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⮞ Chapter Nine: Like Iron Man Pairing: Jungkook x Reader Other Tags: Convict!Jungkook, Escaped Prisoner!Jungkook, Piolet!Reader, Captain!Reader, Holyman!Namjoon, Boss!Yoongi, Commander!Jimin, Astronaut!Jimin, Doctor!Hoseok, Astronaut!Hoseok 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: 9.5k+ 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, Trauma, 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, some mental health issues, survivor's guilt, lots of talking to herself, and recording it, because she'll lose her mind otherwise, fixing things, intergalatical politics, strong female characters are everywhere, launching into space in a toaster oven with a tarp on it, lots of stakes in this one, horrible safety culture, NOSA should honestly be sued for how botched all of this was, "family" reunion, bomb making, EVERYONE is getting fired, cynical humor, bad science language, honestly all of this has probably had the worst science and basis ever, I researched a lot I promise, let me know if I missed anything... A/N: Goodbye M6-117.

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The NOSA campus had never seen anything like it.

Even from a kilometer out, the perimeter was packed. People leaned against barricades and each other, huddled in clusters under floodlights bright enough to wash the stars from the sky. The night, if it could still be called that, was drowned in artificial daylight—spotlights from media towers, camera flashes from a thousand news crews, lens-flares from civilian drones hovering in place like mechanical fireflies.

The crowd stretched for blocks. Families with children on their shoulders. Retired engineers in old NOSA polos. College students wrapped in space agency flags. All of them waiting—silent now, or murmuring in low, expectant voices. Most watched the massive Jumbotrons mounted along the walls, where every second of telemetry, every heartbeat from the Starfire, was being broadcast in real time. Or close enough.

Inside the gates, the chaos was no less intense, just better organized. The lawns around the main complex were a grid of satellite trucks, news tents, interview stations, and temporary barricades. It looked like a music festival for a world that had stopped needing music. The buzz of conversation, of nerves and theory and speculation, filled the air like static. You could feel the tension in the soles of your feet.

“Y/L/N RESCUE MISSION”—the headline repeated on every screen. Beneath it, a stream of live feeds: camera angles inside Starfire’s command deck, raw footage of the launch vehicle back on M6-117, and endless shots of mission engineers working inside NOSA’s own nerve center.

It had the atmosphere of a global broadcast event, but the stakes felt heavier than spectacle. There was no backup plan. No one else coming. It was this or nothing.

In the observation gallery above Mission Control, the tone was different—quieter, but no less charged. The room sat high above the main floor, separated by thick soundproof glass and a subtle line of recessed lighting. A few dozen seats were arranged in staggered rows. Most were filled.

Some guests were dignitaries, political envoys, government liaisons. Others were agency veterans or invited family. No one talked much. Every pair of eyes was focused on the wall of screens below.

At the front of the gallery, Yoongi stood at the glass, his hands tucked into his pockets. He hadn’t spoken in nearly fifteen minutes. Not since the MAV ignition timer passed the T-60 mark. His reflection in the glass looked calm. It wasn’t.

Beside him, Mateo stood like a coiled spring—arms crossed tightly, one boot tapping silently against the floor. His jaw was tight, eyes fixed on the main feed: a wide-angle shot of the MAV, barely visible in the amber haze of M6-117’s dusk light. The tarp-covered nose fluttered faintly in the breeze. The image looked unreal.

A few steps away, Alice shifted her weight for the tenth time in as many minutes. She couldn’t keep still. Her jacket sleeves were bunched at her wrists, one hand fidgeting with the hem of her cuff.

She stared out over the glass, her voice low. “If something goes wrong... what can Mission Control do?”

Mateo didn’t turn. His eyes stayed locked on the MAV telemetry feed, where the fuel lines were just beginning to pressurize.

“Nothing,” he said. Blunt. Final. “We can’t do anything.”

Alice turned to look at him. “Nothing?”

“Nothing,” he repeated. “Twelve light-minutes out. Every command we send, every word we speak, takes twelve minutes to get there. Another twelve to hear the response. The launch sequence is automated. Remote override is already locked. Once she pushes ignition, we’re out of the loop.”

He exhaled, slow and controlled. “The launch takes twelve minutes. We won’t even get confirmation until it’s already over.”

The silence that followed was cold. Not angry. Just still.

Alice looked back at the feed. Her hands had gone still.

“She’s really alone,” she said quietly.

Mateo nodded once. “The loneliest human being in the system.”

She wanted to ask him if this was a good idea. If it should’ve gone differently. But there was no point. The plan wasn’t theoretical anymore. The preparations were over. They had crossed the point of no return days ago.

And it wasn’t just them watching.

Outside, the crowd was still growing. Across the world—cities, schools, military bases, public squares—people gathered around screens. Governments had lifted firewalls. Feeds were open in every major language. There were kids on rooftops in Seoul and nurses watching from break rooms in São Paulo. An entire generation had come of age watching people like Y/N step into the unknown, and now the world held its breath to see if she would make it back.

Alice hesitated. Then asked, quietly, “Are we sure we want to be broadcasting this? If something goes wrong—”

Mateo finally turned. His eyes met hers—sharp, dark, and unwavering.

“Yes,” he said.

It wasn’t said for debate. It was said because it was true.

“She signed up for this. We all did. We don’t get to hide it now.”

He looked back down at the floor below, at the engineers, the specialists, the people sweating through every line of code, every telemetry update, every heartbeat.

“She deserves for the world to see what it looks like when someone says yes to an impossible thing. Whether it works or not.”

Alice looked down again, her throat tight.

Then the comms feed crackled to life.

“Fuel pressure green,” Valencia’s voice said, smooth and precise over the open line. “Oxidizer stable. Thermal spread within margins.”

Every head in the room turned toward the console.

Onscreen, the MAV’s internal systems lit up in sequence, lines of green text confirming status. The ship looked small, too small for what it had to do.

Yoongi spoke for the first time.

“Here we go.”

And below them, on the fractured surface of a red world, the countdown continued.

On Taurus 1, the city didn’t sleep.

Not tonight.

From the upper skyrails to the narrow alleys around Old Harbor, people had gathered in thick knots along sidewalks, rooftops, train platforms—anywhere with a clear view of the public display boards. Giant screens mounted at intersections flickered and glowed, their live feeds broadcasting the MAV telemetry like gospel. The air hummed with a low static of voices and distant music, the scent of food stalls clinging to warm air vented from cafes and transport hubs.

No one moved much. Conversations were hushed. The entire city had turned its face toward the sky, or the screens, or both—gathered under the soft yellow light of a hundred thousand advertisements that, for once, had all been silenced.

