her fingers, stiff and awkward, moved like they didn’t remember what finesse was.

“Okay,” she said hoarsely, voice cracked like the desert floor outside. She swallowed and tried again, quieter this time. “Okay…”

The timestamp blinked to life: HUNTER GRATZNER – SOL 19 – 06:53. She stared at the numbers, let them sit there, heavy as lead. Nineteen sols. Almost three weeks since the crash. Almost three weeks since everything splintered apart. Somehow it felt like forever and yesterday at the same time.

She leaned back, dragging a hand across her brow and only smearing more dirt across it. “This is… Y/N Y/L/N. Pilot.” Her tone was flat, too drained to bother with formality. She could’ve been filling out a form, not recording what might be her last words. “Logging this… just in case.”

Her voice trailed off into the heat-thick air. The only sound was the low whir of the camera. Then, suddenly, a bitter laugh escaped her—sharp, involuntary. “Just in case I don’t make it.”

Her eyes drifted toward the cramped walls of the survival shelter. They looked closer than before, like they were shrinking inward. She blinked hard, tried to focus. But her thoughts had a way of slipping off-course these days. She blamed the heat. She blamed the silence.

The first week after the crash was a mess of pain and blackout stretches. That damned bone had punctured her side—jagged and deep—and pulling it out nearly knocked her out cold. She’d spent two full days sprawled across the remains of the cockpit, bleeding into the floor, half-conscious and half-delirious. Every movement felt like a death sentence. The bleeding slowed eventually, and she’d tied together enough scraps of uniform to hold herself together.

By day three, she’d clawed her way to what was left of the storage compartments and scavenged a crude medkit. Nothing sterile, nothing proper, but enough to keep the infection at bay. Enough to survive.

Since then, survival had been a matter of cataloging and rationing. What was left? What still worked? Most of the ship was scrap—gutted, burned, twisted beyond recognition—but there were pockets of salvage. A stash of dehydrated meal packs. Some intact water lines, though who knew how long they’d hold. The pressure unit was holding, barely. The oxygen regulator had hairline fractures she hadn’t figured out how to seal yet. Time was running out. Breath by breath.

And the heat. Gods, the heat. The planet didn’t cool. Ever. With three suns in staggered orbit, there was no real night, just a dimming. A pause. She wasn’t sticking around for the next sunset—not when that was a couple of decades away. The constant pressure of it was maddening. Sweat pooled beneath her clothes, dried in salty crusts. Finding a tube of half-used sunscreen in one of the cabins had felt like discovering gold. She'd applied it like it was sacred, smoothing it over her arms and face with a reverence she didn’t even know she had left. For a few moments, she’d felt like a person again.

Now, she stared into the camera, her voice quieter. “Probably won’t make it,” she said, almost like she was sharing a secret with herself. “Not unless I can fix the ship… or find something better.”

Her gaze hardened, locking onto the lens like it was someone to talk to. “It’s oh-six-fifty-three, Sol nineteen. And I’m still here.” She let the words hang, heavy and strange. “Obviously.” It was meant to be sarcasm, but it landed like an empty shell.

She rested her elbows on her knees, her body folding in on itself. “I bet this’ll come as a shock. To NOSA. To… whoever’s watching. Surprise, I guess.” She exhaled slowly, one corner of her mouth twitching in what might have been a smile if there’d been any humor left in her.

“They think I’m dead. All of them. Honestly? So did I.”

Her hand curled into a fist, knuckles pale. Then she held something up—a jagged, bloodstained piece of bone. It caught the light like something sacred and awful. “This tore through me,” she said, eyes locked on it. “Ripped me open like tissue paper. I thought I was done.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “I should’ve been done.”

She turned the bone slowly in her hand, studying it like it might tell her something. “But it saved me. Long enough for the bleeding to stop. Long enough to crawl somewhere safe.” She paused, jaw tightening. “Three days. Three godsdamn days. Hiding in a fucking cave. Praying those bioraptors wouldn’t sniff me out.”

She looked toward the viewport, her eyes following the jagged line of the horizon. Nothing but dust and rock and heat as far as she could see—like the planet had been built just to wear people down. No signs of life. No movement. Just stillness and that same bone-dry silence that stretched forever. A place that didn’t give a damn if you lived or died.

Her voice came out barely above a whisper. “Jungkook…”

She paused, swallowing around something thick in her throat. It took effort to keep her voice steady. “If you ever hear this… just know it wasn’t your fault. None of it was. Shit just went sideways.” Her jaw tensed. “You did what you had to. I get it.”

She let the silence sit for a second, then added, softer, “If I’d been in your shoes… I would’ve done the same.”

Her eyes dropped to the floor, and her whole body seemed to cave in on itself, like the weight of everything finally settled on her shoulders. “I’m glad you made it,” she said quietly. “All of you.”

The quiet that followed was thick and suffocating. After a moment, she let out a sharp breath and dragged a hand down her face, like she could wipe off the fatigue. “So yeah,” she muttered, the edge in her voice dulled by exhaustion. “That’s where we’re at.”

She straightened up a little, like it was some kind of formality. “Y/N Y/L/N. Stranded on planet M6-117.” Her eyes scanned the room, as if it still surprised her that this cramped little pod was all she had left. “No comms, because—” She gave a small, humorless laugh. “Well, the ship’s a fireball now. So, there’s that.”

Her hand swept vaguely around the tiny habitat. It trembled a little as she gestured. “Even if I could send a signal, the closest manned mission isn’t anywhere near this quadrant. Not for years. Maybe decades. And I’ve got thirty-one days’ worth of supplies. That’s my clock.”

She took a breath, slower this time. “If the oxygenator dies, that’s it. No backup. I just… stop breathing. If the water reclaimer fails, dehydration’s next. If there’s a breach and this place heats up?” She shook her head slightly. “I’ll cook before I even know what hit me.”

Her voice cracked, barely holding together. “And if none of that happens... I still run out of food.”

Her eyes lingered on the camera lens, but they were distant now, like she wasn’t really seeing it. Like she was already somewhere else in her mind, farther away than the stars.

After a long beat, she reached for the console. Her fingers hovered for a second—then pressed the button.

The screen flickered off, and the silence rushed back in like a wave.

Y/N sat on the makeshift bunk she’d pieced together, her back pressed against the icy metal wall. The chill seeped through her jumpsuit, a sharp contrast to the constant, oppressive heat of M6-117. Her stitches pulled faintly with every shift of her weight, a dull, nagging reminder of how fragile her body had become. Heavy lifting? Out of the question. Even breathing too hard felt like it might tear her apart. Every motion had to be slow, deliberate, calculated—none of which came naturally to her.

Her fingers drummed lightly against the wall in an uneven rhythm, the faint sound filling the silence around her. The days had started to blur together, stretching endlessly into a haze of pain and exhaustion. Minutes felt like hours. Hours felt like days. She had no way to tell how long she’d been sitting there, staring at the opposite wall and letting her thoughts wander like loose debris floating in zero gravity.

The ship was a wreck. It had been from the moment it slammed into the desert, but with every passing day, it seemed to decay further. Panels hung precariously from the ceiling, some blackened and melted from electrical fires. Wires dangled like severed vines, swaying faintly every time she moved or the ship groaned in the wind. Dust—or maybe ash—coated the cracks in the floor, a constant reminder of the violence that had brought her here.

The smell was the worst: a mix of burnt plastic, old sweat, and something metallic that she couldn’t quite place. It clung to her skin, her clothes, the walls. There was no escaping it.

She shifted slightly, wincing as her stitches tugged again. Her fingers fell still, resting limply in her lap, as her thoughts drifted to the others. She hoped they were safe now, wherever they were, but the not knowing gnawed at her.

Jungkook’s face appeared unbidden in her mind, sharp and vivid as though he were standing in front of her. His eyes came first—those strange, unnerving, beautiful eyes. They were like polished silver, catching the light in ways that didn’t seem possible. They’d always made her feel a little unsteady, like he could see through her, into the parts she tried to keep hidden.

Where was he now? Safe on some station, no doubt, his cocky smirk driving everyone around him crazy. The thought made her stomach twist, a mixture of relief and something else she didn’t want to name.

And yet, her mind refused to let him go. She remembered his laugh, low and rough around the edges, and the way his shoulders always seemed too broad for whatever cramped space they were stuck in. She thought about the time he’d leaned close to her after she went back for Captain’s log, blood dried to her knuckles, and licked the blood off her hand like it was nothing.

The memory hit her like a jolt, and she flinched, physically recoiling from the thought. What the hell was wrong with her? Thinking about him like that, here, now, when she didn’t even know if she’d survive the week?

Her jaw tightened, and she shook her head, forcing the memory down into the depths of her mind where it belonged. Jungkook was gone. Namjoon and Leo were gone. And she was here, alone, on a planet no one cared about, clinging to life in the ruins of what used to be a ship.

She ran a hand over her face, exhaling shakily. Forcing her mind away from Jungkook, she thought about Namjoon and Leo instead. Namjoon, steady and calm even when the world was crumbling around them. He’d been the one to keep everyone together after the crash, the one who made everything seem so miniscule in the grand scheme of things. Who hoped and prayed to a God that she openly mocked. Well, look where that got her.

She hoped he’d found some semblance of peace, though she doubted he’d ever let himself rest.

And Leo—sweet, quiet Leo, who’d seemed so afraid and brave all at the same time and had a laugh that could light up a room. She could still hear her humming softly to herself as she worked, could still see the way her hands moved with the boomerang that she’d grown fond of during the short stay here. She deserved safety. She deserved a future.

Y/N could only imagine what the girl faced on these ships that made her pretend to be a boy.

Y/N knew because she had her own stories to tell. It was a shame the two of them never got to bond. She was a good girl, a sweet girl, and needed a home like Jimin had.

Oh God, Jim… He must think I’m dead.

Her chest ached with the weight of it all. She wanted to believe they’d made it, that the escape shuttle had gotten them somewhere safe. But hope was a dangerous thing out here.

Her gaze drifted to the cracks in the floor again, her fingers tapping absently against her knee. The silence pressed in around her, heavy and suffocating, as her thoughts spiraled in slow, relentless circles.

She wanted to move. To do something—anything—to break the stillness. But her body rebelled against her, reminding her with every ache and throb that she wasn’t ready yet.

"Tomorrow," she muttered, her voice hoarse and thin in the empty room. "Tomorrow, I'll start again."

But tonight, she would sit in her makeshift bunk, staring at the scorched walls, and try not to think about the eyes she couldn’t forget or the faces she might never see again.

The horizon had that strange, muted glow again, the kind that came when only one of the planet’s three suns was awake. It wasn’t exactly dawn—not in the way she remembered it from Helion 5—but it was the closest thing this godforsaken rock could offer. Y/N sat on a flat patch of charred metal outside the remains of the Hunter Gratzner, watching the pale orange light crawl across the jagged landscape. She knew the second sun would start peeking over the horizon soon, and if her mental clock was still reliable, that meant it was about six or seven in the morning back home.

When the third sun joined the party, it’d feel more like late afternoon, and the heat would grow even more unbearable. For now, the air was heavy but tolerable. A small mercy. She stretched her legs out in front of her, boots scuffed and battered, and stared out at the endless expanse of sand and rock. Nothing moved out there, not even a whisper of wind. This planet didn’t do “gentle.” It just existed, glaring down at her with its triple suns, daring her to survive another day.

She sighed and got to her feet, wincing as her muscles protested. The Hunter Gratzner was more like a wreckage with a roof than a proper ship these days, but it was home—for now. She ducked through the hatch and into the cramped quarters, the smell of metal and stale air greeting her like an old, annoying friend.

Her first stop was the toilet. Not glamorous, but necessary. The vacuum system roared to life, sucking the waste away and beginning its overly complicated drying procedure. Y/N stood there, half-listening to the machine whine and hum, her mind wandering. When it finished, she glanced back at the result—a silver bag sealed tight like a little alien gift.

She tilted her head, studying it. An idea started to form, half-baked and ridiculous, but the beginnings of something useful. “Huh,” she muttered under her breath, filing it away for later.

The rest of the morning was dedicated to inventory. Again. It wasn’t exciting, but it was important. She crouched next to the ration packs she’d pulled from the wreckage over the last few days, stacking them into neat, slightly obsessive piles. Most of it was unremarkable—protein bricks, nutrient paste, the kind of stuff that made eating feel more like a chore than a comfort. But one case caught her eye.

“DO NOT OPEN UNTIL SOLVARA,” the label read in bold, almost cheerful letters.

Solvara. Y/N snorted. The odds of her making it to Solvara felt about as likely as the suns setting on this planet anytime soon. Still, she tapped the edge of the case thoughtfully before moving on. Maybe it was worth saving. For morale or whatever.

The hours blurred after that. She worked on autopilot, sorting through supplies, patching what she could, ignoring the gnawing hunger in her stomach. By the time the second sun was high enough to heat the air into its usual suffocating blanket, she found herself sitting in the semi-darkness of the ship, surrounded by stacks of rations and scattered tools. She stared at the walls, at the faint flicker of the broken console, at nothing in particular.

It was the kind of stillness that didn’t feel restful—just hollow. Her thoughts circled back to the same questions, the same numbers. How long could she last? How much water did she really have? What if the pressure machine gave out tomorrow? Or the oxygen pack? There were too many variables, and the math was starting to feel like an enemy she couldn’t outsmart.

Y/N shook her head, forcing herself to sit up straighter. Enough. She needed to do something, anything, to stop the spiral. “Get up,” she muttered to herself. Her voice was rough, dry from dehydration and disuse. “Come on. Move.”

She pushed herself to her feet, scanning the room with purpose now. Her fingers trailed over the scattered wreckage, pausing every so often as she searched for... something. There. Tucked into the corner of a storage compartment. A pencil. It was small and unassuming, the kind of thing that would’ve been forgettable on any other day.

But not today.

She yanked a notecard free from one of the ship’s dusty manuals, the paper slightly yellowed but intact. Back to basics. No screens, no touchpads, no malfunctioning tech—just pencil and paper, like it was the old days.

Y/N sat down at the tiny table bolted to the floor and started writing. The pencil scratched across the card, leaving behind numbers and symbols, equations that didn’t look like much but felt monumental in her mind. Water consumption rates. Oxygen usage. Repair estimates. She wrote it all down, no matter how grim the answers looked.

“Let’s do the math,” she whispered, her voice steady this time. She kept writing.

The camera was rolling again, its tiny red light blinking steadily as Y/N adjusted its angle. She leaned into the frame, her face slightly less tragic than it had been in previous recordings. She’d cleaned up—sort of. The layers of grime and sweat were still there, and her hair, while still tangled, no longer clung to her forehead like a second skin. She looked more human. Barely.

She exhaled slowly, straightened her back, and looked directly at the camera lens. “After arriving in New Mecca,” she began, her voice steady but edged with dry sarcasm, “my crew was only supposed to be awake for thirty-one days before going back into cryosleep. For redundancy, NOSA sent enough food to last for sixty-eight days. For three people.”

She paused, letting the weight of the numbers settle in her mind—and maybe for whoever might watch this someday. “So for just me, that’s three hundred days. Four hundred if I get creative.” Her lips twisted into a tight smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. “Which means I still have to figure out how to grow food. Here. On a planet where nothing grows.”

Reaching for one of the mission briefs, she held it close to the lens. The bold, official lettering across the top read Co-Pilot, but just above it, in her own handwriting, the word “Botanist” had been scrawled in jagged letters. She tapped the scratched-out title with a finger. “Luckily, I’m the co-pilot for a reason,” she added with mock cheer. “God, I’m so glad I studied botany.”

Her voice turned deadpan, the barest hint of a smirk tugging at her lips. “M6-117 will come to fear my botany powers.” She let the silence hang for a moment before cutting the feed.

The camera’s perspective shifted as Y/N carried it outside, the glare of the twin suns washing the screen in a harsh, blinding white before the auto-filter finally kicked in. Slowly, the barren world beyond the wreckage came into focus. Jagged red sands stretched endlessly in every direction, the dunes rippling like frozen waves. It was beautiful, in a way, but beauty couldn’t hide its cruelty. The planet was desolate, a hostile wasteland that mocked her with its emptiness.

Her boots crunched against the sand as she trudged forward, every step a deliberate effort. The sharp tug of her stitches with each movement was a constant reminder of her limitations, a small but insistent pain that kept her grounded in the reality of her fragile survival.

Tucked securely under her arm was a stack of sealed silver bags, their reflective surfaces gleaming in the oppressive sunlight. Compost material. Every single one of them. It wasn’t glamorous or pleasant, but it was necessary. She’d scrounged every bit of organic waste she could find over the past weeks, hoarding it like treasure. If her plan had even a sliver of hope, she would need it all.

Her destination loomed ahead: the Hab. It wasn’t much to look at—a mismatched structure cobbled together from the remains of the ship. Panels that once carried vital systems now served as patchwork walls. Observation deck glass had been repurposed into crude, dusty windows. Dented cryochamber lids insulated the roof. The entire thing leaned slightly to one side, as though daring the wind to knock it down.

But it wouldn’t. Y/N had made sure of that.

