Corporal Joshua Shishone wasn’t much of a God-fearing man. He’d never really had a relationship with faith, and after Ceres, there wasn’t an inch of his mind that believed. But for him, if ever there was a time for prayer, it was now.

  The reverse jump commenced.

  “Hold on to something,” he said, flipping the ship around and feeding the reactors their vitriolic food. The fuel pellets dropped into the fire, igniting into roaring cinders, and the Harbinger’s thrusters flashed bright white, blasting them from their near thousand kilometers a minute speed to a mere crawl in the vicinity of Eris. The Mystic Sky mirrored his maneuvers, practically blinking into space above the farm-world.

  They faced the blank canvas of the mighty universe now, spinning up their radars. Shishone glanced at his, spotting Eris’s signature creeping into view. He pulled up on the stick, rotating the ship by the nose once more, flipping it to face the planet as Thomas did the same on the Sky. They came face-to-face with the planet’s rocky, icy, mountainous surface with white knuckle grips on their controls.

  And then, there, on the horizon, just cresting it in the pale and faraway light, was Dysnomia. The moon slowly rose above the barren mountains and great glass domes of Eris like an ominous spirit. The Admin Zone could be seen from here, its lights stretching out in eight directions across Dysnomia’s surface. In the center, the grand Admin Tower rose like a monolith to all of humanity’s hopes, and all of its sins.

  Shishone checked the radar again. Multiple signatures were appearing now, all hostile, launching toward them from the moon. Looking back out of the cockpit, he could see the massive blue burners of the battlecruisers and destroyers that hovered above Dysnomia as they turned to face the two tiny gunships. There were many, many ships hovering above the moon like angry wasps, all turning, all matching course to swarm the Harbinger and the Mystic Sky.

  His blood ran cold.

  “Thomas,” he said over the radio. “We have company.”

  “I see them.”

  On the radar, the signatures all began to approach at blitzing speeds. Shishone could see them flood his sensors, blazing across the atmosphere of Eris toward them. He thought of Tay, and his reasons. This blistering mass of warships would be upon the gunships soon, and if they didn’t move now, then this was all over before it even began.

  “Go left!” Shishone called as he pulled the stick to the right.

  Thomas banked the Sky left, and they split apart. As they did so, the formation headed toward them began to wall up, creating a standard block battle formation as they hovered above Eris. The wall was immense. Terrifying. Several blocky dots in a grid formation lay before them, waiting to trap them like a spider would a fly. Yarns, sitting in the gunner’s seat, his hands shaking above the weapons controls, had to swallow down the contents of his stomach. Yu simply watched in cold silence.

  Shishone pulled them up and to the right even more, pushing them down in their crash seats. The wall began to split into two, headed for an intercept course on either side. There was no avoiding it, and there was no going through it.

  “What do we do?” Yarns asked, quivering.

  Yu maintained her silence as Shishone continued to maneuver, trying to break the wall’s line of sight. The massive ships were surrounded by smaller gunships and bombers, and those were breaking away from the formation and zipping forward to cut them off on either side. It was bad all around. There were so many ‘ifs’, Shishone thought. If they made it. If they got to Dysnomia. If they could defeat Xiao. If.

  It all seemed unlikely.

  He rolled the ship left, trying to break the trajectory line, but it was no use, as even more gunships dispersed from the hangars aboard the battlecruisers and began to flood the radar with their signatures.

  Xiao had been waiting.

  Yarns cried out, “We’re gonna die!”

  Just then, a transmission came through on their shipboard radio. Xiao’s voice flooded the cockpit, powerful and violent.

  “Harbinger, stand down,” he commanded. “I order you to cease and surrender your ship for inspection. You are all under arrest.”

  “Go fuck yourself,” Shishone said.

  Xiao scoffed. “If you wish to die, then so be it. But you cannot stop what is already in motion here. Humanity, our destiny, it will be fulfilled, and I will be the one to do it. You have surrendered your lives the moment you attempted to retard our progress. For that, you shall –”

  Another transmission interrupted Xiao’s, fizzling it out into a blip of static.

  Admiral Gorsin’s voice now came over the radio.

  “Yu? Is that you?”

  Her heart leapt as she sat up straight, her demeanor of darkness changing to one of surprise. “Admiral!” she called out.