The mission feed had taken over everything.

Val’s voice cut through the background noise—steady, calm, practiced. A voice people had come to trust not because it was flashy, but because it didn’t flinch.

“Engine alignment confirmed. No deviation. Guidance lock acquired.”

The words echoed out from rooftop speakers, tunnel intercoms, even the handhelds of passersby. In a place usually driven by speed and noise and business, it was the quiet that stood out now. Even the traffic had slowed.

On the north side of the city, at the junction plaza near Station Six, a child perched on their father’s shoulders asked a question no one could quite answer: Is she scared?

The father didn’t respond right away. Just kept his eyes on the screen, jaw clenched, fingers curled tight around the kid’s legs.

Across the sea, thousands of kilometers away, the cold had arrived early in Capital City.

It was well below freezing in Palace Square, and still the crowds came. Blankets wrapped tight around shoulders, gloves shoved into pockets already warmed by heat packs. The vapor of breath rose in small white clouds, shared between strangers standing shoulder to shoulder beneath the towering faces of state buildings and lighted monuments.

No one was talking.

The massive curved screen suspended above the plaza showed a grainy image of the MAV on M6-117—dust curling around its base, canvas shivering at the nose. To anyone unfamiliar, it looked unfinished, even broken. But the people here knew what they were looking at. They knew that stripped-down shell was all that stood between a stranded woman and the vacuum of space.

A flicker of telemetry updated in the corner of the screen.

“Communications five by five,” Val confirmed, her voice broadcast through hidden speakers tucked into the stone architecture. “Telemetry stable. NAV sync clean.”

A ripple went through the crowd. Not a cheer, not yet—but a collective exhale. A small signal that things were still holding together. That the silence from the planet below was expected, not ominous.

Down in the center of the square, an elderly woman gripped her cane tighter. She remembered a time when humanity barely had satellites, let alone interplanetary relays. When communication was limited to voices over radios, not faces on screens. She watched the numbers tick by with quiet reverence, lips moving soundlessly with each update.

In the background, cameras captured everything. News crews stood behind makeshift barricades. Their anchors didn’t speak. They didn’t need to. The images told the story better than words could—millions gathered across continents, all facing the same direction, watching the same thing.

This wasn’t politics. This wasn’t entertainment.

This was a moment.

From the outposts on Europa’s ice fields to the orbital towers over Aguerra Prime, from Earth’s equatorial cities to the research hubs in high desert plateaus, the signal threaded its way through cables, satellites, relay drones and fiber. The delay was small, but the wait still felt immense.

And the voice—Val’s voice—was the only thing filling that space.

“Power distribution is stable across all systems… Primary tanks at ninety-eight percent… Environmental seals remain intact.”

The woman had been on countless missions, but her tone never changed. She didn’t hype. She didn’t understate. She just gave the truth, and that was all anyone wanted.

In a small apartment above a grocery stand in southern Calisto City, a woman sat on the floor with her back against a radiator, hands folded under her chin. She wasn’t watching the screen so much as listening—eyes closed, letting the familiar cadence of Val’s voice wrap around her like a blanket.

Somewhere in the back of her mind, she thought: She’s going to make it. She has to.

Because failure didn’t feel like an option anymore. Not here. Not now. Not with the whole world bearing witness.

And even if it was—

Even if it could all go sideways—

People had still come.

They came to see courage. They came to see proof that someone, somewhere, was still willing to take the kind of risk that didn’t come with guarantees. Not for money. Not for glory.

Just because it was right.

Because someone had to try.

The universe held its breath.

Inside the Starfire’s flight deck, Jimin sat motionless in the command chair. His posture was straight, composed, but his fingers betrayed him—curled tight around the edge of the console, knuckles just beginning to pale. The overhead lighting was low, throwing soft shadows across the brushed metal panels and illuminating the subdued glow of the displays. Every screen around him pulsed with movement: vector plots, fuel flow readouts, ascent modeling, thermal stress predictions. The MAV's telemetry scrolled in tight bands of green text.

The air in the flight deck had taken on a different quality—thinner, almost reverent. The kind of silence found in hospitals before surgery or courtrooms just before a verdict. There wasn’t much to say anymore. Nothing to debate. Every variable had been checked. Every contingency rehearsed. Everything now came down to what they could no longer touch.

Jimin exhaled slowly and leaned forward just enough to bring his hands back over the controls. His eyes scanned the readouts again, even though he already knew what they said.

MAV systems nominal. Engine tanks stable. Remote link active. T-minus 2:05 and counting.

Jimin closed his eyes for a single heartbeat.

Just long enough to draw a line between simulation and reality.

This wasn’t training. This wasn’t rehearsal. This was it—the launch. The intercept. The final phase of a mission that had mutated over time into something personal, something unspeakably heavy. It had started with a disaster. A disappearance. The loss of the H-G. And then—somehow, impossibly—not a death.

Jimin opened his eyes. The screens were still there. The MAV’s signal solid. The countdown ticking in blue at the top-right corner of the main panel. He reached out and keyed the comms open, his fingers steady, his voice measured.

“Two minutes, Y/L/N,” he said. “How’re you holding up down there?”

The line crackled softly, the signal traveling across satellites and space, rebounding off relays stationed in orbit over a planet with no name beyond its catalog number.

In the MAV, Y/N sat strapped into a frame of aluminum and bolted steel, wires running overhead in exposed bundles. The EVA suit compressed slightly around her shoulders and chest as she shifted, pressure equalizing. She wasn’t in a cockpit so much as a box—jury-rigged, stripped down, sealed with reinforced tarp and trust. Her gloved hands rested on the straps that held her to the hull. There were no controls in front of her. No windows.

Koah was flying it from orbit.

Her job was to stay alive.

The voice in her ear was clear. Familiar. Unmistakable.

Y/N blinked once, swallowed hard, and let her head tilt slightly back against the padding behind her helmet. Her reply came after a pause. Not because she didn’t have an answer, but because she needed the moment to believe that this wasn’t just a voice in her head.

“It’s good to hear you, Commander,” she said quietly.

Jimin blinked against the burn in his eyes. He didn’t let it take him.

“Likewise, Doc,” he replied. His voice was steady, but not rigid. A softness sat underneath it. Something real. “You ready?”

Y/N’s eyes flicked upward, as if she could see through the canvas dome overhead. She stared at the riveted seams—the makeshift patchwork of layered thermal tarp, epoxy sealant, and internal scaffolding that shouldn’t have worked.

But it had held.

She exhaled slowly. Not out of fear. Just... the weight of it all.

“I’m ready,” she said. “I’m really ready to come home.”