It had taken her weeks of slow, painstaking effort to build the Hab, every minute a struggle against her aching body and the unforgiving heat. Every bolt she’d fastened and panel she’d secured had been an act of stubborn defiance. It wasn’t pretty. It didn’t have to be.

As she stared at the Hab, she couldn't help but remember Koah Nguyen, her old crew mate. She still saw his face in her mind, the way his eyes sparkled when he talked about engineering, his hands always moving in that precise, methodical rhythm. Koah had been the pilot of the Starfire, and an engineer to boot. He’d been a walking encyclopedia of mechanics, someone who could fix anything—from starship engines to the tiny gadgets that never seemed to work quite right on the ship.

When she first met him, Y/N had been a little intimidated by how effortlessly Koah could repair everything. She’d been content to stay in her co-pilot role, figuring her job was keeping the ship flying while he handled the nuts and bolts of it. But Koah had a different idea. “You’re gonna need to know this stuff if you're gonna make it,” he’d told her one night, flashing her that crooked grin of his as he set down a welding torch. “A ship doesn’t fly itself, you know?”

The two of them had spent hours together, over the course of many trips, with Koah showing her the basics of engineering. He’d taught her how to patch a hull, how to recalibrate a plasma vent, how to wire a circuit when it wasn’t quite cooperating. At first, it was just another thing to tick off her list, but soon she found herself enjoying it. The rhythmic process of taking something broken and making it whole had its own kind of satisfaction. Sometimes, after long days of flying, they’d meet up outside of work and work on one of Koah’s welding projects. It wasn’t just about fixing things anymore. It was about creating something, about making beautiful things out of metal scraps and old, discarded parts.

Koah was an artist with metal. He’d often bring out pieces he was working on—small sculptures made of twisted pieces of scrap metal, intricate shapes that, at first glance, seemed like chaotic messes but came together in unexpected ways. Y/N had always admired his ability to see art in something that most people would throw away. They’d spend evenings together in his workshop—sometimes laughing, sometimes in complete silence as they both focused on their projects. He always made her feel like she was part of something bigger than just the ship and the mission.

If she had stayed on the Starfire, she wouldn’t be here now.

She shook her head, trying to push the thoughts away, but they lingered like a stubborn fog. He would’ve found it hilarious, Y/N thought, glancing back at the Hab. She could almost hear his voice teasing her now, the lighthearted tone he’d use when he saw her struggling with the wiring or the metalwork. “Not bad for a botanist,” he’d say, giving her a sarcastic wink, “but you still can’t hold a candle to my welds.”

A bitter laugh escaped her lips. She could practically see him there, grinning, as he passed her a welder’s mask. They’d work on metal together until the stars outside began to dim, the quiet hum of the ship their only company.

Now, the Hab stood as a testament to everything Koah had taught her, and she hated to admit it, but it was comforting in a way. Each metal panel she’d carefully cut and welded into place, each beam she’d reinforced, each crooked corner—was a small victory. She could hear his voice now, an echo in her mind: “You’ve got this, Y/N. Just one piece at a time.”

And she had done it, one painful piece at a time. She had taken scraps and forged something functional from the wreckage, just as Koah would have.

It wasn’t pretty, but it didn’t have to be. The Hab was a survival mechanism, built from the remnants of her past crew, from the skills Koah had shared with her. He’d never have imagined that she’d be here alone, making a home out of the wreckage of her ship, but Y/N could almost hear his voice in her ear: "You always did make the best of things."

Inside, the air offered little relief. The temperature was only marginally cooler, but it was enough to keep her moving. She placed the silver bags onto a counter made from a scavenged section of the hull, then walked to the water reclaimer in the corner. It hummed faintly as it dispensed lukewarm water into a container. Not fresh. Not clean. But drinkable.

She carried the container back to her makeshift kitchen station, where a rudimentary compost bin waited for its next grim addition. The bin was a patchwork creation, much like the Hab itself, built from leftover crates and reinforced with scraps of metal. Its lid hung open, waiting expectantly.

Y/N set the container down and stared at the silver bags. Her stomach twisted in anticipation of what came next. “Okay,” she muttered, more to herself than anything. “You can do this. It’s fine. Everything is fine.”

Her fingers hesitated on the seal of the first bag, but she forced herself to tear it open.

The smell hit her instantly—a wave of rot and decay so pungent it felt like a physical blow. She gagged, stumbling back a step, her hand flying to her mouth. “Oh my God,” she choked out, her voice muffled behind her palm. “What have I done?”

The answer was obvious, but there was no turning back. She squeezed her eyes shut, took a deep breath of what passed for fresh air, and tore open another bag. The stench deepened, an unholy mix of decomposition and an odor she couldn’t identify but knew she’d never forget. She dumped the contents of each bag into the bin, one after another, her hands trembling as she worked.

By the time she finished, her stomach churned, her mouth dry. She leaned heavily on the counter, gasping for air that didn’t reek of death. Her eyes watered, and she swiped at them with the back of her hand, determined not to lose her nerve. The compost bin was full now, its contents a nauseating slurry of organic matter that sloshed slightly as she moved.

She stared at it, her nose wrinkled and her expression grim. This mess—this putrid, rancid soup—was supposed to be the start of her plan. Her first step in growing food on a planet that had never known life.

She let out a heavy sigh, running a hand over her face. “M6-117 will definitely fear my botany powers,” she muttered, her tone dry, almost bitter. She glanced at the camera perched on the counter, its red light still blinking. “Don’t laugh,” she added, pointing at it as though it could respond.

Turning back to the bin, she grabbed a stirring rod and braced herself for the next unpleasant step.

The dirt was dry. Too dry. Each grain of sand seemed to mock her, unyielding, as if the planet itself had conspired to make her struggle just a little bit harder. Y/N scooped it into the container with a small shovel she’d salvaged from the wreckage. Her movements were slow, deliberate, each scoop a reminder of the reality she couldn’t escape. The relentless heat pressed down on her like a weight, suffocating any energy she might have had. She’d been at this for hours, maybe days—it was impossible to tell anymore. The days had blurred together into an endless cycle of exhaustion and tiny victories, and she could no longer tell when one bled into the next.

With each scoop, the shovel hit the ground with a faint clink, like a tiny rebellion against the barren land. It wasn’t much—just a handful of dry dirt, nothing more—but it was all she had to work with. She winced as her wrist twinged from the impact, shaking it out before continuing, her fingers raw from the constant effort. She couldn’t afford to stop. Not yet. Not when she was so close.

The walk back to the Hunter Gratzner was short, but the container felt heavier with each step, its weight dragging at her arms. By the time she reached the airlock, her muscles were burning, her joints screaming in protest. She muttered something under her breath—probably a curse, probably aimed at the planet itself—and trudged through the airlock, her face set in grim determination.

Inside the Hab, she placed the container down in the corner she’d cleared a few days ago. The dirt spilled out in a dry cascade, joining the small pile she’d started. It wasn’t much, but it was something. It had to grow. She needed it to.

Time continued to pass in a blur, but by the time Sol 25 rolled around, the pile of dirt had grown considerably. Y/N stood in the doorway, arms full of another container, her face a mix of exhaustion and determination. The pile of dirt looked almost ridiculous in the center of her Hab, a mountain of Martian soil in the middle of a place that was meant to be her shelter. But it didn’t matter. Ridiculous was better than dead. She wasn’t going to let herself fail.

On Sol 28, the plan began to take shape. Y/N spread the dirt across the Hab’s floor, smoothing it out with her hands, the reddish dust caking beneath her nails as her fingers worked through the dirt. It was tedious work, but it was necessary. The heat made everything feel like it was happening in slow motion, each movement taking more energy than it should. She wiped the sweat off her forehead with the back of her hand, not even pausing to think about the pain in her body. Her stitches tugged uncomfortably, but she ignored it. There was no time to slow down.

As she spread the dirt, her gaze flicked toward the compost bin in the corner. The smell that radiated from it had only gotten worse in the past few days, growing stronger and more unbearable. She glared at it for a long moment, nose wrinkling. She had to deal with it. She had no other choice.

“Okay,” she muttered, steeling herself. “Let’s do this.”

Taking a deep breath, she opened the compost bin. The smell hit her immediately—sharp, rancid, and overwhelming. She gagged, instinctively covering her nose with her arm, but she didn’t stop. She couldn’t. Every step she took, every task she completed, was part of the bigger plan. Gritting her teeth, she grabbed the bin and began dumping its contents over the dirt. The mixture of decaying organic matter sloshed out in a wet mess, and her stomach churned. It smelled worse than she’d imagined, like something was rotting inside of her, and her throat burned. She stumbled back, gasping for air, but forced herself to move forward. She couldn’t afford to stop now.

“Oh God,” she wheezed, stumbling back a step. “That’s... that’s horrible.”

But she kept going. She opened bag after bag, each one worse than the last, the smell making her gag and her vision swim. She couldn’t even tell if the foul stench was from the bags or the sour taste in her mouth. When she finally finished, she stood there, breathing heavily, her chest rising and falling in sharp gasps. The pile was an ugly, soupy mess now, but it was a necessary evil. The dirt and compost would have to be the foundation for something greater. She wasn’t sure what that would be yet, but she had to try.

By Sol 31, the Hab had transformed. It wasn’t just the floor anymore; the dirt had spread across every available surface. The countertops were covered, the bunks cleared away and replaced with layers of soil. Even the table was buried beneath a thick layer of dirt. The Hab looked like a mad scientist’s lab, chaotic and strange, but there was no other way. She had to make it work.

Y/N sat cross-legged on the floor, a knife in hand, carefully cutting into a pile of potatoes. She sliced them into neat quarters, making sure each piece had at least two eyes. The process was slow, meticulous, but it was soothing in its own way. It gave her focus, something to ground her mind as her thoughts often spiraled. She placed the potato quarters into neat rows in the soil, pressing them gently into the dirt. It wasn’t perfect. It wasn’t much. But it was a start. It was the first step in building something that could sustain her.

As she worked, her hand brushed against something small and metallic in the corner of one of the bunks. Curious, she reached down and picked it up. A data stick. She squinted at it, turning it over in her fingers. “Huh,” she muttered to herself. She hadn’t seen one of these in ages.

Plugging it into the computer, she leaned back in the chair, fingers crossed as the contents loaded. A list of files appeared on the screen, and she clicked on the first one. The screen flickered to life, and a cheesy title card filled the frame. It was Star Trek. She couldn’t help but laugh. Of course it was. Shields had loved this show. He’d talk about it for hours during quiet moments in between shifts—rambling on about warp drives and the Prime Directive like they were the truth, his excitement contagious. Y/N had rolled her eyes at the time, dismissing it as childish, a distraction from the mission. But now, as she sat there in the silence of her broken Hab, the sight of the show made her smile.

“Of course,” she murmured, a faint smile tugging at the corners of her mouth.

It was strange, the little things that could make her smile now. She hadn’t known how much she’d miss these trivialities, these small bits of normalcy.

But then it hit her. The smile faded as the reality settled in. Shields would never watch this show again. He was gone, just like Captain Marshall, just like the rest of the crew. The weight of that truth hit her harder than the barren landscape outside. She swallowed hard, blinking rapidly as she pushed the thought away. There was no room for grief now. She had no time for it.

Instead, she leaned forward, determined, as if making a silent promise to herself.

“Star Trek it is then,” she said quietly, her voice just above a whisper. She would make it her new favorite show. And in doing so, she would keep a piece of them alive.

"The problem is water," Y/N muttered to herself, her voice barely more than a whisper. It came out thin, brittle, like the very air she was dragging into her lungs. It wasn’t the first time she’d voiced this frustration, and it surely wouldn’t be the last. There was always something, wasn’t there? Water. Food. Air. The constant gnawing feeling that the planet itself was conspiring against her, as if Mars resented her every step. Today, though, it was water. That was the issue that was eating away at her with the most urgency.

Her eyes narrowed as she adjusted the straps of her gear, the weight of the shotgun pressing against her chest. The weapon felt reassuring against her ribs with every step—solid, reliable. A reminder that she wasn’t entirely defenseless out here, not yet. It wasn’t much in the face of an unforgiving world, but it was something. She needed to keep moving, keep thinking. Focus. She had to focus.

The walk to the settlement was long—longer than it used to be—and the terrain was uneven, with cracks and ridges that slowed her pace. The air was thick with dust, the ground coated with a fine layer of reddish sand that clung to her boots like an ever-present reminder of the planet’s hostility. Every step left a trail, as if the planet itself wanted to track her every movement. The twin suns hung overhead, relentless, their heat pressing down on her, baking everything in sight. The light was harsh, unforgiving, and it made the shadows look sharper, more dangerous, more alive.

She tried not to think about the cracks in the stone, or what might be lurking within them—whether some predator was watching her from afar, or something worse was silently biding its time. The thought gnawed at her, but she pushed it back. There was nothing to be done for it, not right now.

Her breath came in shallow bursts, steady but strained. Her body was moving almost automatically now, one foot in front of the other, the path she’d been following for what felt like forever etched into her muscle memory. Her stitches tugged at her side with every step, but the discomfort was dull compared to the burning ache in her chest, the weight of the abandonment still heavy there.

When the settlement came into view, Y/N couldn’t help but pause. The place looked even worse than she remembered. It had once been a bustling outpost, a last chance for survival, but now it was a graveyard—metal skeletons, shattered hopes, rusting away under the relentless assault of the Martian elements. There was nothing left here, nothing but the bones of a failed dream. This was the place where Jungkook, Leo, and Namjoon had found the skiff that they used to escape. The same skiff they’d used to leave her behind. She could almost picture them, as if they were still here—Jungkook’s quiet determination, Leo’s nervous energy, Namjoon’s steady faith in something greater than themselves.

They had thought she was dead. Y/N couldn’t blame them for leaving. Not really. The wound she’d sustained—it had been deep, jagged, the kind of wound that should have finished her off. But somehow, she’d survived. She’d dragged herself back from the edge of death, stitched herself back together with the same stubbornness that kept her walking every day. She remembered Jungkook’s face as they left, that final glance filled with hesitation, confusion, guilt. He’d thought she was gone. And for a moment, she almost had been.

Shaking her head, Y/N forced herself to focus. She didn’t have the luxury of self-pity here. Not anymore. Not with survival on the line.

The settlement was eerily silent as she approached, the kind of silence that pressed in on her, thick and suffocating. The only sounds were the faint crunch of her boots against the dirt and the soft hum of the wind that stirred the dust in lazy eddies. Her shotgun felt heavier in her hands now, the weight comforting as she scanned the area. Every instinct in her screamed at her to stay alert. The place had been abandoned for weeks, but that didn’t mean it was safe. This planet had a way of surprising you when you let your guard down.

Y/N moved carefully through the wreckage, her eyes flicking over the scattered debris, looking for anything useful. The first thing she found was a set of blueprints, the faded paper curled and torn but still legible enough to be useful. They had to be. She rolled them up tightly, tucking them into her bag. Something else caught her attention—small, solar-powered gadgets, scattered haphazardly across a broken table. They probably wouldn’t do much, but they could come in handy later, and right now, she couldn’t afford to leave anything behind.

Her fingers brushed over the eclipse dial next. The metal was cold beneath her gloves, smooth and unyielding. She paused for a moment, her heart skipping a beat as memories of that suffocating darkness washed over her—an endless void that had pressed down on her, stealing her breath, her sanity. She hated that dial. It wasn’t just a tool; it was a reminder of that terrible night when everything had gone wrong. A symbol of how close she had come to losing it all. But sentiment didn’t have a place here, not anymore. With a resigned exhale, she grabbed the dial, shoving the memories to the back of her mind.

The next stop was where the skiff had been, the spot where it had been hastily abandoned in the wake of their escape. The sand around the area was still disturbed, the evidence of their flight still visible in the shifting dunes. Y/N scanned the ground, her eyes sharp, looking for anything they might have left behind. She needed anything that could help her survive—anything at all.

Her gaze landed on something distant, something that caught the light in a way that made her heart skip. She moved toward it, her boots crunching softly against the sand, her shotgun still at the ready, even though she knew the chances of something hostile were slim.

It was another sandcat—or rather, what was left of one. The vehicle’s frame was bent and crumpled, its front half caved in like it had been struck by something massive. It wasn’t going anywhere, not in this lifetime. But Y/N didn’t care about that. Her eyes swept over the wreckage, and then—there it was. Beneath the undercarriage of the sandcat, barely visible from where she stood, something caught her eye.

A Hydrazine tank.

Her breath caught in her throat. She knew exactly what this meant. It wasn’t much, not yet, but it was something. Something that could be useful. She crouched down, wiping the sweat from her brow with the back of her glove. The heat from the suns was relentless, but she didn’t stop. She couldn’t. The connections on the tank looked fragile, delicate. This wasn’t a job for brute strength. No, she needed patience, steady hands—things she didn’t exactly have in abundance right now.

“Okay,” she whispered to herself, trying to steady her breathing. “One thing at a time.”

Her fingers were trembling as she reached for the first connector, the metal cool against her skin. She took a slow breath, steadying herself before loosening the first piece, then the second. It wasn’t easy. The tank was heavier than she’d expected, the connections stubborn. Every movement felt like it took more energy than she had. But she kept going. She had to.

