One spirals downward in a lazy corkscrew, landing harmlessly in the middle of a vendor’s stall.
The crowd doesn’t understand at first. I see it in the tilt of their heads, the confused laughter, the ripple of whispered questions. But then a child screams. A vendor shouts something in fractured Vakutan. Panic moves fast—always has. People begin to run.
I slide to the floor, my back to the console, and I sob.
Ugly, shuddering sobs that tear out of my throat like something dying. I bury my face in my arms and let it hit me—we did it.Against every odds. Against every goddamn coded layer, every twist of my uncle’s cruelty. We stopped it. No one’s blood is soaking this plaza. No nanite fog is curling into alien lungs. No sterilization, no mass death. Just confusion. Chaos.
But notgenocide.
A warm weight thuds beside me—it’s one of the console relays, burnt out completely. Smoke curls from the edges, acrid and sharp. My side throbs. My body’s screaming for rest, for medical attention, maybe even sleep.
And then I hear it.
Gunfire.
Not security. Not drones. Not warning shots.
Kenron.
I snap up so fast I almost black out. The room spins. My vision narrows to a tunnel of urgency and adrenaline. The console’s glow blurs at the edges. I push off it, stagger to the emergency rack where the guards had stored backup arms. My fingers wrap around the first weapon I can grip—ashort-barreled sidearm with a scorched grip and two confirmed charges left.
It’ll do.
My legs scream as I run. The stairwell out of the hub is narrow and steep. Every step is a jolt through my spine. My breath comes in short, wet gasps. Somewhere above me, people are screaming. The crowd is moving, shoving, spilling like water trying to find the lowest point.
Gunfire again.
It echoes off the plascrete walls, sharp and final.
Don’t you dare die on me.
I burst through the stairwell door just as a pulse round hits the far wall, sending shards of plas-glass raining down. The chaos is total now. The plaza’s become a living tide of bodies. Alien, human, hybrid—no one cares anymore. Everyone’s running.
And in the middle of it, fighting like a myth?—
Kenron.
His hair’s matted with sweat, his ceremonial robes stripped down to bloodstained layers. His shock staff is broken in half, one piece clutched in his left hand like a jagged blade. He’s bracing himself against the stage support, three Earth First enforcers surrounding him.
One lunges.
Kenron sidesteps, catches the enforcer’s wrist, twists until something cracks, and slams the shard-end of his staff into the man’s throat.
The second one fires.
I scream, “Kenron!”
He turns.
That’s all the hesitation the shooter needs.
The round clips Kenron’s side—he staggers, grunts, but stays standing. His gaze finds mine across the square, and something raw, something furious and beautiful, burns behind his eyes.
He shouts, “MOVE!”
I drop to one knee and fire.
The shot hits the second enforcer square in the chest. His armor absorbs most of it, but the kinetic force throws him backward into the support beam. He slumps and doesn’t get up.