Her voice cracked just a little on home, and she bit it back, jaw clenched. She hadn’t cried since Sol 64. Not really. But hearing his voice—knowing they were up there, waiting—cut through whatever armor she’d built to survive this place.

“Thanks,” she added, quieter now. “For coming to get me.”

Jimin didn’t answer right away. Just watched the readouts, his throat tight.

“You’ve got a hell of a ride ahead of you,” he said finally. “Eleven, maybe twelve G’s. You black out, don’t panic. Nguyen’s got the stick.”

There was a long enough pause on the other end that for a second he thought the signal dropped—until she spoke again, drier now.

“Tell that asshole no barrel rolls.”

He huffed out something like a laugh, short and tight. Even now, she still had that edge to her.

“All right,” he said, fingers moving across the panel in front of him. “Stand by for final call.”

He toggled to internal comms. “CAPCOM.”

“Go,” Val replied. Sharp. Focused. No hesitation.

“Remote command.”

Koah didn’t even look up, just flexed his fingers once and leaned toward the control interface. “Remote is go.”

“Recovery?”

Down in Airlock 2, Hoseok checked his MMU pack again. The power display glowed a steady green. His tether was locked, rigged to a reinforced anchor point. He stared through the small viewport at the empty space beyond.

“Recovery go.”

“Secondary recovery.”

“Go,” Armin said, clipped and sure, one hand already braced against the airlock frame.

Jimin’s eyes returned to the main screen. The MAV sat alone on the dusty plain of M6-117, surrounded by wind-blown tracks and the long shadow of the rising sun. From orbit it looked like a relic—something half-buried, forgotten.

But it was enough.

He keyed the last channel.

“Pilot.”

Static. Then her voice, sharp again. Controlled.

“Go.”

Jimin leaned in and pressed the command sequence.

The ignition protocol loaded in less than a second.

“Main engines primed,” Val confirmed. “Propellant mix green. Fuel tanks pressurized.”

“Remote throttle engaged,” Koah said. His voice was tight now. All business. No jokes.

Jimin sat back, hands laced together in his lap.

“Copy all,” he said, voice low but firm. “Initiate burn in ten.”

There was no final speech. No dramatics. Just numbers and signal strength and the trust they’d placed in each other long before this moment.

The MAV’s engine bell flared on the screen—dull red at first, then blinding white.

Jimin’s voice came again, barely above a whisper.

“Let’s bring French Fry home.”

Across Earth, and far beyond, the world watched.

On Aguerra Prime, crowds packed the city cores and lunar domes, eyes turned to public screens suspended above skyline intersections and carved into rock facades. In New York, traffic came to a crawl as pedestrians spilled into the street, unmoving, faces lit by the blue glow of the feed flickering across Times Square’s massive displays. The buildings around them blinked in time with telemetry overlays.

No one spoke. Even the news anchors had gone quiet.

From orbit to surface, from time zones to colonies, from palaces to tenement rooftops—the entire human footprint held its breath.

And then, her voice.

“See you in a few, Commander.”

It wasn’t loud. Wasn’t triumphant. But it was enough.

Cheers erupted in the streets. Not wild celebration, but something sharper, more reverent. A wave of relief laced with awe. Like witnessing history claw its way forward by sheer will.

Inside Mission Control, Yoongi stood above the floor, hands folded behind his back, shoulders rigid. Through the glass below, the control room thrummed with quiet motion. Dozens of personnel hunched over their stations, focused, motionless, disciplined. No one flinched. This wasn’t the part where anyone could afford to.

Jimin’s voice came over the comms. Measured. Familiar.

“Mission Control, this is Starfire Actual. We are go for launch. Proceeding on schedule. Ten seconds to burn… mark.”

On Starfire’s flight deck, Koah’s hands moved like water over the guidance array. Calm. Precise.

“Main engines start.”

The countdown was a drumbeat. Eight. Seven. Six.

“Mooring clamps released,” Val called, her voice tight but focused. There was no wasted tone. No room for nerves.

“Five seconds, French,” Jimin warned, his voice now only for her. “Hang on.”

Inside the MAV, Y/N’s fingers tightened around the sides of her seat frame—there were no proper handholds. The EVA suit pressed in at every angle. The inner hull rattled under tension. She looked up once, just once, at the canvas patch stretched across what used to be a pressurized nose cone.

It fluttered slightly in the wind.

No going back.

“Four... three... two... one...”

The launch struck like a fist.

The MAV surged upward, a violent lurch that slammed Y/N against the harness with brutal force. Her teeth clenched hard enough to ache. Her vision blurred almost immediately, and the noise—the sound—was nothing like she’d trained for. Not clean. Not linear. It was raw, like metal trying to tear itself apart.

The G-forces built fast, more than her body could manage. Her chest compressed. Her vision narrowed. Her thoughts splintered.

The canvas above her groaned, then tore.

A flap of synthetic material snapped free, yanked away by the pressure difference, and vanished into the sky. Her view opened—to a sliver of black and rising red horizon—before she had time to register it.

And then her world went gray.

“Velocity seven-forty-one meters per second. Altitude thirteen-fifty meters,” Val called out. Her tone was tight now, not from fear, but from sheer control.

“That’s too low,” Jimin snapped. “We’re not gaining fast enough.”

“I know!” Koah shot back, knuckles white on the controls. “It’s underpowered, I’m fighting drag!”

In the MAV, Y/N didn’t hear them. Her consciousness danced at the edge, fraying like thread. Her fingers twitched once. Her heartbeat pounded in her skull, then slowed. Her last clear thought was the sky.

The stars weren’t just stars anymore.

They were clean. Sharp. Unreachable.

She blinked once.

Then everything went dark.

On Starfire’s flight deck, the numbers kept climbing.

“Main shutdown in three... two... one. Shutdown confirmed.”

The cabin trembled faintly as the relay synced. Jimin didn’t speak yet. He waited. He always waited, just in case—just long enough for something to go wrong.

“Back to auto-guidance,” Koah said, almost to himself. “Confirm shutdown complete. Signal holding.”

Jimin leaned over the nav display, eyes locked on the MAV’s marker. “Y/N?” he said, voice low but direct. “Do you read?”

Silence.

Val was already glancing back over her shoulder. She didn’t need to say it.

“She’s probably out,” Hoseok said from Airlock 2. His tone wasn’t casual—it was informed. Clinical. But not detached. “Twelve Gs minimum. That’s enough to knock her unconscious for at least a minute.”

Jimin nodded. It wasn’t good news, but it wasn’t failure. Not yet.

“Copy that,” he said, steadying his voice. “Keep watching her vitals.”

Val’s eyes flicked across the telemetry. “Pings are coming in. Altitude’s stabilizing.”