With a final grunt of effort, she managed to free the tank from the wreckage, setting it down carefully beside her. She sat back on her heels, breathing hard, the effort of the task still making her pulse race. For a long moment, she just stared at the tank. Her mind raced with the possibilities. It wasn’t the solution to her water problem—not yet.

“I’ve created one hundred and twenty-six square meters of soil,” Y/N said into the camera, her voice steady despite the rivulets of sweat dripping down her temple and disappearing into the grime streaked across her face. Dirt clung stubbornly to her skin, and her hair stuck to her neck in damp, wild tangles. She wasn’t trying to look triumphant—it wasn’t like there was anyone left to see her—but there was a flicker of pride in her voice anyway. “But each cubic meter needs forty liters of water to be farmable. So, I gotta make a lot of water.”

She paused, leaning forward slightly. The faintest twitch of a smile ghosted over her lips, but it didn’t last long. “Fortunately, I know the recipe. Take hydrogen. Add oxygen. Burn.” She held the word, let it hang in the air, her tone dipping into something darker. “Unfortunately… burn.”

Her breath escaped in a long sigh as she leaned back in the chair, turning her head to glance at the chaos behind her. The Hab looked less like a living space and more like the aftermath of an explosion in a junkyard. Piles of salvaged parts cluttered every available surface, jumbled together with tools, wiring, and half-built contraptions. At the center of it all, sitting smugly on her workbench like a prize, was the Hydrazine tank she’d dragged from the wreckage of the sandcat. It gleamed under the weak artificial light, a reminder of just how thin the line was between salvation and annihilation.

“I have hundreds of liters of unused Hydrazine,” she continued, gesturing toward the tank. “If I run the Hydrazine over an iridium catalyst, it’ll separate into N2 and H2…” Her voice trailed off as she stood, picking up the camera and swinging it toward her workbench. “Science time.”

The next few hours were a blur of sweat, ingenuity, and no small amount of duct tape. She started with the basics, piecing together a crude laboratory using whatever she could scavenge. Torn trash bags became the walls of a makeshift tent draped over her workbench, their edges secured with layers of tape. It wasn’t pretty, and it sagged in the middle, but it would do the job—or so she hoped.

“Not bad,” she muttered, stepping back to inspect her work. Her hands were already filthy, her gloves doing little to protect her from the grime that seemed to coat everything in the Hab.

Next, she turned her attention to ventilation. She’d torn an air hose from an old EVA suit earlier, the edges still jagged from where she’d ripped it free in a fit of frustration. Now, she taped it to the top of her makeshift tent, securing it to the ceiling to act as a chimney. “That’ll do,” she murmured under her breath, wiping her brow with her sleeve.

The room was quiet except for the faint hiss of the oxygen tank as she vented it. She leaned in close, sparking the gas with a few frayed wires from a battery pack. The flame that leapt to life was small but bright, and Y/N couldn’t help the grin that spread across her face. “Whoosh,” she whispered, as if narrating the moment for an audience that wasn’t there.

The next step was more delicate. She adjusted her goggles, the scratched lenses fogging slightly as she exhaled. Her hands hovered over the Hydrazine tank, careful and deliberate as she started the flow. The liquid sizzled the moment it hit the iridium catalyst, disappearing in a flash of vapor that shot up the chimney. Her eyes followed the plume, watching as small bursts of flame sputtered out the other end.

“It’s working,” she whispered, her grin widening. Her gaze flicked to the instruments she’d rigged up—a mix of actual equipment and salvaged scraps—monitoring the temperature and flow rate with hawk-like focus. She repeated the process again and again, each cycle of vaporized Hydrazine bringing her one step closer to the water she so desperately needed.

By the time she sat down in front of the camera again, her muscles ached, and her hair clung to her face in damp, sweaty strands. The chaos of her makeshift lab spread out around her like a disaster zone. She wiped her goggles clean with the edge of her shirt, leaving a streak of dirt in their place. “Then I just need to direct the hydrogen into a small area and burn it,” she said, leaning slightly toward the lens. “Luckily, in the history of humanity, nothing bad has ever happened from lighting hydrogen on fire.”

She stared at the camera for a long moment, her expression blank but faintly amused. Then she blinked, shrugged, and continued. “Believe it or not, the real challenge has been finding something that will hold a flame. New Oslo hates fire because of the whole ‘fire makes everyone die in space’ thing. So, everything we brought with us is flame retardant. With one notable exception…” She reached off-camera and pulled a pack into view, unzipping it with practiced ease. “Namjoon Kim’s personal items.”

Her grin turned sharp as she pulled out a small wooden cross, holding it up to the camera and turning it over in her fingers. “Sorry, Mr. Kim,” she said, her tone mock-apologetic. “If you didn’t want me to go through your stuff, you shouldn’t have left me for dead on a desolate planet.”

She reached for the knife strapped to her belt and began shaving thin curls of wood off the cross, each stroke precise and steady. The sound of the blade against the wood filled the room, a rhythmic counterpoint to the hum of the equipment around her. “I figure God won’t mind,” she added, glancing up at the camera with a raised eyebrow. “Considering the situation.”

The knife moved slowly but deliberately, the pile of shavings growing with every careful pass. Y/N’s hands never wavered, her focus razor-sharp. This was survival, messy and dangerous and imperfect. And she’d take it over nothing every time.

Y/N was still at it, even though every muscle in her body begged her to stop. Her arms felt like lead, her shoulders stiff from hours hunched over her workbench. The air in the Hab was thick and stale, clinging to her skin along with the sweat and grime that had become her constant companions. Time blurred here—had it been hours? Days? She didn’t know, and she didn’t care to check. Survival was the only clock that mattered, and it kept ticking, whether she kept up with it or not.

She swiped her forearm across her forehead, smearing a dark streak of grease across her temple. Her hair clung to her damp skin, strands sticking out at odd angles where the heat and her helmet had flattened them earlier. Her lips were dry, cracked from dehydration, and her throat burned with each shallow breath, but none of that mattered. Not yet. Not until this worked.

The steps were second nature by now, her hands moving with the kind of automatic precision that came from repetition rather than confidence. Vent the oxygen. Ignite the torch. Burn the hydrogen. She murmured each step under her breath like a mantra, her voice thin and raspy, barely audible over the quiet hum of the equipment.

Her eyes flicked to the atmospheric analyzer. The numbers blinked back at her, steady and impersonal. She frowned, leaning in closer. Was that reading… higher than usual? It was a tiny discrepancy, just enough to tickle the edges of her exhaustion-fogged mind. She should have stopped. She should have double-checked the setup, recalculated the variables. But she didn’t. The weight of her own fatigue pressed the thought down until it slipped away entirely. It was fine. It had to be fine.

She struck the torch.

The explosion was immediate, a roar of heat and light that sucked the air out of the room. For a single, terrifying moment, Y/N was weightless, her body thrown backward as the force of the blast ripped through the Hab. She slammed into the wall hard, the impact jarring every bone in her body.

Her ears rang with the deafening aftermath, the sharp, high-pitched whine drowning out everything else. She lay crumpled on the floor, her chest heaving as she struggled to pull in air. Her lungs felt tight, her ribs screaming in protest with each shallow inhale. Her head spun, a dull ache blooming at the base of her skull where it had struck the floor.

For a moment, she stayed there, staring up at the ceiling with wide, unfocused eyes. Her brain scrambled to piece together what had just happened, but the only coherent thought she could muster was: I’m alive. Somehow.

She pushed herself upright slowly, her arms trembling with the effort. Every inch of her body ached, and her skin prickled uncomfortably where the heat of the blast had singed her clothes. The edges of her sleeves were blackened, threads curling like burnt paper. Her hair, already a tangled disaster, now sported uneven patches that smelled faintly of burnt keratin.

She groaned, a hoarse, broken sound, and crawled toward the camera, which, miraculously, had stayed intact. It blinked at her like a curious bystander, untouched by the chaos surrounding it.

Y/N collapsed in front of the lens, sitting back heavily against the wall. For a long moment, she said nothing, her chest rising and falling in uneven breaths. Then, finally, she looked up, meeting the camera’s unblinking gaze.

“So,” she began, her voice scratchy and uneven, “yes. I blew myself up.”

Her lips quirked into a weak smile, the expression more wry than amused. She gestured vaguely toward the wreckage behind her. “Best guess? I forgot to account for the excess oxygen I’ve been exhaling when I did my calculations. Because I’m stupid.”

She leaned her head back against the wall, her eyes fluttering shut for a brief moment before she forced them open again. The ringing in her ears hadn’t stopped, but she was getting used to it now, the noise settling into the background like white noise.

“Interesting side note,” she said, her tone conversational, almost detached. “This is how the Jet Propulsion Laboratory was founded. Five guys at Strikeforce Academy were trying to make rocket fuel and nearly burned down their dorm. Rather than expel them, General… East? I want to say East? Anyway, he banished them to Aguerra Prime and told them to keep working.”

She waved a hand lazily, the movement more a suggestion than an actual gesture. “And now we have a space program. See? I pay attention.”

Her gaze drifted back to the camera, her expression softening into something more resigned. “I’m gonna get back to work. As soon as my ears stop ringing.”

She didn’t move. Instead, she stayed where she was, her legs sprawled out in front of her and her shoulders slumped against the wall. The Hab was eerily quiet now, the earlier chaos replaced by a strange, heavy stillness. Smoke hung faintly in the air, curling upward in lazy spirals, and the faint smell of singed metal lingered in her nose.

Y/N let her head fall forward, staring at the ground with unfocused eyes. For a while, she just sat there, her body too tired to move, her mind too drained to think. She wasn’t done—not even close—but for now, she let herself rest.

Y/N was back at it. Her movements were steady, almost methodical now, but there was still a hint of tension in the way her shoulders hunched and her jaw tightened. She checked her math for the fifth time, fingers tapping absently against the edge of the table. The numbers were good. The O₂ levels were where they needed to be. Everything was in place.

She glanced at the camera, raising an eyebrow as if daring it to witness her fail. Then, with a small, humorless smile, she crossed her fingers. “Okay,” she muttered under her breath, wincing as she lit the torch.

Nothing exploded. She exhaled slowly, the tension in her shoulders easing. “Phew.” The Hydrazine started to vent, the faint hiss of the gas escaping into the controlled environment a comforting sound. Controlled chaos—her specialty now.

Hours later, she stepped back from the table, her body aching but her mind alight with hope. She wiped her forehead with her sleeve, smearing sweat and grime into the creases of her skin. Her hands were clammy, slick with sweat that hadn’t been there earlier. Something caught her eye, and she turned toward the walls.

Condensation. Tiny beads of water dotted the smooth surfaces, glinting faintly in the artificial light. She reached out, tracing a droplet with her fingertip, watching as it slid down the wall. It felt surreal, like a rainforest trapped inside the sterile walls of her Hab. She blinked, then turned toward the water reclaimer.

Her hands trembled as she lifted the lid from the tank. It was full. Not just damp, not just a few measly drops, but filled with water. Her breath caught, and then, finally, she smiled. A real, honest-to-God grin that lit up her tired face. She let out a shaky laugh, the sound breaking the heavy quiet of the room.

Over the next few weeks, time became a blur of movement and repetition. Days stretched endlessly under the triple suns of M6-117, each one bleeding into the next as Y/N worked tirelessly. The sun wouldn’t set again for another twenty-five years, not on this planet, but she’d already lived through its terrifying darkness once. She didn’t need a reminder of what the eclipse brought. For now, the constant daylight was her ally, even if the heat and pressure made every task harder.

Inside the Hab, every surface was a testament to her persistence. Soil covered the floors, tables, bunks—anywhere she could make room. Her equipment, rigged together with salvaged parts and duct tape, gave the place a chaotic, mad-scientist vibe. The atmosphere was a strange mix of desperation and ingenuity, every corner filled with evidence of her determination to survive.

Her days followed a relentless cycle. She vented Hydrazine, checked the readouts on her makeshift lab, and collected water from the reclaimer. She spread the precious liquid over the soil, making sure each patch got just enough to stay damp. She ate quickly, barely tasting the nutrient-dense food bricks she rationed so carefully. Then she went back to work.

She slept when her body forced her to, collapsing onto her makeshift bed in the corner of the Hab. Her dreams were restless, filled with flashes of her crew, the skiff disappearing into the sky, the dark shapes that had hunted them during the eclipse. But when she woke, she put the ghosts aside and pulled on her patched-up spacesuit. The air on M6-117 was technically breathable, but the higher pressure and lower oxygen levels made every task feel like running uphill. With the suit, she could work faster, longer, without the constant ache in her chest.

She hauled more dirt inside, her arms burning with effort as she carried the heavy containers. She vented Hydrazine again. She ate, she slept, and she worked.

Days sped by, a blur of movement and monotony, but Y/N never stopped. The pile of soil in the corner grew larger, spreading across the Hab like a living thing. Her hands were constantly dirty now, the dark grime of the soil embedded under her nails, a permanent part of her.

In the quiet moments, when the work slowed, her gaze would drift toward one particular patch of soil in the corner. It was smaller than the rest, a deliberate experiment within the larger chaos. She’d spent extra time on that spot, watering it carefully, checking the light, running her fingers through the dirt like she was coaxing it to life.

And then, one day, it happened.

The first sign was small. A tiny green sprout, barely breaking the surface, its fragile stem trembling as if unsure of its place in the world. Y/N froze when she saw it, her breath catching in her throat. She crouched down and all she could do was stare at her miracle.

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chimcess · 2 days ago

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⮞ Chapter Four: Dark Fury (Part One) Pairing: Jungkook x Reader Other Tags: Convict!Jungkook, Escaped Prisoner!Jungkook, Piolet!Reader, Captain!Reader, Holyman!Namjoon Genre: Sci-Fi, Action, Adventure, Thriller, Suspense, Strangers to Enemies to ???, Slow Burn, LOTS of Angst, Light Fluff, Eventual Smut, Third Person POV, 18+ Only Word Count: 16k+ Summary: When a deep space transporter crash-lands on a barren planet illuminated by three relentless suns, survival becomes the only priority for the stranded passengers, including resourceful pilot Y/N Y/L/N, mystic Namjoon Kim, lawman Taemin Lee, and enigmatic convict Jungkook Jeon. As they scour the hostile terrain for supplies and a way to escape, Y/N uncovers a terrifying truth: every 22 years, the planet is plunged into total darkness during an eclipse, awakening swarms of ravenous, flesh-eating creatures. Forced into a fragile alliance, the survivors must face not only the deadly predators but also their own mistrust and secrets. For Y/N, the growing tension with Jungkook—both a threat and a reluctant ally—raises the stakes even higher, as the battle to escape becomes one for survival against the darkness both around them and within themselves. Warnings: Strong Language, Side Character Death, Violence, Blood, Jungkook is a huge prick, Cocky too, Talks About Past Characters Dying, Trauma Bonding, Bickering, Arguing, Graphic Death Scenes, Jaded Characters, Religious Themes (I mean no harm and do not want to offend anyone), Bad Character Choices, SUSPENSE, ANGST, In Namjoon we trust, This is all angst and action and that's pretty much it, suppressed feelings, deranged psychopaths, guns, gore, Outlaw gives off big collector vibes, and I mean that literally, bad science language, honestly all of this has probably had the worst science and basis ever, let me know if I missed anything... A/N: So, because Tumblr makes no sense, I'm having to cut this chapter in half because of a text block issue. So, you'll technically be getting two updates at once (even though it's the same chapter). Yay. I love this flatform so much. Thanks for reading!

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In the center of the New Oslo Space Administration, a hall that once buzzed with celebration now sat heavy with silence. The walls, scrubbed to a relentless white, gleamed under the clinical glare of overhead lights—so clean it was almost aggressive, as if any trace of real life had been wiped out long ago. Above, thin panels of recessed lighting poured down a harsh, surgical brightness that flattened every edge and erased every shadow. Comfort had never been part of the blueprint.

The ceiling stretched high overhead, a lattice of glass-smooth alloy and layered panels, packed with pale, cold lights that made everything below look stark and brittle. What used to be a press hall—a place where new orbital colonies were announced with champagne and handshakes—now buzzed faintly with a low, nervous current. Reporters filled the sharply angled rows of seating, sitting stiffly, their faces tight with the kind of apprehension that kept them quiet. No one dared to break the stillness. Only the distant whirr of surveillance drones and the faint, mechanical ticking from the timekeepers embedded in the walls stirred the air.

Beneath the sterile flood of artificial daylight, Yoongi Min stood alone.

He wasn’t exactly young anymore, but he wasn’t old either—caught in that quiet middle place carved out by years of navigating crises and silent, sleepless nights in war rooms. His stance was rigid, trained over decades to betray no fear. His hair was slicked back, the first hints of gray just beginning to thread at his temples. His face, pale in a way that looked almost unnatural for someone who had lived most of his life under the twin suns of Aguerra Prime, showed the fine beginnings of lines around his eyes and mouth.

In his hands, he held a red folder—simple, worn, almost inconspicuous. The spine sagged from too many openings; the corners were frayed, softened by time and handling. It looked like the kind of thing that might get overlooked in a place like this. It wasn’t.

When Yoongi finally spoke, the sound of his voice caught the room off guard. It wasn’t loud or commanding—just steady. Low. Controlled in a way that made you listen closer without meaning to. His S’s carried a faint rasp, like the tail-end of static on an old comms channel. There was something about it—like the voice of someone used to delivering bad news, and doing it carefully.