  Shishone looked to her, then to Yarns, and said, “Admiral?”

  Gorsin chuckled bitterly, and said, “Xiao has the entire sector locked down. But not for long. I need you and your friends to charge the wall.”

  On the radar, the gunship signatures grew closer, dangerously closer.

  Yu shook her head. “Charge the wall? That’s suicide!”

  “It is,” Shishone said. “We’ll be torn to pieces.”

  “I need you to trust me,” said Admiral Gorsin. “I’ve been working while you’ve been gone. I need you to charge the wall.”

  Yu and Shishone locked eyes. Shishone said, “What’s your plan?”

  “There’s no time,” he said. “Do it.”

  Then, the line cut. Yarns looked pale. “We’re not really gonna charge in there, are we?”

  Yu nodded. “We are.”

  “Then, we are,” Shishone said, sneering. He flipped on the radio and hailed Thomas. “Sky, change of plans. Charge the wall.”

  “What?” came the response. “No! That’s insane. We keep to the pincer maneuver, and we –”

  “Do it!”

  There was a pause.

  “Heard,” came Thomas’s voice. Shishone looked on the radar, and sure enough, Thomas was shifting course, and headed directly at the wall. Shishone pulled on the stick and did the same, aiming the Harbinger’s nose directly at the formation of battlecruisers and destroyers. He pushed up on the throttle. The ship lurched forward, roaring like a lion. Suicide or not, as the ship began barreling down the sights of the formation, they had made their choice now. He increased the throttle even more, and checked the radar.

  The Harbinger and the Sky were on a V course, headed for an intersection point directly in the formation. They’d be within weapons range soon too. Sweating, Shishone turned to Yarns and said, “Get ready. I want all missiles spun up, turrets on, and barrels hot.”

  “Yes sir!” Yarns said, flipping switches and pressing buttons, spinning up the weapons systems aboard the ship.

  Yu gripped the edge of her seat as they flew directly toward the enemy ships. From the cockpit, they could make out the small outline of the Sky, doing the same.

  If this didn’t work, if the Admiral couldn’t be trusted, if anything went wrong, it was over for them. Shishone wasn’t one to blindly trust, either, but it was death this way or that, and so really, what did he have to lose? He ground his teeth. Flashes of Ceres flickered through his mind.

  They’d be in range soon. The signatures on the radar grew closer, closer, even closer. His heart began to skip beats, his eyes wildly searched the control panels of the ship for any out, his body began to shake. This was it.

  “Yarns, on my command, fire at will,” he said.

  Yarns began to cry. “This is suicide!”

  “Yarns! On my command!” he snapped. “Three.”

  Here went nothing.

  “Two.”

  Live or die.

  “One.”

  Likely die.

  But before he could say ‘fire’, some of the ships in the formation began to unleash barrages of kinetic ballistics, missiles, and gunships, all aimed at… each other.

  Several of the ships within the formation fired at each other, missiles flying and bullets hailing out in thick ropes. Large torpedo munitions began to spill out of the silos on the ships, bombarding the hulls of nearby compatriots. Explosions rocked the skies of Eris, metal debris raining down on the domes below. On the radar, the gunships that approached began to spin around and regroup toward the formation, multiple signatures going offline as they turned on each other. The formation was becoming a graveyard.

  Bright orange explosions ripped through several of the destroyers as they turned in the confusion, firing at will on each other. Red hot lines of bullets whipped throughout the wall, sinking deep into the hulls of the battlecruisers beside each other. Ships turned on ships, with some splitting completely in half in the carnage and falling to Eris’s surface in fiery plumes. One, the flaming wreckage of the bow of a destroyer, even fell to one of the domes below and crashed through it in a fireball the size of a skyscraper and with the brightness of a star.

  Shishone squinted to maintain his sight.

  “Holy shit,” Yu said, gripping the edge of her seat tightly. “He did it. That crazy bastard did it.”

  “Thomas!” Shishone called.

  “Here!”

  “Go! Full throttle, we need to break through!”

  The Sky’s thrusters glowed a bright white, as did the Harbinger’s, both ships accelerating toward the chaos. As they neared it, Gorsin’s voice cut through their comms again.

  “Not too shabby for an old man, eh?”

  Yu laughed. “You’re insane!”