Jimin leaned in closer.

“What’s the intercept velocity?”

Val hesitated. Then: “Eleven meters per second.”

Jimin didn’t have to ask.

Hoseok’s voice crackled over comms. “I can make that work.”

But before anyone could breathe again, Val went still. Her fingers froze mid-keystroke.

She stared at the newest numbers coming in.

Her voice was thin now. Controlled, but shaken.

“…distance at intercept will be sixty-eight kilometers.”

The words didn’t land immediately.

Then Hoseok’s voice, low and incredulous: “Did you say sixty-eight kilometers?”

Koah turned from his station, the color draining from his face.

“Oh my god.”

Everything went quiet.

Then Jimin snapped into motion.

“Keep it together,” he barked. “Work the problem. Nguyen—do we have any fuel in the MAV?”

“Negative,” Koah replied without delay, already double-checking. “OMS was pulled to cut weight. There’s nothing left.”

Jimin didn’t blink.

He pivoted sharply toward Val, who was already deep in the numbers.

“Then we go to her,” he said. His voice left no room for interpretation. “Talk to me.”

Val’s eyes stayed locked on the data, her fingers flying over the console. She didn’t hesitate.

“Time to intercept: thirty-nine minutes, twelve seconds,” she said.

Jimin nodded once. That was the window. That was the clock now.

He began to pace, just two short steps in either direction, mind moving faster than his body ever could. His gaze jumped to the thrust control parameters. An idea started forming.

“What if we realign the attitude thrusters? Push toward her. Cut the distance manually.”

Koah hesitated. Not because he doubted the idea, but because it came with a cost.

“Depends how much attitude fuel we want left for return navigation,” he said. “Use too much now and we compromise our ability to reorient later.”

Jimin's eyes locked on him. “How much do you need for reentry?”

Koah was already running the mental math, his fingers tapping quick calculations against his thigh.

“Minimum? Twenty percent.”

Jimin turned to Cruz. “Do it. Use seventy-five point five of what’s left.”

Cruz was already on it. Her hands flew over her controls like they were extensions of her own thoughts.

“Burning now.”

Val’s eyes darted across the new values. “Intercept range now zero,” she confirmed. Then a pause, her brow creasing. “But relative velocity is climbing. Forty-two meters per second.”

Jimin didn’t flinch. “Then we have thirty-nine minutes to figure out how to slow down.” He turned to Koah. “Light it up.”

Outside, the attitude thrusters hissed to life. The Starfire tipped, adjusted, and settled into a new trajectory. The maneuver was subtle from within, but its implications were massive.

Inside the MAV, Y/N stirred.

Her eyelids fluttered. Then pain. Her chest throbbed, ribs stabbing with each breath. She shifted and regretted it immediately. The harness had cut into her side during ascent, and now every part of her body screamed.

She opened her eyes. The curved blue-white limb of M6-117 arced beneath her. The stars beyond it were clean, sharp, endless. Her head swam.

The planet looked peaceful. Beautiful, even. But it didn’t matter.

With a wheezing breath, she lifted one gloved hand and extended her middle finger toward the viewport. “Fuck you, M6,” she rasped.

It helped.

Her hand found the comms panel. She keyed the line with fingers that didn’t feel entirely her own.

“MAV to Starfire,” she croaked.

On the flight deck, Jimin straightened. The voice was garbled, barely legible, but it was hers.

“Affirmative, Commander,” came the reply. Dry. Thin. Alive.

Jimin exhaled for the first time in a minute. “What’s your status?”

“Chest hurts. Pretty sure I cracked something.” A pause. “You?”

A smile tugged at the corner of Jimin’s mouth. “We’re making our way to you. Launch didn’t go entirely to plan.”

“No shit,” she muttered. “Canvas blew off halfway through.”

Val confirmed with a nod. “That tracks.”

A beat. Then her voice again, quieter now. “How bad is it, Commander?”

Jimin hesitated. Then: “Intercept range is zero. But relative velocity—forty-two meters per second.”

Silence.

Then, over the comms, Y/N's voice returned. Flat. Dry. Blunt as ever.

"Well. Shit."

On the Starfire's flight deck, the quiet that followed wasn't the stunned kind. It was the focused kind—a collective exhale that reminded them all the window hadn't closed. Not yet.

The faint tapping of keys filled the room, background to the controlled chaos of data flowing faster than thought.

Then: "Commander?"

Jimin turned toward the console. "Go ahead."

Y/N's voice came back steadier now, but laced with something unspoken. A tension undercut by humor, desperation, maybe both.

"If I poke a hole in my EVA glove," she said, tone far too casual, "the escaping air should act like thrust, right?"

Val looked up, startled. "She's joking."

Jimin didn’t respond right away. He waited.

"I mean, I could aim with my arm," Y/N continued, deadpan. "Micro-course correction. Little puffs of Iron Man.”

Jimin let his eyes close for a breath, then reopened them.

"You wouldn't have control. No vector stability. You're gambling with a half-second burn and zero forgiveness."

"All true," Y/N said.

A pause.

Then, delighted: "But I’d get to fly like Iron Man."

Cruz let out a groan. Val visibly resisted the urge to smack something. Koah muttered, "We should've left her on that rock."

Jimin sighed, rubbing a hand down his face. "You're not flying like Iron Man, Y/N."

She didn’t answer right away, but he could hear her smiling.

Despite everything, Jimin laughed—just once, just enough to let the tension crack. Around him, the room eased half a degree. Even Koah glanced up, eyes lighter than a second before.

Then something shifted in Jimin's posture.

His head tilted. His brows drew together, just slightly.

And then he straightened.

"Maybe... it’s not the worst idea."

Koah’s head snapped up. "No. It is. It’s the worst idea ever pitched in this room. And I’ve heard you pitch bad ones."

Jimin ignored him. "Not her part," he clarified quickly, gesturing in the air. "But the concept. Using controlled decompression for thrust."

Val blinked, processing. The room quieted again, this time differently—expectant.

Jimin’s voice sharpened. "Nguyen, get Zimmermann's station up."

Koah didn’t argue this time. He keyed into the data interface. "It's up. What are we running?"

"I need to know what happens if we blow the VAL."

Val froze.

Koah stared.

The air seemed to still.

"You want to open the vehicular airlock?" Koah asked, incredulous.

"It'll kick us forward," Jimin said evenly.

"And maybe shear the nose off the ship in the process," Koah replied. "Not to mention evacuating every molecule of atmosphere we have."

"We seal the bridge and reactor," Jimin said. "The rest goes vacuo. We survive it."

Koah opened his mouth again but stopped, running mental checks. His fingers tapped at speed.