“At zero four thirty local standard,” he began, each word unhurried, shaped with a kind of quiet finality, “NOSA’s orbital tracking array picked up an object—a fast-moving meteor that crossed paths with the civilian transport Hunter-Gratzner, en route to New Mecca.”

The name dropped like a stone. Not just data. Not just a ship. That name meant something.

The Hunter-Gratzner had been missing for over a month. People stopped saying it out loud after the first few days—just whispered it in prayers or on old signal boards, hoping for something. Anything. It wasn’t just a transport. It was families. Workers. Students. It was a hundred hopes wrapped in one hull, gone silent.

“The impact disabled its navigational systems,” Yoongi continued. “The vessel lost control and crash-landed on an uninhabited planet. Designation: M6-117.”

He paused—not for drama, but because the truth needed air.

Then, quieter, “Hades.”

That name, too, wasn’t new. Every pilot had heard it, tucked in the corners of old space. A place that didn’t show up clearly on starcharts, like the universe itself was trying to forget it. Lost ships. Broken signals. A survey team that went dark three decades ago and never came back. Their names redacted, their logs buried.

Yoongi’s hands shifted slightly around the red folder.

“There were forty souls aboard,” he said. “Eight crew. Thirty-two passengers. Captain Theodore Marshall died on impact. The co-pilot, Y/N Y/L/N, took command. Navigator Gregory Shields initiated emergency protocol. He didn’t survive the first day.”

He read the names slowly. Like each one deserved to land.

Yoongi stood at the podium, shoulders square, the folder in his hands marked only by a NOSA emblem and an older classification tag that had been partially scratched out—CONFIDENTIAL | LEVEL FOUR.

He flipped it open again, even though the pages weren’t necessary anymore. He knew the story by heart.

“There’s evidence the ship’s trajectory wasn’t an accident,” he said, tone sharpening—not louder, but with precision. “Navigator Gregory Shields manually altered course before entering cryo-stasis. There were no backup checks. No secondary alerts. The system didn’t flag the reroute because the flightpath remained mathematically valid... just deadly.”

He looked out across the press chamber.

“We believe he was paid. And a bounty hunter was onboard.”

The air shifted. Shoulders tensed. It wasn’t dramatic, just quiet—sharp-eyed people registering new gravity.

“The hunter’s target,” Yoongi said, “was Jungkook Jeon.”

The room went still. That name didn’t need context, but it carried weight just the same. Jeon had lived at the edge of myth—once a Strikeforce Ranger, elite beyond measure, then a traitor during the Sigma Uprising, blamed for the assassination of his own commanding officer. Disappeared after the Outer Rim collapsed. His name was a ghost story whispered in mercenary camps and prison transports.

“Jeon was aboard as a prisoner,” Yoongi continued. “Chained. Under heavy sedation. Transported under warrant for extraction.”

A voice from the right side of the room: “So this wasn’t just a transport. This was a bounty run disguised as a civilian haul?”

“Yes,” Yoongi confirmed. “The civilian manifest was real. The bounty was embedded—intentionally quiet. Shields altered the route, likely paid directly. We believe the plan was to bring the ship out of NOSA-controlled lanes, into a no-response corridor. Clean handoff. Simple extraction.”

He let a beat pass. “It wasn’t simple.”

A woman in the second row stood halfway. “And this was all done with no oversight? No NOSA fail-safes?”

Yoongi nodded once. “Shields had access and authority. It wasn’t supposed to be permanent—just a course change during the stasis window. But the route intersected with a meteor cluster. The ship was struck. The shielding failed. They went down on M6-117.”

He flipped a page in the folder—not for show, just rhythm. Anchoring.

“M6-117 has three suns. A tri-helix orbit. For most of its cycle, the surface stays in daylight—years of sun. Harsh terrain. Deep ravines. But once every twenty-two Earth months, the planetary orbit aligns with its moon cluster.”

A larger screen behind him flickered to life, showing orbital diagrams, eclipse projections.

“The result,” Yoongi said, “is full eclipse. No starlight. No planetary glow. Just pitch black.”

He paused. Not long—just enough to make space for what came next.

“And when the dark comes... something else comes with it.”

Front row, an older reporter with deep orbital tattoos leaned in. “You’re confirming... that this wasn’t just an ecological anomaly?”

“No,” Yoongi said. “This wasn’t weather. It wasn’t terrain. Thirty years ago, a NOSA survey team landed on M6-117. Their transmissions lasted just under forty hours. Fragments only—distorted visuals, audio clips of movement in the dark, what sounded like screams echoing in underground tunnels. Then... silence. Mission loss was recorded as environmental failure. But those files were quietly buried.”

The screen behind him showed a grainy image—a partial silhouette of something hunched and clawed. The timestamp was thirty-two years old.

“We now know the cause was biological. Subterranean predators. Nocturnal. Carnivorous. Hyper-aggressive. We call them Bioraptors.”

A reporter near the back—one of the offworlders—asked, “Why didn’t NOSA return?”

Yoongi was quiet for a moment.

“We didn’t want to believe what we saw. The risk was too high. And honestly... no one thought anyone would land there again.”

Another voice: “The survivors didn’t know, did they?”

“No,” Yoongi said. “They had no idea.”

He shifted, the story finally ready to unfold in full.

“After the crash, Co-pilot Y/N Y/L/N assumed command. Captain Marshall died on impact. Shields was killed within hours—exact cause unknown. Y/L/N organized what remained of the crew and passengers: two Earth prospectors, a relics dealer, the bounty hunter, a child, a holy man, his missionaries—and Jeon.”

That name again.

“Jeon was restrained at first. But Y/N fought for his release. Not out of trust—but survival. They were exposed. No food. No comms. They needed every capable hand.”

“Did he help?” someone asked bluntly.

Yoongi met their gaze. “Yes. He saved lives.”

The screen now displayed a map of their path across the surface—miles on foot. Some terrain shown in red: areas later confirmed to house tunnel openings.

“They moved at day. Hunted parts from old wrecks. Found a barely functional skiff, hidden in the ravine. Y/N and one of the prospectors—Bindi Ariki—repaired it using power cells pulled from a derelict mining rig. They had a window. One hour before total darkness.”

He breathed.

“Four made it: Y/N, Jeon, the child, the holy man. Bioraptors were already emerging, and took out the others as they made the long trek to the other wrecksite. Y/N secured the child and the holy man on the shuttle. She went back for Jeon.”

Another long pause.

“They almost made it.”

Now the room was hushed. Every note of Yoongi’s voice landed like weight on a scale.

“She carried him. He’d taken a strike defending the others. But just before they reached the light—the Bioraptors took her.”

A reporter whispered, “Her body?”

“Never recovered,” Yoongi said. “But her story didn’t end there.”

He opened a final section of the folder.

“The shuttle was captured in orbit by a mercenary vessel. We believe they were hired to reclaim Jeon. All three passengers were taken. But Jeon turned the ambush. Freed the other two. Killed the crew. He died from wounds sustained during the escape.”

There was a silence then—not empty, but full of something impossible to name.

“The shuttle landed at New Mecca eleven standard days later. The child and the holy man survived. And they told us everything.”

Yoongi closed the folder one last time.

“Co-pilot Y/N Y/L/N perished on M6-117. She will be remembered—for her leadership. Her strength. And the future she gave others a chance to reach.”

Another hand went up. This time cautious. “Do you believe this was preventable?”

Yoongi’s jaw tightened slightly.

“I believe the people who lived owe everything to the people who didn’t. And I believe if NOSA had listened to its own lost team thirty years ago… maybe this planet would’ve stayed off our charts. Maybe a course reroute would’ve raised a flag. Maybe this wouldn’t have happened at all.”

A few seconds passed.

“But if someone had to fall... there’s no one else we would’ve trusted to lead them in the dark.”

He stepped back from the podium.

One Week Earlier

Jungkook leaned against the edge of the pilot’s console, arms folded across his chest, eyes fixed on the stars slipping past the viewport. The slow drift of space didn’t calm him—if anything, it made the silence feel heavier. Like the galaxy was holding its breath.

Namjoon stood nearby, quiet now, whatever he’d needed to say already out there between them. When he finally spoke again, his voice was low. Not ceremonial, not polished. Just quiet. Honest.

“It’s sad,” he said, not taking his eyes off the void. “Leaving her down there like that. Her family’s never gonna get anything. No closure. No funeral. Just silence.”

He exhaled through his nose, slow and tired.

“She deserved better.”

Jungkook didn’t say anything. His jaw tightened, and he stayed focused on the stars like they might give him something back. They didn’t.

Namjoon gave a small nod, more to himself than anyone else, and let his hand rest lightly on the edge of the console. Then he turned and walked off, the soft hiss of the door sealing behind him.

Jungkook stayed.

The hum of the ship was the only sound now—low and steady, mechanical breathing. After a while, he pushed off the console and moved down the corridor, his boots barely making a sound against the metal. The ship always felt bigger at night. Too much space. Too few people.

He passed by the small berth where Leo slept. The girl had been having nightmares again—loud ones. Screaming in her sleep, scratching at the sheets. The kind of fear that didn’t care whether you were awake or not. He paused outside the door. Thought about checking in. He’d do it later. Make sure she hadn’t clawed herself bloody again.

He kept walking, but his mind didn’t come with him.

Frenchie, that’s what she called herself. The nickname came out of nowhere, like she didn’t think twice about it. He never asked why. Figured he’d get the story eventually—when things slowed down, when they weren’t fighting for air or light. He didn’t think there wouldn’t be time.

They’d known each other for what, a day? Maybe a little more, if you counted the way time stretched and bled on that planet. One day. That was it. But it didn’t matter. That day carved her into him deeper than most people did in a lifetime.

By the time he reached his quarters, the lights were already dim. He didn’t turn them up. Just slid onto the narrow cot, arms behind his head, staring at the ceiling like it might give him something to hold onto. It didn’t.

She was still with him. Not her face exactly—faces fade. It was the shape of her, the presence. That feeling she left in the room, even when she wasn’t in it. The way she looked at him—direct, unafraid, like she saw something in him worth dragging back into the light.

He let out a breath. Short. Almost a laugh. Almost.

If she could see him now, wherever the hell dead people end up, she’d probably have that crooked little smirk on her face. The one she wore right before she’d crack a joke or kick someone’s ass just to make a point.

Look what I did to you, Jungkook. You’re not such a complete bastard after all.

He almost smiled at the thought. Almost.

He loved that mouth of hers. Sharp as hell. Didn't let anything slide. Not even him.

But the truth didn’t care about charm. The truth was colder.

Memories don’t die. They just stay there, quiet and heavy. Reminders.

And she was wrong. He hadn’t changed. Not in any real way. Maybe she’d made him hesitate. Maybe she’d made him hope. But it didn’t last. It couldn’t.

If she’d survived… if they’d somehow made it off that rock together… he would’ve ruined it. Ruined her. Not because he wanted to. Just because that’s what he did. She got too close. Made him forget for a second who he was, what he was built for. Made him wonder about things that had no business existing in his world.

And that kind of thing? That was dangerous.

She’d looked at him like there was something human still buried in there. And she believed in it. Believed in him.

He could still hear her voice—soft, steady, maybe even a little sad when she said it: “There’s got to be some part of you that wants to rejoin the human race.”

She meant it. God help her, she really thought he could come back from wherever he’d gone.

And that scared the shit out of him more than anything with claws or teeth.

She thought he stayed with the group—her, Leo, Namjoon—because of her. Because she pulled him back. Maybe she had. Maybe that was the worst part.

But he told himself it was smart. Tactical. Safety in numbers. Better odds if help came. And if help didn’t come? He’d outlast them. He always did.

That’s what he told himself.

Then Leo had looked up at him, covered in ash and sweat and blood, and said “Never had a doubt.”

And he’d believed it. She trusted him. Just like Y/N had.

And Y/N… she’d protected him. Lied for him. Not to save herself, not even to keep the peace. She did it because she thought he deserved a chance.

No one had ever done that for him.

And now she was gone.

And all the things he didn’t say—couldn’t say—pressed down on his chest like a second gravity.

He didn’t save her.

Didn’t even try. He froze. Watched it happen. Watched her turn around for him.

And now he didn’t know how to feel.

He hated her for it. For being that stupid. For believing in something that wasn’t there.

But he loved her for it too.

And that tore him up worse than any wound.

Lying there in the dark, the hum of the ship in his ears, he realized he didn’t even know what he was supposed to feel. Grief? Guilt? Rage? All of it? None of it?

She died going back for him.

And he couldn’t find one single reason why she would.

Not for him.

Not for what he was.

He turned onto his side, the cot creaking beneath him, the thin blanket cool against his skin.

It had only been three days since they left the planet.

Three days.

And already, he thought about her more with each one. Her face getting clearer the further he got from where she died.

The alarm wasn’t just loud—it felt alive. It screamed through the skiff like it was trying to claw its way out of the metal, shrill and unrelenting, bouncing down the narrow corridor walls until it became part of your blood pressure. Red strobes pulsed overhead, flooding the cockpit in waves of crimson that hit the eyes like a warning flare. The light moved like a heartbeat—fast, panicked, dying.

The control panel was a mess. Warnings stacked on warnings, lights blinking out of sync, system failures cascading like dominos. Every button screamed for attention. The nav screen had gone from glitchy to almost useless, flashing garbled data in sickly orange script.

“Hull breach contained. Engines operating at 170 percent capacity,” the onboard AI reported, clinical as ever.

The ship didn’t care if they made it.

Jungkook moved fast, but there was no panic in his hands—just speed. Muscle memory. Focus. His jaw was set tight beneath his goggles, sweat stinging his eyes, but his fingers never fumbled. They flew across the console, rerouting power from places that didn’t have any left to give.

The ship was failing. He could feel it in the floor—each tremble under his boots more desperate than the last. The whole frame groaned like it was holding its breath, like it knew it wasn’t going to make it.

Behind him, Leo sat stiff in the co-pilot’s chair. Her knees were pulled up slightly, boots braced against the bulkhead like she was trying to ground herself in something. Her patched-up jumpsuit hung loose on her, and she looked even smaller in the red light. Quiet, but not calm. Her lips were pressed in a hard line, but her eyes were wide—too wide. She wasn’t looking at the controls anymore. She was watching Jungkook.

On the other side, Namjoon was still. His hands worked slowly over a string of worn prayer beads. His mouth moved, but no sound came out. Just the rhythm of his lips—like maybe if he kept going, the ship wouldn’t tear apart around them.

“Engine and hull failure imminent under current parameters,” the computer said, calm and cold.

The skiff jolted. Hard.

Metal screamed. Panels rattled. Jungkook slammed his hand out to steady himself, then shoved another lever forward with too much force. The ship groaned louder in protest.

Outside the cockpit, the Trinidad filled the viewport. Big. Beautiful. Terrifying. A cruiser built like a cathedral—sharp lines, gold-trimmed plating, gunmetal veins running beneath polished armor. It wasn’t flying so much as lurking, and the tether line pulling them toward it felt more like a noose than a rescue.

The cable had them. They were being dragged—no propulsion, no fight left in the engine. Just a dead weight being reeled into the belly of something much bigger.

Leo leaned forward, voice low, bitter. “I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”

Jungkook didn’t look up. No point. No time. Bad feelings didn’t change trajectory.

He didn’t speak.

The cockpit dimmed. Systems started dying one by one. Screens faded. The noise dropped away like someone had turned down the volume on the whole universe. The engine gave one last wheeze of heat, and then—nothing.

The ship went still.

Jungkook exhaled and sat back, his body finally catching up to the silence. His goggles reflected the last flicker from the dash, one final blink before darkness took over.

He turned his head just slightly. Looked at Leo.

“First you’re a boy, then a girl, now a psychic,” he said, voice dry. “Careful what you wish for.”

Leo let out a shaky breath. Could’ve been a laugh. Could’ve been panic. Hard to tell.

Before she could answer, a voice cracked over the comms.

“Unidentified craft. State your purpose and contents.”

The three of them froze.

Namjoon’s fingers stopped on the beads. Leo’s expression snapped back to blank. Jungkook’s hands hovered over the dead controls.

Out the viewport, the Trinidad opened up. Massive bay doors unfurled with precision, the glow of internal lights spilling out like a halo around a mouth too wide. Inside, the crew moved with calm efficiency—figures in white uniforms, their faces obscured by interface helmets. Augmented reality panels glowed across their armor, data syncing in real-time as they prepared to receive… whatever they thought this was.

And at the center of it all stood Typhon.

Tall. Pale. Designed, not grown. His boots echoed as he walked across the command deck, each step deliberate. No wasted motion. He didn’t need to raise his voice—when he spoke again, the ship seemed to carry it.

“Unidentified craft, state your purpose and contents.”

Jungkook’s voice came through on comms, flat and casual. “Name’s Lee. Just a hauler. Ship blew on a short run. Got two civvies onboard. No cargo. Nothing worth selling.”

There was a pause. Then the faint sound of data being pulled, processed. A technician tilted their head. Something blinked red on their visor.

The bounty came up.

1,126,000 UD. Dead or alive.

