One word slips from my mouth.
“Why?”
The wind doesn’t answer.
Not tonight. Not ever, maybe.
But I ask anyway. Because Carson’s gone, and everyone’s pretending that his death makes sense, that it was simple. Monster attacks boy. Monster flees. Marines rally. The end. Easy, tidy, tragic.
Bullshit.
I lean into the wind until it stings my cheeks. I want it to burn. I want something real, something sharp. Grief is too soft. Too slow. Anger’s better.
No one sees me when I return to my bunk. They’re all curled into grief rituals or revenge fantasies. I slide the compad from beneath my mattress like I’m peeling back a scab.
It boots up fast—Carson’s encryption is clean. Nervous kid, but brilliant. The files are messy, tucked into hidden folders layered under innocent ones—notes on mineral composition, survey logs, academic bullshit. But I dig deeper. Crack past the surface.
Then I find them.
First: A spreadsheet.
Lines and lines of lab data. At first glance it looks legit, but then I see it—time stamps don't line up. Some logs are duplicated. Others overwritten. Calibration numbers that don’t match the input samples. It's forged. All of it. Designed to mimic legit research but built on sand.
Second: Sensor logs.
Water sensors rerouted. Why? That doesn’t even make sense until I follow the trail—our real water sources never get pinged. They’re reporting to a dead feed. Which means something else is being used. Somethingnotlisted in any official manifest. Maybe Carson was close to figuring out what.
Third: Safety alerts.
Or rather—thelackof them.
Carson found evidence that the perimeter sensors had been tampered with. One string of code runs like an automated flush every twelve hours, wiping out any movement logs from the last cycle. No alerts. No flags. No record of the stingtail migrations. No record of anything... including an Odex.
And then I find it.
An audio file.
Buried under two dummy backups. I almost miss it. It’s unlabeled. Just static at first. Then...
Ciampa’s voice.
“As long as no one else dies,” he says, slow and deliberate, “they’ll keep sending funds.”
That’s it.
That’sit.
My throat goes dry. My hand clamps over my mouth. It’s like being punched in the ribs while underwater—shock without breath. I replay it three times. The inflection never changes. No remorse. Just calculus.
Ciampa knew.
Not suspected.Knew.And still he let us come. Still he sent us into the field. Still he smiled and raised a toast at orientation like we were some fresh crop of saplings ready for harvest.
My stomach churns.
And suddenly I can’t sit anymore. I bolt outside again, this time barefoot and shaking. The gravel tears at my feet, but I don’t care. The chill bites through my shirt, but Iwelcomeit.
The beacon lights buzz and flicker behind me. The perimeter is quiet. For now.