"We still can’t steer it," he said finally. "Same problem. No directional control."

Jimin countered, “We don’t need to steer. The VAL is in the nose. We point the nose at her, then blow it. That’s our push."

Koah stared at the data now pouring in.

"A full breach at the VAL gives us... twenty-nine meters per second in retro."

Val leaned in. Her voice was almost a whisper. "That brings intercept down to thirteen meters per second."

Jimin nodded. "Jung, you hearing this?"

From Airlock 2, Hoseok replied. Calm. Steady. "Loud and clear, Commander."

On the flight deck, tension knotted tight.

Koah shook his head slowly. "How do we open the airlock doors remotely? There's no mechanism. Someone has to be inside."

Jimin didn’t pause. He scanned the room and zeroed in.

"Zimmermann."

Armin's voice came in, clear. "Go ahead."

Jimin keyed his mic. "Take your suit off."

There was a pause. Then, more slowly:

"Say again, Commander?"

"You’re coming back in to make a bomb."

There was static.

Then, from the MAV:

"Did you just say bomb?"

Y/N’s voice, sharper now, carried clear indignation. "You guys are making a bomb without me?"

Back in Airlock 2, Armin's voice came through the comms with the kind of tight restraint that only barely held back the obvious. "Commander... I feel like I should mention that setting off an explosive device on a spacecraft is, objectively, a terrible idea."

No one disagreed. But no one argued, either.

Jimin didn’t flinch. He nodded once, his voice firm. "Copy that. Can you do it?"

There was a pause, a slow exhale, the kind you give before stepping off a ledge. Then:

"Ja. I can."

It wasn’t bravado. It was acceptance. And it was final.

At NOSA Mission Control, chaos erupted.

Consoles lit up. Voices rose over each other. The phrase "breach the VAL" passed from headset to headset like a shockwave.

Jimin's voice cut through the noise like a scalpel. "Houston, be advised: we are initiating a deliberate VAL breach to produce thrust."

Mateo, sitting at his console, stared like he’d misheard. His coffee mug tipped over, unnoticed, a dark smear crawling across the surface.

"Did he just say breach the VAL?"

Nobody answered. They were too busy shouting.

Back on the Starfire, Jimin gave no time for panic to root.

"Jung," he barked, already moving. "Suit stays on. Meet Cruz at Airlock 1. We’ll open the outer hatch. I need you to place the charge on the inner VAL door."

Hoseok responded instantly. "Copy. Moving."

"Once it's placed, crawl back to Airlock 2 via the hull."

"Understood."

Inside the MAV, Y/N gripped a twisted piece of console framing, her knuckles bone-white.

Her voice cracked across the line. "Commander, I can’t let you do this. I’m ready to punch the suit. Let’s go with the Iron Man plan."

"Absolutely not," Jimin said without missing a beat.

She hesitated.

When she spoke again, it was softer. There was a raw edge in her voice that hadn’t been there before.

"Thing is... I want to be the only one in the memorials. Just me. I earned that. You stay alive."

There was a pause. A long one.

Then Jimin came back, cool as ever. "Oh. Well. If you put it like that..."

You could almost hear him looking at the nonexistent camera.

"Hang on, just checking my shoulder patch—yep, still says Commander. So shut up."

Y/N muttered something through the comms.

Jimin raised an eyebrow. "What was that?"

"Smart ass."

"Heard that."

In the forward prep bay, Armin worked fast. His hands were steady, methodical. A beaker clinked as he set it down. He tapped sugar into it like it was a recipe—not an improvised explosive.

He drilled the stopper. Ran wire through. Sealed the threads. His foot tapped a steady rhythm against the deck—nerves or calculation, no one could say.

Val arrived just as he was finishing the setup. She took one look and exhaled sharply.

"Bomb?"

He didn’t even glance up. "Bomb. One kilo of sugar in pure O2 releases over 16 million joules. We don’t need much. This will do."

He poured a controlled stream of liquid oxygen into the beaker. It hissed softly. Precise. Calm.

Val blinked. "That’s... eight times a stick of dynamite."

"Yes," Armin said, still focused. "That’s why I’m using less than half a kilo."

He twisted the wire leads clean, stripped them down, and twisted them to bare copper. Held them up. "Can you run this to a lighting panel?"

Val reached for the leads with a small grin. "You are terrifyingly good at this."

Armin offered the faintest shrug. "We all have hobbies."

Out in the Vehicular Airlock, Hoseok stood in full EVA gear, breathing slow and steady, watching the countdown tick by on his suit HUD. The silence of the chamber was suffocating, broken only by the faint hiss of his oxygen flow. Val crouched beside him at the access panel, hands moving with mechanical precision as she stripped wires and connected the last leads to Armin’s improvised explosive.

There wasn’t room for doubt now. No room for nerves.

"Make sure you're not still here when it goes off," Val said, voice level but tense. Her tone had an edge of affection wrapped in warning. She didn’t look up from the panel as she spoke, but her eyes flicked briefly toward the timer. "If you’re still inside when this blows, I swear I’ll haunt your ass."

Hoseok nodded once, accepting the charge she handed him with both hands. He double-checked the wiring, verifying it by feel and muscle memory more than sight. Then he turned to go.

Val reached out, gripping his arm through the suit. Their eyes met through the visor. For a beat, everything else faded.

Then she leaned in and tapped her lips gently against his helmet.

"Be careful," she said. Her voice was low, almost tender. "And don’t tell anyone I did that."

A small smile ghosted across Hoseok's face. "Not a word."

The inner hatch sealed behind him with a hiss. Val exhaled slowly and turned back to her console, her expression shifting into one of sheer focus.

Hoseok made his way along the hull, hands gripping the external rails with measured certainty. Every move was deliberate. The ship groaned beneath him, metal protesting the torque of its slight realignment, but his breathing stayed even. The VAL door came into view. A dark line of reinforced seams. Waiting.

He anchored himself with one tether and affixed the device to the frame, checking each contact. No errors. No drift.

"Bomb is set," he said calmly into the comm. "Returning to Airlock 2."

Inside the flight deck, the tension wound tighter. Koah's voice came through with urgency. "Running updated intercept numbers. Even with ideal thrust vector, we’re still wide."

Jimin stood behind him, brow furrowed. "How wide?"

Val answered. "Two hundred sixty meters. She’ll miss the docking field completely."

Jimin didn’t curse. He just turned and walked. No explanation, no hesitation.

"Commander?" Koah called after him.

But Jimin was already out the hatch.

By the time he reached Airlock 2, Hoseok was halfway out of his MMU. Jimin was already sealing his own helmet.