Typhon smiled. Just a little. It didn’t reach his eyes.

“Well then, Mr. Lee,” he said, “what brings you this far out? Not much out here but dust and wreckage.”

Jungkook didn’t skip a beat. “Bounty hunter. Got turned around. Fuel cell blew. Nothing noble.”

Typhon tilted his head. “Looks like we’re in the same business.”

Up on a raised platform at the rear of the deck, a woman sat—motionless, veiled in white, her face hidden beneath layers of fabric that shimmered like glass. She made no sound. Just watched. And then, slowly, she nodded once.

Typhon didn’t hesitate.

“Bring them in.”

The cable pulled tight with a mechanical groan. The skiff jerked slightly as the slack disappeared, and then it began the slow crawl forward, dragged through space like a hooked fish.

Leo stared out the viewport, eyes fixed on the massive bulk of the Trinidad ahead. The cruiser’s hangar doors were yawning open now, gaping like some metal beast waiting to feed.

“They’re reeling us in,” she said, voice flat, thin.

Jungkook didn’t answer. Just kept one hand on the side panel, steadying himself as the ship was drawn into the docking bay.

The Trinidad swallowed the skiff whole.

A dull thud echoed through the hull as the landing clamps hit. There was a brief hiss—pressure equalizing. Then another thud. Heavier. Final. The bay doors slammed shut behind them with a clang that reverberated down the frame like a coffin being sealed.

“Ship is secure in Bay 3.” The voice from overhead was automated, clipped. No warmth. No welcome.

Silence followed. Not peaceful—oppressive. A kind of silence that felt earned. Like something had died in it.

Jungkook struck a match.

The flame caught fast, flickering orange in the dim cockpit. For a second, it lit his face—sweat-slick, focused, jaw tight. Then he touched it to the tip of a handheld torch and let it roar to life.

He dropped to a knee near the bulkhead panel and pressed the flame to the ship’s internal fire sensor. The heat would fry the scanner for just long enough—muddle the data, scramble the signatures. One last trick before the curtain went up.

Namjoon leaned forward, watching. “That’s… clever.”

Jungkook didn’t answer. He wasn’t doing this for points. It was the kind of thing you did when you didn’t plan to get caught—and definitely didn’t plan to explain yourself.

Leo glanced toward him, uncertainty in her voice now. “You think that’s gonna work? That it’ll be enough?”

Still no answer.

The torch hissed, spitting heat. A few more seconds. The sensor casing blackened and warped.

Jungkook muttered, just loud enough to cut through the quiet: “Hold your breath.”

Across the hangar, in the Trinidad’s command deck, the mood was sterile and sharp. The lighting was low, just enough to make the glowing data walls pop. Readouts flowed along the arc of the room—everything from structural scans to environmental profiles to biometrics.

The skiff showed up on every screen. Docked. Vulnerable. Slowly being dissected line by line by the ship’s scanners.

Typhon stood dead center in the room. Tall. Unshaken. He didn’t fidget, didn’t shift his weight. His voice didn’t rise unless there was a reason.

“Report.”

One word. That was enough.

Freddy, perched at the main terminal, squinted at the data. “Two adult signatures. Weak. Third… not consistent. Could be residual heat. Could be a juvenile. Or…” He hesitated. “Could just be engine wash.”

Typhon didn’t even blink. “Find out.”

Back in the skiff, the torch died. Jungkook closed the panel. Leo was sitting stiff, shoulders drawn in tight, breathing shallow. Her arms were wrapped across her chest, her fingers dug into the sleeves of her jumpsuit. Namjoon whispered a prayer, low and steady—maybe for them. Maybe for whoever walked through that hatch first.

On the bridge, Freddy frowned.

“Running a tighter sweep… wait.”

Typhon didn’t move, but the air changed around him. “What is it.”

Freddy blinked hard, tapping the screen. “They’re gone.”

“Gone,” Typhon repeated.

Freddy nodded, still staring at the monitor. “All three heat signatures just… vanished. Like they were never there.”

Typhon’s jaw shifted. Just once. No emotion. Just recalibration.

“Full breach protocol,” he said. “Prep the team.”

Far below deck, a low alarm chimed. A hatch slammed open. Boots hit steel in tight, rhythmic strides. A dozen mercenaries—lean, geared, practiced—moved fast down the corridor. Armor plates clicked into place. Mag-locks on their boots sparked and sealed.

Typhon moved with them, pacing like a man walking into a boardroom, not a breach op. At the hangar, two sentries were already posted.

The first—Gunner—leaned casually against the wall, cigarette tucked behind his ear. His armor was scratched up, half-unzipped, a permanent smirk carved into his face.

The second was all silence. A woman with a close-cut buzz, a black eye-patch, and an expression that didn’t change for anything.

Typhon stopped between them. “Anything?”

Gunner shrugged. “I locked it myself. No motion. No breach. Atmosphere’s flatlined.”

Typhon stepped to the window. Looked out at the skiff—small, dented, still.

“Pressurize.”

The air hissed into the bay—slow at first, then building. It moved like a whisper, filling the room with a quiet, tense hum. A soft green light blinked to life on the outer seal.

“Green for breach,” Gunner said. “O2’s thin, but it’ll hold.”

Typhon stepped back and gave a single nod—sharp, economical.

The mercenaries moved in.

They advanced without a word, rifles up, line tight. Each step was practiced, precise. No wasted motion. One broke formation—a smaller guy in a sleek zero-G rig, fast and quiet. He bounded forward in low gravity, using the bay floor like a springboard. Three strong strides and he hit the side of the skiff, magnetized boots clamping on with a heavy clunk. He crawled across the hull like a spider, hugging the curvature of the wing, working fast toward the hatch.

No noise. Just the soft whir of his suit servos and the faint click of tools being unpacked.

A small puck-shaped device was placed over the hatch lock. It blinked once, then started spinning—a magnetic bypass tool, top-grade. He leaned back slightly, fingers flying over the interface.

Hiss.

The seal disengaged with a low pop.

And then everything went to hell.

The hatch blew outward with a concussive blast—a contained charge that wasn’t designed to destroy, but to stun. A wall of thick, white foam surged from the opening, dense and fast, coating everything in seconds. No sound—just pressure. Pure force in a vacuum.

Three mercs were knocked off their feet immediately. One slammed into a wall and stayed down. Two vanished into the mass—swallowed whole. The lockpicker was thrown clear, landing hard and skidding across the deck, foam trailing from his gear. He choked, clawing at his faceplate.

“What the hell is this?” he gasped. “Foam?”

Typhon’s expression didn’t change, but his eyes narrowed, calculating.

“A trap.”

He didn’t yell. He didn’t have to.

“Fall back. Now.”

Some obeyed. Some didn’t get the chance. The foam wasn’t ordinary. It writhed—chemically reactive, thickening by the second, dragging bodies into itself like a slow tidal wave. A merc screamed, muffled and short-lived, his voice dying under the weight of the compound.

Fire suppressant—repurposed. Smart. Brutal. Designed to suck the air out of lungs and silence screams before they started.

The remaining mercs at the perimeter held their ground, rifles aimed, scanning for movement. The bay lights stuttered once as backup systems kicked in.

Typhon didn’t move. He just watched.

“He has to breathe sometime,” he muttered.

And then he did.

Leo surfaced first, breaking through the foam with a sharp inhale, eyes wide, panicked. One of the mercs opened fire instantly. A tight burst. The rounds tore into the foam just as she ducked back under, disappearing in a churn of white.

Namjoon came up next—gasped, blinked, gone. Another burst of rounds shredded the air where he’d been.

Then silence.

Then chaos.

Jungkook burst from the foam like a goddamn missile—silent, fast, feral. He didn’t pause. Didn’t look. Just moved.

One merc went down before he even registered the threat—a crushed windpipe under a sharp elbow. The second tried to turn, but Jungkook disarmed him with a clean strike, spun the rifle in his hands, and used the butt to collapse the man’s throat.

A third stumbled backward. Jungkook kicked him square in the chest—sent him flying into a support beam. The crunch was loud even through sealed helmets.

He wasn’t fighting. He was erasing.

He vaulted to the ledge—two more waiting. He stripped a weapon from one, slammed it across the other's helmet, and pinned the second to the bulkhead with his forearm. The rifle in his other hand came up like a whisper.

From the foam, Leo reemerged, soaked and gasping, dragging a rifle with her.

She caught her breath just enough to shout, “That’s nothing, scarecrow! He’s gonna kick your—”

A round screamed past her head. She yelped, ducked, then was pulled under again by the shifting foam, her shout swallowed mid-word.

Typhon watched all of it from behind the glass. His lips curled, just slightly. Not amusement. Appreciation.

“You certainly know how to make an entrance,” he said over comms—voice calm, clear, cutting.

Jungkook didn’t respond. He didn’t even look up. Another merc lunged at him with a baton—Jungkook caught the swing mid-arc and drove a knee into the man’s ribs, then tossed him into the wall like a rag doll. The impact echoed through the bay.

Blood—small, floating spheres of it—drifted in the low gravity, glinting under the harsh lights like dark rubies.

But Typhon wasn’t watching the fight anymore.

His eyes had locked on Leo.

She’d dragged herself back up, coughing foam out of her lungs, just in time to see Typhon step forward. His boot slammed into her chest, dropping her hard. The air left her in a sharp grunt.

She gasped, arms raised, stunned but not broken.

Typhon leveled his pistol at her, one eye narrowed down the sight.

“Stay down.”

Her chest heaved. Her hands trembled. But she didn’t look away. Didn’t blink. There was something in the set of her jaw—a refusal to break, even when it made no sense.

Jungkook’s voice cut through, low and cold.

“Call off your lapdog.”

Typhon didn’t glance back. But his finger curled slightly on the trigger.

Jungkook stepped forward, slow and deliberate. He had one of the mercs pinned beneath his knee, a curved shiv at the man’s throat. The kind of weapon that wasn’t standard issue. The kind that had stories behind it.

“Before his trying to impress you gets him killed,” Jungkook said, eyes locked on Typhon.

For a second, everything held still.

The foam churned in lazy spirals across the bay, thick and clinging, full of bodies and blood that hadn’t yet settled. Rifles were up. Triggers hovered. No one moved. Not yet. The whole hangar was waiting—watching.

Jungkook didn’t flinch.

He stood in the middle of the wreckage like it belonged to him. Eyes forward, breath even. Hands still, but ready. Every inch of him was wound tight beneath the surface. A man born from this kind of chaos.

Above them, movement.

A figure stepped into the light overhead—graceful, deliberate. Like a performer walking onto a stage she already owned.

Loralai Youngblood.

Her robe was bone-white, trailing behind her in slow waves. It hung too clean for a place like this, almost religious in its softness. But as she moved, the fabric parted just enough to reveal a sleek, polished exo-frame beneath. Cybernetic. Expensive. More sculpted than engineered. A whisper of otherworldly tech that didn’t belong in a hangar full of mercs and corpses.

“Am I that easy to spot?” she asked, voice lilting, amused. “You make it sound like I enjoy the drama.”

Jungkook’s jaw tightened as his gaze snapped to her. “Call it what you want. Just tell him to lower the damn weapon.”

Youngblood drifted closer, eyes skimming over the scene without concern. Her smile was polite, but thin—like something she wore out of habit, not emotion.

“You’ll have to forgive Typhon,” she said. “He gets ahead of himself sometimes. It's part of the job.” She looked down at the carnage like it was spilled coffee on her favorite rug. “Still. Can’t say I blame him.”

She met Jungkook’s eyes. “You have a reputation, Jungkook.”

He didn’t answer. She already knew he wouldn’t.

“Yes, Jungkook. I know your name. And more than just that,” she added, like she was letting him in on a secret.

His voice dropped. Gravel and warning. “Keep digging and you’ll find something sharp.”

Her laugh was soft. Almost kind. Almost.

“I’m not here to fight you. Not unless you make me.” She nodded to the foam-streaked floor. “But if it saves me another cleanup crew and a PR nightmare… I’d appreciate if you dropped the blade.”

Jungkook’s grip tightened just slightly. “Not gonna happen.”

Her smile flickered. Not gone, just... cracked.

She gave a subtle look to Typhon.

The blade at Leo’s forehead shifted—barely. Just enough to leave a thin line of red down her skin. She didn’t scream. But her breath caught. Her hands twitched in the air—raised, trembling.

“The girl,” Jungkook said flatly, “doesn’t matter to me.”

Youngblood raised an eyebrow. “Then help me understand. Why risk this much for someone you don’t care about?” She turned to Leo, then back again. “Unless, of course... she got to you.”

Leo’s breath hitched. Her shoulders were shaking now, barely holding together. Namjoon had finally emerged from the foam, his robes soaked and streaked, blood and suppressant clinging to his skin. He watched silently, his expression grim.

But Jungkook didn’t move.

Everything around him had slowed—background noise drowned out by the way Leo was looking at him. Not begging. Not pleading. Just watching. Like she needed to know, right then, what kind of man she’d followed through hell.

One tear slid from her eye. It caught the light.

“She’s a cover story,” Jungkook said quietly. “That’s all.”

The words hung in the air. Dry. Final. Like smoke from a long-dead fire.

“You shoot her now,” he added, eyes still locked on Typhon, “you’re just saving me the effort.”

Youngblood’s mouth twitched, the ghost of a grin pulling at the corner.

“Then I have your blessing.”

Typhon’s grip shifted. He adjusted the barrel just slightly—one finger already beginning its pull—

Thunk.

Jungkook’s shiv spun through the air in a perfect arc. The blade struck the rifle’s barrel and knocked it upward just as the trigger was pulled. The shot cracked into the bay ceiling with a sharp metallic ping, sending sparks raining down.

Leo gasped, hands flying up to shield her face. The shot hadn’t touched her, but it had been close enough to feel.

Typhon didn’t flinch. He didn’t even react. But his finger eased off the trigger.

Youngblood didn’t turn around. She just started walking away, her robe trailing like nothing had happened at all.

“I think I know you better than you know yourself,” she said over her shoulder. “And I think you’re lying.”

Jungkook watched her go, jaw clenched, saying nothing.

“Now’s not the time,” he muttered under his breath.

The merc still pinned beneath his boot struggled weakly, reaching for something—anything. Jungkook shifted his weight. There was a snap. Then stillness.

“Lock them down,” Youngblood called out. “We’re finished here.”

Typhon stepped back. He holstered the weapon, but not before giving Leo a final look—impassive, clinical. A single drop of blood still traced its way down her temple.

Mercs poured into the bay like water breaking through a dam. All business. No adrenaline. Just cleanup.

Leo didn’t resist when one of them grabbed her by the collar and hauled her upright. Her feet scraped, boots dragging across the floor. Her eyes were unfocused now, but not broken. She didn’t cry out. Didn’t cry at all.

Jungkook didn’t fight either.

But his eyes never stopped moving.

And if you looked closely—really looked—you’d see it:

He was counting. Doors. Guns. Guards.

Behind the group, Typhon fell in step beside Youngblood. His voice was low, barely audible over the clank of boots on metal.

“My apologies.”

Youngblood let out a small laugh. It didn’t warm anything. “Typhon, you know what those mean to me.” She didn’t look at him. “You did what you were told. A few bodies? Acceptable cost.”

Typhon nodded once, just enough to acknowledge the blood on his hands wasn’t a mistake—it was math.

“What about him?” he asked.

Youngblood’s pace slowed, her lips pulling into something between a smirk and a promise. “Slowly,” she said. “Bring Jungkook to the conservatory. I’ve got… something in mind.”

“And the others?”

She waved her hand like brushing crumbs from a table. “Unfreeze more mercs. Replacements are easy.”

Outside, the skiff that had brought them was jettisoned from the bay like trash. No ceremony. It tumbled once, struck the side of the Trinidad’s engine housing, and bounced off, spiraling into the dark.

Inside the cruiser, Jungkook lay strapped to an immobilizer—arms pinned, chest locked down. He didn’t look angry. He didn’t look afraid. He just watched.

Namjoon and Leo were ahead of him, forced down a long corridor lit by strips of flickering white light. The walls were metal, matte black, cold. Industrial. Functional.

Leo’s feet barely touched the floor—her captor dragging her like she wasn’t even worth the full effort. Namjoon walked, hands bound at the wrists, back straight. Calm.

“Ever seen a ship like this before?” Namjoon asked, voice quiet.

“Plenty,” Jungkook muttered. “Just trying to figure out how they fit the pieces together.”

Namjoon’s gaze swept the walls—lined in cryo-pods, dozens of them. Some empty, others with shadows barely visible through the frost. Men. Women. Frozen for a reason.

“It’s a plantation model,” Namjoon said. “Ships like this leave port loaded with mercs and bounty contracts. They float for months. Years, if the crew holds together.”

Jungkook scoffed. “Growing soldiers instead of crops.”

Namjoon nodded once. “Bodies on one end. Labor on the other.”

Leo’s voice cut in, barely above a whisper. “Just add heat.”

Jungkook’s eyes flicked to her. She wasn’t being sarcastic. Just tired. But she was still sharp.

He turned his attention to Namjoon again. “You know a lot for a holy man.”

Namjoon didn’t answer right away. “I listen.”