  “I’m crafty, is what I am,” he said. “Go. Get to Dysnomia. Find Xiao. Finish this. And Yu?”

  “Yes sir?”

  “Do it for my daughter.”

  The line cut.

  Yu slapped the dash and laughed angrily. “Go Shishone, go!”

  He pulled on the stick, lurching the ship up, and then evened it out as they plunged into the depths of the battle. Bullets flew around them, and Shishone maneuvered, flipping the ship and diving down to dodge an incoming missile. The Harbinger split from the Mystic Sky, heading deeper into the mayhem. Debris and detritus pinged against the hull of the ship, rattling it. Shishone had to white-knuckle the stick to keep course.

  Before them, a ship began to crash down to Eris, its thrusters blinking in and out as its power systems failed. He pulled up, just barely avoiding the massive, blown out metal husk as it fell. But, as he lurched the ship up, he had to bank hard to the right to avoid the floating back end of another ship that hovered shattered, suspended in space above the planet below. He pulled the Harbinger up, then right again, but now, on the radar, a missile signature appeared.

  It was flying straight for them.

  “Yarns!” he called out. “Flares!”

  Yarns reached down and pushed a button, and from the back of the Harbinger, several bright white phosphorous flares ejected like an angel’s wings. The missile veered off course, headed for the heat signature of the flare, and exploded behind them. The ship buckled with the explosion, but kept course.

  Sinking into his crash chair, Shishone veered the ship away from the debris field, and finally, ejected them out on the other side with metal shards trailing them, glistening in the cold light of the sun. Behind them, the battle raged on, ship against ship, hundreds upon hundreds of lives claimed so far. But they survived.

  He looked around, searching for any sign of Thomas and Allister, but, unable to spot them, he checked the radar. There they were, just about to be spat out from the crashing wall of ships behind them.

  Shishone said into the radio, “Thomas? Allister? Are you two alright?”

  There was a moment of silence, a tension in the air as the three of them waited with bated breath for a response.

  Then, it came. “We’re here,” Thomas said with a grunt. As he spoke, the Mystic Sky appeared in the periphery of the cockpit window. Shishone looked to them, and Thomas gave him a salute. The Sky looked a little worse for the wear, dinged up and spiked in points with metal shrapnel, but still, it flew straight and true.

  “We made it!” Yarns exclaimed. “Jesus, we made it!”

  Allister came over the radio now, her voice sharp and tense. “We did?”

  Laughing, Yu said, “We did Allister! We made it!”

  Shishone grunted as Dysnomia neared. “Don’t celebrate yet. It’s not over.”

  Several red arrows appeared on the radar now, closing in on their rears. Shishone cursed under his breath, and said, “Thomas, incoming!”

  Stolen story; please report.

  “Go,” the man said. “I’ll swing around and lead them off. Set down on the Tower. Find Xiao.”

  “Godspeed,” said Yu.

  With that, the Sky peeled off to loop around with several missiles flooding out from its wings. The Harbinger banked hard right, aiming for an orbital approach to Dysnomia. On the radar, Shishone could see the red arrows bank off to follow Thomas, leaving them clear for landing. The lights of the Admin Zone were soon sparkling below them as Shishone lowered the ship for a landing. Buildings cropped up below them on the moon’s surface, the Military Tower to their right, the water tower to their left, and before them, the multi-tiered, dazzling, sky-scraping Admin Tower loomed.

  He took them in low, headed straight for the tower, when another red blip appeared on the screen. It was right behind them. One of the gunships following them had veered off to tail the Harbinger.

  “Yarns,” Shishone said, “missiles, now! Yu, load up targeting data. Fire at will.”

  Yu punched in a few numbers into the targeting computer, and Yarns flipped open the plastic covering on the missile control button.

  “Alright, you’re good to fire!” said Yu.

  Yarns nodded, and punched the button, the ship wobbling slightly as one of the forward facing missiles peeled off from its wing. Shishone jerked the ship left, weaving them around the Admin Tower as the gunship behind them followed. The missile, a small white dot on the radar, shot off from them and spun around, headed right for the tailing gunship.

  Then, it blinked out.

  “Fuck! They shot it down,” Shishone said. “Another one Yarns, go!”

  Yarns leaned in and pressed the button again, and another missile dropped from the wing, shooting off.

  “How many do we have left?” Yu asked.