"Intercept's out of reach," Jimin said, voice clipped. "I’m going untethered."

Hoseok froze. "Sir, let me go. I’m already out. I can do it."

"I know you can," Jimin replied, voice sharp. "But I’m not risking you. That’s an order."

Hoseok met his eyes, jaw set. There was no convincing him. Just acceptance.

"Understood."

Jimin tapped his comm. "Cruz, countdown to detonation?"

Val’s voice was taut. "Fifteen seconds."

Jimin stepped into position at the outer hatch.

"We do love a dramatic exit," he murmured.

Inside the cockpit, Armin pulled his harness tight. Koah was already strapped in, eyes darting between velocity plots and range estimates. His knuckles were white against the control board.

Val monitored the panel. Her voice rang out like a steady drumbeat.

"Ten seconds."

Koah muttered to himself. "Everyone hates rockets until they’re out of options."

"Five. Four. Three."

Jimin, floating at the threshold, gave the hull one last look.

"Brace."

"Two. One. Activating Panel 41."

A deep, muffled thud rolled through the Starfire like distant thunder. Not sound exactly—there was no air in space to carry it—but the force made itself known. The hull shuddered, groaned. Lights flickered. Loose gear trembled in its racks.

Then came the real shock.

The VAL blew.

A controlled detonation, precise and brutal, sheared the airlock open and instantly vented thousands of cubic meters of atmosphere into vacuum. The entire ship jerked backward with the force of it, like a train car hit from behind. A deep vibration passed through the frame, through the floor, through every rib and brace and bolt. It knocked Koah’s stylus clean out of his hand. Armin’s chair jolted sideways before his harness caught him. Val clenched her jaw and rode it out, eyes glued to the numbers spilling down her screen.

“Bridge seal’s holding,” she confirmed tightly, voice clipped. “Pressure integrity green. No hull breaches on aft or secondary decks.”

“Damage?” Jimin’s voice came through the comms, taut but level.

Val didn’t glance up. “Don’t care. Not yet. Relative velocity?”

A beat passed as telemetry recalculated.

“...Twelve meters per second.”

Jimin didn’t answer right away. Somewhere down in Airlock 2, recovering from the blast wave, he steadied himself, got his bearings. Then his voice came again.

“Copy.”

He knew what that meant. Twelve meters per second wasn’t survivable. Not for a drifting MAV capsule with no maneuvering thrusters, no OMS, no way to brake. Not for a rescue mission balanced this delicately on the knife’s edge.

There was no choice.

He locked his boots to the airlock grid, checked his line, and shoved off.

And just like that, Commander Jimin of the NOSA Starfire was flying.

He drifted into space with the practiced control of a man who had trained for this, but never expected to actually do it. The blackness opened in front of him—huge, endless, and filled with nothing but stars and one tumbling, half-functional MAV pod moving just a little too fast to catch.

His target.

“Three-twelve meters?!” Y/N’s voice came sharp and raw through the comms, her voice rising in disbelief. “Are you kidding me? You guys have got to stop measuring these distances in football fields. I’m not an orbital wide receiver!”

Jimin grimaced behind his visor. “Visual on MAV. Frenchie, you’re still out of reach. I’m closing, but... I’m not going to make it in time.”

A pause.

Inside the MAV, Y/N’s eyes locked on the Commander’s approaching form—still too distant. Still too slow. She could feel the blood pounding in her ears, feel the raw ache in her chest from the G-force. Her ribs throbbed. Her vision swam. But somewhere under the pain, she knew what she had to do.

Her voice came low but clear. “Commander.”

“I see you,” Jimin answered, urgency seeping into his tone now. “Don’t do anything stupid.”

Too late.

Y/N unstrapped the harness.

Her fingers found the jagged shard of paneling she’d kept since the cabin decompression—sharp enough to pierce composite. Her breath caught. This was the part no one had trained her for.

She took one last breath.

And stabbed her suit.

The hiss was immediate. A sharp, explosive burst of air ripped out of the tiny hole near her forearm. It didn’t tear her apart, didn’t rip the arm off like a cartoon. But it shoved her—hard. She rocketed forward, air gushing past her helmet in a screaming roar. The force pressed her back in the suit like a punch to the chest. Her limbs trembled.

But she was moving.

“Jesus Christ, Frenchie!” Val’s voice snapped through the channel.

“I said I got this!” Y/N barked back. She twisted her wrist, angling the suit, nudging her path toward Jimin.

The gap narrowed.

Inside the flight deck, Val’s hands moved in a blur, feeding telemetry to both of them. “Relative closing velocity… 5.4 meters per second. Declining. Twenty-eight meters to contact.”

Jimin adjusted his MMU, one burst at a time, smooth and controlled. His pulse hammered in his throat. His breathing slowed to stay focused.

“Five meters per second,” Val updated. “Twenty meters.”

“Adjusting…” Jimin’s voice barely registered above a whisper.

Koah leaned over the console, white-knuckled, tracking their positions in real time. “C’mon…”

“Four-point-three,” Val called. “Four-point-oh. Distance: fifteen.”

Below them, the planet turned slowly. Its burnished red hue cast long reflections on their EVA suits, the light catching on every scuff, every scar.

“Eight meters,” Jimin’s voice crackled through the comms, low and calm, but clipped at the edges with strain.

He reached out, fingers extended through the thick press of his glove, closing the gap between them one meter at a time.

“Six,” he said.

Y/N blinked hard behind her visor. Her eyes stung—part windburn, part tears, part adrenaline tearing through her like a lightning strike that wouldn’t end. She was trembling, though whether it was from cold or exhaustion or raw emotion, she couldn’t tell.

“Four meters.”

The world seemed to hold its breath.

“Contact,” she murmured, the word barely audible.

Their hands met in the vacuum.

His glove locked around hers, firm and unyielding. The jolt spun them slightly off-axis. They drifted together, a slow tumble in the dark. Jimin adjusted with practiced precision, a single controlled burst from his MMU. The movement steadied them—brought them face to face, visor to visor, until their helmets bumped softly.

“I’ve got you,” he said.

She didn’t answer right away. Couldn’t. The relief hit her like decompression—sudden, overwhelming, silent. Her heart pounded so loud she was sure it was leaking into the comms. And when she looked at him—really looked—her breath caught.

Jimin. Real. Alive. Close enough to touch. The first human face she’d seen in what felt like a lifetime. His presence shattered the isolation that had wrapped itself around her bones. For a long moment, she just stared at him, eyes wide, heart aching.

Then, laughter bubbled out of her—ragged, broken, but real. A laugh of disbelief. Of survival. Of something like joy.