Jungkook’s smirk was brief. “Gotta be a real special brand of desperate to sign up for this kind of hell.”

A merc walking beside them stopped. Turned. Big guy. Thick armor. No patience. He slammed the butt of his rifle into Jungkook’s face without a word.

The crack echoed down the hall. Jungkook’s head jerked sideways, lip split open.

He spat blood to the floor, gave the man a slow once-over. “That wasn’t about the comment,” he said flatly. “You just needed a win today.”

Leo barked out a small, bitter laugh. She didn’t smile for long, but it was enough.

The corridor opened into a wider passage lined with more guards. The temperature dropped—not cold, exactly, but sterile. Like a morgue. The walls were clean. Too clean.

At the far end, a new voice barked: “Split ’em.”

The man who spoke—red hair, broad shoulders, hands like slabs of alloy—grabbed Leo by the shoulder and jerked her to the side. His grip wasn’t cruel, but it made a point. His name tag said BYRNE, but the way he moved said don’t test me.

Leo tensed but didn’t fight. Not yet.

Byrne looked at Namjoon. “You too, preacher.”

Namjoon nodded slightly, the expression on his face unreadable. Peaceful. Maybe performative. Maybe not. “I’ll pray.”

“For me?” Jungkook called out, half-laughing through blood.

Namjoon didn’t look back. “Not for me.”

Jungkook snorted.

Byrne shoved Leo toward a side hall. “Let’s go.”

Leo twisted in his grip, just enough to look back. Her voice cracked around the edge when she shouted, “I’m not leaving you, Jungkook! I’ll find you!”

He didn’t respond.

But for the first time, his expression changed. Not panic. Not pain. Just something tight around the eyes. Not for himself—for her. Because he knew her well enough to believe she meant it. And that kind of loyalty? That kind of promise?

That could get her killed.

He didn’t say a word as the guards rolled him down the corridor. The table moved smooth, gliding over polished floors that gleamed too much for a ship like this. But Jungkook wasn’t focused on the ride. His eyes stayed busy.

Counting boots. Watching doors. Marking every camera and shadow.

They wheeled him through a heavy door that hissed open like a lung exhaling stale breath.

The room inside was... strange.

It was clean—painfully so. Every surface gleamed under cold, sterile light, but that light wasn’t white. It was a deep, electric blue that made the shadows hum and the edges of things blur. There was something wrong with the color—it made depth look flat, made solid things feel translucent. Unreal.

The air hit him like frost. Thin and cold, dry enough to burn in his nose. The kind of climate you set for machines, not people.

Then there were the shapes.

Figures lined the walls and corners, lit from below by recessed floor lights. They weren’t statues exactly. Not in the traditional sense. They were... human-shaped. Mostly. But the more he looked, the less he liked what he saw. Arms bent wrong. Ribs that flared out too far. Mouths frozen in screams that looked too detailed to be sculpted.

In the center of the room stood a towering cone—matte black, smooth, unnaturally reflective. It shimmered slightly in the ambient glow like it was absorbing the light, not reflecting it.

Around it: the figures. Silent. Watching.

“Set him down and leave,” Typhon said.

No ceremony. Just a flat command.

The mercs unlatched the restraints. No words, no glances. The table was wheeled out as fast as it had come in, vanishing through the thick doors with a quiet thunk.

Jungkook stood slowly, rolling his shoulders, his muscles stiff from being pinned down. The floor glowed faintly beneath his boots—each step lighting up as he walked. He didn’t like it. The tech was too quiet, too intentional.

He only got a few steps in before something caught his eye.

A statue. Human form. Nearly life-sized. The posture was... strange. Shoulders hunched, head tilted slightly, arms half-raised like it had been caught mid-reaction. There was power in it—muscle, tension—but also something broken in the stance. Like whoever it had been, they hadn’t died well.

The plaque at its base read: KILLER OF MEN: FURYA

Jungkook’s lips curled at the name. Familiar. He stepped closer, narrowing his eyes. The detail was eerie—every muscle line, every pore. This wasn’t sculpture. This was capture. Preservation. A body flash-frozen in time.

His hand moved up, instinctive, almost curious—reaching toward the statue’s lip.

Then it moved.

A tongue flicked out—thin, fast, wet. Just enough to lick his fingertip.

He jerked his hand back like he’d touched a live wire. “What the hell—”

“You like it?” a voice asked, silk-smooth and too amused.

Jungkook spun. Loralai Youngblood stood in the doorway, silhouetted against the blue glow, one hand holding a glass of something deep red that shimmered like blood in stasis. Her robe—long, silver-white—trailed behind her like it had its own gravity.

The Furyan statue turned toward her. Slowly. Like it knew who was in charge.

Typhon stepped up behind Jungkook. Fast. Too fast.

There was a sharp, clean stab of pain—something sliding into the base of his neck. He dropped to his knees, hands catching the floor just before his face hit. His body shook once, a cold fire racing down his spine.

“Son of a—” he growled through gritted teeth.

Youngblood took her time walking in. She set her glass on a sleek chrome pedestal, casual as if this was her parlor and not some waking nightmare.

“Precaution,” she said lightly, waving her hand. “If you get any ideas—say, murdering me—I press a button, and that little implant Typhon just gifted you? Well, let’s say it ends things... fast.”

Jungkook rose to his feet slowly, one hand rubbing the back of his neck. His voice was low, rough. “You’re not freezing me like one of your art pieces.”

She smiled, sharp and effortless. “Of course not. You’re for my private collection.”

She gestured toward the cone at the center of the room. As she moved, the light shifted slightly—and with it, the illusion of the space broke.

There were more of them.

Dozens. Maybe more.

Not statues—people. Or what had been people. Bodies suspended mid-motion, frozen in positions that told a story: panic, rage, surrender. Every face locked in its final expression.

Jungkook’s eyes swept the room.

It wasn’t a conservatory.

It was a gallery of endings.

Commander Angel Hitchcock moved down the dim corridor like she owned it—not fast, but with purpose. Her green-and-gray environ-suit was scuffed from years of use, the kind you didn’t replace unless it stopped sealing. Her boots hit the grated floor with a steady metallic clang, each step echoing in the empty passage like a countdown.

The hallway was cold. Not just temperature—ship cold. Recycled air, too clean to trust. Walls lined with frost-sealed cryo-chambers, each one dark and quiet like coffins for the not-quite-dead.

She stopped at a wall-mounted panel and keyed in a string of commands. The screen flickered to life, casting a pale light on her face. Sharp angles. No makeup. No softness. Just function.

REVIVE: KING?

She didn’t hesitate. Tapped yes.

Hydraulics hissed. Gears locked and disengaged. A chamber slid out with a groan, as if the ship itself wasn’t thrilled about what it was waking up.

The cryo-tube extended from the wall like a tongue spitting something out. Frost cracked along the seams. Inside, a figure twitched.

The man hit the floor hard—bare skin on freezing steel. He dropped to his knees in the decontamination chamber, gasping, face slick with cryo-sweat. A second later, he surged forward like an animal. Slammed into the glass with a shoulder and let out a guttural snarl.

“Miss me?” he rasped, voice shredded from months—or maybe years—of silence.

Hitchcock didn’t flinch. Just stepped back, pressed a gloved finger to the controls, and started the purge.

Steam hissed around him, the automated system blasting him with decontaminants. He stood there like it was nothing, letting the chemicals wash off the freeze. He shook his head, flinging water like a dog, then grinned.

“Mmm,” he muttered, eyes wild but sharp. “Fresh as a f***in’ daisy.”

The chamber hissed open, and he stepped out barefoot, half-naked, still dripping. No shame. No nerves. Just motion.

Hitchcock handed him a duffel—worn, stitched, tagged. His gear.

She didn’t say his name. Just, “Suit up. Report in.”

That was all he needed.

King pulled the bag open and started pulling on layers without breaking eye contact, checking the straps on his boots like he was reacquainting himself with an old friend. Then came the weapon—a compact scatter rifle with a folding stock and enough kick to knock a man through a bulkhead. He flipped it once, just to hear it click.

“Must be something serious,” she said, dryly. “You don’t wake up someone like you unless things are about to go sideways.”

He looked at her, eyes gleaming, grin spreading like a bad idea.

“Sister,” he said, voice low and ready, “I certainly hope so.”

Youngblood moved through the gallery like she was giving a private tour. Her voice was light, casual, the kind of tone you'd expect at a high-end auction, not in a tomb full of monsters. Jungkook followed, every step slow, eyes scanning—part curiosity, part survival. Typhon stayed back, silent, but watching. Always watching.

Jungkook folded his arms, masking the unease crawling up his spine. “Let me get this straight,” he said. “You track these people down, throw resources into catching ‘em alive… and this is what you do with them? Line ‘em up like trophies?”

Youngblood didn’t turn. Just smiled to herself as she drifted past another figure—one twisted so badly its silhouette barely looked human. “You’re missing the point,” she said, her voice velvet over steel.

Jungkook snorted quietly. “What point? You’ve got a gallery full of killers worth a fortune and you’re using them for interior design.”

She stopped in front of a pair—locked in some grotesque, almost intimate tangle. A man and a woman. Hard to tell which parts belonged to who. She reached out, ran her fingertips along the rigid curve of a shoulder, almost tender.

“You see waste,” she murmured. “I see legacy. These aren’t corpses, Jungkook. They’re monuments. Each one used to be the most dangerous person in some corner of the galaxy. Some of them entire systems wanted gone. The lives they took? Too many to count. Too many to forget.”

She looked at him then, her eyes sharp and bright. “I don’t waste that kind of history.”

Jungkook’s jaw shifted, his tone edged with disdain. “Yeah. Still not what I’d call ‘livin.’”

The light caught her face just right when her smile faded. It was only for a second, but something slipped through—something cold.

“They’re not dead,” she said softly.

He blinked, then turned to the statue she was facing. Looked closer.

The man’s face was frozen in a perfect expression. Calm. Too calm. His eyes slightly parted, as if caught in the middle of blinking—or trying to blink.

Youngblood leaned in. “Still breathing. Just barely. Cryo slowed to the point where seconds feel like days. No sleep. No escape. Just... thought.”

Jungkook’s stomach turned, but he kept his face blank. He didn’t want to give her the satisfaction.

“And what’s that supposed to be?” he asked. “Mercy?”

She walked again, drawing him deeper into the space. The gallery shifted around them—figures more twisted, more broken. Arms fused to spines. Mouths contorted in impossible ways. It stopped feeling like a collection and started feeling like a warning.

Eventually, they reached a curtain.

Thick. Heavy. Blood-red. The kind of fabric that looked like it had weight even when it didn’t move.

Youngblood paused, turned to him like a magician before the reveal.

“They’re conscious, Jungkook. Every second. The brain keeps going, trapped inside the same memory loop. Over and over.” Her voice dropped, almost reverent. “It’s a better sentence than anything a slam can give. No cells. No guards. Just… them. And who they were.”

Jungkook’s jaw tightened. “And what do you think that turns them into?”

She smiled again, slow. “Art.”

He gave a dry laugh, shaking his head. “Your taste is garbage.”

She didn’t react. Just gave a small nod.

“Typhon.”

The man stepped forward. One hand raised. A click.

The curtain rose.

The platform wasn’t a gallery. It was a pit—wide and deep, with metal railings lining the edge. Red lights pulsed beneath the floor, slow and rhythmic, like the place itself was breathing.

Two mercs stood at either side. One of them Jungkook recognized—a pig-faced bastard who’d grinned too much during the last scuffle.

Jungkook stepped up to the edge.

He stopped cold.

Below them, suspended over the void, were Namjoon and Leo.

Both stood barefoot on smooth, unstable spheres—barely the size of their feet. Hands cuffed behind their backs. Necks looped in thin suspension cords, tight enough that one bad move would tip the balance.

Namjoon’s head hung low, body trembling with the effort to stay upright. Leo’s knees were shaking visibly, her chin lifted in forced defiance—but her eyes searched the shadows, wild with fear.

Youngblood came to stand beside him, calm as ever. “This is the difference between you and me.”

He didn’t take his eyes off them. “Yeah,” he muttered. “You’re insane.”

She reached up, touched his cheek.

He flinched, but didn’t move.

“You don’t understand beauty,” she whispered. “Not yet. But you will.”

He shoved her hand away.

“I’ve been called a lot of things,” he said. “But I’m not your canvas.”

She laughed under her breath, low and indulgent. “You already are.”

Her voice dropped, almost affectionate. “You make art, Jungkook. You carve it into bodies. You leave it behind every time someone tries to stop you. The difference is, I preserve it. I elevate it.”

Jungkook turned back toward the pit, every nerve tight, jaw locked, heart thudding in his throat.

Leo looked up from below, swaying slightly where she stood on that fragile orb of a platform. Her legs trembled from the strain, but her voice was steady.

“I said I’d find you, didn’t I?”

He didn’t answer. Couldn’t. His chest had already tightened with the kind of rage that clouded the edges of reason. He turned his head slowly toward Youngblood.

She stood a few steps behind him—composed, casual, one arm draped across her midsection as she idly swirled the wine in her glass. Watching. Not like a tactician or a soldier, but like a patron at an exhibit she’d paid dearly to attend.

“What do you want?” Jungkook asked, his voice hoarse, cracked with fury.

Youngblood smiled, slow and measured, her words curling out with a calm that made them land even harder. “I want to see you in motion,” she said, voice low. “Not through files. Not after cleanup crews. I want to see you... work.”

She took a step closer, her heels silent against the polished floor.

“I’ve spent the last ten years chasing men like you. I’ve read the reports, seen the aftermath. Bullet holes. Burn marks. Piles of bodies. But it’s always... after. Cold. Quiet.” Her eyes met his, and for the first time, they burned with something like obsession. “Now I want to see what happens before all of that.”

Typhon moved to her side and pressed a control panel embedded in the wall.

The sound that followed was deep and mechanical—ancient tech waking up. Across the far end of the chamber, thick steel doors creaked and parted with a groan that echoed off the high walls.

Down in the pit, Leo’s face drained of color. Her shoulders jerked. Namjoon’s muscles tensed, his whole body fighting to stay upright, the veins in his neck straining against the cord that kept him one slip from the end.

Up on the ledge, Youngblood took a slow sip from her glass and sighed, as if this was exactly the kind of theater she’d hoped for.

“I want to see what everyone’s so afraid of,” she said. “I want to see you, Jungkook. At your peak. At your worst.”

He stared at her for a long moment. Then a smile tugged at the corner of his mouth—cold, humorless. He stepped in, slow, until he was close enough that she could feel the heat off his skin.

“I get out of here,” he said quietly, “you’re gonna see it again.”

He leaned in slightly, voice dropping to a murmur.

“From this close.”

Youngblood didn’t blink. Her expression didn’t falter. She raised her hand, and with almost theatrical flair, lifted his chin with something small and gleaming between her fingers—his own shiv. Reclaimed. Mocked.

She let it hang there for a second, the sharp tip kissing just beneath his jaw. Then she let go, and the blade clattered to the floor between them.

“I’m not interested in threats,” she said, her tone velvet but firm. “I want your masterpiece. An artist is nothing without his tools.”

Jungkook stepped back, his face unreadable. He glanced down at the shiv, then back up.

That’s when Typhon moved—silent, imposing, stepping between him and the weapon like a wall of armor and muscle.

Jungkook didn’t back down. He just looked up at the man, slow and steady, reading him.

“When we meet again,” he said, voice low, like a promise, “I’m gonna bury that blade in your eye.”

Typhon didn’t answer.

Jungkook stepped around him, bent at the waist, and picked up the shiv. No rush. Just a clean, deliberate motion, like he was slipping back into a version of himself he hadn’t worn in a while.

Jungkook rose slowly, sliding his goggles down over his eyes. The red glow from the pit caught the lenses just right, turning his expression into something not quite human—eyes faintly reflective, cold, animal.

“Let him in,” Youngblood said, her voice slicing clean through the silence.

Two mercs moved in—boots loud on the steel floor. Jungkook didn’t resist. He let the first one circle behind him, posture slack, as if compliant.

Then he turned.

One step, one twist—his boot drove hard into the side of the pig-faced merc’s head. Bone cracked. The man dropped like scrap metal.

The second merc started to lift his weapon, but he was too slow. Jungkook closed the distance in a blur and drove the shiv up under his ribs. One smooth motion. No wasted effort.

The first merc groaned, pushing himself upright, rage painted across his busted face. He lunged.

They went over the edge together.

The air split around them as they crashed into the pit below. But Jungkook twisted mid-fall, landing hard on top. The merc hit first, breath knocked from his lungs, shiv at his throat. Jungkook didn’t finish it—not yet. He stood, leaving the man wheezing on the floor.

Above, Youngblood didn’t flinch. She set the remote for Jungkook’s implant aside and lifted something else: a slim pair of polished optic lenses, old-world elegant—opera glasses reworked for ultraviolet.

“Switch it,” she said. “Ultraviolet.”

The lighting shifted. The blood-red glow vanished, replaced by a strange violet haze. Shadows sharpened. Every edge turned stark and surreal.

Jungkook blinked behind his goggles. The dark bloomed into life.

Two faint glimmers began to form in the far corners of his vision—indistinct at first, like heat waves. Then, they took shape.

Massive. Fluid. Tentacled.