  Shishone looked down at his screen on the dash. “Two.”

  The white dot on the radar looped around and headed right for the ship, as did the first. It flew with great speed, headed right for the nose, before it too was shot out.

  “Dammit! Hold on!”

  He jerked the ship vertical, flying up the length of the Admin Tower now. Yarns, struggling to breathe, began to panic.

  “Should I shoot another one?” he asked nervously.

  “No, they’ll just shoot it down too,” Shishone said. “Once we crest the tower, I want you on the under turret. Show those bastards who they’re messing with.”

  Up the length of the Tower they flew, and soon, the Harbinger shot high above its flat top, where Shishone pushed the stick forward and angled the nose down in a violent jerk that sickeningly lifted them out of their seats for a moment. Then, behind them, the enemy gunship shot up. Yarns swung the turret on the belly of the ship around to face them with the thumbstick and began to fire up on them.

  A rapid succession of muted bangs rang out inside the ship as the turret rattled out its bullets. Shishone fired the forward thrusters and angled the nose down so that it was facing the tower, exposing the belly of the Harbinger to the gunship in tow. Yarns, using this newfound vantage point and the stability of Shishone’s hover, trailed the ship in a firestorm of bullets.

  He hit.

  A line of bullets reamed through the midsection of the enemy ship, causing it to fall off course and loop away, but it was too late. The damage was done. Yarns continued to lay into it with all the firepower he could muster, ripping it to shreds. It fell back, nose first, and dove down before ripping apart in a powerful explosion near the base of the tower.

  Shishone broke the hover and leveled out the Harbinger above the tower, finally able to breathe. The landing the feet extended and the ship hovered above one of the three landing pads that sat in a triangle on its top. He brought the ship down on the lighted landing pad, blowing off red dust from its top in a plume as the ship settled.

  Then, finally having a moment to think as the wretched battle continued high above them, Shishone, Yu, and Yarns all sat back and let their hearts calm down. Shishone looked back at Yarns with a grin.

  “Good shooting kid,” he said.

  Yarns looked deathly pale, but offered a small smile. “Thanks.”

  “I can’t believe we made it,” Yu said, clutching her chest and breathing deeply. “That was insane.”

  “That was insane,” Shishone agreed. “But we did it. We’re here. So we have to keep going. That means you two need to go. There should be a spare rifle on the wall in the cabin. Don’t worry about slipping out of the airlock. Just depressurize the cabin, the cockpit will be fine. Helmets on, guards up. Be. Careful.”

  They nodded to him, and then, Yarns said, “Shishone, before I go, I wanted to say thank you. For being my battle partner. It was really something to know you.”

  “Don’t act like we won’t see each other again,” Shishone said, lightly punching his leg. “I’ll be here to pick you guys up when you’re done. Make it quick, got it?”

  “Yes sir,” Yarns said, giving him a salute. Then, he and Yu stood and headed into the cabin, where Yu grabbed the last rifle on the wall. They both put their helmets on, and checked each other’s seals. Satisfied that they wouldn’t depressurize, and rifles in hand, Yarns in black spec ops armor and Yu in elite guard armor, they stood by the back hatch of the Harbinger, hesitating.

  Yu looked to Yarns. “You ready kid?”

  “Ready as I can be,” he said.

  “Good. Here we go.” She hit a button on the back wall, and the seal of the ramp broke, the air whooshing out of the cabin around them. Crates rattled and trash shot out the hatch as it lowered. The were exposed to vacuum now. The ramp settled on the floor of the pad, and they aimed their rifles out onto the roof.

  There were three pads here, all in a triangle, leading down with stairs to a center box, all of which bathed in bright, flashing orange lights that ringed not only the landing pads but the entirety of the roof. Only one of the other pads housed a ship, and Yu recognized it immediately, its slender, curving features glimmering in the light. It was Xiao’s personal RPT ship, the Destiny. He was still here, then.

  Carefully, they made their way down the ramp with raised rifles, but suspiciously, nobody came out to greet them. They stepped onto the pad, before heading down the stairs as the Harbinger’s ramp closed behind them. It was silent, now, eerily so.

  Yu said over the radio, “Shishone, we’re going in. Be safe up there.”