“You were right,” she said, her voice cracking. “About not working for Marshall.”

Jimin’s brow lifted in surprise. “Oh yeah?”

“Guy had terrible taste in music.”

His laugh—quiet and genuine—filtered through the comms. That soft, human sound broke something in her and mended it at the same time.

“I told you,” he said, grinning. “No one should be allowed to play yacht rock during critical ops.”

Their boots connected, magnetically latching to stabilize. He was still holding her hand, and she didn’t let go.

At Mission Control, the moment contact was confirmed, silence exploded into chaos. A wave of sound crashed through the control room—a crescendo of cheers, gasps, sobs. Years of calculations, failures, and sleepless nights had built to this single, miraculous connection. And now, it had happened.

People leapt from their chairs. Engineers shouted and hugged, some spinning in circles, others frozen in disbelief. The weight of relief—of impossible odds defied—hit them like gravity finally turned back on.

In one corner, a systems analyst wept openly, his face in his hands. Beside him, a propulsion tech laughed so hard she doubled over. All around them, joy unfolded like a chain reaction, uncontained and raw.

From the overhead speakers, Jimin’s voice rang clear, calm despite everything: “I got her.”

And that was it. The phrase that set the world ablaze.

Across the globe, the news spread like solar flare.

In cafés and living rooms and subway stations, screens lit up with the headline: Y/N Rescued. Starfire Mission: Success.

On Earth, people poured into the streets. Flags waved. Strangers embraced. Horns blared in traffic and fireworks erupted in cities that hadn’t planned any celebration, but lit the skies anyway.

In the heart of Capital City on Aguerran Prime, the response was seismic. Giant screens lit up skyscrapers, projecting the image of two astronauts suspended against the cosmos. The crowd erupted. Music blared from rooftops. It was New Year’s, the Olympics, and a national holiday rolled into one—but better. This wasn’t just a celebration of survival. It was proof that the universe, in all its vast indifference, had blinked—just long enough for them to pull off a miracle.

On Taurus 1, cheers echoed through stone corridors older than Earth itself. In a quiet square in an old district, an elderly man who had once worked on early EVA suits cried openly as the footage played. A group of children surrounded him, pointing at the stars on screen and clapping with wild abandon.

In that moment, the universe felt smaller. Gentler. More connected than it had ever been.

Aboard the Starfire, the airlock sequence initiated with a soft, mechanical hiss.

Inside, the silence returned—but it was not empty. It pulsed with tension.

Jimin guided Y/N through the process step by step, his movements sharp, deliberate. His breathing was shallow now, not from exertion, but from the staggering realization of what they’d just done.

Y/N’s body sagged in his grip. Her limbs moved sluggishly, her face pale behind the helmet. The EVA suit had kept her alive, but it hadn’t protected her from fatigue. Her pulse fluttered at her throat like a trapped bird.

“Jung, prep the med bay,” Jimin called into the comms, his voice clipped but steady. “We’re bringing her in. Everyone else—Airlock Two.”

On the flight deck, Koah, Val, and Armin didn’t wait for the full order to come through. As soon as Jimin’s voice cut across the comm—“She’s in. Inner seal holding.”—they were already moving.

No discussion. No gear. Just instinct.

They took off down the corridor at a dead sprint, boots thudding hard against the metal flooring, echoing through the narrow ship like heartbeats too big for their chests. The corridors blurred past in streaks of cold steel and overhead lighting. Turn, straightaway, turn again. They knew the route by muscle memory, but this time it felt longer—like space itself had stretched the halls.

At the last junction, Val nearly slid into the bulkhead, catching herself with a palm against the wall before pushing off again. Koah was just ahead, eyes locked forward. Armin, quieter than the others but just as fast, matched them stride for stride. No one said anything.

There was nothing left to say until they saw her.

They reached the observation deck seconds later and slammed to a halt in unison, chests heaving, adrenaline crashing hard through their veins. The reinforced glass fogged instantly from their breath, still cooling from the run.

Beyond it, the airlock lit pale blue. The outer door had sealed. And suspended inside, between the void and safety, was Y/N.

Jimin held her upright, one arm braced tight around her torso. Her limbs dangled like a marionette cut from its strings—slack, heavy, unmoving. But her helmet display still flickered. Her vitals were registering. She was breathing.

Val’s hand smacked the glass without thinking—an involuntary, almost desperate gesture—fingers splayed wide as if she could reach through. Her knuckles turned white.

Armin didn’t move. His face had gone hollow, lips parted, a flicker of disbelief tugging at the corner of his mouth. Not joy. Not yet. Just the raw, suspended terror that this might still go sideways.

Koah leaned forward slowly, lowering his head until his forehead touched the glass. He closed his eyes, let out a single, unsteady breath.

No one spoke.

They didn’t have to.

She was here.

The inner airlock door opened with a soft thunk as pressure equalized, followed by the gentle hiss of recirculating air. The lights adjusted.

Y/N’s knees buckled the second the seal completed. Her body gave out with no ceremony, no warning—just a complete surrender to gravity and fatigue. Jimin caught her under the arms and eased her down, kneeling with her as she folded into him.

Her head lolled forward. Face pale, lips dry. Her skin had that faint, paper-thin translucency that came from months of low oxygen and high stress. She looked... hollow. But she was there.

Alive.

The door to the chamber slid open, and the trio spilled in fast, voices colliding with the walls in breathless urgency.

“Y/N—hey—hey, we’ve got you—”

“Jesus, hold her head—”

“Is she conscious?”

They knelt around her, crowding close without hesitation. Their hands moved with focus but reverence—steady but careful. They took the weight of her body like it was something sacred, every movement precise. Koah slipped an arm under her shoulders. Armin supported her back. Val reached for the clasps of her helmet, fingers fumbling before settling into rhythm.

“She’s heavier than she looks,” Armin muttered, not complaining, just surprised. His voice was thick, caught somewhere between awe and grief.

“She’s got months of trauma packed in there,” Val said, her voice tight. “That stuff weighs a ton.”

Y/N stirred.

It was barely more than a twitch—a flutter of her eyelids and the softest, cracked breath—but they all froze.

Then she spoke.

“Hi, guys.”

The words rasped out like sandpaper, rough-edged and barely above a whisper. Her lips curved into the ghost of a smile—lopsided, exhausted, but unmistakably hers.

Koah choked on a laugh that turned almost immediately into a sound dangerously close to a sob. Val looked away quickly, blinking hard. Armin just shook his head like he couldn’t believe it.

“Oh, hey, French Fry,” Val said after a pause, her voice quivering. “Been a while.”

Koah sniffed and offered a crooked grin. “Yeah. What, you get lost?”