Each had a pulsing mass at its core, like a brain encased in jelly, spinning slowly, lit from within. Not solid—translucent. Their bodies shimmered, phasing between visibility and shadow, like they didn’t fully exist in one place.

There wasn’t one.

There were two.

Jungkook exhaled, low and steady. “Namjoon.”

A pause. “Start praying.”

Namjoon’s voice cracked through the pit. “I was on a pilgrimage,” he muttered, his voice distant. “Just a damn pilgrimage.”

Leo was pale, her breath shaky. “This is bad, huh?”

Jungkook didn’t look at her. “Give it a minute.”

One of the shrill shifted, its long limbs trailing across the floor, dragging filaments behind it. The UV light bent around its form, warping its outline.

Then it moved.

Fast.

A tentacle lashed through the air toward the wounded merc. He never had a chance. His panicked gunfire lit up the cavern—wild, useless.

The tentacle coiled around him.

There was a snap of bone, then a piercing scream as the shrill pulled him close and injected something. His body seized, twitched. Then swelled.

Then burst.

A glowing spray of blood and tissue misted into the air, scattering across the pit floor.

Leo gagged.

Namjoon didn’t move.

Jungkook didn’t blink.

The second shrill turned toward him.

It lunged.

Jungkook moved with it, sliding beneath the strike, twisting low. He grabbed hold of one of its tendrils as it whipped past. It flung him off like dead weight. He flew, hard, slamming into the orb Leo balanced on.

It bucked under the impact. She screamed, arms flailing, collar yanking tight against her throat.

“Leo!” Namjoon shouted. He kicked off, rolling his own orb closer, using his shoulder to brace hers before she could fall. They held each other, both gasping, barely stable.

Jungkook hit the floor hard, but rolled with it, coming up fast. The creature was already pivoting, trying to flank him. He stepped in and slashed—one clean stroke.

The blade met flesh.

A hiss, like gas escaping a pressure valve. The shrill recoiled, flickering out of visibility for half a second before reforming with a sickening ripple.

Jungkook didn’t stop.

He advanced, carving through the haze. His movements were precise—nothing flashy. Just survival sharpened into muscle memory. Each strike aimed to cripple, not kill.

Behind him, the second shrill shifted direction. Its pulsing core lit up brighter as it turned on Namjoon and Leo.

“Move!” Jungkook shouted.

They were already reacting—working the collar ropes, using the tether to drag their orbs in tandem. They kicked off together, rolling straight into the beast’s path.

It stumbled, briefly disoriented.

Jungkook heard their coughing, their struggle to stay upright. He turned, sprinted, and vaulted. His boots hit the second shrill’s back mid-motion.

He drove the blade deep, straight into the core.

The creature shuddered, spasmed, then collapsed—its body dissolving into twitching muscle and light.

Jungkook hit the floor hard, shoulders absorbing the impact, the shiv still in his grip. Leo and Namjoon landed beside him in a heap, breathless and shaken.

“Get her up,” he said, already scanning the dark edges of the pit. His voice was tight, clipped. No time for softness.

“I can’t see!” Namjoon coughed, his voice raw.

“You don’t want to,” Jungkook muttered, not looking back. His goggles locked forward, catching the shimmer of movement—fluid, inhuman.

The shrill were circling now. Slow at first. Coordinated. Their bodies shifted in and out of the UV light, limbs trailing across the stone like liquid shadows. Tentacles moved with eerie precision, each one anticipating the other’s motion.

Jungkook didn’t wait.

One struck fast—too fast for the eye, but not for him. He moved like instinct given shape. Slipped sideways, spun into the blow, and let his restraint chain catch the impact. The force shattered the links.

The shiv came up like a reflex.

“You wanna go?” he said under his breath, locking eyes with the creature’s flickering core. “Let’s go.”

It lunged. He met it, blade-first.

The tentacle dropped, still writhing as it hit the ground. The other shrill hesitated, their movements suddenly less certain. Sizing him up.

Above, Youngblood leaned forward, wine forgotten. “Beautiful,” she breathed, reverent.

Typhon stood stone-still next to her. “The shrill are an exquisite species.”

She barely turned her head. “I wasn’t talking about the shrill.”

Down in the pit, Jungkook crouched low, reading the shift in their body language. One shrill moved to shield the injured one, forming a wall of limbs and light.

“They’re gonna kill him!” Leo choked, trying to push forward.

Namjoon caught her arm, pulling her back with a grip firmer than his voice. “Wait.”

The two creatures separated. Slowly. Deliberately.

Jungkook stepped back a half pace, shiv up, shoulders tight. He didn’t blink.

Then Leo’s voice broke the air.

“Jungkook!”

He didn’t hesitate. Grabbed one of the balancing spheres and shoved it hard into the wounded shrill. The orb hit with a hollow thud, knocking the creature off its footing. Jungkook followed with a fast, brutal slice, cutting deep.

The thing dropped in two halves, its body folding into itself like wet cloth.

He stared down, chest rising and falling. For a second, he couldn’t believe how fast it went down.

“Huh?”

“Jungkook—no!”

Leo’s scream snapped him around. The second shrill was already on him.

It wrapped around his arms with impossible strength, pinning him in place. He grunted, trying to twist, to shift—but the thing was too strong, too tight.

“Leo, stay back!” Namjoon shouted.

She didn’t. She tore herself free and ran toward them, grabbing the severed tentacle from the ground. She swung it, raw and desperate, around the creature’s neck. It thrashed, flinging her off like a rag doll.

She hit hard, skidding across the floor—but close. Close enough.

Jungkook saw her near the shiv. Saw her hand close around it, slick with black ichor.

“Jungkook?” she rasped, her voice shaking.

He reached for her—blood on his lips, limbs straining.

“Here!” she shouted.

The throw wasn’t perfect. But it was close enough.

He caught it clean.

A breath. A blink. Then the blade was moving—slicing through the restraint on his wrist in a single, practiced stroke.

The shrill reared back, stinger lifted, coiled like a whip ready to snap.

He didn’t back off.

Instead, he grabbed the tentacle Leo had dropped, looped it around his forearm, and pulled—dragging himself forward into the creature’s body.

A reckless move. A killer’s instinct.

He drove the shiv deep.

Right into its core.

The shrill froze.

Then it ruptured—its bioluminescent center collapsing in a burst of searing light. UV flared across the room. The sound was like glass under pressure—stretching, then snapping all at once.

Then—silence.

Everything went dark.

A beat later, the overhead lights flickered back to life—dull, industrial, humming with age.

And then came the clapping.

Slow. Measured. Hands meeting with the kind of rhythm that didn’t applaud success—just confirmed it.

Leo was curled on her side, chest heaving. Namjoon was on his knees, dazed, blinking hard. His hands shook.

Jungkook sat for a moment, head bowed, goggles cracked but still in place. Then he stood, quiet and steady. No celebration. No quip.

Above them, high on the steel balcony, Youngblood and Typhon stood like they were watching a play’s final act. The lighting cast long shadows behind them, painting their silhouettes across the far wall.

“Bravo!” Youngblood’s voice rang out—sharp, rich, soaked in something halfway between mockery and genuine awe. “The grace. The detail. The sheer violence of it. Exquisite.”

Down in the pit, Namjoon and Leo exchanged a glance. She was smiling. Not pleasantly. Not politely. She was smiling like a woman watching a private collection expand.

Leo’s stomach turned. “Is she serious?”

Namjoon didn’t answer. His eyes were already on Jungkook.

Jungkook stood a few feet away, chest rising and falling. His jaw was tight, shoulders drawn back. He wasn’t breathing hard, but his eyes hadn’t moved from Youngblood once.

He opened his mouth to speak—but cut himself off.

“Give—”

“What?” Namjoon asked, wary.

Jungkook looked over at him. “The knife.”

Namjoon hesitated. Then nodded.

He crouched next to the shrill’s corpse, reached into the split torso, and yanked the shiv free with a wet, tearing sound. He didn’t flinch—there was no room left for that. He tossed the blade underhand.

Jungkook caught it.

Above, Youngblood continued as if the whole scene was part of her script.

“Such raw beauty,” she murmured. “But it leaves one dilemma.”

Leo stiffened. “She’s not gonna say it…”

Youngblood smiled, slow and poisonous. “How will I ever have you mounted in a way that does you justice?”

Jungkook didn’t answer. He just lowered the blade and pressed the tip to the side of his neck.

Leo took half a step toward him. “Wait—Jungkook, what are you doing?”

But he was already cutting.

The blade worked under his skin—fast, efficient. Blood welled and ran in thin rivers down his collarbone, warm against the cold of the pit. His face was still, focused, teeth clenched against the pain.

Then: the flicker of metal.

He pulled it free.

A tiny black device—slick with blood. Mechanical legs twitched faintly, clinging to nothing.

Youngblood’s expression cracked. For the first time, the mask slipped. She lunged for her remote.

“You gonna keep that?” Leo muttered faintly, one hand pressed over her mouth.

Youngblood’s voice turned brittle. “Looks like you’ll have to be an abstract.”

But Jungkook moved first.

He hurled the implant. Fast. High.

“Down!” he shouted.

Leo and Namjoon dropped. No hesitation.

The device struck just below the balcony’s edge.

Youngblood hit the button.

The explosion kicked a thunderclap through the room. Heat. Light. Shrapnel.

Jungkook was thrown backwards, his body hitting the ground with a dull thud. The blast echoed around the pit, then dissolved into a dense, swirling smoke.

Above, metal groaned.

Youngblood stumbled forward, coughing, ash on her cheek. Fury twisted her features into something jagged. She leaned over the railing, searching through the haze.

The smoke thinned. Enough to see.

Typhon stepped forward beside her, silent and still. His face unreadable.

Below, Leo was already crawling toward Jungkook, her hands bloody, trembling.

“You good?” she asked, breathless.

He groaned and propped himself up on one elbow. “Been worse.”

Namjoon was already on his feet. No words. His eyes locked on the ragged hole in the far wall—an exit, maybe. Maybe.

He didn’t wait.

He ran.

Youngblood’s scream tore through the metal chamber, high and shrill with fury. “We’ll need a full pursuit force!”

Typhon didn’t move, didn’t blink. Just raised one brow. “With what personnel?”

“All of them,” she snapped. “Even the ‘Golls. I don’t care. If it holds a weapon or breathes through a tube, I want it moving. Now.”

She spun, heel striking the top of Typhon’s foot with a sharp twist—rage too tightly wound to keep in.

Around them, the cryo-pods hissed open one by one, venting pale mist into the already tense air. Rows of mercenaries stumbled out half-conscious, coughing, blinking against the low light. Some reached for weapons before they were even fully awake—instincts faster than thought.

Far from the chaos, deeper in the ship where the lights buzzed dim and wires hung loose from panels, a different kind of energy moved.

King crouched low in front of an old terminal, cracked fingers flying across the keys. The screen flickered to life, casting a soft blue light over his face.

Jungkook’s file popped up. The bounty number took up half the screen.

1,126,000 UD.

King whistled. “Well, aren’t you expensive,” he muttered, grinning.

Behind him, boots clanged against the grated floor. Commander Hitchcock stood in the doorway, arms crossed, face like stone.

“You wanna tell me what the hell you’re doing?” she asked.

“Just browsing,” King replied without looking up. “Company files. Light reading.”

“Stow it,” she snapped, stepping closer. “We’ve got runners. Orders are clean—shoot on sight.”

“Yes, ma’am,” King said with a half-hearted salute, barely suppressing a smirk as she turned and walked off.

Elsewhere in the bowels of the ship, the world was weightless.

Jungkook moved first, drifting through a corridor choked with zero-g debris. Every motion was practiced—fluid. Namjoon followed, his hands light on the walls, guiding himself with calm precision. Behind them, Leo struggled to stay centered, arms flailing slightly as she kicked off too hard and bounced off a pipe.

“I hate this,” she muttered.

“Focus,” Jungkook said.

Behind them, the first wave of mercenaries dropped into the pit like angry wasps. They swept flashlights across the destruction—the burst shrill, the splattered walls.

King stepped into something wet. Looked down. Grimaced.

“Ugh. What was that?”

“Shut up and take point,” Hitchcock barked.

He wiped his boot on a piece of broken paneling, then looked up toward the observation deck. Youngblood was there, her face hidden in silhouette, hands gripping the rail so tight her knuckles had gone pale.

He offered her a lazy salute.

She didn’t respond.

“Burn ‘em,” Hitchcock said flatly.

King exhaled. “All right, boys—time to get sweaty.”

Gravity slammed back without warning.

Jungkook hit first, absorbing the impact in a tight roll. He came up fast, moving already. Behind him, Namjoon landed solidly, while Leo stumbled, catching herself on a broken conduit.

A deep, guttural noise rumbled through the walls—like something exhaling behind the metal.

Leo froze. “What the hell was that?”

Jungkook raised a hand, signaling stillness. “Don’t move.”

But the stillness didn’t last.

The second wave of trackers entered, boots pounding, weapons raised. Behind them came something else.

Something worse.

It clanked as it moved—metal limbs, hydraulics whining. But the rest of it was flesh. Stitched-together muscle and exposed nerves, thick cables feeding into its skull. It sniffed at the air like a dog that hadn’t eaten in days.

Its handler crouched, wiped blood from the floor, and smeared it across a feeding plate mounted to its snout.

“Let it go.”

Six Golls held the ropes. Five obeyed. The sixth tried—then screamed as the thing yanked him forward, dragging him into the dark.

Jungkook was already climbing—up a twisted support beam toward a crumbling catwalk. His muscles burned. Every step counted. At the top, he reached down without thinking.

“Come on!” he called.

Leo grabbed his arm just as flashlight beams hit her back. Jungkook pulled hard, flipping her over the ledge with a grunt. She hit the floor beside him with a yelp, still scrambling for breath.

Below, King’s voice crackled through comms. “What the—”

Gunfire.

A round clipped Jungkook’s shoulder. He staggered, caught himself, and turned with a wince. Blood soaked through his sleeve.

“You’re hit,” Namjoon said, eyes scanning him.

“Him?” Leo snapped, still breathless. “He nearly ripped me in half!”

“It’s just a graze,” Jungkook said, voice low, brushing it off.

Then the sound came again.

Louder. Closer.

That thing was moving fast.

“That bitch,” King muttered, already backing away. “Move!”

He shoved one of the other mercs aside and broke into a run, heading for the path Jungkook had carved—like he’d been planning it all along.

Jungkook stopped on a flat stretch of metal grating, just below a half-collapsed catwalk. He turned, breathing through his nose, eyes sweeping the corridor behind them.

Leo stumbled up behind him, face pale, sweat sticking strands of hair to her cheeks. She was trying to keep pace, but her legs were starting to shake. Every breath she took came in fast and shallow.

“We can’t stop,” Namjoon said, glancing back, his voice low and urgent.

“We’re not outrunning it,” Jungkook replied, calm—but final. “Not all three of us.”

Leo straightened instinctively, trying to make herself stand taller. “What? I can keep up.”

Jungkook didn’t look at her right away. When he did, his tone softened, but the edge was still there. “Maybe someday.”

He looked up. Above them, tucked just below the docking bay's support beams, was a small maintenance crawlspace—half-hidden by shadow, just out of direct line-of-sight.

He pointed. “Get her up there. Flight deck’s not far. Upper level, aft side.”

Namjoon nodded without hesitation. “I know the way.”

“Wait there. Let whatever’s chasing us pass through,” Jungkook said, already turning his attention toward the darkened corridor beyond. “When it does, you move. No looking back. No matter what you hear.”

Leo blinked. “We’ll wait for you.”

Jungkook didn’t respond. His eyes had already moved past her, tracking movement in the shadows. He stepped away, blade drawn. The light caught the edge of it just enough to glint.

“What are you gonna do?” Leo asked, but he was already gone—disappearing into the dark.

Blood hit the floor in neat, heavy drops. Jungkook sliced a clean line across his arm, dragging the blade deliberately. He didn’t wince. The pain grounded him, kept him focused.

The trail was no accident.

Far behind, mercenaries stormed through the corridor. Their lights sliced through the gloom, beams flashing across walls streaked with soot and rust.

Namjoon held Leo close in the crawlspace, her breathing shallow, hands clenched into fists.

Below them, King crouched over the blood trail, two fingers touching the fresh smear. He lifted his hand, studying the slick red against his glove.

“Smart bastard,” he muttered. His eyes tracked the path ahead, then flicked to the squad behind him. He didn’t wait for orders—just moved, following the trail like a hound on scent.

Leo shifted. “Where do we even—?”

Namjoon’s hand clamped gently over her mouth. Not harsh, not afraid. Just... controlled.

“Leo. Shh.”

She froze.

The ship was suddenly too quiet. Too still.

Then it came—deep, metallic footfalls echoing through the hull. Each step vibrated through the floor panels, a slow, deliberate rhythm.

Something was coming.

Leo’s eyes widened. Her hand found Namjoon’s sleeve, gripping tight. He didn’t flinch. He just waited—barely breathing. The beast’s roar rolled through the corridor like thunder, long and guttural.

It passed. Heavy steps retreating.

Only then did Namjoon move, peeking through the slats to check the corridor. Nothing. For now.