  “I’ll try. You too,” he replied, spinning up the engines of the ship. They turned to watch as the feet retracted into the gunship as it hovered in place. Then, it rose, higher and higher, turning as it did.

  Just before Shishone could maneuver away, however, another gunship rose from below the tower, facing him. Yu and Yarns watched helplessly, terror sinking into their chests as Shishone spun up the under turret, but it was too late. The enemy ship had already gotten a lock.

  It fired a missile at the Harbinger, which struck its right wing in a fireball and sent the ship lurching back and falling into a spin.

  “Shishone!” Yarns cried out, but there was no response. The Harbinger, wing flaming, began to spin out uncontrolled, metal raining down onto them. They ducked, raising their arms to brace themselves as the Harbinger fell into a lethal nosedive tailspin, whirling away and disappearing below the horizon of the Tower, leaving them stranded.

  “Come on,” Yu said, yanking Yarns’ arm. “We need to go now.”

  The enemy gunship hovered for a moment, scanning the roof, before spotting them. They hurried down the stairs as it began to fire on them, bullets ripping into the landing pad in a trail that led right to them.

  They barely made it into the security building in the center as the gunfire reached them. They shut the door behind them and listened nervously as bullets sunk into the metal outside, before it fell silent. Yarns bolted the door with the latch on the inside, and then sunk down against it, beginning to sob.

  Yu looked around the room. It was a bloody mess here, bullet holes sunken deep into the walls, dead soldiers slumped against the desks and walls. It looked like the battle had reached here as well. The lights above flickered, some shot out, casting an unsettling ghostly glow on the scene. She felt sick, but there was no time to vomit.

  She turned and knelt down next to Yarns. “Hey, hey, listen to me.”

  He looked up at her, shaking, sniffling. “He’s gone?”

  “He’s gone,” she said. “But we have to keep going.”

  “How can you be so cold?” he spat.

  Yu frowned. “It’s not callous to make sure that none of this was in vain. And that’s what you need to remember Yarns. If we don’t make it, then what just happened? Shishone’s life? It was in vain. We have to keep going.”

  Yarns watched her for a second, absorbing that, before he shook his head and slowly started trying to stand. His legs were weak, and so Yu tucked her arm under his and helped him up, before putting a gentle hand on his shoulder.

  “You’re stronger than you think,” she said. “Be strong now.”

  He shuddered. “Okay. I… I will be.”

  “Good. C’mon, the radio is this way.”

  She turned and led Yarns to an elevator door on the wall. There she pushed the button, but it didn’t respond. It didn’t even light up. Frowning, she said, “Looks like we’re taking the stairs.”

  They went to a door in the wall and opened it, revealing a set of metal stairs that zigzagged down several stories. Hurriedly they began their descent, rushing down, down, passing by bullet hole riddled corpses here or there, blood dripping down the grated stairs. Every so often, Yu would have to rush back up to the shell-shocked Yarns and yank him onwards.

  “The radio is on the fortieth floor,” she said. “Hurry.”

  They passed by several doors leading into other floors, and through some of them, they could hear more gunfire. As they approached the fifty-fourth floor’s door, it swung open, and a man stumbled out clutching his gut. He was bleeding from it, and when he saw them, he stared at them with pleading eyes, showing them his bloody hand and the hole in his stomach, before collapsing before them.

  From within the hall, they could see two more soldiers rushing their way.

  Yu swung her rifle up and aimed it at them, and they did the same, but Yarns was the first to get a shot off, gunning them down before they could even pop off one. They both fell, and Yarns stood there, shaken, staring at the bodies.

  Yu grabbed his arm and tugged him onward, saying, “Let’s go!”

  They rushed down more stairs, eventually coming to the door for the fortieth floor. Here, they stopped, and Yu said, “This floor is special access. I hope my PDA still works.”

  She pressed it against the door’s scanner, and to her surprise, it unlocked. She yanked it open, and pushed Yarns inside, before she herself slipped in and shut it behind her, locking it. Now, they were in a long hallway, surrounded by silence. The fighting appeared to not have reached here yet; at least, that was what Yu could gather, seeing as there were no signs of blood or battle. Instead, the carpeted hall seemed… normal. Bland, soulless paintings hung on the wall, doors sealed shut, the lights still on. For a moment, Yu had flashes of normalcy, before it all, the battle, Sedna, her discoveries. A pang of pain flashed through her heart, some deep sadness, a longing for what once was.