Y/N tilted her head slowly, her eyes barely able to stay open. “Just took the scenic route.”

Val managed a weak laugh. “Scenic route through hell.”

“Pretty much.”

Armin, still kneeling, reached to loosen the helmet collar. It gave way with a hiss, and as he eased it off, an invisible wall broke.

The smell hit instantly.

“Oh, damn—” Armin recoiled, covering his face with the crook of his arm. “God, Y/N…”

“Yeah,” Koah coughed, grimacing. “That’s... that’s not human. That’s a whole new element.”

Y/N winced, but even that looked like too much effort. “Didn’t exactly pack perfume,” she said, her voice hoarse but holding steady.

Val waved a hand in front of her nose, her expression torn between disgust and laughter. “Y/N, we love you, but... you smell like dead ambition and despair.”

“That’s fair.” Y/N let her head fall back into Koah’s shoulder. “Been marinating in my own failure for eighteen months.”

For a beat, the chamber filled with the sound of tired, grateful laughter. Not joyous. Not yet. But real.

Then something in her expression changed—just slightly. The edges softened, the humor falling away like ash from a burned-out log.

“I missed you,” she whispered.

They went still again.

Y/N’s eyes glistened. “I shouldn’t have left. Not like that. Not for a contract. Not for... them.”

No jokes this time. No sarcasm. Just silence.

Val leaned in first, slipping her arm around Y/N’s shoulders, pressing her forehead to the side of her helmet.

“Doesn’t matter,” she said quietly. “You’re here now.”

Koah followed, wrapping an arm around both of them.

Armin didn’t hesitate. He leaned in too, awkward but firm, his hand resting over hers where it trembled in her lap.

They held her like that—clumsy, off-balance, elbows in the wrong places and armor pressing too hard against ribs—but none of it mattered.

She was back.

He crouched low behind the twisted trunk of a wind-battered pine, its bark scarred by years of storms. The sharp scent of crushed needles filled his lungs, grounding him. Around his shoulders hung a makeshift cloak, frayed at the hem and stiff with dirt and sweat. It barely kept the cold out, but it was enough. His beard scratched against the collar as he shifted, eyes locked on the clearing ahead.

Jungkook didn’t move. Not even to breathe. The air was still, and in that stillness, time stretched. He didn’t know how long he’d been tracking the deer—an hour? Maybe more. Up here in the mountains, the days bled into each other, a fog of wind, hunger, and silence. He hadn’t spoken to another person in weeks. Not since crossing the ridgeline from the valley, leaving the last trace of civilization behind.

His hair had grown long, knotted in places from nights spent sleeping with his head against tree trunks or curled in shallow caves. If anyone saw him now—mud-caked, eyes sharp from vigilance and wear—he doubted they’d recognize him as the man he used to be. That boy was long gone, buried beneath layers of calloused muscle and survival instinct.

The deer stepped cautiously into view, its ears twitching, nostrils flaring at the wind. It was young. Slender. Beautiful, even. Part of him hesitated, a quiet flicker of guilt threading through his chest. But hunger spoke louder.

He raised the bow slowly, breath held. His fingers, stiff from the cold, found the worn fletching of the arrow and drew it back until the tension hummed along the string. His eyes narrowed.

Then—release.

The arrow struck with a dull, final thud. The deer jolted, stumbled a few feet, then dropped. The forest held its breath.

Jungkook stood, lowered the bow, and approached carefully. The deer’s chest rose once, then stopped. He knelt beside it, placed a hand on its flank.

“Thank you,” he murmured, almost unconsciously.

He reached for the knife at his side, quick and practiced, and ended what was left of its pain.

Then—he heard it.

Not in the trees. Not behind him. In him.

At first, it was barely more than a breath of wind in his ear. So faint he thought it was the trees whispering, the way they sometimes did when the weather turned.

But then it came again. Clearer.

“Where did you get your eyes?”

He went still, the knife frozen in his grip.

His body tensed. He scanned the woods—but there was no movement, no footprints, no shadows slipping through the branches. Just the quiet hush of pines and the fresh silence of the kill.

Then again—closer this time.

“Where did you get your eyes?”

It wasn’t a voice made of sound. Not really. It didn’t vibrate the air; it vibrated him. Deep in his bones. Deep in the part of his mind that still remembered how to fear things he couldn’t see.

Jungkook staggered back a step, hand instinctively reaching for the blade at his belt.

“Who’s there?” he asked, voice low and raw.

Silence.

“Where did you get your eyes?”

A memory dressed as a voice. He could almost hear the lit of her voice, her scowl, smell her sweat while he was restrained.

His throat tightened. He felt the world stutter.

And then the forest melted.

Suddenly, he wasn’t in the trees. He was back in the flickering fluorescent corridor of Butcher Bay.

The air reeked of sweat and disinfectant, the distant clang of a cell door echoing off concrete walls. He could feel the texture of it under his boots—the grimed, cracked floor, the grit that never left no matter how many times it was mopped. Chains rattled somewhere behind him.

The lights overhead flickered once.

He blinked.

He was standing outside Block 9, back pressed to the cool stone wall, just as he had so many times before. He remembered the voices in the dark, the muttered threats, the laughter with no warmth. He remembered him—the preacher.

Tall. Steady. A flicker of something in his eyes that nobody could quite name. He spoke rarely, but when he did, people listened. He wasn’t like the others.

The preacher had told him once, in a whisper beneath the noise: “Eyes are a gift. Use them like you earned them.”

Jungkook had never asked what he meant. He hadn’t dared.

But now, standing in the memory, he understood.

The forest returned in a blink.

Jungkook swayed slightly, the weight of it still pressing against his chest. The deer lay still, the blood soaking into the damp earth beneath it. The wind had shifted—cooler now. Carried the smell of rain and something older. He closed his eyes, drawing in a lungful of pine, trying to clear the scent of stone and steel from his mind.

His hand trembled slightly as he cleaned the blade.

Whatever that voice had been—memory, madness, something else—it had stirred something he’d tried hard to bury. Butcher Bay wasn’t gone. It hadn’t faded. It just waited in the cracks, ready to bleed through.

He slung the deer over his shoulders with a grunt. The weight wasn’t unbearable, but it was more than just meat. It was a reminder. Of hunger. Of survival. Of debts not quite paid.

He turned back toward camp.

Each step forward was a small act of defiance. Against the memories. Against the fear. Against the question that still echoed in the dark corners of his thoughts.

Where did you get your eyes?

He didn’t answer this time.

He just kept walking, boots crunching softly over the forest floor, until the trees swallowed him again—one man beneath the vast canopy, hunted by memories but still, somehow, moving forward.

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