“We’ve got to help him,” Leo whispered, voice shaking. “He won’t make it alone.”

Namjoon looked at her. Really looked. Then shook his head.

“Sometimes, helping means leaving.”

She didn’t argue. Couldn’t. The words hung heavy between them. Truth, brutal and necessary.

Far below, in the corridor, floodlights snapped on, painting the walls in harsh, clinical white.

“Fan out. Clean sweep,” Commander Hitchcock barked. Her team responded like clockwork—silent, coordinated, rifles raised as they moved room to room.

“Something here,” called Donna, one of the forward scouts, crouched over a scrap of torn cloth smeared with blood.

She picked it up delicately, glancing toward Hitchcock.

King stepped closer, eyes narrowing. His whole body tensed.

“Don’t—” he started.

Too late.

Donna turned the fabric over in her hands.

“Oh, shit,” Hitchcock muttered.

A low rumble shook the walls. Deeper than before.

The Goll was coming.

It wasn’t subtle—nothing about it was. Half-machine, half-flesh, its limbs hit the floor like dropped anvils. Tubes pumped fluid into open muscle. Metal teeth glinted in its warped jaw.

King backed up, fast, drawing his weapon.

“Guns up!” someone shouted. Too late.

The beast rounded the corner.

No pause. No roar.

It hit the team like a battering ram.

Rifles barked in quick, sharp bursts—but the rounds barely slowed the thing down. The Goll moved straight through the fire like it was walking through rain. Donna didn’t even get a scream out. One swing of its massive arm, and she was airborne, her body cracking against the wall with a sickening, final sound. Everyone nearby flinched—but no one looked twice. There wasn’t time.

King dropped low, rolling behind a half-shattered support bulkhead. He risked a glance.

Bad call.

The creature had already carved through two more—just ripped them open like wet paper. Its claws glistened in the emergency lights, streaked with blood and fluid.

King’s expression changed—gone was the smirk, the commentary. He fired once, not at the beast, but at the wall. A sewage pipe ruptured with a loud hiss, spraying black water and chemicals. Without hesitation, he dove into the flood, letting it carry him down into darkness.

Hitchcock never got the chance.

The Goll spotted her mid-shout, and lunged. The crunch of impact was brutal—sickening. Then nothing. Just a torn uniform and a smear across the deck.

And that’s when Jungkook dropped.

He came out of the ceiling—no words, no sound—just a blur of movement and weight. He landed hard on the Goll’s back, all his momentum driving the blade down and in.

It found soft tissue, somewhere deep beneath the armored spine. The creature roared—less fury now, more agony. It stumbled forward, legs buckling.

Jungkook held on tight, twisting the blade with both hands until something deep inside the thing gave. The Goll dropped hard, its frame twitching as systems shorted and flesh spasmed.

Jungkook pulled the shiv free and rolled off before the beast fully collapsed. He landed in a crouch, breathing hard.

He stood over the wreckage, chest rising and falling, eyes scanning the quiet that followed. His shoulder bled from where the graze hadn’t clotted, but he didn’t seem to notice. His gaze flicked to a cyborg body half-buried in debris. One arm gone, but the torso armor—intact.

He grunted to himself.

“Not putting that tank back on,” he muttered. Then eyed the cyborg’s gear again. “But that might do.”

Up ahead, Namjoon was already at work, prying open a floor panel with his hands. The cover came loose with a groan of warped metal. He ducked his head and peered down.

A tunnel. Just a few meters. The flight deck was at the far end—quiet, lit in low blue strips. Empty.

He slipped through, crawling forward. He’d barely cleared the edge when something slammed into the back of his skull.

Hard.

He hit the deck with a thud, lights spinning.

Leo followed fast, hands scrambling for the same edge.

She barely had time to register what she saw before a hand caught the back of her neck and yanked her through like luggage.

Typhon.

He lifted her effortlessly, his grip ironclad. Her boots kicked against the floor, hands flying up to fight. She slammed her fist into his jaw—once, twice.

Nothing.

His face didn’t twitch.

Then his hand closed around her throat.

Not a squeeze. A clamp—a controlled crush, like someone picking up glass and daring it to shatter.

Leo’s legs kicked once, her vision tunneling. The sound of her own heartbeat filled her ears, ragged and fast.

Then a voice cut through the air—low, sharp, and unmistakably cold.

“Let her go.”

Typhon’s eyes shifted—slow, deliberate. He didn’t look surprised. He just lowered her gently to the floor, his hand slipping away like nothing had happened.

Leo dropped to her knees, coughing hard, hands pressed to her neck.

Jungkook stepped out of the shadows, his stance steady, the shiv in his right hand catching just enough light to gleam.

“You want me,” he said quietly. “Not her.”

He took a step forward.

“You want a shot at the title?”

Typhon’s lip twitched into something close to a smirk.

Jungkook’s fist hit the steel wall hard. The clang echoed through the space like a warning bell, not just sound—but intent. His jaw was tight, his chest rising and falling in quiet rhythm. Across from him, Typhon stepped forward calmly, like none of this was a surprise. Like he’d been waiting.

He peeled off his long coat with mechanical ease. No rush. No wasted movement. His expression was unreadable—just the steady calculation of someone who'd survived more fights than he could count.

Jungkook didn’t wait for ceremony. His shiv was already in hand, blade glinting under the harsh fluorescents.

Typhon pulled a sidearm, but didn’t lift it. Instead, he dismantled it as he walked—piece by piece—then let it clatter to the floor. He was choosing the other weapon. The one that made this personal.

A long, curved blade came next. Hand-forged, clean. It hummed when it moved. It wasn’t for show.

They faced each other, silent. No banter. No taunts. Just air moving between them, charged like a stormfront.

Jungkook moved first.

He came in fast but stopped short—just outside Typhon’s reach. Testing him.

Typhon didn’t flinch. He jabbed.

Jungkook slipped it. Knocked the sword aside with a snap of his boot and closed the gap.

The first flurry was close-range—tight, fast, vicious. Blades scraped, fists collided, breath caught in chests. Typhon’s strikes were disciplined. Measured. Jungkook’s were sharp, fast, and dirty. He wasn’t dancing—he was trying to end it.

Typhon ducked a throat strike and spun behind him. Jungkook reversed, catching the man’s forearm mid-swing and twisting. The sword dropped. Jungkook kicked it across the floor.

But Typhon wasn’t unarmed for long. He slammed his elbow into Jungkook’s ribs, then drove a knee into his leg. Jungkook staggered, grunted—but didn’t go down.

They separated. Breathed.

Then came at each other again.

No finesse now. Just blunt force. Jungkook’s knuckles cracked across Typhon’s jaw. Typhon shoved him into the wall. Jungkook rebounded and drove his shoulder into Typhon’s gut, lifting the bigger man briefly off the ground. They hit the floor hard, grappling in a tangle of limbs and breath.

A boot connected. Jungkook’s shiv skidded across the room.

Typhon rolled to his feet, grabbed the sword again, and advanced.

Jungkook saw it coming. No blade. No backup. Just a broken field of debris around him. And a severed power line—sparking, twitching.

As Typhon raised the sword, Jungkook moved. He dove, rolled under the swing, and grabbed the live cable. He yanked it tight, flipped it over Typhon’s head, and pulled.

The choke was instant.

Typhon clawed at the wire, his blade falling loose. Sparks hissed against his skin. He tried to pivot, throw him off. Jungkook held on, jaw clenched, hands white-knuckled.

Then—snap.

Typhon’s free hand sliced the wire with a utility blade from his belt. Power surged one last time before the lights went out.

Blackness.

Just the sound of heavy breathing.

A footstep.

A scrape.

Then—crack.

The wet sound of something breaking. Not metal. Bone.

Then a scream—ragged, short-lived, cut off like a bad signal.

The emergency lights sputtered to life. Dim, red, flickering.

Typhon was on the floor, twisted on his side, his body twitching in the fading current. Jungkook stood over him, face unreadable, blood on his hands. The shiv—his—was buried clean through Typhon’s eye socket, the hilt flush against his skull.

No words for a long moment.

Then, quietly, “I told you that was coming.”

Namjoon groaned, low and hoarse, as pain dragged him out of unconsciousness. His head throbbed. A sharp, pulsing ache just behind his right eye. He blinked, eyes adjusting slowly to the flickering light above him. Cold metal under his palms. Smoke in the air.

Beside him, Leo lay still.

He turned toward her, reaching out with a hand that didn’t feel entirely steady. He shook her gently by the shoulder.

“Leo,” he murmured.

Nothing.

His breath caught for a moment. Panic surged—sharp and uninvited—until he saw her chest rise, shallow but steady. She was out cold, not gone.

Namjoon exhaled, steadying himself before pushing upright, his joints stiff from whatever blast or fall had knocked them flat. His eyes scanned the hangar—dim, scattered with debris—and then landed on Jungkook.

Jungkook was walking toward them, slower than usual. He cradled his left arm tight to his ribs. Blood soaked through the fabric in thick blotches, but he didn’t stop. His face was pale, lips drawn tight. No sound but the soft drag of his boots on the floor.

Namjoon rose, still holding Leo, watching Jungkook approach.

“Where are you going?” he asked, the words dry in his mouth.

Jungkook paused. Lifted his eyes.

“Prepping the ship,” he said. “We’re getting out of here.”

Namjoon nodded slowly. “So… it’s over?”

Jungkook didn’t answer at first. Just looked toward the bay doors, the flickering lights, the wreck of what had almost been their grave. Then back to Namjoon. A flicker crossed his face. Something like relief—but only for a breath.

“Not yet,” he said.

The doors to the launch corridor groaned open.

For a second, they all just stood there—no alarms, no monsters, no orders coming through their ears. Just stillness.

Then a sound. Subtle. Wrong.

Jungkook’s head snapped around.

Standing in the open doorway was Youngblood.

Her hair clung to her face in clumps, soaked in blood. Her gown—once pristine—was torn, stained, half-charred. She held herself together by sheer spite. Her eyes locked on Jungkook with feral focus. She was smiling.

“Thought you’d just leave?” she asked, her voice hollow.

The gun in her hand shook, just a little.

“Should’ve mounted you when I had the chance,” she whispered.

Then she fired.

The crack of the gunshot echoed like thunder in the metal belly of the ship.

Jungkook’s body jerked. He hit the ground hard, his leg folding under him. The impact was rough—raw. His head bounced once. He didn’t move again.

“Stinking savage,” Youngblood spat, stumbling closer, the gun still raised.

Namjoon froze. Leo was stirring now, blinking, dazed, but trying to sit up.

Youngblood’s hand trembled as she pointed the barrel at Jungkook’s head, eyes glassy.

Her finger curled again.

The shot never came.

A second gunshot rang out—short, sharp, final.

Youngblood’s head snapped back. Then it wasn’t there.

Her body collapsed like a dropped coat.

The silence that followed was brutal. No one moved for a second. Just the soft clink of the gun hitting the ground.

Smoke drifted from the barrel in Leo’s hand.

She didn’t say anything. Didn’t need to.

Namjoon helped Jungkook sit up. Blood trickled from his side, soaking into his waistband, but he was breathing.

“Damn,” Jungkook rasped. “You always this dramatic?”

Leo stared down at Youngblood’s body. “She was going to shoot you again.”

“That doesn’t answer my question.”

Namjoon snorted quietly. Leo didn’t smile.

Jungkook grinned, just a little. Then winced.

The shuttle broke free of the Trinidad’s pull like it had been holding its breath.

Outside, the black was endless. Cold. Empty. The wreck behind them was already just a shadow.

Inside, the engines hummed steady and low. A mechanical heartbeat. No chatter. No alarms. Just the quiet tension of people who weren’t sure what came next.

Jungkook sat slouched in the pilot’s chair, his body loose with exhaustion, one arm cradled in a torn sling of salvaged cloth. The goggles he wore were scratched at the edges, grime smudged into the lenses, but he kept them on. Maybe out of habit. Maybe because he didn’t want to look too closely at what was ahead—or behind.

He hadn’t spoken in a while.

Namjoon stepped forward from the corridor, slow and careful not to disturb the quiet.

“Jungkook.”

No response at first.

“Jungkook,” he repeated, lower this time.

The pilot’s head tilted slightly, eyes still on the stars. “We got a problem?”

Namjoon shifted, his hand brushing the edge of the console. “No. Not back there, anyway.” His gaze flicked to the distant debris field shrinking in the rear scope. “It’s what’s in front of us I’m worried about.”

Jungkook finally looked at him—just a glance.

Behind them, Leo lay curled on the bench meant for gear storage, not people. She was wrapped in an old thermal blanket, one hand clenched around Typhon’s weapon like it was a lifeline. Her breathing was even, but her fingers twitched every few seconds. Like her body hadn’t realized it could rest yet.

Namjoon followed Jungkook’s gaze.

“She’s changed,” he said quietly. “I’m not sure she knows how to come back from this.”

Jungkook’s eyes stayed on her a moment longer, unreadable. Then he spoke, low and blunt:

“She’ll end up like me.”

Namjoon didn’t argue. Just looked down at the floor, lips pressed into a line. Silence stretched between them—not awkward, not heavy. Just honest.

Jungkook eased himself back into the pilot’s seat, the leather torn and stiff beneath him. His injured arm was tucked close to his body, the sling damp with blood at the shoulder. He worked the console with his other hand—efficient, practiced. Like muscle memory doing the heavy lifting.

A row of green lights blinked to life across the dash. Soft glows spread across his face—cool blues, dull greens. Nothing harsh. Nothing loud. Just the quiet hum of a ship on the edge of silence.

The nav system buzzed once, screen flickering to a crawl as the starmap unfolded. A scatter of constellations shimmered across the glass like oil on water. Jungkook scrolled through them, eyes moving quick but deliberate. He paused when he hit one system—small, out of the way.

“UV system,” he muttered. Just loud enough for himself.

Namjoon, who’d been standing just off his shoulder, leaned in slightly. His presence was quiet, but solid. “Where’s that?”

Jungkook didn’t answer. Just keyed in the new coordinates and leaned back, his breath slow and shallow.

Namjoon watched him for a long moment. He didn’t press.

Jungkook finally spoke, voice low. “I’m dropping you and Leo at New Mecca.”

Namjoon frowned gently. “New Mecca?”

“Yeah,” Jungkook said. “Wasn’t that the plan? Safe port. Clean exit. It’s yours.”

He didn’t look at Namjoon, but he could feel the man’s eyes on him. Thoughtful. Heavy with concern.

“And you?” Namjoon asked.

“I’ll disappear before docking. Sneak out through the lower chute if the seals hold.” He exhaled slowly. “You tell them I died on the Trinidad. Keep it simple.”

Namjoon stepped back a pace, his brow furrowed. “You don’t have to do that.”

Jungkook’s fingers paused over the controls. “I do.”

“You think you’re protecting us by doing this,” Namjoon said gently.

Jungkook gave a tired half-smile. “Am I wrong?”

Namjoon didn’t argue. But he didn’t agree either. He just looked down at the floor between them, then back up at the younger man in the pilot’s seat.

“You saved her,” he said quietly. “You didn’t have to. You could’ve run.”

Jungkook shrugged with his good shoulder. “Didn’t feel like running.”

Namjoon smiled faintly. “You say that like it means nothing. But it means everything to her.”

The shuttle’s engines shifted tone—deeper now, resonant. The course had locked in. They were committed.

Outside, stars bent and slipped past the viewplate in streaks, like rain on glass. The Trinidad—ruined and burning—was already behind them. Just another piece of debris in the black.

Jungkook sat quietly, watching it fade.

Namjoon turned to leave, but hesitated.

“If you change your mind,” he said gently, “there’s room on that planet for all of us.”

Jungkook didn’t turn.

“Some people don’t get to come back,” he murmured. “Doesn’t mean they didn’t make sure others did.”

Namjoon didn’t speak again. He just nodded—once—and walked away, the soft thud of his boots fading down the corridor.

Jungkook stayed there, alone at the controls, hand still on the throttle. He didn’t move.

He just watched the stars and thought about the someone who didn’t make it either.

The flight deck was quiet now. Too quiet.

No alarms. No comms. Just the faint crackle of fried circuits and the slow, lazy spin of a busted fan overhead. The kind of silence that only happens after a massacre—when even the ship seems unsure whether it’s still alive.

King stood near the edge, just outside the docking threshold, arms folded, weight shifted onto one blood-crusted boot. The other was planted in something sticky that used to be part of a merc. He didn’t look down. Didn’t care.

The hangar bay stretched out behind him like the inside of a gutted animal. Smoke drifted along the ceiling. The lights flickered and dimmed, like they were giving up.

He watched the shuttle.

Just a glint at first, a speck of movement against the black. Then it was gone—swallowed up by the void.

Still, he stared after it. Silent. Brow furrowed. A vein twitching just above his temple.

“Jungkook,” he muttered.

The name tasted like rust and regret. Like something he’d been chewing on too long.

He licked a cut on his lip and spat off the edge of the deck. The blood hit metal with a soft tch.

“We ain’t done,” he said, low and even. Not a threat. Not even a promise. Just fact.

His voice didn’t echo.

He didn’t move.

Just kept standing there, hands still, boots glued to the carnage beneath him, eyes locked on where the stars had swallowed the shuttle whole.

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