  “The radio should be somewhere near the center of the tower,” she said with a frown. “Come on Yarns. We’re almost there.”

  She took point, clinging to her rifle, and Yarns followed closely as they made their way toward the center of the building. Every so often, a terrified civilian would poke their head out of a doorway, before slamming it shut and locking it as they passed. Yu, unfazed by this, remained focused now on her only goal: stopping her father.

  Soon they arrived at a large foyer that led to the radio station. It appeared evacuated in haste, chairs overturned, terminals on the floor, even a PDA had been dropped. They worked their way through the room, behind the desk and there, Yu pressed her own PDA to the door, unlocking it.

  It parted open, revealing a large round room with multiple offshoot rooms that were soundproofed and padded, all controlled by a long central console, at which sat multiple chairs. There were microphones in each room, switchboards, and unlit signs displaying the on-air status of would be programs. But the most striking thing in the room, the thing that caught Yu’s and Yarns’ eyes immediately as the door opened, the thing that caught their breath and stopped their hearts… was Xiao.

  He turned from the desk, where he had set a pistol and his PDA, and faced them. His features looked tired, weary, with dark, sunken eyes, pallid skin, and a thin frame. It looked as though he could drop dead at any moment, really, and in this moment, Yu caught herself feeling sorry for him. Still, there was the disbelief, that at the center of all of this bloodshed, the crux of this suffering, was a frail old man on the brink of death who had lost his mind.

  Xiao took a deep breath and let it out, and Yu caught herself internally shying away. The man appeared deathly and fragile, yet he still commanded an air of respect. He stood straight and waved them in, saying, “Well, don’t just stand there.”

  Yu let her guard down, if ever so slightly, lowering her weapon and entering the room, Yarns in tow behind her. Yarns kept his weapon trained on Xiao as he entered, a hellish rage building inside of him, burning like the brightest of suns.

  “Father,” Yu said.

  He glared at her. “Yu.”

  “How?” she asked. Tears began forming in her ducts. “How could you do all of this? And how did you know we’d be here?”

  “Do you think I’m stupid?” He shook his head like one would to a misbehaving child. With a sigh, he turned from them, folding his hands behind his back, and said, “My daughter. If only you knew of the grand works unfolding before us. Then, perhaps, you would understand the sacrifices I have made.”

  “Sacrifices?” she blurted. “You killed people. A lot of people. Tell me what in the hell could have made all of this worth it to you?”

  Xiao looked over his shoulder at them with a sneer. “I taught you better than to talk back like that,” he snapped.

  Yu stepped back, staring at him with horror and disgust. “You’ve become a monster.”

  Turning back around, he took a step forward, and gave her a sly, sideways look. Brushing off his jumpsuit, he said, “I have become the leader humanity needs. For centuries, humanity has looked to strong men to guide them through dark times. You know now that we are in dark times.”

  She scoffed. “You call this leading? People are dying under your orders.”

  “If my orders had been obeyed none of this would have come to pass!” Xiao slammed his fist down on the desk in rage, before clearing his throat, and standing up tall once more, regaining his composure. “In order to achieve greatness, some things must be lost. Some lives, even. It is all for the greater good.”

  “What good could come of this?” she asked, motioning around her. “All of this death. All of this suffering. Where is the good in that?”

  “What you don’t know,” Xiao said, frowning, “is that this is the better alternative. This is the good, Yu. Don’t you see? With all you know, from all you’ve seen, don’t you understand? The alternative is death, not just for you, or for me, but for all of us. TerraGov would rather kill every man, woman, and child than ascend to greatness. I would not have it. Instead, I propose an alternative.”

  He motioned for her to sit, but she simply grimaced and said, “Your alternative? What are you talking about? You’ve lost it.”

  “No, my daughter,” he said, a sadness flashing in his eyes. “I’m afraid not. Instead, I have found it. Our salvation. Our sublimation. Our ascendance. There are things out there that you could not even begin to fathom.”

  Yarns stepped forward. “Let’s just kill him,” he growled.

  “No,” said Xiao. “Unfortunately for you, that isn’t an option here.”

  Scowling, Yarns hesitated for a moment, looking out of the side of his eye at Yu, who nodded. Then, he squeezed the trigger, unloading an entire magazine into Xiao, who fell to the floor and began to writhe. Yarns let out an animalistic scream as he finished the magazine, before dropping it from his rifle and loading another one in, and unloading that one too into Xiao’s flailing body.

  Once he was done, and his weapon’s muzzle smoking, he stepped back, breathing heavily. Yu looked at him, then to her father, the weight of the universe weighing on her heart. It was over, she thought. They had done it.

  But before they could celebrate – if it could even be called that – Xiao grunted and rolled over, pushing himself up onto his knee. The bullet holes that should’ve been bleeding him out through his back began to close through the tatters of his jumpsuit. Sick, unnatural red strands overlaid the wounds, sealing them. Yu and Yarns watched in horror as Xiao stood tall now, turning to face them with a disappointed frown on his lips and a stern look in his eye.

  “I assume you’re finished?” he asked.

  They stood there speechless. Inspecting them, Xiao then shook his head, and picked up the pistol on the table.

  “It’s a shame.”

  He raised it at Yarns, who stood there, fear shining in his eyes.

  “Thank you for taking care of my daughter,” Xiao said, before pulling the trigger. The bullet pierced Yarns’ visor, splattering his helmet’s interior with blood. The boy crumpled to the floor as Yu let out a visceral scream.

  She knelt down beside Yarns and scooped up his body in her arms. “Yarns!” she cried. “Oh my God, what have you done?”

  “I did what needed to be done,” Xiao said. “Now watch me Yu! Watch, and I will show you the future!”

  She watched in terror as Xiao bent over, groaning, laughing, crying out as his face warped and sunk impossibly into itself, leaving only skin. Then, in silence, he fell onto the desk with a loud thud, before rolling off of it and writhing on the ground. From his back, red, sinewy vines began to pour out, thin at first, but soon, they started to mingle into thicker, heartier strands. The vines lashed about, tearing down the holoterminals on the desk, scattering the chairs. Yu backed away, unable to turn her gaze.

  Xiao was no longer Xiao. As he stood, she saw in unholy glory what he had become: a faceless creature that cocked its head at her, standing not on its feet, but on the vines protruding from its back. There were six main, thick, muscled tendrils, four of which propped him up at an angle, the other two waving as though suspended in water behind him. Multiple smaller strands poured from his back, giving him the appearance almost of a vile centipede. He watched her, if he even could watch her, as though he didn’t have eyes, it appeared as though he could still see her.

  Then, she heard his voice in her mind.

  I do you one last kindness, as your father.

  Then, the tendrils digging into the concrete and steel of the floor and walls, he thundered his way past her at inhuman speeds, slithering out the door and vanishing deeper into the Admin Tower. She watched him go, mouth agape, tears streaming down her wide, shock filled eyes as she shook there, alone.

  She slowly turned to Yarns and stared at his body. He was dead, and her father was gone. No, she thought, he was gone long ago. Truly alone now, she began to sob.

  Step by quivering step, she approached the desk, only to find it completely destroyed by Xiao. There would be no radioing Earth, and given the situation with the battle overhead, there would be no exchange of loyalty either. Her goal, the lives lost, it was pointless. Her mind and world were left in ruin.

  Terrified, feeling like a small, afraid little girl, she fell to her knees and cried out, howled in pain, screamed in etheric horror, before collapsing on the ground and curling into a ball, hyperventilating.

  They had lost.

  “Yu? Yarns?” came a voice through her helmet. It was Thomas. “Are you still alive?”

  She tried to speak, but the words choked up in her throat. What could even be said anymore?

  “Yu!” Allister said now. “Yarns! If you’re down there, please say something. We need to get out of here soon!”

  “I’m here,” she muttered. “Right here.”

  “Oh thank God,” Allister said. “Yu, where’s Yarns?”

  “I’m here,” she repeated.

  There was a moment of silence.

  “Oh…” said Allister.

  Thomas now spoke. “Yu, get to the roof, and double time it. We’ll meet you there, we need to go now.”

  Yu pushed herself up, but fell, grunting. “I’m coming,” she said, tears falling onto her visor. “I’m coming.”

  Finally managing to push herself up, she stood, wobbly, and tried to regain her balance and bearings. Then, she turned, and slowly began to shuffle out of the radio room, feeling hollow and empty.

  They had lost.